Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
Do you think it as simple as that? I spent a year in Isreal in 1987 and I noticed just how badly they treated the Arabs...and this was a forward thinking, socialist kibbutz....
Isreal has treated the Palestinians appallingly for generations now. And this was before Netanyahu and the nationalists that dispossess Palestinians from their land. The Israel freeholders.
I can tell you one thing...bombing the fuck out of Gaza and Lebanon is not going to make anything better for the Israeli people...not today, not tomorrow and not ever...
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
All these freebie football tickets from the FA, EPL and football lobbyists, anybody would think that the government were proposing changes to the way the industry is regulated.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
Israel is attacking Hezbollah and Lebanon for much the same reasons as Bush invaded Iraq, I believe. Because it can and because it wants to kick ass after previous humiliation. That it's a different set of bad guys is a detail. Like the US in Iraq it sees this adventure as a cost free way to sort things out. Unlike the US, Israel doesn't have a huge military and diplomatic reserve to sustain any reverses.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
Do you think it as simple as that? I spent a year in Isreal in 1987 and I noticed just how badly they treated the Arabs...and this was a forward thinking, socialist kibbutz....
Isreal has treated the Palestinians appallingly for generations now. And this was before Netanyahu and the nationalists that dispossess Palestinians from their land. The Israel freeholders.
I can tell you one thing...bombing the fuck out of Gaza and Lebanon is not going to make anything better for the Israeli people...not today, not tomorrow and not ever...
Whereas Jews in Israel's neighbours presumably get treated brilliantly?
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
I heard it used in the City quite a bit working there 20+ years ago.
TIL the Romans had an equivalent phrase "from eggs to apples" - since at least the late Republic.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
indeed, which is why I seldom make comment on the situation. We simply have no influence, and everything we did when we did have influence made the situation worse. We shoould steer clear.
Pretty impressive of Hamas to still be fighting after a year of total siege and bombardment, they are nutters but fanatical fighters. Hezbollah will be tougher still. Israel is expanding a military and political quagmire.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
Israel is attacking Hezbollah and Lebanon for much the same reasons as Bush invaded Iraq, I believe. Because it can and because it wants to kick ass after previous humiliation. That it's a different set of bad guys is a detail. Like the US in Iraq it sees this adventure as a cost free way to sort things out. Unlike the US, Israel doesn't have a huge military and diplomatic reserve to sustain any reverses.
Was Saddam Hussein raining down rockets on Nebraska?
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
Seems Biden has called for a ceasefire and Israel is not listening
If they won't listen to the US they are not going to listen to the UK, especially as Lammy announced a weapons embargo on Israel and as a result Netanyahu refused to meet Starmer at the UN this weekend
Israel have basically called US bluff. Now once the election is over that might change, maybe that is why Israel are going full pelt at the moment, because Biden administration is stuck between rock and a hard place domestically.
As Friedman in NYT says (repeatedly) the only way out of this mess that lasts is that Netanyahu ditches his ultra-hard-right nationalist cabinet colleagues and agrees to work with Saudia Arabia, USA and other moderate arab states on a two state solution that brings the non-whacko Palestinian west bank types in to take over running Gaza.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
The same way we defeated fascism as an ideology.
Two-pronged assault, carrot and stick.
First defeat the enemy until they unconditionally surrender.
Then promote moderate forces within your former enemy and stuff their faces with gold so that people get rich and decide they have no interest or desire in going back to the old ways anymore.
Military victory, then Marshall Plan. That's how the hell you do it.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
Trump does what he's interested in.
And Trump is interested in personal vendettas not policies.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
A question the Palestinians are asking themselves at the moment
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
Hard to see it stopping now, Lebanon about to get a pounding. These boys have their minds set now it is no more mister nice guy, Iran will be bricking it.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
Israel is attacking Hezbollah and Lebanon for much the same reasons as Bush invaded Iraq, I believe. Because it can and because it wants to kick ass after previous humiliation. That it's a different set of bad guys is a detail. Like the US in Iraq it sees this adventure as a cost free way to sort things out. Unlike the US, Israel doesn't have a huge military and diplomatic reserve to sustain any reverses.
