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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
On a purely empirical basis the fact that here were 100ks in ancient Jewish communities across the Middle East before they were expelled suggests that antisemitism wasn’t all pervasive until that point.
Er, the Jews were captured and enslaved in Babylon. This is historical fact
"The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in the Jewish–Babylonian War and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The event is known to be historical, and is described in the Hebrew Bible in addition to archaeological and extra-biblical sources."
BY the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept : when we remembered thee, O Sion.
2 As for our harps, we hanged them up : upon the trees that are therein.
3 For they that led us away captive required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness : Sing us one of the songs of Sion.
4 How shall we sing the Lord's song : in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem : let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth : yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my mirth.
7 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem : how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground.
8 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery : yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.
9 Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children : and throweth them against the stones.
Ps 137
Boney M.
Every month in an echoey cathedral we intoned the words of this psalm, unaccompanied. I can’t remember the musical setting (I remember it in my head, but not the composer). Late in the month, one of the last evenings of the cycle. I did this month in month out for 5 years.
Sometimes we would sing it - 18 boys and about 10 men - to a congregation of 2 or 3 people, all up in the choir stalls while the nave sat in darkness. A song of loss and longing.
There’s a recording of this psalm, I think, on a CD we did back in about 1990. I must look it up.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
If we are gonna be blamed for everything bad then it is only fair we get the credit for everything good
democracy (Greece), parliaments (Vikings), the rule of law (Rome), free speech (we haven't got it), Magna Carta (England), the English language (England), the internet (USA), cricket (UK), universal suffrage (Iceland?), television (Scotland), antibiotics (England), smiling politely (China), decent suits (you might be right here), rugby (Wales/NZ), erotic spanking (Germany/Austria?), the Raj (UK), Pax Britannica (UK), the abolition of slavery (mostly UK), football (England), and the sandwich (England)
Reminds me. And apologies for the teeny-weeny compressed image courtesy of vanilla (I assume).
Just found out the other day that the beans used in "British" baked fart capsules served in putrid orange fart juice have never been British grown beans
Apparently Biden retired for the day at..... 11.50 am. "We will not be seeing the president again"
An hour later Hamas announced they are gonna start executing hostages, live, on air - including up to a dozen American nationals
Sleepy Joe is not having a good war so far. He could lose the election in the coming days, if he's not careful. An urgent global crisis is when you realise you don't want an 80 year old man running the shop. This also applies to Trump, nearly as much, of course
He is going to get hammered on the $6 billion deal with Iran and the Robert Malley thing for sure. Then the analogies already being drawn between what has happened in his Presidency and Trump's on foreign affairs.
He has also got the problem of his left wing to deal with who are more 'equivocal' when it comes to Israel.
Moreover, it looks like the Israel conflict is spurring the GOP to get the House Speaker contest over with ASAP. Even Gaetz has said he will respect the majority result. That helps on the aid front but it probably means there is not the extended process of the House GOP ripping itself apart.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
My grandfather fought somewhere in the middle east. Never spoke about it other than to express his hatred for camels.
Apparently Biden retired for the day at..... 11.50 am. "We will not be seeing the president again"
An hour later Hamas announced they are gonna start executing hostages, live, on air - including up to a dozen American nationals
Sleepy Joe is not having a good war so far. He could lose the election in the coming days, if he's not careful. An urgent global crisis is when you realise you don't want an 80 year old man running the shop. This also applies to Trump, nearly as much, of course
He is going to get hammered on the $6 billion deal with Iran and the Robert Malley thing for sure. Then the analogies already being drawn between what has happened in his Presidency and Trump's on foreign affairs.
He has also got the problem of his left wing to deal with who are more 'equivocal' when it comes to Israel.
Moreover, it looks like the Israel conflict is spurring the GOP to get the House Speaker contest over with ASAP. Even Gaetz has said he will respect the majority result. That helps on the aid front but it probably means there is not the extended process of the House GOP ripping itself apart.
If we are gonna be blamed for everything bad then it is only fair we get the credit for everything good
democracy (Greece), parliaments (Vikings), the rule of law (Rome), free speech (we haven't got it), Magna Carta (England), the English language (England), the internet (USA), cricket (UK), universal suffrage (Iceland?), television (Scotland), antibiotics (England), smiling politely (China), decent suits (you might be right here), rugby (Wales/NZ), erotic spanking (Germany/Austria?), the Raj (UK), Pax Britannica (UK), the abolition of slavery (mostly UK), football (England), and the sandwich (England)
Reminds me. And apologies for the teeny-weeny compressed image courtesy of vanilla (I assume).
Just found out the other day that the beans used in "British" baked fart capsules served in putrid orange fart juice have never been British grown beans
It's a good and important point you make - especially given the food security issue and the likelihood that meat production would crash or be closed down in a crisis, so we depend more on beans and other pulses.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
On some level @148grss seems to believe that decolonisation was a mistake, and we should instead have all joined in one big happy family with no borders.
I mean, that is the least favourable way of interpreting my beliefs. My political ideals are, without a deep education in what many call "theory", broadly communist / anarchist - I believe that states are fictive creations of groups of people that are typically used on the behalf of the elite of those groups to better position themselves in international power structures. I see no reason why we cannot live in a stateless society, with the second best option being some form of singular global state (although that is a far second best, big gap between first and second preference). I also understand that is not a likely state of political reality in my lifetime, so... yeah
No state?
So no state education? No voting for state elections? No state welfare? No state healthcare? No taxes paid to the state?
Or not?
I mean, in my ideal utopian position - anarchist organisation methods via community organising and mutual aid would cover those things, and things would be done on a basis of direct democracy within the community you live and work - with mutually beneficial arrangements between those communities to support each other. We can take some ideas from the how Native American confederacies worked, we can look at the democratic confederalism of the Kurdish theorists and Rojavan project. Again, I understand this is not a realistic position in the political reality of the now, even if I think it is both a possible and preferable way to live. I also accept that, relative to others on the left, I am not a theory nerd and therefore cannot and do not wish to give you a full outline of how this would function or answer the questions that are often asked of, like, "how would x under anarchist utopia" when the answer is roughly "if enough people want x, and enough people have the skills to make x, people who enjoy making x will be free to make x and you, as someone who enjoys x but may not have the skills to make x, would be able to also have x".
You must be the most right-wing libertarian on the state.
So if people want to voluntarily pay towards the community aid then they can be free to do so, but if they don't then there's no taxes and no compulsion?
Or are you saying that people would be forced to pay taxes? In which case there is a state in your utopian position, even if you dislike the word.
Again - my utopianism does not believe in capital; from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
And if you look at Rojava then involvement in the direct democracy is compulsory - but that was enforced in part to make sure that women and other ethnic groups were represented and speaking for themselves in what was (and still is) a very patriarchal culture with a long history of political tensions down ethnic lines.
If its compulsory, its a state.
So you don't believe in no state. You believe in your version of a state.
Like I described, in Rojava they have made specific provisions to make it compulsory that women and ethnic minorities are involved in the direct democracy because they recognise the cultural and historic barriers that prevent that.
If you were to do it in your village, for example, and you didn't want to be involved - that would be fine.
If I was an ethnic minority woman in my village, would that be ok? Is there someone adjudicating on this? Am I ethnic enough to be compelled or just not ethnic enough so don't need to bother and sit with my feet up while I watch the fully ethnics walk past my window?
I understand that you are joking - but again, with the Rojavan project the recognition that they were trying to move out of a culture where women were still expected to defer to their husbands on all decisions and where mass murders had happened (of Kurds, of Armenians, of Syrians etc) by the other neighbouring or historic states, typically based on ethnic lines, means that for their project to work they felt the need of direct input from those communities. And by compelled I don't mean "if the woman said no, they were forced" - but if the husband said no the husband was ignored and where the wife was unsure because they have no frame of reference for such activities they were supported in participating.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
I'm fine with making it less civil. To be honest "half-wit" is very mild for someone who names himself after an historical figure with pretty close associations with Eden, but who obviously doesn't know jack about Suez.
my avatar comes from the name of the street I grew up in. but beat your chest if it keeps you happy
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
My grandfather fought somewhere in the middle east. Never spoke about it other than to express his hatred for camels.
My dad was in the Navy. His equivalent phobia was for tinned apricots and tinned plums!
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
I wonder how long it is until some opportunistic politician responds to the demands for reparations due to slavery/colonialism by issuing a counter-demand for reimbursement for aid, contribution to development, disaster relief etc in the developing world in the post colonial period. The answer to both would be no - they would cancel each other out.
If we are gonna be blamed for everything bad then it is only fair we get the credit for everything good
democracy (Greece), parliaments (Vikings), the rule of law (Rome), free speech (we haven't got it), Magna Carta (England), the English language (England), the internet (USA), cricket (UK), universal suffrage (Iceland?), television (Scotland), antibiotics (England), smiling politely (China), decent suits (you might be right here), rugby (Wales/NZ), erotic spanking (Germany/Austria?), the Raj (UK), Pax Britannica (UK), the abolition of slavery (mostly UK), football (England), and the sandwich (England)
Reminds me. And apologies for the teeny-weeny compressed image courtesy of vanilla (I assume).
Just found out the other day that the beans used in "British" baked fart capsules served in putrid orange fart juice have never been British grown beans
It's a good and important point you make - especially given the food security issue and the likelihood that meat production would crash or be closed down in a crisis, so we depend more on beans and other pulses.
