Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
The first stage is that Israel should pull back to a defensive stance
Then the global community needs to obliterate Hamas. They have demonstrated they are beyond the pale. Targeted sanctions, international arrests, moral suasion.
At the same time put in an interim government into Gaza with a fuck ton of money for reconstruction. A plan for a transition to the election of a new Palestinian authority as well.
In parallel a truth and reconciliation commission for everyone except the political and military leadership.
And ultimately a single state with a consociational democratic structure, the abolition of list PR and the introduction of a German style minimum threshold for Knesset representation
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Their current strategy of levelling Gaza and then starving anyone isn't getting the hostages released. If that's the aim, maybe they should try something else?
If you have a better strategy to get Hamas to surrender and release the hostages then I'm all for it.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
The first stage is that Israel should pull back to a defensive stance
Then the global community needs to obliterate Hamas. They have demonstrated they are beyond the pale. Targeted sanctions, international arrests, moral suasion.
At the same time put in an interim government into Gaza with a fuck ton of money for reconstruction. A plan for a transition to the election of a new Palestinian authority as well.
In parallel a truth and reconciliation commission for everyone except the political and military leadership.
And ultimately a single state with a consociational democratic structure, the abolition of list PR and the introduction of a German style minimum threshold for Knesset representation
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are not fighting a just war
Defeating Hamas and seeking the release of the hostages is just.
They should follow the rule of law while doing so, and I oppose the blockade of aid - that is a far more legitimate criticism.
But continuing the war until the aims are achieved? So long as the law is followed, that is entirely just.
I don’t want to count the chickens before they’ve hatched but was I onto something when I said several months ago that Labour wasn’t quite as bad as people said?
They had an absolutely terrible start, with some tone-deaf messaging, contradictory decisions and they spent political capital on questionable policies. There’s a reason why they’re languishing in the low to mid 20s in the polls.
There is however recent evidence that they are starting, however tentatively, to right the ship somewhat. The strategy of slow, incremental, unflashy improvement might yet yield dividends down the line, but we are in a waiting game now.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Their current strategy of levelling Gaza and then starving anyone isn't getting the hostages released. If that's the aim, maybe they should try something else?
If you have a better strategy to get Hamas to surrender and release the hostages then I'm all for it.
Stop committing war crimes and violating international law
Make clear no intention to annex territory or to carry out ethnic cleansing
Provide aid for Gaza
Stop bombing civilians in Gaza
Win over "hearts and minds" of Gazan population
Leverage good relationship with Trump and Trump's good relationship with Qatar to put pressure on Qatar to stop supporting Hamas or to get Qatar to get Hamas to release the remaining hostages
Stop bombing and invading Syria in order to build good relations with new Syrian government and to build better relations with Turkey, so they too do not support Hamas/get Hamas to release the remaining hostages
We know some Trump hating Americans have gone to Canada, could some now go to Mexico if they aren't rich enough to get private health insurance, buy the best food and go to a private gym?
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Lt Hiroo Onoda of the IDF International Brigade (PB section), I salute you.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
Most Reform voters don't want to be socially mobile, they want to stay in the town they were born in but keep it as it was
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are not fighting a just war
Defeating Hamas and seeking the release of the hostages is just.
They should follow the rule of law while doing so, and I oppose the blockade of aid - that is a far more legitimate criticism.
But continuing the war until the aims are achieved? So long as the law is followed, that is entirely just.
A just war has a very specific definition in ethics. Go and reread your Aquinas.
Proportionality is one of the key criteria and Israel is not behaving proportionally.
The Conservative vote continues to be squeezed mightily effectively by Reform. Pips duly squeaking.
The Conservatives should still reclaim a reasonable number of seats from Labour that ought never to have been lost in anything like 'normal' circumstances but it looks as those Con Gains will serve as electoral handmaidens to Nigel.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are not fighting a just war
Defeating Hamas and seeking the release of the hostages is just.
They should follow the rule of law while doing so, and I oppose the blockade of aid - that is a far more legitimate criticism.
But continuing the war until the aims are achieved? So long as the law is followed, that is entirely just.
That would be the same Israel that shot the hostages who had their hands up in the air with a white flag?
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are not fighting a just war
Defeating Hamas and seeking the release of the hostages is just.
They should follow the rule of law while doing so, and I oppose the blockade of aid - that is a far more legitimate criticism.
But continuing the war until the aims are achieved? So long as the law is followed, that is entirely just.