Was Saddam Hussein raining down rockets on Nebraska?
The chances of any of ten thousand rockets rained down on that state hitting anything other than a large flat field of crops would have been very low, anyway
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
indeed, which is why I seldom make comment on the situation. We simply have no influence, and everything we did when we did have influence made the situation worse. We shoould steer clear.
Pretty impressive of Hamas to still be fighting after a year of total siege and bombardment, they are nutters but fanatical fighters. Hezbollah will be tougher still. Israel is expanding a military and political quagmire.
I would love to see a time when people in countries like Britain don’t obsess over what goes on in the Middle East. The whole area is and will remain a complicated and impossible to understand mess of ancestral hatred, sectarian brutality and megalomania where no side is free of guilt. Anywhere where the primary rivals are Saudi Arabia and Iran isn’t a healthy place to be.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
Well, it wont be Jenrick. He'll be out in two years.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
The same way we defeated fascism as an ideology.
Two-pronged assault, carrot and stick.
First defeat the enemy until they unconditionally surrender.
Then promote moderate forces within your former enemy and stuff their faces with gold so that people get rich and decide they have no interest or desire in going back to the old ways anymore.
Military victory, then Marshall Plan. That's how the hell you do it.
There’s no comparison with the end of WWII. You do realise the Marshall plan only came about because, three years after the war’s end, the US realised it needed to rebuild the economies of Europe and Japan lest they fall to its communist rival ?
And there’s no sign that Israel has any such intention.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
No Palestinian state on the map.
Despite the fact that Israel agreed to one in 1948 and again in 2000.
Regrettably Abba Eban's quote that the leaders of the Palestinians have "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" is as true today as it was half a century ago.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
Israel is attacking Hezbollah and Lebanon for much the same reasons as Bush invaded Iraq, I believe. Because it can and because it wants to kick ass after previous humiliation. That it's a different set of bad guys is a detail. Like the US in Iraq it sees this adventure as a cost free way to sort things out. Unlike the US, Israel doesn't have a huge military and diplomatic reserve to sustain any reverses.
Was Saddam Hussein raining down rockets on Nebraska?
He was only 45 minutes away from raining them down on the UK, apparently. So Nebraska should have ben quaking in it's boots.
Is it possible to know everyone who is anyone, as Capote once did ?
Today is Truman Capote's 100th birthday, and I'm trying to come to grips with his complicated, controversial legacy. But one thing is undeniable—he knew a lot of celebrities.
He was one of only two people in the world, who knew both John Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. He also knew both Robert Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan. And that's just a start.... https://x.com/tedgioia/status/1840789935923617845
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
Shamed former lawyer Philip Shiner pleaded guilty to fraud yesterday after orchestrating a £3million legal aid scam relating to claims against Iraq War veterans. The 67-year-old, who was struck off for pursuing false torture and murder allegations against British soldiers, now faces a potential jail sentence after admitting three counts of fraud on the eve of his trial.
I remember when the media couldn't get enough of this guy.
Sue Gray wasn't a civil servant at the time she accepted the hospitality. I'm not sure whether she is now and would be bound by the civil service code.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israle have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israle have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
If it ends with just bombing and then a ceasefire then yes I completely agree nothing will be achieved, I've made that point myself repeatedly.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
Or not.
It’s equally likely (arguably more so, but we’ll see) that Harris wins.
You’re assuming polling companies are using the same assumptions they did four years ago; we know they aren’t. They could still be wrong, of course, but what you cannot do is simply extrapolate from the Clinton or Biden polling.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israle have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
If it ends with just bombing and then a ceasefire then yes I completely agree nothing will be achieved, I've made that point myself repeatedly.
Unless you are suggesting genocide - and I am not entirely convinced at this point that you would demur on that - then that is exactly how it will end.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
Not in the UK. We had far-right riots that were swiftly put down by the police with overwhelming support from the public, and Millenials are resolutely left-wing after 14 years of the Conservatives.
For all groups except for outright-owners, Labour got 40% or more of the vote. They got double what the Conservatives did from working people. They won easily in all age groups except for the over 65s.