Any bean in a tomato sauce would serve tbf. I am sure we could grow a lot more beans in Britain if we needed to - borlotti beans grow very well in our garden.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
I'm fine with making it less civil. To be honest "half-wit" is very mild for someone who names himself after an historical figure with pretty close associations with Eden, but who obviously doesn't know jack about Suez.
my avatar comes from the name of the street I grew up in. but beat your chest if it keeps you happy
The photo's just a coincidence then?
Of course not I fished it out. I grew up on a post war council estate where all the streets were named after the WW2 "Irish Generals" - Montgomery, Alexander, Alanbrooke, Templar and Dill.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
My grandfather fought somewhere in the middle east. Never spoke about it other than to express his hatred for camels.
My dad was in the Navy. His equivalent phobia was for tinned apricots and tinned plums!
I remember a friend of my parents who had gone out with the merchant navy. Regaling them with "Wow! We had steak for dinner on the first night! Amazing!". And "Wow! We had steak the second night too!".
Eventually ending up as "Day 341: Steak again. Hate steak. Please... send.... veg....".
I had some sympathy for the Palestinians, but if Maggie Chapman is on their side, all sympathy has evaporated.
Hard to remember that someone who was once the COO of a rape crisis centre now thinks that one should "understand" the "context" for brutal rapes of young girls. She is the current Deputy Convenor of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee..
The Scottish Greens have been unhinged for a while. Now we know some of their number are lacking in all moral sense.
If we are gonna be blamed for everything bad then it is only fair we get the credit for everything good
democracy (Greece), parliaments (Vikings), the rule of law (Rome), free speech (we haven't got it), Magna Carta (England), the English language (England), the internet (USA), cricket (UK), universal suffrage (Iceland?), television (Scotland), antibiotics (England), smiling politely (China), decent suits (you might be right here), rugby (Wales/NZ), erotic spanking (Germany/Austria?), the Raj (UK), Pax Britannica (UK), the abolition of slavery (mostly UK), football (England), and the sandwich (England)
Reminds me. And apologies for the teeny-weeny compressed image courtesy of vanilla (I assume).
Just found out the other day that the beans used in "British" baked fart capsules served in putrid orange fart juice have never been British grown beans
It's a good and important point you make - especially given the food security issue and the likelihood that meat production would crash or be closed down in a crisis, so we depend more on beans and other pulses.
Any bean in a tomato sauce would serve tbf. I am sure we could grow a lot more beans in Britain if we needed to - borlotti beans grow very well in our garden.
The things you see in fields here which look like broad bean plants are in fact field beans. They are dried and shipped to Spain where they are ground up and mixed with olive oil to make a delicious if dubiously-brown paste.
I wonder how long it is until some opportunistic politician responds to the demands for reparations due to slavery/colonialism by issuing a counter-demand for reimbursement for aid, contribution to development, disaster relief etc in the developing world in the post colonial period. The answer to both would be no - they would cancel each other out.
I mean the Faragists already do make that kind of argument - I saw it a lot when India's space program was more in the news.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
On a purely empirical basis the fact that here were 100ks in ancient Jewish communities across the Middle East before they were expelled suggests that antisemitism wasn’t all pervasive until that point.
Hmmm...those ancient communities didn't always have a pleasant existence - just as they faced persecution in Europe - but that was the world then, and people generally didn't have the means to wipe each other out until the late 19th Century. As the OP says, the Ottoman Empire (and European ones for all their terrible faults) generally didn't persecute Jewish communities, except sporadically, until the 20th Century.
A bigger cause would arguably be those countries' turns towards nationalism and theocracy, post-Empire, and the spreading of antisemitism by first the Nazis then Soviets in the Arab world, and the rise of Qutbism and other fundamentalist creeds that are explicitly antisemitic on religious grounds. The Protocols are still uncritically referred to in some Muslim nations. Unfortunately, I think some of the toxic antisemitism that proved so catastrophic in the first half of the 20th Century, rather stuck in some parts of the Middle East and has led to an entirely destructive view of Israel. Otherwise the conflict may be more resolvable or frozen in a way that leaves less violence like lots of territorial, liberation, or nationalist disputes. As a result many of those ancient Jewish communities have disappeared as you often either ended up with a Gaddafi or a Ba'ath party driving them out, or theocratic movements doing so. The Israel-Palestine conflict hasn't helped there, obviously, but there's got to be some agency beyond that in terms of many regimes in the Middle East adopting virulently antisemitic beliefs - and promoting them - for either Arab nationalist or religious fundamentalist reasons. Lots of which take their cues from the deadly strains of conspiratorial antisemitism that mutated from more ancient hatreds in the 19th and 20th Century.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
Good response to call out a lazy, weak argument that imo achieves nothing other than betraying the weakness of the arguments against the points you have put.
I come to this board to learn stuff, and read much more than I post. @148grss I am slightly in awe of how cogently and calmly you have put across a point of view that, whilst being radical, is imo pretty much bang on. I’ve learnt a lot from your posts today, thanks.
On topic, sort of: It looks to me as if Mid Bedfordshire is fairly close to the center (or, if you prefer, the centre) of England's population.
(By center, I am thinking mean, rather than median, following the standard practice of the US Census Burea, but I would be interested in knowing either, or both, for England.)
On topic, sort of: It looks to me as if Mid Bedfordshire is fairly close to the center (or, if you prefer, the centre) of England's population.
(By center, I am thinking mean, rather than median, following the standard practice of the US Census Burea, but I would be interested in knowing either, or both, for England.)
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
A country’s relative position is not determined by the past. Sixty years ago, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, China were all dirt poor. Now they aren’t. Botswana, a British Protectorate was no better off than Rhodesia. Now, Botswana is prosperous, whereas Zimbabwe is even poorer than it was sixty years ago.
Poland, the Baltic States, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, suffered years of horror, first at Nazi hands, then at Communist hands. Now, they’re all prosperous.
Prosperity is there for the taking, given the right 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?
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
Good response to call out a lazy, weak argument that imo achieves nothing other than betraying the weakness of the arguments against the points you have put.
I come to this board to learn stuff, and read much more than I post. @148grss I am slightly in awe of how cogently and calmly you have put across a point of view that, whilst being radical, is imo pretty much bang on. I’ve learnt a lot from your posts today, thanks.
That's very kind. If you're interested in this kind of stuff I can point you in the direction of the history podcasts, videos and articles I consume (I don't really know how DMing works on this platform, but it is apparently a thing?)
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
On a purely empirical basis the fact that here were 100ks in ancient Jewish communities across the Middle East before they were expelled suggests that antisemitism wasn’t all pervasive until that point.
Er, the Jews were captured and enslaved in Babylon. This is historical fact
"The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in the Jewish–Babylonian War and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The event is known to be historical, and is described in the Hebrew Bible in addition to archaeological and extra-biblical sources."
BY the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept : when we remembered thee, O Sion.
2 As for our harps, we hanged them up : upon the trees that are therein.
3 For they that led us away captive required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness : Sing us one of the songs of Sion.
4 How shall we sing the Lord's song : in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem : let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth : yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my mirth.
7 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem : how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground.
8 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery : yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.
9 Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children : and throweth them against the stones.
Ps 137
That's not the lyrics I know.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
There the wicked Carried us away in captivity Required from us a song Now how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? There the wicked Carried us away in captivity Requiring of us a song Now how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
By the rivers of Babylon (dark tears of Babylon) There we sat down (you got to sing a song) Yeah, we wept (sing a song of love) When we remembered Zion (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah) By the rivers of Babylon (rough bits of Babylon)
There we sat down (you hear the people cry) Yeah, we wept (they need their God) When we remembered Zion (ooh, have the power) By the rivers of Babylon (oh yeah yeah), there we sat down (yeah, yeah)
Boney M.
The Bible and the Book of Common Prayer have clearly been indulging in copyright breach. Down with it. Down with it.
Apparently Biden retired for the day at..... 11.50 am. "We will not be seeing the president again"
An hour later Hamas announced they are gonna start executing hostages, live, on air - including up to a dozen American nationals
Sleepy Joe is not having a good war so far. He could lose the election in the coming days, if he's not careful. An urgent global crisis is when you realise you don't want an 80 year old man running the shop. This also applies to Trump, nearly as much, of course
He is going to get hammered on the $6 billion deal with Iran and the Robert Malley thing for sure. Then the analogies already being drawn between what has happened in his Presidency and Trump's on foreign affairs.
He has also got the problem of his left wing to deal with who are more 'equivocal' when it comes to Israel.
Moreover, it looks like the Israel conflict is spurring the GOP to get the House Speaker contest over with ASAP. Even Gaetz has said he will respect the majority result. That helps on the aid front but it probably means there is not the extended process of the House GOP ripping itself apart.
I can't see twitter any more (thanks Elon!) - what does it say?
One of the stupidities of the American system of politics (and other things) is the presentee’ism culture
Demanding that the President is up 24/7 is stupid. It results in nothing of value. But you got morons saying that Bush II and Obama were *too* fit and rested.
