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Public sympathies – politicalbetting.com
Public sympathies – politicalbetting.com
Which side in the Israeli?Palestinian conflict do you sympathise with more?The Israeli side: 16% (-2 from 22-23 Nov)The Palestinian side: 26% (+5)Both sides equally: 24% (-7)Don't know: 34% (+5)https://t.co/e9U34vDxvn pic.twitter.com/bc3V9qbIdn
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But their government is run by a facist bully and coward who is doing everything to cause maximum loss of life to innocent people.
So for that reason I have chosen to sit on the fence. There will be no solution until the Israeli people hopefully vote Netanyahu out.
44% of Labour voters sympathise more with the Palestinian side compared to just 7% for the Israeli side. Remain voters too preference Palestinians by 37% to 10% for Israelis
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/02/12/4b134/1
Let them duke it out and please remove this poisonous debate from British discourse
https://thenewstack.io/how-to-set-up-and-run-a-local-llm-with-ollama-and-llama-2/
It’s almost like these governments don’t actually care that much despite everything they say
The good news for those of us close to completing Xhamster, there’s about to be abundant and limitless porn, with no-one treated badly while making it.
And every time they do it, it creates another cadre of Palestinian martyrs.
That’s the only way to get security for themselves after October 7 - or so they perceive it (is my reading)
Gaza will obviously be first. Then the West Bank
Is anyone going to stop them? Maybe Iran if Iran acquires nukes. That would change everything
And before any runs in with the fallacy that Israel has been blockading Gaza since it withdrew, that again is false. Israel has only been blockading Gaza since Hamas took over, and quite justifiably so.
If you want a chance of peace, a chance of a better life for both Palestinians and Israelis, then that must be a future without Hamas. For that reason (and more) I wholeheartedly support Israel finishing the job and destroying Hamas completely. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are estimated to have died due to our invasion of Iraq, and a comparable death toll may occur to vanquish Hamas. So long as Israel remains within the rules of law and proportionality, that is tragic but legal. Innocent refugees should ideally be granted a place of refuge outside the war zone, but there can be absolutely no safe haven within Gaza for Hamas.
Regrettably it will mean civilian casualties, war always does, so we need to be honest about that.
Although it's just 5% who will say it was justified, it's still a result that sends a shiver down my spine. Whatever you might think about what Israel has done before or since, I would have thought that recognising the Hamas attack as unjustified would have been something almost everyone could agree on.
Egypt and Jordan would also be opposed because of being swamped by Palestinian refugees and might even go to war with Israel again as a result. Iranians are Shia rather than Sunni Muslims which most Palestinians are albeit it does fund Hamas and would continue to do so
But this seems - to me - to be the ultimate logic of Israel’s policies post October 7. Elimination of all threats from Palestinians
That means removing them from “Israel”
I am certainly not applauding this! Just trying to work out their strategy. I don’t think it is mindless cruelty or mere revenge - if you see this as their long term goal then Gaza makes a terrible kind of sense
And they need to do it now or soon before Iran gets those nukes
And no, I don't have a better plan, apart from two sets of better leaders.
That is the scale of the issue.
And just as we're not keen on a few tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving by boat, imagine how the nearby governments would feel about being handed millions of Palestinians.
After October 7 Israelis - I sense - believe they can no longer live alongside Palestinians who want to kill all Jews. The Palestinians need to be put behind a much stronger border
So push the Gazans into Sinai and ultimately push the West Bankers across the Jordan
And do it now while Israel still has unquestionable military superiority and other Arab countries are reluctant to take on Israel
Iran is already providing support to Hamas in Gaza even without nukes. A 2 state solution remains the only viable one
Why should Syrians be able to get refuge outside of Syria but it be denied to Palestinians?
And I fear a “2 state solution” - which was the best bet, and came close to fruition? - has passed into a history as a what if
It's not your fault.
(Or perhaps more specifically, it's someone else's fault.)
When, most of the time, it is our fault.
An ad from a hopeful Presidential candidate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ui5_Pwg7KU
They chose to fight in October knowing the consequences, they started this latest conflict not Israel.
They could also unconditionally surrender, lay down their arms and release all hostages if they wanted to. They haven't.
If you want to bemoan casualties then do so. But to just outright lie and fabricate untruths is beneath you.