The reason they are unpopular at the moment is not because people have gone off left-wing politics; it's because the new government so closely resembles the old one. Those making the biggest fuss are millionaire pensioners who have had their freebies taken off them, and weird Trumpist wannabes.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israle have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
If it ends with just bombing and then a ceasefire then yes I completely agree nothing will be achieved, I've made that point myself repeatedly.
Unless you are suggesting genocide - and I am not entirely convinced at this point that you would demur on that - then that is exactly how it will end.
No, I put what I'm suggesting at 10:39pm and it did not entail "just" a ceasefire, nor did it entail a genocide.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israel have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
Note the postwar plan was to deindustrialise Germany and Japan. Indeed Britain was still dismantling some factories in its occupied sector when the Marshall plan started. Then the US realised that economic misery was likely to provide fertile ground for communism, and did a rapid volte face. Fortunately there was a faction in government who’d been arguing in favour of that for some time, so plans were ready to go quite quickly.
In Gaza’s (and Lebanon’s) case, they’re already in a state of economic devastation. There’s virtually nothing left to dismantle in the former, and Lebanon isn’t in great shape.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
That is the difficult question that the Palestinians need to find an answer to, yes.
Ultimately, you have to find some sort of negotiated peace whereby your neighbours step back from wanting to remove you from the map. It’s very difficult, but Bosnia is at peace (albeit with ongoing tensions and a barely working nation state), Kosovo/Serbia are at peace (with even more ongoing tensions), Northern Ireland is at peace (with a clunky devolution and lots of subsidies), the Basque Country is at peace, Cyprus is at peace (but divided in two).
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israel have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
Note the postwar plan was to deindustrialise Germany and Japan. Indeed Britain was still dismantling some factories in its occupied sector when the Marshall plan started. Then the US realised that economic misery was likely to provide fertile ground for communism, and did a rapid volte face. Fortunately there was a faction in government who’d been arguing in favour of that for some time, so plans were ready to go quite quickly.
In Gaza’s (and Lebanon’s) case, they’re already in a state of economic devastation. There’s virtually nothing left to dismantle in the former, and Lebanon isn’t in great shape.
Agreed completely.
And if its left in that state (and it will if there's just a ceasefire and no surrender by Hamas/Hezbollah and change of who leads the areas) then the cycle of violence will inevitably continue.
Two prongs are needed to end the cycle of violence, create a window of opportunity by defeating the enemy, then winning the peace by ensuring the populace turns its back on them as being gainfully employed is a better lifestyle.
The first will not achieve the second alone, and the second is not viable without the first. Both are necessary prerequisites to a lasting peace.
Sue Gray wasn't a civil servant at the time she accepted the hospitality. I'm not sure whether she is now and would be bound by the civil service code.
She was in the Spurs box with Starmer two weeks ago
Rudy Giuliani’s daughter explains why she is supporting Harris: “Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1840816985501778197
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
Seems Biden has called for a ceasefire and Israel is not listening
If they won't listen to the US they are not going to listen to the UK, especially as Lammy announced a weapons embargo on Israel and as a result Netanyahu refused to meet Starmer at the UN this weekend
Bibi wants Trump to win, what with being birds of a feather, so of course he’s not listening to Biden. Bibi has basically said he’ll keep this up until the US election. He is happy to sacrifice Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli lives for his personal political gain.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
I honestly don't think we know.
Forget the polling. Every day on PB there's another discussion about why US polling is mainly shite.
Forget Clinton. She took it all for granted and listened to the data boys when her husband was yelling 'ffs get to wisconsin and shake some hands'.
Rudy Giuliani’s daughter explains why she is supporting Harris: “Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1840816985501778197
Aint no doubt his life has crumbled. How much does he owe?
Everyone who goes near Trump gets burnt like it was toxic nuke waste. They never learn. Elon will be burnt eventually.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
Do you think it as simple as that? I spent a year in Isreal in 1987 and I noticed just how badly they treated the Arabs...and this was a forward thinking, socialist kibbutz....
Isreal has treated the Palestinians appallingly for generations now. And this was before Netanyahu and the nationalists that dispossess Palestinians from their land. The Israel freeholders.