As CITI group, we used to see these morons troupe into the office at 6am and stay until past 10pm*. Where they would read news websites. Hint for morons - in the dark, glass office walls reflect…
*I was working night shifts to support some stuff going live
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Yet in most of the world, colonised or not, life is way better than it was 200 years ago. Growing rich is not a zero sum activity.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
You might want to look at what led to the indemnity:
These issues are complex; and yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you seem very keen to put all the ills of the world at our / the west's feet. Which is not only rubbish; it is dangerous rubbish, as only looking at situations in total can lead to understanding and peace.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Again you're talking BS.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
On some level @148grss seems to believe that decolonisation was a mistake, and we should instead have all joined in one big happy family with no borders.
I mean, that is the least favourable way of interpreting my beliefs. My political ideals are, without a deep education in what many call "theory", broadly communist / anarchist - I believe that states are fictive creations of groups of people that are typically used on the behalf of the elite of those groups to better position themselves in international power structures. I see no reason why we cannot live in a stateless society, with the second best option being some form of singular global state (although that is a far second best, big gap between first and second preference). I also understand that is not a likely state of political reality in my lifetime, so... yeah
No state?
So no state education? No voting for state elections? No state welfare? No state healthcare? No taxes paid to the state?
Or not?
I mean, in my ideal utopian position - anarchist organisation methods via community organising and mutual aid would cover those things, and things would be done on a basis of direct democracy within the community you live and work - with mutually beneficial arrangements between those communities to support each other. We can take some ideas from the how Native American confederacies worked, we can look at the democratic confederalism of the Kurdish theorists and Rojavan project. Again, I understand this is not a realistic position in the political reality of the now, even if I think it is both a possible and preferable way to live. I also accept that, relative to others on the left, I am not a theory nerd and therefore cannot and do not wish to give you a full outline of how this would function or answer the questions that are often asked of, like, "how would x under anarchist utopia" when the answer is roughly "if enough people want x, and enough people have the skills to make x, people who enjoy making x will be free to make x and you, as someone who enjoys x but may not have the skills to make x, would be able to also have x".
You must be the most right-wing libertarian on the state.
So if people want to voluntarily pay towards the community aid then they can be free to do so, but if they don't then there's no taxes and no compulsion?
Or are you saying that people would be forced to pay taxes? In which case there is a state in your utopian position, even if you dislike the word.
Again - my utopianism does not believe in capital; from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
And if you look at Rojava then involvement in the direct democracy is compulsory - but that was enforced in part to make sure that women and other ethnic groups were represented and speaking for themselves in what was (and still is) a very patriarchal culture with a long history of political tensions down ethnic lines.
If its compulsory, its a state.
So you don't believe in no state. You believe in your version of a state.
Like I described, in Rojava they have made specific provisions to make it compulsory that women and ethnic minorities are involved in the direct democracy because they recognise the cultural and historic barriers that prevent that.
If you were to do it in your village, for example, and you didn't want to be involved - that would be fine.
If I was an ethnic minority woman in my village, would that be ok? Is there someone adjudicating on this? Am I ethnic enough to be compelled or just not ethnic enough so don't need to bother and sit with my feet up while I watch the fully ethnics walk past my window?
I understand that you are joking - but again, with the Rojavan project the recognition that they were trying to move out of a culture where women were still expected to defer to their husbands on all decisions and where mass murders had happened (of Kurds, of Armenians, of Syrians etc) by the other neighbouring or historic states, typically based on ethnic lines, means that for their project to work they felt the need of direct input from those communities. And by compelled I don't mean "if the woman said no, they were forced" - but if the husband said no the husband was ignored and where the wife was unsure because they have no frame of reference for such activities they were supported in participating.
I think the challenge as I have always understood it for such anarchist or anarchist-syndicalist communities comes from defence. Chomsky was good on this.
Simply put, such collectives will always be vulnerable to groups within or without that form organs of statehood to fund and organise militaries. The only way to protect against this is to create organs of state in turn to form collective defence. But that concentrates power in a way that fatally weakens any anarchist project.
Or so goes the theory as I understand it. Which is a shame. For a long time I’ve felt that I’m philosophically an anarchist but a democrat in practice.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
You might want to look at what led to the indemnity:
These issues are complex; and yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you seem very keen to put all the ills of the world at our / the west's feet. Which is not only rubbish; it is dangerous rubbish, as only looking at situations in total can lead to understanding and peace.
All the more absurd when you consider how wretched the lot of a typical inhabitant of this world was, prior to the rise of the Western powers.
The past century has seen the biggest ever rise in living standards in world history.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
On a purely empirical basis the fact that here were 100ks in ancient Jewish communities across the Middle East before they were expelled suggests that antisemitism wasn’t all pervasive until that point.
Er, the Jews were captured and enslaved in Babylon. This is historical fact
"The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in the Jewish–Babylonian War and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The event is known to be historical, and is described in the Hebrew Bible in addition to archaeological and extra-biblical sources."
BY the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept : when we remembered thee, O Sion.
2 As for our harps, we hanged them up : upon the trees that are therein.
3 For they that led us away captive required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness : Sing us one of the songs of Sion.
4 How shall we sing the Lord's song : in a strange land?
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem : let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth : yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my mirth.
7 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem : how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground.
8 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery : yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.
9 Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children : and throweth them against the stones.
Ps 137
That's not the lyrics I know.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
There the wicked Carried us away in captivity Required from us a song Now how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? There the wicked Carried us away in captivity Requiring of us a song Now how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
By the rivers of Babylon (dark tears of Babylon) There we sat down (you got to sing a song) Yeah, we wept (sing a song of love) When we remembered Zion (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah) By the rivers of Babylon (rough bits of Babylon)
There we sat down (you hear the people cry) Yeah, we wept (they need their God) When we remembered Zion (ooh, have the power) By the rivers of Babylon (oh yeah yeah), there we sat down (yeah, yeah)
Is this part of the "don't have time to sort between the good and bad Palestinians" position?
i checked that guy's TwitterX feed. Not a single tweet expressing regret for the Israeli dead from Hamas attacks. Not one. Not even noted. Various tweets quietly exulting in dead Israeli soldiers. The rest just a tedious lament
I get that he is Gazan and feels oppressed and all that, but he is not a neutral observer worth citing
It's a war. And in this instance it is a war started by outrageous Palestinian barbarism
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
Good response to call out a lazy, weak argument that imo achieves nothing other than betraying the weakness of the arguments against the points you have put.
I come to this board to learn stuff, and read much more than I post. @148grss I am slightly in awe of how cogently and calmly you have put across a point of view that, whilst being radical, is imo pretty much bang on. I’ve learnt a lot from your posts today, thanks.
That's very kind. If you're interested in this kind of stuff I can point you in the direction of the history podcasts, videos and articles I consume (I don't really know how DMing works on this platform, but it is apparently a thing?)
I’ve sent you a dm which should alert you I think. If not just click my username and then ‘message’ on vanilla.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
On some level @148grss seems to believe that decolonisation was a mistake, and we should instead have all joined in one big happy family with no borders.
I mean, that is the least favourable way of interpreting my beliefs. My political ideals are, without a deep education in what many call "theory", broadly communist / anarchist - I believe that states are fictive creations of groups of people that are typically used on the behalf of the elite of those groups to better position themselves in international power structures. I see no reason why we cannot live in a stateless society, with the second best option being some form of singular global state (although that is a far second best, big gap between first and second preference). I also understand that is not a likely state of political reality in my lifetime, so... yeah
No state?
So no state education? No voting for state elections? No state welfare? No state healthcare? No taxes paid to the state?
Or not?
I mean, in my ideal utopian position - anarchist organisation methods via community organising and mutual aid would cover those things, and things would be done on a basis of direct democracy within the community you live and work - with mutually beneficial arrangements between those communities to support each other. We can take some ideas from the how Native American confederacies worked, we can look at the democratic confederalism of the Kurdish theorists and Rojavan project. Again, I understand this is not a realistic position in the political reality of the now, even if I think it is both a possible and preferable way to live. I also accept that, relative to others on the left, I am not a theory nerd and therefore cannot and do not wish to give you a full outline of how this would function or answer the questions that are often asked of, like, "how would x under anarchist utopia" when the answer is roughly "if enough people want x, and enough people have the skills to make x, people who enjoy making x will be free to make x and you, as someone who enjoys x but may not have the skills to make x, would be able to also have x".
You must be the most right-wing libertarian on the state.
So if people want to voluntarily pay towards the community aid then they can be free to do so, but if they don't then there's no taxes and no compulsion?
Or are you saying that people would be forced to pay taxes? In which case there is a state in your utopian position, even if you dislike the word.
Again - my utopianism does not believe in capital; from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
And if you look at Rojava then involvement in the direct democracy is compulsory - but that was enforced in part to make sure that women and other ethnic groups were represented and speaking for themselves in what was (and still is) a very patriarchal culture with a long history of political tensions down ethnic lines.
If its compulsory, its a state.
So you don't believe in no state. You believe in your version of a state.
Like I described, in Rojava they have made specific provisions to make it compulsory that women and ethnic minorities are involved in the direct democracy because they recognise the cultural and historic barriers that prevent that.
If you were to do it in your village, for example, and you didn't want to be involved - that would be fine.
If I was an ethnic minority woman in my village, would that be ok? Is there someone adjudicating on this? Am I ethnic enough to be compelled or just not ethnic enough so don't need to bother and sit with my feet up while I watch the fully ethnics walk past my window?