Or should be.
F-16s?
Saar Gunboats?
So why are Sunak and Cameron so in love with it? Because they have nothing else to offer. Simples. The choice between having gibberish and nothing, is gibberish.
Partition asap before Israel can grab control even more Palestinian area’s, making the situation even more of a headache for Western leaders - this has been the extent of thinking for far too long. A crude Partition neither the Israeli government, nor Palestinians and their leaders at all want, or even think is possible.
So you disagree with me? Okay - I won’t hold you to 8 seconds, take as long as you can, and tell us where through, like so much of the West Bank, where daily lives of Arab and Jew and Christian still so entwined, you are bringing your partition, and they have to be living one side of a divide, in one of the states? Where are you putting these people so it works for them democratically?
With all your lines of partition in a dispute over the same heritage and same land and living standards, are you actually achieving agreement of all the parties, so all parties see it as just, fair, and they are charitable to making the deal work?
Worse. When you help with talks, Getting to yes in talks like these can only start with a blank canvas, not bringing preconditions like 2 state solution to the table to start from. At least see the division in Palestinians, so see at least 3 states.
2 State Solution is just jibberish from the mouths of out of touch Western leaders incapable of the imaginative and bold thinking necessary to actually solve issues like this one. whenever you hear “Two State Solution” know it comes from someone, politician or blog poster, utterly clueless, lazy, and who doesn’t really care shit about peace in that region.
The median voter is there to be led by leaders, not leaders led by voter apathy or indifference
That tendency doesn't represent the entirety of faith but it's the one that always seems to win out in the end, given enough time. The sects that decide it might be preferable to be nice to other people simply get outflanked by fundamentalists offering the simple comforts of certainty and purity. The only true safeguard of tolerance and pluralism in any society is secularism and the marginalisation of faith (achieved through a combination of public apathy, atheism and the relegation of faith groups to banal cultural traditions: nobody is menaced by the dear old CofE and its harmless cycle of food festivals.) The moment one of these groups gains the upper hand, everybody else gets beaten into submission.
Ordinary Palestinians who die as part of this will go to heaven, whether they wanted to be a part of the fight or not. Hamas are, they believe, doing these people a favor.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timeline_of_Israel-Palestine_fatalities_2008-2023.png
Proportionality has never meant a 1:1 ratio. That's not what it means. How many did we kill in Iraq versus how many of our soldiers we lost? And that wasn't an existential war for survival started by the enemy like Israel is fighting.
Numbers are irrelevant. As long as Hamas exists, Israel is within its rights to proportionately kill to destroy them.
The Arab nations all don't want to help as they're worried about the consequences, yet Israel is supposed to just live with this violence and do nothing about it?
I think they expected more support from the wider Muslim world and a bigger regional war; and they probably expected America to rein in Israel long before now as it levels Gaza
Oslo for slow learners.
However nice try to rewrite history, it was Arafat that destroyed the peace process that began in the 1990s and rejected the two state solution Bill Clinton nearly negotiated, not Israel.
Bullets.
Missiles.
Rockets.
Explosives.
Anything that kills is a serious weapon. Especially in war. You have no right to fight on equal terms.
One side winning the war and vanquishing the other.
Both sides laying down their arms singing kumbayah and living in harmony in a single state.
Etc
Currently the "two state" lazy thinking is about as plausible as the kumbayah alternative.
"Don't tell him Horse!"
I am absolutely OK with them killing hundreds of thousands if that is what it takes to win the war.
Just as we have killed hundreds of thousands before.
Just as we killed millions seeking the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan.
The war ends when Hamas is vanquished and does not exist anymore, when the threat is eliminated. Or when they unconditionally lay down their arms and surrender. Until then Israel has my unconditional support to do whatever it takes to achieve that ambition, within the rule of law.
The rule of law does not require either zero civilian casualties, nor does it require a 1:1 death toll.
You, like Cameron and Sunak, are lazy. You don’t really care about peace.
What if Israel deems it is necessary to kill one million Gazans to exterminate Hamas? 50% of all Gazans?
On a complete tangent, if you want to see everything wrong with Britain in 2024, try travelling on trains over a weekend.