I can tell you one thing...bombing the fuck out of Gaza and Lebanon is not going to make anything better for the Israeli people...not today, not tomorrow and not ever...
Whereas Jews in Israel's neighbours presumably get treated brilliantly?
We could spend the next 24 hours just posting horrific things done to Palestinians and other Arabs by Israel and to Jews by Palestinians and various Arab countries. Perhaps the only way forward is not to look backward. How do you do that? (I don’t know.)
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
The same way we defeated fascism as an ideology.
Two-pronged assault, carrot and stick.
First defeat the enemy until they unconditionally surrender.
Then promote moderate forces within your former enemy and stuff their faces with gold so that people get rich and decide they have no interest or desire in going back to the old ways anymore.
Military victory, then Marshall Plan. That's how the hell you do it.
But the Israeli right have no interest in that plan. They’re fine with the first part, but want to follow it up with ethnic cleansing and annexation.
Rudy Giuliani’s daughter explains why she is supporting Harris: “Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1840816985501778197
Aint no doubt his life has crumbled. How much does he owe?
Everyone who goes near Trump gets burnt like it was toxic nuke waste. They never learn. Elon will be burnt eventually.
Rudy has lost all his assets. He has also lost his ability to practice law in NY and DC.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israel have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
Note the postwar plan was to deindustrialise Germany and Japan. Indeed Britain was still dismantling some factories in its occupied sector when the Marshall plan started. Then the US realised that economic misery was likely to provide fertile ground for communism, and did a rapid volte face. Fortunately there was a faction in government who’d been arguing in favour of that for some time, so plans were ready to go quite quickly.
In Gaza’s (and Lebanon’s) case, they’re already in a state of economic devastation. There’s virtually nothing left to dismantle in the former, and Lebanon isn’t in great shape.
Agreed completely.
And if its left in that state (and it will if there's just a ceasefire and no surrender by Hamas/Hezbollah and change of who leads the areas) then the cycle of violence will inevitably continue.
Two prongs are needed to end the cycle of violence, create a window of opportunity by defeating the enemy, then winning the peace by ensuring the populace turns its back on them as being gainfully employed is a better lifestyle.
The first will not achieve the second alone, and the second is not viable without the first. Both are necessary prerequisites to a lasting peace.
There are plenty of examples of peace being achieved without the overwhelming military defeat of one side, the approach you argue for: e.g., Cyprus, Bosnia.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
Insofar as you can get a ‘feel’ from being in a country where almost no-one will actually talk about the election, my instinct is the opposite - that things are surely, slowly but firmly tilting Harris’s way.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
Insofar as you can get a ‘feel’ from being in a country where almost no-one will actually talk about the election, my instinct is the opposite - that things are surely, slowly but firmly tilting Harris’s way.
It is going to the wire and will come down to Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Harris needs to win one and Trump both
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
As a wise man once said, success isn’t final and failure isn’t fatal. The Tories will be back, possibly sooner rather than later. Those suggesting they are demographically doomed sound like those who said that of them in 97, 01, and 05; and of Labour in 83, 87, 92, 15, and 19.
PS that picture was inserted as a link at 23:55 Sept 30th but edited six minutes later on 00:01 Oct 1st. I hope it counts as an image on Sept 30th.
I hope it's one per calendar day, rather than one in 24 hours, or I'm going to have to post my photo five minutes later each day like some awful treadmill.
Nice to see David Lammy out calling for a ceasefire. Unfortunately this completely fails to understand a basic rule of warfare; when its going good, exploit. Logically Israel should push on, the much vaunted talk to escalation has actually been one way traffic and the evidence is that they have done significant damage to Hezbollah and other group's war fighting capacity.
Two points:
For those who say that this will not defeat Hezbollah, this misses the point. The Israelis know that this is not about Hezbollah being eliminated as an organisation its about driving them to ineffectiveness and pushing them to weak position when the inveitable negotiation follows. Remember many in Hezbollah, including Nasrallah himself, had some regrets about the war in 2006. Despite the talk amongst dimwits in this part of the World that it was some kind of draw. Hezbollah capacity in Lebanon vis a vis Israel was set back years. This time, Israel has seen no downside so the situation is currently way more advantageous than then.