I understand that you are joking - but again, with the Rojavan project the recognition that they were trying to move out of a culture where women were still expected to defer to their husbands on all decisions and where mass murders had happened (of Kurds, of Armenians, of Syrians etc) by the other neighbouring or historic states, typically based on ethnic lines, means that for their project to work they felt the need of direct input from those communities. And by compelled I don't mean "if the woman said no, they were forced" - but if the husband said no the husband was ignored and where the wife was unsure because they have no frame of reference for such activities they were supported in participating.
I think the challenge as I have always understood it for such anarchist or anarchist-syndicalist communities comes from defence. Chomsky was good on this.
Simply put, such collectives will always be vulnerable to groups within or without that form organs of statehood to fund and organise militaries. The only way to protect against this is to create organs of state in turn to form collective defence. But that concentrates power in a way that fatally weakens any anarchist project.
Or so goes the theory as I understand it. Which is a shame. For a long time I’ve felt that I’m philosophically an anarchist but a democrat in practice.
More that in the absence of state control of violence, you get amateur, distributed violence. Which ends up coalescing into rule by the nastiest gangster you have to hand.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
The Abba Eban quote works quite well for Russia over the past few years, not just the Palestinians.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
Good response to call out a lazy, weak argument that imo achieves nothing other than betraying the weakness of the arguments against the points you have put.
I come to this board to learn stuff, and read much more than I post. @148grss I am slightly in awe of how cogently and calmly you have put across a point of view that, whilst being radical, is imo pretty much bang on. I’ve learnt a lot from your posts today, thanks.
When evil occurs the most important thing is to provide context which blames the evil on someone else
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Again you're talking BS.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
India was greatly impoverished by British rule! It went from a country with one of the largest global exports to one of with the smallest. Large scale famine did not exist in India before British rule because local rulers understood that taxing your subjects to death was bad - indeed local forms of mutual aid exists where if one area had a bad harvest or such another local area would subsidise it that year / time period, alongside a tax waver, with the understanding that if the situation were reversed that community would have done the same. British Imperial rule of India killed an astronomical number of Indians, which have reverberations to today:
The things you say are positives, like railways and democracy, were not build with the Indian people in mind - the railways were built with the transportation of soldiers and goods for the British Empire in mind, and the imported "democracy" was to replace traditional Indian practices (many of which like the above example related to mutual aid and tax waivers) with stringent inflexible laws and policies - with the singular aim of maximising resource and wealth extraction for the benefit of the British Empire.
Ironically the thread header "divide and conquer" is appropriate for such a topic:
If we are gonna be blamed for everything bad then it is only fair we get the credit for everything good
democracy (Greece), parliaments (Vikings), the rule of law (Rome), free speech (we haven't got it), Magna Carta (England), the English language (England), the internet (USA), cricket (UK), universal suffrage (Iceland?), television (Scotland), antibiotics (England), smiling politely (China), decent suits (you might be right here), rugby (Wales/NZ), erotic spanking (Germany/Austria?), the Raj (UK), Pax Britannica (UK), the abolition of slavery (mostly UK), football (England), and the sandwich (England)
Reminds me. And apologies for the teeny-weeny compressed image courtesy of vanilla (I assume).
Just found out the other day that the beans used in "British" baked fart capsules served in putrid orange fart juice have never been British grown beans
IIRC various attempts to grow the beans in the UK have been tried and failed. Probably a Zionist plot.
On topic, sort of: It looks to me as if Mid Bedfordshire is fairly close to the center (or, if you prefer, the centre) of England's population.
(By center, I am thinking mean, rather than median, following the standard practice of the US Census Burea, but I would be interested in knowing either, or both, for England.)
Whats your take on RFK ?
I'm interested in this too. He's announced he's standing as an independent. Will he take more votes from Trump or Biden?
My guess is more votes from Trump, which is ironic as I understand RFK is financed by a Republican PAC.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
On some level @148grss seems to believe that decolonisation was a mistake, and we should instead have all joined in one big happy family with no borders.
I mean, that is the least favourable way of interpreting my beliefs. My political ideals are, without a deep education in what many call "theory", broadly communist / anarchist - I believe that states are fictive creations of groups of people that are typically used on the behalf of the elite of those groups to better position themselves in international power structures. I see no reason why we cannot live in a stateless society, with the second best option being some form of singular global state (although that is a far second best, big gap between first and second preference). I also understand that is not a likely state of political reality in my lifetime, so... yeah
No state?
So no state education? No voting for state elections? No state welfare? No state healthcare? No taxes paid to the state?
Or not?
I mean, in my ideal utopian position - anarchist organisation methods via community organising and mutual aid would cover those things, and things would be done on a basis of direct democracy within the community you live and work - with mutually beneficial arrangements between those communities to support each other. We can take some ideas from the how Native American confederacies worked, we can look at the democratic confederalism of the Kurdish theorists and Rojavan project. Again, I understand this is not a realistic position in the political reality of the now, even if I think it is both a possible and preferable way to live. I also accept that, relative to others on the left, I am not a theory nerd and therefore cannot and do not wish to give you a full outline of how this would function or answer the questions that are often asked of, like, "how would x under anarchist utopia" when the answer is roughly "if enough people want x, and enough people have the skills to make x, people who enjoy making x will be free to make x and you, as someone who enjoys x but may not have the skills to make x, would be able to also have x".
You must be the most right-wing libertarian on the state.
So if people want to voluntarily pay towards the community aid then they can be free to do so, but if they don't then there's no taxes and no compulsion?
Or are you saying that people would be forced to pay taxes? In which case there is a state in your utopian position, even if you dislike the word.
Again - my utopianism does not believe in capital; from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
And if you look at Rojava then involvement in the direct democracy is compulsory - but that was enforced in part to make sure that women and other ethnic groups were represented and speaking for themselves in what was (and still is) a very patriarchal culture with a long history of political tensions down ethnic lines.
If its compulsory, its a state.
So you don't believe in no state. You believe in your version of a state.
Like I described, in Rojava they have made specific provisions to make it compulsory that women and ethnic minorities are involved in the direct democracy because they recognise the cultural and historic barriers that prevent that.
If you were to do it in your village, for example, and you didn't want to be involved - that would be fine.
If I was an ethnic minority woman in my village, would that be ok? Is there someone adjudicating on this? Am I ethnic enough to be compelled or just not ethnic enough so don't need to bother and sit with my feet up while I watch the fully ethnics walk past my window?
I understand that you are joking - but again, with the Rojavan project the recognition that they were trying to move out of a culture where women were still expected to defer to their husbands on all decisions and where mass murders had happened (of Kurds, of Armenians, of Syrians etc) by the other neighbouring or historic states, typically based on ethnic lines, means that for their project to work they felt the need of direct input from those communities. And by compelled I don't mean "if the woman said no, they were forced" - but if the husband said no the husband was ignored and where the wife was unsure because they have no frame of reference for such activities they were supported in participating.
I think the challenge as I have always understood it for such anarchist or anarchist-syndicalist communities comes from defence. Chomsky was good on this.
Simply put, such collectives will always be vulnerable to groups within or without that form organs of statehood to fund and organise militaries. The only way to protect against this is to create organs of state in turn to form collective defence. But that concentrates power in a way that fatally weakens any anarchist project.
Or so goes the theory as I understand it. Which is a shame. For a long time I’ve felt that I’m philosophically an anarchist but a democrat in practice.
More that in the absence of state control of violence, you get amateur, distributed violence. Which ends up coalescing into rule by the nastiest gangster you have to hand.
Yes although some forms of anarchism have quite good answers for how you protect against the coalescing into gangster rule that you mention by maintaining vigilance and fairly extreme reprisals against amateur, distributed violence within a collective. But the formation of a militaristic group (gang- or state-based) outside the collective is hard/impossible to protect against.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
If we are gonna be blamed for everything bad then it is only fair we get the credit for everything good
democracy (Greece), parliaments (Vikings), the rule of law (Rome), free speech (we haven't got it), Magna Carta (England), the English language (England), the internet (USA), cricket (UK), universal suffrage (Iceland?), television (Scotland), antibiotics (England), smiling politely (China), decent suits (you might be right here), rugby (Wales/NZ), erotic spanking (Germany/Austria?), the Raj (UK), Pax Britannica (UK), the abolition of slavery (mostly UK), football (England), and the sandwich (England)
Reminds me. And apologies for the teeny-weeny compressed image courtesy of vanilla (I assume).
Just found out the other day that the beans used in "British" baked fart capsules served in putrid orange fart juice have never been British grown beans
IIRC various attempts to grow the beans in the UK have been tried and failed. Probably a Zionist plot.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
On topic, sort of: It looks to me as if Mid Bedfordshire is fairly close to the center (or, if you prefer, the centre) of England's population.
(By center, I am thinking mean, rather than median, following the standard practice of the US Census Burea, but I would be interested in knowing either, or both, for England.)
Whats your take on RFK ?
I'm interested in this too. He's announced he's standing as an independent. Will he take more votes from Trump or Biden?
My guess is more votes from Trump, which is ironic as I understand he is financed by a Republican PAC.
He sort of can attract the Trump blue collar democrats which will hit DJT in key states as the Kennedy name will carry weight . Bur he might also attract stay at homes and fed up with Bidenites. I cant for the moment see him breaking the two party mould but he has just added a level of uncertainty to 2024.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
My grandfather fought somewhere in the middle east. Never spoke about it other than to express his hatred for camels.