A just war has a very specific definition in ethics. Go and reread your Aquinas.
Proportionality is one of the key criteria and Israel is not behaving proportionally.
I know, which is why I said they should not commit war crimes and should allow aid in.
Proportional doesn't mean a 1:1 ratio or no casualties, it means doing what is necessary but not more to achieve the aims of the war.
That is what Israel should do. Until Hamas surrender unconditionally, disarm, and release all hostages.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
The first stage is that Israel should pull back to a defensive stance
Then the global community needs to obliterate Hamas. They have demonstrated they are beyond the pale. Targeted sanctions, international arrests, moral suasion.
At the same time put in an interim government into Gaza with a fuck ton of money for reconstruction. A plan for a transition to the election of a new Palestinian authority as well.
In parallel a truth and reconciliation commission for everyone except the political and military leadership.
And ultimately a single state with a consociational democratic structure, the abolition of list PR and the introduction of a German style minimum threshold for Knesset representation
Thanks. This is heavily reliant on an imaginary concept of 'the global community', identical I suppose with 'the international community' which is so often called on as the last resort to do something about something. The commentating media have a special love for it, as there is no difficulty so great that it cannot be called upon to resolve it. Sadly it doesn't exist.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
Tje alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
I think you have cart before the horse. Maybe places are nice because they vote Lib Dem.
The places maybe but the people won’t be.
I was involved with the local Lib Dems in a smart part of London about 10 years ago. A majority of the activist (not me sadly) were those progressive types who bought run down Georgian terraced in the late 60s and gentrified their area. They were involved in the Labour Party through the 70s and ages but wealth and expanding property prices blunted their radical edge sufficiently to move them over to the Lib Dems.
Did they, then, object to further development as seems to happen in the Home Counties ?
Interesting question. I don't think they would say they object to further developments per se. It's just that if you're the kind of person (the herbivores as Michael Frayne called them) who gets involved with local history groups, gardening clubs, community associations etc then you're probably more likely to take a dim view of a lot of the planning projects that actually get submitted. You also have to remember that a lot of ageing activists got involved with politics in the 70s and 80s when protecting communities from the depredations of the town planner was actually really important.
The really striking thing from my background of 20 years growing up in Denmark is the *unquestioned" dominance of low-rise detached or semi-detached homes. That is on its own responsible for the pressure on the countryside - Greater Copenhagen has lots of homes like that but also masses of well-supported tower blocks - I grew up in a duplex flat on the 8th floor with 5 rooms for 3 people, with two lifts and a full-time porter, next door to this place: https://home.dk/salg/lejligheder/lehwaldsvej-3-9d-2800-kongens-lyngby/sag-1530003573/. which is smaller (3 rooms) but £593K, which wouldn't get you that good a location in Britain. I get that people prefer low-rise detached living, but there's a case for inexpensive well-maintained blocks, and nobody seems interested. Why?
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
Tje alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
I think you have cart before the horse. Maybe places are nice because they vote Lib Dem.
The places maybe but the people won’t be.
I was involved with the local Lib Dems in a smart part of London about 10 years ago. A majority of the activist (not me sadly) were those progressive types who bought run down Georgian terraced in the late 60s and gentrified their area. They were involved in the Labour Party through the 70s and ages but wealth and expanding property prices blunted their radical edge sufficiently to move them over to the Lib Dems.
Did they, then, object to further development as seems to happen in the Home Counties ?
Interesting question. I don't think they would say they object to further developments per se. It's just that if you're the kind of person (the herbivores as Michael Frayne called them) who gets involved with local history groups, gardening clubs, community associations etc then you're probably more likely to take a dim view of a lot of the planning projects that actually get submitted. You also have to remember that a lot of ageing activists got involved with politics in the 70s and 80s when protecting communities from the depredations of the town planner was actually really important.
The really striking thing from my background of 20 years growing up in Denmark is the *unquestioned" dominance of low-rise detached or semi-detached homes. That is on its own responsible for the pressure on the countryside - Greater Copenhagen has lots of homes like that but also masses of well-supported tower blocks - I grew up in a duplex flat on the 8th floor with 5 rooms for 3 people, with two lifts and a full-time porter, next door to this place: https://home.dk/salg/lejligheder/lehwaldsvej-3-9d-2800-kongens-lyngby/sag-1530003573/. which is smaller (3 rooms) but £593K, which wouldn't get you that good a location in Britain. I get that people prefer low-rise detached living, but there's a case for inexpensive well-maintained blocks, and nobody seems interested. Why?