The idea that all this action is somehow being driven by Netanyahu and those on the hard right that he is beholden to, is nonsense. Its being driven by a cold hard calculation by the Intelligence & military wonks that the Iranians were more talk than action (so far proven correct) and that they could with planning & intelligence put Hezbollah on the back foot from the get go and sow disarray (so far proven correct). Its also driven by a desire after October 7th to deliver a massive response to every one of its enemies, which it has
The blunt facts are the Israelis have made the better assumptions & calculations, the Western diplomats have not.
Nice to see David Lammy out calling. for an ceasefire. Unfortunately this completely fails to understand a basic rule of warfare; when its going good, exploit. Logically Israel should push on, the much vaunted talk to escalation has actually been one way traffic and the evidence is that they have done significant damage to Hezbollah and other group's war fighting capacity.
Two points:
For those who say that this will not defeat Hezbollah, this misses the point. The Israelis know that this is not about Hezbollah being eliminated as an organisation its about driving them to ineffectiveness and pushing them to weak position when the inveitable negotiation follows. Remember many in Hezbollah, including Nasrallah himself, had some regrets about the war in 2006. Despite the talk amongst dimwits in this part of the World that it was some kind of draw. Hezbollah capacity in Lebanon vis a vis Israel was set back years. This time, Israel has seen no downside so the situation is currently way more advantageous than then.
The idea that all this action is somehow being driven by Netanyahu and those on the hard right that he is beholden to, is nonsense. Its being driven by a cold hard calculation by the Intelligence & military wonks that the Iranians were more talk than action (so far proven correct) and that they could with planning & intelligence put Hezbollah on the back foot from the get go and sow disarray (so far proven correct). Its also driven by a desire after October 7th to deliver a massive response to every one of its enemies, which it has
The blunt facts are the Israelis have made the better assumptions & calculations, the Western diplomats have not.
Netanyahu in his speech this evening was directed at Iran, basically we can hit you hard...want some. He gave a similar speech a few months ago directed at Hezbollah. Its high risk stuff.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
The same way we defeated fascism as an ideology.
Two-pronged assault, carrot and stick.
First defeat the enemy until they unconditionally surrender.
Then promote moderate forces within your former enemy and stuff their faces with gold so that people get rich and decide they have no interest or desire in going back to the old ways anymore.
Military victory, then Marshall Plan. That's how the hell you do it.
But the Israeli right have no interest in that plan. They’re fine with the first part, but want to follow it up with ethnic cleansing and annexation.
Screw the Israeli "right"
Israel is a democracy and when peace is an option it has repeatedly voted for it.
Israel isn't the problem here. The problem is those who are not democracies led by theocratic dictators who have no desire for peace or democratic transfer of power.
In accordance with the decision of the political echelon, a few hours ago, the IDF began limited, localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.
The IDF is operating according to a methodical plan set out by the General Staff and the Northern Command which IDF soldiers have trained and prepared for in recent months.
The Israeli Air Force and IDF Artillery are supporting the ground forces with precise strikes on military targets in the area.
These operations were approved and carried out in accordance with the decision of the political echelon. Operation “Northern Arrows” will continue according to the situational assessment and in parallel to combat in Gaza and in other arenas.
The IDF is continuing to operate to achieve the goals of the war and is doing everything necessary to defend the citizens of Israel and return the citizens of northern Israel to their homes.
PS that picture was inserted as a link at 23:55 Sept 30th but edited six minutes later on 00:01 Oct 1st. I hope it counts as an image on Sept 30th.
I hope it's one per calendar day, rather than one in 24 hours, or I'm going to have to post my photo five minutes later each day like some awful treadmill.
Speaking of which, here's today's: the energy price cap in retrospect, per the BBC.