Quite right too - those camels were devils with a bayonet…
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Again you're talking BS.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
India was greatly impoverished by British rule! It went from a country with one of the largest global exports to one of with the smallest. Large scale famine did not exist in India before British rule because local rulers understood that taxing your subjects to death was bad - indeed local forms of mutual aid exists where if one area had a bad harvest or such another local area would subsidise it that year / time period, alongside a tax waver, with the understanding that if the situation were reversed that community would have done the same. British Imperial rule of India killed an astronomical number of Indians, which have reverberations to today:
The things you say are positives, like railways and democracy, were not build with the Indian people in mind - the railways were built with the transportation of soldiers and goods for the British Empire in mind, and the imported "democracy" was to replace traditional Indian practices (many of which like the above example related to mutual aid and tax waivers) with stringent inflexible laws and policies - with the singular aim of maximising resource and wealth extraction for the benefit of the British Empire.
Ironically the thread header "divide and conquer" is appropriate for such a topic:
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Ireland is not SFAICS, absolutely not, aligning with Hamas over this one. It's line is : Condemn Hamas, Israel's response should be proportionate though we have no idea what that means, and there should be a peace process.
I disagree with RoI about almost everything in military policy but let us be fair to the country that was quite content to see the UK be conquered by Hitler, our people massacred and enslaved and not lift a finger.
Its all well and good the BBC trying to do this, but all this has already been done by people on social media within a day, while at the time BBC / Sky wouldn't show the footage.
Today people in Germany have already tracked down the name / location of one of those involved in the murder of the Germany woman.
President of the United States, Joe Biden has released a statement from the White House announcing that at least 11 Americans are now Confirmed to have been Killed as a result of the Hamas Surprise Attack on Southern Israel and again reiterating that the United States will continuing to provide Israel with what it needs to Defend its Nation and People.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
Good response to call out a lazy, weak argument that imo achieves nothing other than betraying the weakness of the arguments against the points you have put.
I come to this board to learn stuff, and read much more than I post. @148grss I am slightly in awe of how cogently and calmly you have put across a point of view that, whilst being radical, is imo pretty much bang on. I’ve learnt a lot from your posts today, thanks.
When evil occurs the most important thing is to provide context which blames the evil on someone else
I think we are all better served when we treat each others arguments as more nuanced and thoughtful than that.
What Hamas have done over the past few days is horrific. Such actions should not occur in the world.
A few points in response to your post, which I read as sarcastic and flippant (apologies if that wasn’t how you meant it): - I’m not sure the concept of ‘evil’ has ever got us very far in understanding the world around us or reducing suffering. People do stuff for reasons that make sense to them. When people do horrific stuff, it seems to me that it is almost always because they are either mentally ill, damaged through trauma, or in a minority of cases are genuinely sociopathic. I think it’s only the last category of person who could ever really be called evil and, even then, I find blame hard to ascribe (the philosopher Derek Parfit was very good on this). - We are most of us capable of holding more than one thought in our heads at the same time. When horrific events occur it seems sensible to use at least part of our discussions to explore reasons and context, in the hope of reducing the likelihood of similar events in the future. Valuable discussions on here over the past few days have ranged as widely as whether we have to accept some form of ethnic cleansing to resolve what is currently going on. 148grss is adding a lot of value to that discussion and context in my view. - In this case I think there are many candidates for blame: Hamas themselves, primarily; whoever is backing them behind the scenes; the Israeli government and particularly the hardliners within it; countries and individuals within those countries who work to maintain and worsen the levels of inequality in the world that leave a population as desperate as the Palestinians within the Gaza Strip; countries with imperial pasts. I’d say one of the few groups with little responsibility for this is poor Palestinians themselves.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
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China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Ireland is not SFAICS, absolutely not, aligning with Hamas over this one. It's line is : Condemn Hamas, Israel's response should be proportionate though we have no idea what that means, and there should be a peace process.
I disagree with RoI about almost everything in military policy but let us be fair to the country that was quite content to see the UK be conquered by Hitler, our people massacred and enslaved and not lift a finger.
No, it wasn’t.
Like all states, there were factions in the government. The military were very pro British - to point of practically encouraging serving Irish soldiers to enlist in the British military. U.K. overflights were ignored - every flying boat that took off for patrol from NI went through Irish airspace, at one point. Any Allied servicemen who ended up in Ireland got given a meal and a bus ticket to the border - all the Germans were interred.
De Valera and his cronies did their thing, but it didn’t amount to much.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Again you're talking BS.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
India was greatly impoverished by British rule! It went from a country with one of the largest global exports to one of with the smallest. Large scale famine did not exist in India before British rule because local rulers understood that taxing your subjects to death was bad - indeed local forms of mutual aid exists where if one area had a bad harvest or such another local area would subsidise it that year / time period, alongside a tax waver, with the understanding that if the situation were reversed that community would have done the same. British Imperial rule of India killed an astronomical number of Indians, which have reverberations to today:
The things you say are positives, like railways and democracy, were not build with the Indian people in mind - the railways were built with the transportation of soldiers and goods for the British Empire in mind, and the imported "democracy" was to replace traditional Indian practices (many of which like the above example related to mutual aid and tax waivers) with stringent inflexible laws and policies - with the singular aim of maximising resource and wealth extraction for the benefit of the British Empire.
Ironically the thread header "divide and conquer" is appropriate for such a topic:
Your account of pre-Raj Indian history is (perhaps accidentally due to gaps in your knowledge) misleading. India didn't have self-rule before the British, it was ruled by the Mughal Empire.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
The Pyongyang Times doesn't seem to have covered the w/e events yet SFAICS. Perhaps they are biding their time before coming out with a robust defence of Israel. But on balance I would add North Korea to the sub-optimal list along with its many friends.
Its all well and good the BBC trying to do this, but all this has already been done by people on social media within a day, while at the time BBC / Sky wouldn't show the footage.
Today people in Germany have already tracked down the name / location of one of those involved in the murder of the Germany woman.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
My grandfather fought somewhere in the middle east. Never spoke about it other than to express his hatred for camels.
My Grandfather was called up, sent to The Somme as an infantry private, then sent straight from France to Mesopotamia to fight the Turks, and finished the War there. He quite respected the Turks as honourable, brave and decent soldiers who always observed truces to collect the wounded. He didn't speak well of Germans or the French.
He rather enjoyed Mesopotamia once the fighting fizzled out in 1918, but never went abroad again. He had seen what went on in foreign parts, and preferred Scarborough.
Its all well and good the BBC trying to do this, but all this has already been done by people on social media within a day, while at the time BBC / Sky wouldn't show the footage.
Today people in Germany have already tracked down the name / location of one of those involved in the murder of the Germany woman.
There’s already been condemnation. Of the BBC for using facial recognition software…
The coked up dickhead waving the photo of the kid who died of cancer at the footy and Lawrence Fox being an attention seeker wanker on GB News is looking very small beer now.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
This reminds me of the time someone edited the So Solid Crew page on Wikipedia to add several hundred new members including Notorious BLT, So Solid Dog, Ivor T Engine and David Cameron.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Again you're talking BS.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
India was greatly impoverished by British rule! It went from a country with one of the largest global exports to one of with the smallest. Large scale famine did not exist in India before British rule because local rulers understood that taxing your subjects to death was bad - indeed local forms of mutual aid exists where if one area had a bad harvest or such another local area would subsidise it that year / time period, alongside a tax waver, with the understanding that if the situation were reversed that community would have done the same. British Imperial rule of India killed an astronomical number of Indians, which have reverberations to today:
The things you say are positives, like railways and democracy, were not build with the Indian people in mind - the railways were built with the transportation of soldiers and goods for the British Empire in mind, and the imported "democracy" was to replace traditional Indian practices (many of which like the above example related to mutual aid and tax waivers) with stringent inflexible laws and policies - with the singular aim of maximising resource and wealth extraction for the benefit of the British Empire.
Ironically the thread header "divide and conquer" is appropriate for such a topic:
The LSE article essentially argues that Indians lack agency. That, their governments cannot be held responsible for their human rights record since 1947. The British puppet-masters somehow still pull the strings. That's actually, pretty uncomplimentary towards India's people and politicians.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Ireland is not SFAICS, absolutely not, aligning with Hamas over this one. It's line is : Condemn Hamas, Israel's response should be proportionate though we have no idea what that means, and there should be a peace process.
I disagree with RoI about almost everything in military policy but let us be fair to the country that was quite content to see the UK be conquered by Hitler, our people massacred and enslaved and not lift a finger.
No, it wasn’t.
Like all states, there were factions in the government. The military were very pro British - to point of practically encouraging serving Irish soldiers to enlist in the British military. U.K. overflights were ignored - every flying boat that took off for patrol from NI went through Irish airspace, at one point. Any Allied servicemen who ended up in Ireland got given a meal and a bus ticket to the border - all the Germans were interred.
De Valera and his cronies did their thing, but it didn’t amount to much.
Thanks for that qualification. BTW I suspect the Germans were interned rather than interred.
It amounted to a policy of accepting that their proximate neighbours could be conquered and enslaved by the most barbarian force ever seen but they would save their own skins in that eventuality.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
The Abba Eban quote works quite well for Russia over the past few years, not just the Palestinians.
Read that quickly and wondered how banning Abba helps Russia?