The Train Operators are still wedded to the view the only worth service worth running is Monday to Friday with Saturday and Sunday very much an afterthought. Weekend travellers (and it's well observed leisure traffic has rebounded more strongly since the pandemic than commuter travel) travel on less frequent and shorter trains while off-prak daytime services from Monday to Friday run almost empty by comparison (if you want a nice journey try travelling from Waterloo to Woking, Basingstoke, Winchester or Guildford on late Tuesday morning or early afternoon, twelve coach trains and you have your own carriage).
My knowledge of this is slight but I believe Government tells the train operators what services to run and when so we need the Government to come into the 21st Century (if JRM makes it to the 19th it'll be a minor miracle) and provide a single seven day service with more frequent daytime trains on Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays and perhaps fewer daytime and commuting services Monday to Friday.
It's the inability to change, the paralysis of mediocrity as @stodge would and indeed does call it. It reminds me of the phrase "kicking the can down the road" which has become endemic in Government and business. It speaks to the inability and unwillingness to face up to transformative issues, the unwillingness to change backed by the inability to face the consequences of change.
One might almost call it "conservatism by inertia" (another good @stodge phrase).
There are some who fear (perhaps justifiably), the can, having had a bigger kicking than a forward in a 1970s match against Leeds or Chelsea, may be on for more of the same under Starmer.
FPT @maxh
I just picked up on the above.
The comment about Tice was that his message about 'saving Britain' is smart politics which has the potential to upend the Conservative party in a similar manner to how the republicans in France have been destroyed by the "far right" and how Trump has overturned the Republican party in the US. It turns politics in to an existential struggle for survivial and so recruits supporters to the cause.
Eric Zemmour did what I thought was a masterpiece of this genre in his 10 minute campaign video in the French presidential election of 2022 - now almost completely censored from the internet. There is an indian version that is dubbed in to English that you can find on youtube but it doesn't really convey the power of the original.
Putting aside the politics, I agree with the idea, insofar that there is a desperate need for national renewal at a similar depth to what was achieved by Atlee or Thatcher- but it is quite obvious to me that this is not going to come from any of the established political parties, unless the conservatives can pull off another reinvention - something that is not beyond the realms of possibility. The labour party seem to be offering business as usual with a few tweaks.
It might be able to win by destroying Hamas and then withdrawing from Gaza, that is it
Last year they had the choice of May 2nd 2024 or October, and they settled on May 2nd long before Christmas. I’m not going post the whole stack of reasons again why they did this, why the narrative gets worse for Tories in second half of this year not better - though media commentators seem to have caught up now that narrative will get worse not better, especially the element where political scientists now believe, you lose votes not get swingback, when you are seen to be SELFISHLY hanging on too long, thwarting the voters and businesses wishes just to get the uncertainty out the way.
But I’ll flag up just one of the coming difficulties in narrative for the government in the second half of this year, this government knew long before Christmas, boat crossings, they have zilch control over, would be substantially higher this summer and autumn 2024 compared to 2023, for two reasons - the UK government done brilliantly last year on boat crossings, with the deal with Alabanians, which helped show a fall on figures, some tried to say the reduction was down to the weather, but it was down to the Alabanians deal, a quick win and much low lying fruit picked. Unfortunately, it means this years figures will be compared to last years, for direction of travel - no pun intended. Because Europe properly tanked up on med crossings last year, and all historical patterns and modelling show that, in the following summer, after a busy med summer filling Europe up, the English Channel crossings shoot up in consequence.
This government cannot fight a General Election this autumn against, a backdrop of a ramping up in the boat crossings this year they pledged to stop. Simples.
It’s not that May 2nd is “becoming” an option. It’s been May 2nd for months now. 🥱
Jordan welcomed Palestinian refugees after the 1967 Yom Kippur war, and gave them citizenship. The reward for Jordan was that part of its territory became a Palestinian (some factions, but the PLO would not control it) base for terrorist attacks on Israel.
By 1970 elements within the PLO were aspiring to overthrow the Jordanian Government.
So Jordan used their army to attack the fedayeen, and expelled the Palestinians, who went to Lebanon in the main. If they had waited much longer, the Govt would have been overthrown.
So Palestinians will not be getting much of a welcome in either Jordan or Egypt, as those countries know what follows. If the Lebanese Govt was strong enough, they would not be getting a welcome in Lebanon either ... but Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, and Syria.