I think I'll adopt this. I used to say there are two types of people. One type, if you give them a fragile vase and ask them to move it across the room, will do so with great care. The other type, if given the same vase, will either refuse or drop it halfway thru neglect and then blame you. But I'll use the shopping cart technique as easier to understand.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You continue to pretend that Netenyahu's problem was he did nothing. It is exactly the reverse. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas, made sure they were well fiunded both from Israel and other countries like Turkey and did everything he could to make sure they became the dominant force in Palestinian politics so that the moderates were sidelined. He didn't even try to hide it. In 2019 he said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
And he was wrong to do that.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
No one can. At least not in the way you want it. Israle have spent the last 40 years or more bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and it has done nothing to mke them more secure. This time will be no different. They kill some people and others take their place. So they kill them and the same thing happens again. This is not a new strategy. It is the same strategy they have pursued for decades and it has got them to exactly this point. They are not dealing with a state that can be defeated in the way we defeated Germany. All they do is perpetuate the hatred. Many in Israel understand this.Sadly people like you do not.
If it ends with just bombing and then a ceasefire then yes I completely agree nothing will be achieved, I've made that point myself repeatedly.
Unless you are suggesting genocide - and I am not entirely convinced at this point that you would demur on that - then that is exactly how it will end.
No, I put what I'm suggesting at 10:39pm and it did not entail "just" a ceasefire, nor did it entail a genocide.
Actually it did. You are just not honest enough to admit it.
I think I'll adopt this. I used to say there are two types of people. One type, if you give them a fragile vase and ask them to move it across the room, will do so with great care. The other type, if given the same vase, will either refuse or drop it halfway thru neglect and then blame you. But I'll use the shopping cart technique as easier to understand.
Keir seems to have gone from the former to the latter.
I think I'll adopt this. I used to say there are two types of people. One type, if you give them a fragile vase and ask them to move it across the room, will do so with great care. The other type, if given the same vase, will either refuse or drop it halfway thru neglect and then blame you. But I'll use the shopping cart technique as easier to understand.
That focus is yet again on illegal immigration. The Tories allowed 1.2 million legal immigrants in just a single year, which is a bonkers number. The small boat people are a rounding error in that context.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
What do you mean?
I was told on here three months ago that Yvette Cooper HAD A PLAN.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
Well, it wont be Jenrick. He'll be out in two years.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
That focus is yet again on illegal immigration. The Tories allowed 1.2 million legal immigrants in just a single year, which is a bonkers number. The small boat people are a rounding error in that context.
Exactly. The drivel about the few thousand illegals is a pure displacement activity, which is why pointing the finger at the ECHR or anyone else is so deeply unserious. The Tories took the decisions to quadruple the foreign born population, not "woke lawyers" or any other paper tigers of their imagination. The Tories own it.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
Insofar as you can get a ‘feel’ from being in a country where almost no-one will actually talk about the election, my instinct is the opposite - that things are surely, slowly but firmly tilting Harris’s way.
I see a parallel with the recent election in Poland. Women came out to vote strongly against the restrictions on their reproductive rights. I think this seems to be a theme that has some traction in the States too.
"Please stop Liz Truss making public appearances. Not for our benefit, for hers Truss events have almost become freak shows where audiences turn up to see what mad thing she will say next John Crace"
"Please stop Liz Truss making public appearances. Not for our benefit, for hers Truss events have almost become freak shows where audiences turn up to see what mad thing she will say next John Crace"
Turns out over 100 NIH-funded Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research papers contain completely made up data, according to new allegations. Billions in funding and years of research now in serious doubt.
On topic, Trump's increasingly petty personal attacks appear to be backfiring. Republican aides, including several I've heard on radio today, are screaming at him to get back to policy, but Trump isn't listening. He's playing to his core vote while repelling marginal voters, especially women.
The worrying thing is that this core vote is extending it's reach to young males, young black and hispanic males, and into Andrew Tate's kind of macho, gender based politics...
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
US women vote in greater numbers than their men folk.
I've resigned myself now to Trump winning. Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala, and Biden much further ahead still and he just squeaked it.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
"Clinton was much further ahead in the polling at this stage than Kamala" Not true:
538 polling averages 1st October 2016: Clinton 43.5 Trump 40.5 Today: Harris 48.5 Trump 45.7
Comments
What first attracted you to millionaire
Paul Danielsfootball lobbyists....Of course Gary, it was the Glaziers fault and the European Super League is evil, Neville doesn't see any issue.