I suppose the name of the game is the winner takes it all.
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.
This is the notion of collective guilt. It is explicitly a war crime.
Then it's one that every country including our own is guilty of. As noted above, it only matters if you lose. But actually of all the Nuremburg trials was one ever held for the bombing of Coventry?
See, I think this is where you and I differ @TOPPING - you see this as an argument for why we shouldn't worry about the plight of the Palestinian people. I see this as an argument for why we should have had a Nuremburg trial not only for the bombing of Coventry, but also the bombing of Dresden. And Hiroshima. Humanity got to a place where it almost said "only following orders" was not a good enough reason for individuals committing crimes against humanity. Much since has been trying to roll that back - we need only look at the indifference to history our Home Secretary displays when discussing the refugee convention, or our own history of "defending our troops" from the consequences of the crimes they committed during the Troubles.
And I find your view wholly admirable. And I do care about the plight of the Palestinian people. I think they have been dreadfully lead although bear not a small amount of responsibility for their leadership.
This is another Brexit issue. Because I was a Remainer it doesn't mean that I thought that everything the EU did was fantastic and beyond reproach; while Brexiters probably didn't think everything the EU did was dreadful, but internet forums, including if you can believe it PB, often force people to adopt those positions.
In this case Israel is not without fault in its behaviour over the past but after the events of the weekend I am giving them quite a lot of leeway to progress the war in whatever way they want and wanted only to point out that at some point a distinction between the sweet, good-natured, wouldn't harm a fly Palestinian people who only want peace with their beloved neighbours Israel, and the Palestinians who, in their hundreds of thousands march in support of the destruction of Israel needs to be drawn.
We didn't single out the nice Germans from the beastly ones and Israel can be forgiven for not doing the same in this instance wrt the Palestinians.
You're an odd fruit sometimes.
On the 'Putin attacking Ukraine' topic you've been at pains to explore the context, discuss the things that might have pushed him into the action (eg did the Iraq War set a precedent? I recall you posing that question quite doggedly), lots of that from you on that one.
Yet on this one, this 'Hamas attacking Israel' topic, any attempt by people to do similar, to mention the context, to discuss reasons why this attack might have happened (eg could the maltreatment of the Palestinians by Israel have anything to do with it?) seems to give you an attack of the vapors.
I'm not slagging you off, I'm genuinely interested in the different way you approach the 2 topics. Putin Ukraine, very up for context and the whys and wherefores. Hamas Israel, not so much. Why is this, do we think?
I am extremely clear on why Hamas attacked Israel. I am extremely clear on why Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked them in 1948. And in 1967. And 1973. And 2023.
They attacked them because they wanted to wipe Israel off the map. In each instance they failed and in trying they got themselves into quite a pickle.
Has Israel behaved as you or indeed I would have wished them to over the past 70 years? I'm sure not. But it's useful idiots like you who think that if Israel had only been a bit nicer over the period everyone would be holding hands and making daisy chains together.
You think that I am excusing Israel's behaviour to the Palestinians on the one hand and ignoring the fact that this might be a root cause of this weekend's actions. Just like I seek to understand the reasons for Putin's actions.
I am here to educate you that for centuries and most recently decades the Arab world (and of course others) has been antipathetic to the Jews and hence this weekend's actions are a symptom of that hatred.
Thanks for non flip reply. Doesn't happen too often. I treasure it.
So iyo the antipathy towards Israel in Gaza has little to do with the maltreatment of its Palestinian population. It's down to the inherent appetite of Palestinians for antisemitism.
Ok. I think that's incredibly jaundiced (and arguably racist) but given that is your view of course you won't (as you say) be shedding too many tears if Israel does end up engaging in large scale collective punishment of 'innocent' Palestinians. Inverted commas since they won't be innocent, will they?
Makes sense now. Quality exchange. Thanks again. Chilean red and nuts time.
Hope you are enjoying your red & nuts. To you and @148grss it seems that you have difficulty believing that there is anti-semitism amongst the Arabs. And that Israel has committed some (original - we'll come on to that later) sin which has brought this behaviour upon them.
I think it doesn't take a google genius to determine quickly that there has been a long and well-documented history of anti-semitism amongst everyone including the Arabs.
For the Arabs it takes on a more "traditional" angle because there is a land angle there also. But a cursory reading of any text or oratory of many of today's Arab leaders now or indeed from history will show that there is deep antipathy towards the Jews. I think this is pervasive hence while someone somewhere in Hamas might see this as a homeland issue, to deny the rampant anti-semitism of much of the Arab world is imo to misunderstimate the dynamic of the Middle East both now and throughout history.
Is there a history of anti Semitism amongst Arabic peoples? Of course. But I do not think it is the driving force behind the issue of Israel, especially not to begin with. Indeed, if the finger of anti Semitism should point anywhere it should be at the hegemonic western powers who refused fleeing Jewish people to their shores prior to WW2 - whereas at that point multicultural communities built on common understanding between Palestinian and Jewish exiles were commonplace. The land that is Israel and Palestine were also relatively free of faith based conflict under Ottoman control - all faiths had the freedom to access Jerusalem, for instance. The issue, I would argue, hinges on the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their land. This creates long lasting conflict - it has done with India and Pakistan, it has done in Africa, and it is the case with Israel and Palestine. People want to return to their homes, to farm their olives, to live and die in the house they were born in. At least with Indian partition people on both Hindu/secular and the Muslim sides held both positions - with Israel it is clear that one side was being forced out by the other.
I wondered how long it would be before we got to: "It's all out fault!"
You really should look at the history of Jews in the region, e.g. Iraq, to see why your pretend high-minded ideal of allowing people to return is utterly bogus. Why are the Palestinians the only ones who have this right to return?
I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault - both the British state specifically and western imperial nations more generally. I mean it was European imperialist states that committed pogroms and refused Jewish refugees entry for hundreds of years, and European imperialist logic that led to the holocaust. The concentration camp was not a Nazi invention, although their evolution into a specific death camp arguably was, and the European imperial powers had already committed acts of mass murder on par with the death camps - just over longer periods of time and less formalised in parts.
I mean I’m in favour of a stateless, classless society without borders - that goes slightly beyond the mere right to return in my mind - but yes, Jewish people should be able to live where they wish, especially more so if their near ancestors were expelled from there. That includes Iraq. I don’t see how me having the position that all states (if they are going to exist at all) should be like that therefore means I am specifically calling on Israel as a special case.
"I mean the history is quite clear that in many ways this is all our fault"
You really don't need to say any more than this. We already understand that this is your answer for EVERYTHING
I mean when you have an Empire that spanned a whole lot of the globe… yeah - lots of things that are bad with the world are going to be, in part, related to that. It’s not rocket science.
We are now at the stage that many countries in Africa have been independent longer than when they were actual colonies.
Even laying aside the fact that the norm in many colonies was for the powers to rule through the local tribes, how long should we assume everything is our fault and not those independent countries' own issues?
When we return to those previously colonised countries the same amount of relative wealth that we extracted from them when we colonised them?
I'm sure you're aware of the foot race metaphor for structural problems related to class, race, gender etc. That is the same between colonised and coloniser.
Britain extracted wealth and labour from other countries; it also destroyed industry in other countries so that industry based at home could monopolise markets (see how we destroyed the Indian manufacturing economy under British rule so that our manufactured goods could be sold more). Some of those things advantaged us, and our colonial contemporaries, and disadvantaged others. Again, see how Haiti was forced to pay the debt to France for their own emancipation.
Done, in full, with interest.
The previously colonised countries are mammothly richer per capita than they were before we arrived.
Britain didn't destroy manufacturing capacity, it invented it and exported it.
And if any isn't, its purely due to corruption and theft of its leaders, not us.
That is patently untrue - least of all because those countries may be richer per capita now before they arrived, but they still have to do labour for that. I am saying we should give them back resources relatively equal to the wealth we extracted from them under colonial rule with zero strings attached, for free, as reparations. The fact that we have offshored our sweatshops to their countries under the guise of "providing them with jobs" and have given "aid" to regimes that are friendly to western interests do not count and, indeed, count against us.
"We" should not do diddly shit, as "we" did not take anything from them - and its absolutely racist to say "we" did.
I had gone out of my way throughout much of this conversation all of today to either refer to a specific state and their empire, or to say western imperial powers or generally western imperial projects. That I decided to respond (somewhat lazily) in one post with the use of the term "we" instead (because it is late in the day and I am feeling lazier) should not, in my view, receive this kind of reaction if you were in any way sincerely interested in having this conversation.
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
No, the point does not stand.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
But to go back to the analogy of a foot race - those of us who are alive are advantaged or disadvantaged by the events that happened 200-300 years ago. So to have an equitable global society, you need to address that inequality - not ignore it and say "we'll we aren't (directly) exploiting you any more, so we're on equal footing now, pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
What a load of crap.
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
"There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago." - yes, what the developed countries did was imperialism where they went in to the other countries and took their resources and labour at the point of a gun. The underdeveloped countries, after being mostly hollowed out, were then given loans using the financial system those imperialist powers had built with stringent strings such as enforced market access and high interest.