It's a fair question (notwithstanding the points of those pointing out that such things do exist in London). I recently read Eric Newby's memoirs - and his description of his (middle class) upbringing in London in the (30s?) sounds not too dissimilar from yours - and jarringly alien from mine.
There is very little of this elsewhere in the UK. Up until very recently there was almost no housing close to Manchester City centre which I would describe as 'high density middle class family housing' - that's changing, and I went for a little walking tour of some last night (I posted a picture at about 7pm if you're interested) but it is still the exception rather than the rule.
My explanation is that the UK is unusual in that most of its big cities are industrial revolution cities. (Contrast this to almost any sizeable city on the continent - nine times out of ten they have been a big and important city for much longer than say, Manchester has) All except London and Edinburgh, really. And while in pre-industrial towns and cities the highest value housing was closest to the centre (so you didn't have to walk far), in industrial cities the highest value housing was - in general - on the edges - so you were furthest from the grime and the squalor. And so outside London and Edinburgh, quality density has never really appealed. That's changing a bit, but slowly.
So basic answer: it's because of the UK's particular economic history!
(Glasgow is an interesting exception: an industrial revolution city which developed high-quality high-density housing in inner areas).
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
Tje alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
I think you have cart before the horse. Maybe places are nice because they vote Lib Dem.
The places maybe but the people won’t be.
I was involved with the local Lib Dems in a smart part of London about 10 years ago. A majority of the activist (not me sadly) were those progressive types who bought run down Georgian terraced in the late 60s and gentrified their area. They were involved in the Labour Party through the 70s and ages but wealth and expanding property prices blunted their radical edge sufficiently to move them over to the Lib Dems.
Did they, then, object to further development as seems to happen in the Home Counties ?
Interesting question. I don't think they would say they object to further developments per se. It's just that if you're the kind of person (the herbivores as Michael Frayne called them) who gets involved with local history groups, gardening clubs, community associations etc then you're probably more likely to take a dim view of a lot of the planning projects that actually get submitted. You also have to remember that a lot of ageing activists got involved with politics in the 70s and 80s when protecting communities from the depredations of the town planner was actually really important.
The really striking thing from my background of 20 years growing up in Denmark is the *unquestioned" dominance of low-rise detached or semi-detached homes. That is on its own responsible for the pressure on the countryside - Greater Copenhagen has lots of homes like that but also masses of well-supported tower blocks - I grew up in a duplex flat on the 8th floor with 5 rooms for 3 people, with two lifts and a full-time porter, next door to this place: https://home.dk/salg/lejligheder/lehwaldsvej-3-9d-2800-kongens-lyngby/sag-1530003573/. which is smaller (3 rooms) but £593K, which wouldn't get you that good a location in Britain. I get that people prefer low-rise detached living, but there's a case for inexpensive well-maintained blocks, and nobody seems interested. Why?
It's weird. We're building detached housing inside the Edinburgh bypass, which has a household density a 1/12th of a traditional tenement. My flat was built straight onto agricultural land 150 years ago.
The difference is that this was built specifically to provide housing for dockworkers and associated local industry, getting as many people in as possible while being reasonably attractive. I don't think they were meant to be profitable for those firms, but now are among the most desirable properties in the country.
Apparently the rule is that they should be no taller than the width of the adjacent street. That's why the density doesn't feel overbearing, except the very old tenements in the Old Town which can be 15 storeys high (with unbelievably narrow stairwells). There is also a nice consistency about them, typically being designed by one architect per area.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
You can’t make much of a single quarter’s growth (a stonking 2.8% if you convert into American), but I will say that Britain looks comparatively economically sane compared with most other countries.
Some analysis of Trump’s tariffs suggest they could even be a net positive for the UK.
Pretty soon, Keir is going to be able to boast of trade agreements with EU, US and India, and if only he had a decent salesperson, and could perhaps dump Reeves, one can imagine a growth narrative which finally exorcises the post 2016 hangover.
Which, if Sunak had done precisely the same, would still be there.
It's Labour who will solidify and consolidate Brexit.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
Tje alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
I think you have cart before the horse. Maybe places are nice because they vote Lib Dem.
The places maybe but the people won’t be.