Isreal has treated the Palestinians appallingly for generations now. And this was before Netanyahu and the nationalists that dispossess Palestinians from their land. The Israel freeholders.
I can tell you one thing...bombing the fuck out of Gaza and Lebanon is not going to make anything better for the Israeli people...not today, not tomorrow and not ever...
Seems likely next step to me.
Might as well be hung for a sheep etc etc...
Pretty impressive of Hamas to still be fighting after a year of total siege and bombardment, they are nutters but fanatical fighters. Hezbollah will be tougher still. Israel is expanding a military and political quagmire.
Two-pronged assault, carrot and stick.
First defeat the enemy until they unconditionally surrender.
Then promote moderate forces within your former enemy and stuff their faces with gold so that people get rich and decide they have no interest or desire in going back to the old ways anymore.
Military victory, then Marshall Plan. That's how the hell you do it.
And Trump is interested in personal vendettas not policies.
Unamusing.
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
You do realise the Marshall plan only came about because, three years after the war’s end, the US realised it needed to rebuild the economies of Europe and Japan lest they fall to its communist rival ?
And there’s no sign that Israel has any such intention.
Regrettably Abba Eban's quote that the leaders of the Palestinians have "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" is as true today as it was half a century ago.
What's your point?
I've said time and again I despise Netanyahu. You saying how shit Netanyahu is doesn't change my views at all, I agree with you on that one!
I don't want to see Netanyahu defended, I want to see Hamas defeated, and Netanyahu won't do that. He should be replaced with someone who will.
Today is Truman Capote's 100th birthday, and I'm trying to come to grips with his complicated, controversial legacy. But one thing is undeniable—he knew a lot of celebrities.
He was one of only two people in the world, who knew both John Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. He also knew both Robert Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan. And that's just a start....
https://x.com/tedgioia/status/1840789935923617845
Men like Trump, young men like Trump, white men like Trump and men of colour like Trump. Trump gets this and he speaks to them, and so he continues to defy political gravity, and challenge politics norms...
Trump thinks he knows better than his advisors and, as much as I hate to sat this, he probably does...
I hope its on a weekend.
I remember when the media couldn't get enough of this guy.
Trump will win Penn, Wi and Mich and take the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. He appeals to men and US nationalism.... His immigration mantra works big time...and he gets a lot of support from first generation immigrants...
It's not a matter of prepare for the worst and hope for the best...US politics is prepare for the worst and it will get even worse....
These are really difficulty times to be liberal...and it is only gong to get worse, and more horrible still...sadly hatred, negativity are winning over kindness and compassion....
It’s equally likely (arguably more so, but we’ll see) that Harris wins.
You’re assuming polling companies are using the same assumptions they did four years ago; we know they aren’t. They could still be wrong, of course, but what you cannot do is simply extrapolate from the Clinton or Biden polling.
Let them decide.
Solid, experienced cabinet minister who will do a decent LOTO job and slowly rebuild the party vs roll the dice.
I'd roll the dice but I'm not a member.
For all groups except for outright-owners, Labour got 40% or more of the vote. They got double what the Conservatives did from working people. They won easily in all age groups except for the over 65s.
The reason they are unpopular at the moment is not because people have gone off left-wing politics; it's because the new government so closely resembles the old one. Those making the biggest fuss are millionaire pensioners who have had their freebies taken off them, and weird Trumpist wannabes.
Then the US realised that economic misery was likely to provide fertile ground for communism, and did a rapid volte face. Fortunately there was a faction in government who’d been arguing in favour of that for some time, so plans were ready to go quite quickly.
In Gaza’s (and Lebanon’s) case, they’re already in a state of economic devastation. There’s virtually nothing left to dismantle in the former, and Lebanon isn’t in great shape.
I can say no more.
Ultimately, you have to find some sort of negotiated peace whereby your neighbours step back from wanting to remove you from the map. It’s very difficult, but Bosnia is at peace (albeit with ongoing tensions and a barely working nation state), Kosovo/Serbia are at peace (with even more ongoing tensions), Northern Ireland is at peace (with a clunky devolution and lots of subsidies), the Basque Country is at peace, Cyprus is at peace (but divided in two).