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Again you're talking BS.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
India was greatly impoverished by British rule! It went from a country with one of the largest global exports to one of with the smallest. Large scale famine did not exist in India before British rule because local rulers understood that taxing your subjects to death was bad - indeed local forms of mutual aid exists where if one area had a bad harvest or such another local area would subsidise it that year / time period, alongside a tax waver, with the understanding that if the situation were reversed that community would have done the same. British Imperial rule of India killed an astronomical number of Indians, which have reverberations to today:
The things you say are positives, like railways and democracy, were not build with the Indian people in mind - the railways were built with the transportation of soldiers and goods for the British Empire in mind, and the imported "democracy" was to replace traditional Indian practices (many of which like the above example related to mutual aid and tax waivers) with stringent inflexible laws and policies - with the singular aim of maximising resource and wealth extraction for the benefit of the British Empire.
Ironically the thread header "divide and conquer" is appropriate for such a topic:
Your account of pre-Raj Indian history is (perhaps accidentally due to gaps in your knowledge) misleading. India didn't have self-rule before the British, it was ruled by the Mughal Empire.
The Mughal Empire was itself a waning power at the time of the East India Trading companies greater involvement in the Indian subcontinent, and the divide and conquer strategy was in part a way of playing the factions within that empire against each other. The history of Mughal Imperial rule is also somewhat more mixed than I would typically attribute to European imperialism - obviously empires all do somewhat similar things when conquering land and peoples, but from my understanding the Mughal Empire was somewhat less extractivist and willing to allow for flexible and more equitable arrangements amongst the peoples in its empire.
The degree to which any government system is "self rule" is contentious - I would argue that for much of the British imperial period there was no real democracy at home and that the imperial aims of the empire were not an expression of the British people as much as a specific class of British elites. But, that being said, many British people at the time and now still benefit from the wealth of the British Empire.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Ireland is not SFAICS, absolutely not, aligning with Hamas over this one. It's line is : Condemn Hamas, Israel's response should be proportionate though we have no idea what that means, and there should be a peace process.
I disagree with RoI about almost everything in military policy but let us be fair to the country that was quite content to see the UK be conquered by Hitler, our people massacred and enslaved and not lift a finger.
No, it wasn’t.
Like all states, there were factions in the government. The military were very pro British - to point of practically encouraging serving Irish soldiers to enlist in the British military. U.K. overflights were ignored - every flying boat that took off for patrol from NI went through Irish airspace, at one point. Any Allied servicemen who ended up in Ireland got given a meal and a bus ticket to the border - all the Germans were interred.
De Valera and his cronies did their thing, but it didn’t amount to much.
Thanks for that qualification. BTW I suspect the Germans were interned rather than interred.
It amounted to a policy of accepting that their proximate neighbours could be conquered and enslaved by the most barbarian force ever seen but they would save their own skins in that eventuality.
Nope - Ireland had nothing to add to the war effort apart from men. Who enlisted with the Allies in considerable numbers. No industry to speak of, no military power. Joining the war would probably have taken more resources from the Allies than they would have given in return.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
The Abba Eban quote works quite well for Russia over the past few years, not just the Palestinians.
Read that quickly and wondered how banning Abba helps Russia?
I suppose the name of the game is the winner takes it all.
For decades, UK governments from all 3 parties have had a foreign policy supporting a rules-based international order, and a domestic law forbidding war crimes. Yet multiple people here have, in recent days, advocated that Israel should commit war crimes. (And they're not defending Israel's actions. They're calling for Israel to go further than they currently are.)
Can I ask these people: why didn't you speak out against the UK's policy in favour of a rules-based International order and against war crimes? If war crimes don't exist or they're fine in some circumstances, shouldn't we have said that decades ago?
It was customary for UK govts not to lie to Parliament about going to war.
Then New Labour gave us Iraq, all HMGs lost their credibility at that point
Eden basically had to resign over lying repeatedly to Parliament about Suez, you half-wit.
Blair didnt and I can do without the insult unless you want to make it less civil.
We fought a war in Malaysia from 1948 to 1960 and forgot to mention it to Parliament at all. And we won. Both parties didn’t see an upside in talking about it.
Wasn't a war - just an "emergency" [edit] in the term of the time, of course. (It, or something like it, did break out again a few years later. But let's call that a separate un-war.).
Quite a few of my friends felt they’d wasted two years of their lives out there!
One of my friends fought in Malaysia. When I asked him about it he said wink 😉
I recently got given my late grandfather's 'Near East' medal for his time in Aden with 42 Commando
I don't know why, but he didn't like talking about that
To be fair a lot of old soldiers didn't, wherever they were. My granddad was in France in 1915-18, in the absolutely typical trench war campaign with a Scottish infantry battalion, and I was told he would never talk about it (though he would dive, or at least begin to dive, into the gutter if a car backfired, at least for a while).
My grandfather fought somewhere in the middle east. Never spoke about it other than to express his hatred for camels.
My Grandfather was called up, sent to The Somme as an infantry private, then sent straight from France to Mesopotamia to fight the Turks, and finished the War there. He quite respected the Turks as honourable, brave and decent soldiers who always observed truces to collect the wounded. He didn't speak well of Germans or the French.
He rather enjoyed Mesopotamia once the fighting fizzled out in 1918, but never went abroad again. He had seen what went on in foreign parts, and preferred Scarborough.
Got talking to an elderly in-law in Florida many years ago. "Ever been abroad?" I enquired smugly. "Only once," came the reply, "didn't like it." "Where?" "Iwo Jima'"
Any UK politician who is at all equivocal on Hamas is going to look very stupid when the first ISIS-style hostage beheadings take place.
It's a big question for Hamas - double down and go full ISIS, or open negotiations? The hostages are awkward for all parties - apparently they are having to keep them safe from the lynch mobs in Gaza.
Russia seems to be very clearly aligning itself with Hamas and Iran. Interesting that they choose now to make that quite fundamental choice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
It feels like the world is dividing into a new hostility
USA UK France Germany Japan Spain Korea Australia Canada Italy Israel Poland NZ (hmm) God
V
China Russia Iran Ireland Palestine Wankers Rogerdamus Kinabalu Er, Syria Pakistan South Africa Satan
Ireland is not SFAICS, absolutely not, aligning with Hamas over this one. It's line is : Condemn Hamas, Israel's response should be proportionate though we have no idea what that means, and there should be a peace process.
I disagree with RoI about almost everything in military policy but let us be fair to the country that was quite content to see the UK be conquered by Hitler, our people massacred and enslaved and not lift a finger.
No, it wasn’t.
Like all states, there were factions in the government. The military were very pro British - to point of practically encouraging serving Irish soldiers to enlist in the British military. U.K. overflights were ignored - every flying boat that took off for patrol from NI went through Irish airspace, at one point. Any Allied servicemen who ended up in Ireland got given a meal and a bus ticket to the border - all the Germans were interred.
De Valera and his cronies did their thing, but it didn’t amount to much.
Thanks for that qualification. BTW I suspect the Germans were interned rather than interred.
It amounted to a policy of accepting that their proximate neighbours could be conquered and enslaved by the most barbarian force ever seen but they would save their own skins in that eventuality.
Nope - Ireland had nothing to add to the war effort apart from men. Who enlisted with the Allies in considerable numbers. No industry to speak of, no military power. Joining the war would probably have taken more resources from the Allies than they would have given in return.
Not least because it would have triggered a restart of the Irish Civil War. Which would have absorbed some of those resources which you mention.
Edit: it did also provide a lot of useful food, as well as civilian labour e.g. for building all those airfields.
Comments
Replace "we" with "British state", "British imperial state", "western imperialist states" or "imperial states" - my point still stands.
Sometimes we would sing it - 18 boys and about 10 men - to a congregation of 2 or 3 people, all up in the choir stalls while the nave sat in darkness. A song of loss and longing.
There’s a recording of this psalm, I think, on a CD we did back in about 1990. I must look it up.
The state is the collection of the people in that state. Not one of whom was alive 200-300 years ago.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mohaicophfnifehkkkdbcejkflmgfkof
Converts the link to this, far better and far more readable: https://nitter.net/jengriffinfnc/status/1710735779834593355?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
Cross fingers:
https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2023-09-29/farmer-could-make-history-as-first-ever-uk-producer-of-baked-beans
Eventually ending up as "Day 341: Steak again. Hate steak. Please... send.... veg....".
The one who the Derry PIRA complained to the army council about? For being a little bit too... enthusiastic?
The scene in The Foreigner where the DefinitelyNotGerry character kneecaps a PIRA rival was a keeper…
There are countries around the planet which are developed or not developed and its based on what those countries did in the past century, not the actions of three centuries ago.
A century ago Argentina had one of the highest GDPs/capita in the world. After a century of misrule its now impoverished.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions, not piss about and blame everything on centuries ago. Especially when they're better off than centuries ago, indeed ex-British Empire armies are almost universally better off than the alternatives.
https://twitter.com/ramabdu/status/1711180158604865700
Is this part of the "don't have time to sort between the good and bad Palestinians" position?