The key I think is Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
"Black September (Arabic: أيلول الأسود Aylūl al-ʾAswad), also known as the Jordanian Civil War, was an armed conflict between Jordan, led by King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by chairman Yasser Arafat."
Was there a numerical limit to how many Germans or Japanese we were prepared to see die in WWII?
So for everyone's sake let's hope it doesn't come to that, that Hamas unconditionally surrender and lay down their arms sooner. Or safe refuge is offered to civilians outside the war zone. I would completely prefer both of those alternatives to your suggested death toll which should be a last resort.
The leadership aren't in Gaza, and the idea of Hamas is in countless heads across the world. The geometry of 1945 (encircle Nazis and push on until they control nothing) doesn't apply here, which limits what Israel can achieve.
And "reasonable chance of success" is one of the criteria for just war.
This like Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia or Armenia/Azerbaijan is a conflict with bad guys on both sides, justifiable claims on both sides too, and two civilian populations that are both caught in the crossfire, and also - at least in part - giving moral support to their bad guys.
Just like those two cases, until children stop being taught selective history and that the other side are evil, at home and at school, the conflict will keep going generation after generation.
Night night and salaam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ygPX-ZgM6w
"their government is run by a facist bully and coward who is doing everything to cause maximum loss of life to innocent people. So for that reason I have chosen to sit on the fence."
🤷♀️
If everyone has laid down their arms and there's no more fighting, the war is over. If the fighting goes on, the fighting goes on, until there's unconditional surrender.
If it was good enough to demand from Germany and Japan, it's good enough to demand from Hamas too. Unconditional surrender, that's all I think Israel should demand.
Not just eastern Ukraine and Crimea
Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Georgia)
Transnistria (Moldova)
South Kuril Islands (Japan)
We eliminated Nazis not just by defeating Nazi Germany and killings its leadership, but by offering Germans a better future on the other side.
The West - principally the US - ploughed in billions into rebuilding Europe, especially Germany. It was the very opposite of the First World War Versailles strategy where the loser paid for the war. Here, the loser was paid.
But it worked. And it worked because the victors so obviously cared for the defeated.
I'm not sure that applies here. I don't think an Israeli government supported by Settler parties is going to do anything other than level Gaza and leave even more resentment and hatred of Israel.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/04/israel-palestine-is-the-two-state-solution-the-answer-to-the-crisis
2019 was a weird one.
2017 absolutely was called on a whim.
2015 was fixed by the FTPA.
2010 was Brown running up to the deadline.
2001 and 2005 were four year elections because Blair knew he was cruising to victory.
1997 was Major running up to the deadline.
1992 was Major (almost) running up to the deadline.
1987 and 1983 were Thatcher knowing she was cruising to victory.
Where is the precedent for a living, breathing PM choosing to call an election they expect to lose?
There are about 426 foreign policy issues I care about more than Israel/Gaza, and even then I reckon I still wouldn't care.
It'd be nice if one side had total victory - just so we never had to hear about it ever again.
Oh Hamas are fighting alright, they are just fighting a version of a guerrilla war and utilising their tunnel network. But it means trying to conserve resources, maintain strategic positions and make it difficult for Israel to reach its goals without consequences that will be deemed unacceptable. Rather than attacking in ways that might inflict more casualties but result in losses Hamas cannot survive. Bear in mind a 'win' for Hamas is any conclusion to the conflict that leaves them intact in some way.
Israel for their part lost so few soldiers as they are acutely aware of the dangers and have adopted conservative tactics in terms of advancing only when can be certain most threats have been neutralised.
Which isn't great for civilians.
A giveaway in the March budget - some kind of tax cut, possibly a surprise bribe for pensioners - would certainly act as a springboard from which to launch a campaign, too. Announcing fresh austerity and tax cuts then challenging Labour to oppose is a valid strategy for the Tories; much polling evidence suggests that voters cleave more to prioritising spending on public services, but most people are also fundamentally selfish. They welcome more money for themselves, whilst expecting other people to fund the extra spending, and a lot of traditional Tory voters will be thrilled if offered a penny or two off income tax paid for by battering social security claimants.
Give him a bonus badge for saying the Red Wall wouldn’t crumble too