And if its left in that state (and it will if there's just a ceasefire and no surrender by Hamas/Hezbollah and change of who leads the areas) then the cycle of violence will inevitably continue.
Two prongs are needed to end the cycle of violence, create a window of opportunity by defeating the enemy, then winning the peace by ensuring the populace turns its back on them as being gainfully employed is a better lifestyle.
The first will not achieve the second alone, and the second is not viable without the first. Both are necessary prerequisites to a lasting peace.
And she is paid more than Starmer !!!!
Rudy Giuliani’s daughter explains why she is supporting Harris: “Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful.”
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1840816985501778197
Forget the polling. Every day on PB there's another discussion about why US polling is mainly shite.
Forget Clinton. She took it all for granted and listened to the data boys when her husband was yelling 'ffs get to wisconsin and shake some hands'.
Everyone who goes near Trump gets burnt like it was toxic nuke waste. They never learn. Elon will be burnt eventually.
https://www.ft.com/video/2ebac039-3c96-4bb4-8e9b-4b05fb4f8844
Whilst Trump still gets to flog $100k watches.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
The cycle comes round again.
https://nitter.poast.org/KamalaHQ/status/1840526130031317329#m
Two points:
For those who say that this will not defeat Hezbollah, this misses the point. The Israelis know that this is not about Hezbollah being eliminated as an organisation its about driving them to ineffectiveness and pushing them to weak position when the inveitable negotiation follows. Remember many in Hezbollah, including Nasrallah himself, had some regrets about the war in 2006. Despite the talk amongst dimwits in this part of the World that it was some kind of draw. Hezbollah capacity in Lebanon vis a vis Israel was set back years. This time, Israel has seen no downside so the situation is currently way more advantageous than then.
The idea that all this action is somehow being driven by Netanyahu and those on the hard right that he is beholden to, is nonsense. Its being driven by a cold hard calculation by the Intelligence & military wonks that the Iranians were more talk than action (so far proven correct) and that they could with planning & intelligence put Hezbollah on the back foot from the get go and sow disarray (so far proven correct). Its also driven by a desire after October 7th to deliver a massive response to every one of its enemies, which it has
The blunt facts are the Israelis have made the better assumptions & calculations, the Western diplomats have not.
Israel is a democracy and when peace is an option it has repeatedly voted for it.
Israel isn't the problem here. The problem is those who are not democracies led by theocratic dictators who have no desire for peace or democratic transfer of power.
In accordance with the decision of the political echelon, a few hours ago, the IDF began limited, localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.
The IDF is operating according to a methodical plan set out by the General Staff and the Northern Command which IDF soldiers have trained and prepared for in recent months.
The Israeli Air Force and IDF Artillery are supporting the ground forces with precise strikes on military targets in the area.
These operations were approved and carried out in accordance with the decision of the political echelon. Operation “Northern Arrows” will continue according to the situational assessment and in parallel to combat in Gaza and in other arenas.
The IDF is continuing to operate to achieve the goals of the war and is doing everything necessary to defend the citizens of Israel and return the citizens of northern Israel to their homes.
"The Conservatives lost the election because they failed to control immigration. That is the closest thing to a consensus at the party’s conference."
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/conservatives/2024/09/the-tories-are-starting-to-get-real-on-immigration
I was told on here three months ago that Yvette Cooper HAD A PLAN.
Truss events have almost become freak shows where audiences turn up to see what mad thing she will say next
John Crace"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/30/please-stop-liz-truss-making-public-appearances-not-for-our-benefit-for-hers
Sperm donor cash rises by £10 as UK faces shortage
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news
Someone gave NotebookLM a document with just "poop" and "fart" repeated over and over again. I did NOT expect the result to be this good.
https://x.com/kkuldar/status/1840680947873718396
https://www.science.org/content/article/research-misconduct-finding-neuroscientist-eliezer-masliah-papers-under-suspicion
It is now October 1st. Ukraine still holds a significant part of the Kursk region.
Not true:
538 polling averages
1st October 2016: Clinton 43.5 Trump 40.5
Today: Harris 48.5 Trump 45.7