A bigger cause would arguably be those countries' turns towards nationalism and theocracy, post-Empire, and the spreading of antisemitism by first the Nazis then Soviets in the Arab world, and the rise of Qutbism and other fundamentalist creeds that are explicitly antisemitic on religious grounds. The Protocols are still uncritically referred to in some Muslim nations. Unfortunately, I think some of the toxic antisemitism that proved so catastrophic in the first half of the 20th Century, rather stuck in some parts of the Middle East and has led to an entirely destructive view of Israel. Otherwise the conflict may be more resolvable or frozen in a way that leaves less violence like lots of territorial, liberation, or nationalist disputes. As a result many of those ancient Jewish communities have disappeared as you often either ended up with a Gaddafi or a Ba'ath party driving them out, or theocratic movements doing so. The Israel-Palestine conflict hasn't helped there, obviously, but there's got to be some agency beyond that in terms of many regimes in the Middle East adopting virulently antisemitic beliefs - and promoting them - for either Arab nationalist or religious fundamentalist reasons. Lots of which take their cues from the deadly strains of conspiratorial antisemitism that mutated from more ancient hatreds in the 19th and 20th Century.
I come to this board to learn stuff, and read much more than I post. @148grss I am slightly in awe of how cogently and calmly you have put across a point of view that, whilst being radical, is imo pretty much bang on. I’ve learnt a lot from your posts today, thanks.
(By center, I am thinking mean, rather than median, following the standard practice of the US Census Burea, but I would be interested in knowing either, or both, for England.)
Let's take the single example of Haiti - a country that is extremely poor and was literally created by the emancipation of enslaved people. Let's take a single policy example - ignoring the military interventions of western imperial nations from the moment of emancipation all to modern times - and just look at the debt the Haitian nation supposedly owed to France. Why did it owe a debt to France, that it only stopped paying in 2016? For the loss of wealth that the emancipation of the enslaved people caused to the French state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy
This is a stark, clear example of the forms of injustice that the imperial period and the imperial nations have committed against people. That this example is so clearly unjust is why it is easy to point to. There are countless other examples across different colonial / post colonial relationships with varying specific contexts. But the underlying issue is the same - extraction of wealth and labour enriching imperial powers at the cost of the colonised countries.
Poland, the Baltic States, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, suffered years of horror, first at Nazi hands, then at Communist hands. Now, they’re all prosperous.
Prosperity is there for the taking, given the right leadership.
(Wife has watched first two episodes and says it is brilliantly written and Coogan will win all awards going.)
Demanding that the President is up 24/7 is stupid. It results in nothing of value. But you got morons saying that Bush II and Obama were *too* fit and rested.
As CITI group, we used to see these morons troupe into the office at 6am and stay until past 10pm*. Where they would read news websites. Hint for morons - in the dark, glass office walls reflect…
*I was working night shifts to support some stuff going live
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haitian_massacre
These issues are complex; and yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you seem very keen to put all the ills of the world at our / the west's feet. Which is not only rubbish; it is dangerous rubbish, as only looking at situations in total can lead to understanding and peace.
Haven't paid much attention to him, but am beginning to wonder whether Marx's tragedy/farce line might apply.
What the UK did was better than almost any other powerful country in the history of the planet.
Name any ex-British colony that is worse off than comparable other nations, which is not because of their own actions.
History isn't perfect, far from it, and that's always been the case, but as harsh as it was the simple fact is that Britain left almost everywhere better than it found it, it didn't impoverish and then leave.
Simply put, such collectives will always be vulnerable to groups within or without that form organs of statehood to fund and organise militaries. The only way to protect against this is to create organs of state in turn to form collective defence. But that concentrates power in a way that fatally weakens any anarchist project.
Or so goes the theory as I understand it. Which is a shame. For a long time I’ve felt that I’m philosophically an anarchist but a democrat in practice.
I see Ramzan Kadyrov has been expressing his delight in the attacks. I can sort of see why on the basis of keeping a fractious Islamist population on side. But having Israel against you can’t be that sensible long term.
The past century has seen the biggest ever rise in living standards in world history.
I get that he is Gazan and feels oppressed and all that, but he is not a neutral observer worth citing
It's a war. And in this instance it is a war started by outrageous Palestinian barbarism
Oh and, yes please and thank you!
French left getting in a twist over Gaza. Melenchon refuses to condemn Hamas and the PS say they will leave his leftist voting block in parliament
https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/attaque-du-hamas-contre-israel-melenchon-denonce-la-lapidation-mediatique-desormais-permanente-contre-lfi-20231009
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2023/07/12/beyond-the-raj-how-british-colonialism-continues-to-impact-human-rights-in-india/
The things you say are positives, like railways and democracy, were not build with the Indian people in mind - the railways were built with the transportation of soldiers and goods for the British Empire in mind, and the imported "democracy" was to replace traditional Indian practices (many of which like the above example related to mutual aid and tax waivers) with stringent inflexible laws and policies - with the singular aim of maximising resource and wealth extraction for the benefit of the British Empire.
Ironically the thread header "divide and conquer" is appropriate for such a topic:
https://peacenews.info/node/8779/shashi-tharoor-inglorious-empire-what-british-did-india
My guess is more votes from Trump, which is ironic as I understand RFK is financed by a Republican PAC.
USA
UK
France
Germany
Japan
Spain
Korea
Australia
Canada
Italy
Israel
Poland
NZ (hmm)
God
V
China
Russia
Iran
Ireland
Palestine
Wankers
Rogerdamus
Kinabalu
Er, Syria
Pakistan
South Africa
Satan
And still undecideds:
India
Saudi
UAE
Brazil
Turkey
Indonesia
@BartholomewRoberts
The Aliens
https://www.cfr.org/blog/modis-statement-israel-crisis-demonstrates-transformed-india-israel-bilateral-relationship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine
(Historical note: The US government began distributing the smallpox vaccine to Indian tribes, beginning in 1797.)
#GeneralPowerWasAWuss
Being "undecided" is not generally one of them.
https://x.com/bellawallerstei/status/1711438283165532252
I disagree with RoI about almost everything in military policy but let us be fair to the country that was quite content to see the UK be conquered by Hitler, our people massacred and enslaved and not lift a finger.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67056741
Its all well and good the BBC trying to do this, but all this has already been done by people on social media within a day, while at the time BBC / Sky wouldn't show the footage.
Today people in Germany have already tracked down the name / location of one of those involved in the murder of the Germany woman.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1711478488685752604?s=20
It's too late. Israel is going to take this to the end
What Hamas have done over the past few days is horrific. Such actions should not occur in the world.
A few points in response to your post, which I read as sarcastic and flippant (apologies if that wasn’t how you meant it):
- I’m not sure the concept of ‘evil’ has ever got us very far in understanding the world around us or reducing suffering. People do stuff for reasons that make sense to them. When people do horrific stuff, it seems to me that it is almost always because they are either mentally ill, damaged through trauma, or in a minority of cases are genuinely sociopathic. I think it’s only the last category of person who could ever really be called evil and, even then, I find blame hard to ascribe (the philosopher Derek Parfit was very good on this).
- We are most of us capable of holding more than one thought in our heads at the same time. When horrific events occur it seems sensible to use at least part of our discussions to explore reasons and context, in the hope of reducing the likelihood of similar events in the future. Valuable discussions on here over the past few days have ranged as widely as whether we have to accept some form of ethnic cleansing to resolve what is currently going on. 148grss is adding a lot of value to that discussion and context in my view.
- In this case I think there are many candidates for blame: Hamas themselves, primarily; whoever is backing them behind the scenes; the Israeli government and particularly the hardliners within it; countries and individuals within those countries who work to maintain and worsen the levels of inequality in the world that leave a population as desperate as the Palestinians within the Gaza Strip; countries with imperial pasts. I’d say one of the few groups with little responsibility for this is poor Palestinians themselves.
Like all states, there were factions in the government. The military were very pro British - to point of practically encouraging serving Irish soldiers to enlist in the British military. U.K. overflights were ignored - every flying boat that took off for patrol from NI went through Irish airspace, at one point. Any Allied servicemen who ended up in Ireland got given a meal and a bus ticket to the border - all the Germans were interred.
De Valera and his cronies did their thing, but it didn’t amount to much.
As for famine, we have no way of knowing how severe famines were in the era preceding the British, because statistics weren't recorded. This article offers an interesting counterargument:
https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/colonialism-did-not-cause-the-indian-famines/
"The people who support Hamas are fully responsible for this appalling attack. They are not freedom fighters, they are terrorists," he said.
"There is no question of balance, I stand with Israel."
Sunak added that he will "stop at nothing" to keep the Jewish community in the UK safe.
He rather enjoyed Mesopotamia once the fighting fizzled out in 1918, but never went abroad again. He had seen what went on in foreign parts, and preferred Scarborough.
And quite a few on here campaigned and voted for the same thing
And some of the same people have had the nerve to mock and criticise people for voting for Boris against Corbyn
Just imagining PM Corbyn during Ukraine and now this in Israel..
And our next PM wanted and worked for that
It amounted to a policy of accepting that their proximate neighbours could be conquered and enslaved by the most barbarian force ever seen but they would save their own skins in that eventuality.
I suppose the name of the game is the winner takes it all.
The degree to which any government system is "self rule" is contentious - I would argue that for much of the British imperial period there was no real democracy at home and that the imperial aims of the empire were not an expression of the British people as much as a specific class of British elites. But, that being said, many British people at the time and now still benefit from the wealth of the British Empire.
It's a big question for Hamas - double down and go full ISIS, or open negotiations? The hostages are awkward for all parties - apparently they are having to keep them safe from the lynch mobs in Gaza.
https://x.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1711479655427952963?s=20
Edit: it did also provide a lot of useful food, as well as civilian labour e.g. for building all those airfields.