I was involved with the local Lib Dems in a smart part of London about 10 years ago. A majority of the activist (not me sadly) were those progressive types who bought run down Georgian terraced in the late 60s and gentrified their area. They were involved in the Labour Party through the 70s and ages but wealth and expanding property prices blunted their radical edge sufficiently to move them over to the Lib Dems.
Did they, then, object to further development as seems to happen in the Home Counties ?
Interesting question. I don't think they would say they object to further developments per se. It's just that if you're the kind of person (the herbivores as Michael Frayne called them) who gets involved with local history groups, gardening clubs, community associations etc then you're probably more likely to take a dim view of a lot of the planning projects that actually get submitted. You also have to remember that a lot of ageing activists got involved with politics in the 70s and 80s when protecting communities from the depredations of the town planner was actually really important.
The really striking thing from my background of 20 years growing up in Denmark is the *unquestioned" dominance of low-rise detached or semi-detached homes. That is on its own responsible for the pressure on the countryside - Greater Copenhagen has lots of homes like that but also masses of well-supported tower blocks - I grew up in a duplex flat on the 8th floor with 5 rooms for 3 people, with two lifts and a full-time porter, next door to this place: https://home.dk/salg/lejligheder/lehwaldsvej-3-9d-2800-kongens-lyngby/sag-1530003573/. which is smaller (3 rooms) but £593K, which wouldn't get you that good a location in Britain. I get that people prefer low-rise detached living, but there's a case for inexpensive well-maintained blocks, and nobody seems interested. Why?
It's weird. We're building detached housing inside the Edinburgh bypass, which has a household density a 1/12th of a traditional tenement. My flat was built straight onto agricultural land 150 years ago.
The difference is that this was built specifically to provide housing for dockworkers and associated local industry, getting as many people in as possible while being reasonably attractive. I don't think they were meant to be profitable for those firms, but now are among the most desirable properties in the country.
Apparently the rule is that they should be no taller than the width of the adjacent street. That's why the density doesn't feel overbearing, except the very old tenements in the Old Town which can be 15 storeys high (with unbelievably narrow stairwells). There is also a nice consistency about them, typically being designed by one architect per area.
Manhattan proves that Anglos (as it was when these buildings were going up from c.1890 to 1930) are quite happy to live in high rises, if they can be sold as aspirational.
The first apartment block - the Dakota - better known for John Lennon’s assassination - was and is an extremely luxurious development.
The Conservative vote continues to be squeezed mightily effectively by Reform. Pips duly squeaking.
The Conservatives should still reclaim a reasonable number of seats from Labour that ought never to have been lost in anything like 'normal' circumstances but it looks as those Con Gains will serve as electoral handmaidens to Nigel.
Most Labour gains in 2024 would go directly to Reform on that poll, apart from Chelsea and Fulham, Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster where the Reform vote was negligible at the GE and which the Conservatives might gain
War Crimes only matter when they’re committed by African warlords and east Europeans. Look at the hero worship by some in the media of the murderous Marine A
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
Tje alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
I think you have cart before the horse. Maybe places are nice because they vote Lib Dem.
The places maybe but the people won’t be.
I was involved with the local Lib Dems in a smart part of London about 10 years ago. A majority of the activist (not me sadly) were those progressive types who bought run down Georgian terraced in the late 60s and gentrified their area. They were involved in the Labour Party through the 70s and ages but wealth and expanding property prices blunted their radical edge sufficiently to move them over to the Lib Dems.
Did they, then, object to further development as seems to happen in the Home Counties ?
Interesting question. I don't think they would say they object to further developments per se. It's just that if you're the kind of person (the herbivores as Michael Frayne called them) who gets involved with local history groups, gardening clubs, community associations etc then you're probably more likely to take a dim view of a lot of the planning projects that actually get submitted. You also have to remember that a lot of ageing activists got involved with politics in the 70s and 80s when protecting communities from the depredations of the town planner was actually really important.
The really striking thing from my background of 20 years growing up in Denmark is the *unquestioned" dominance of low-rise detached or semi-detached homes. That is on its own responsible for the pressure on the countryside - Greater Copenhagen has lots of homes like that but also masses of well-supported tower blocks - I grew up in a duplex flat on the 8th floor with 5 rooms for 3 people, with two lifts and a full-time porter, next door to this place: https://home.dk/salg/lejligheder/lehwaldsvej-3-9d-2800-kongens-lyngby/sag-1530003573/. which is smaller (3 rooms) but £593K, which wouldn't get you that good a location in Britain. I get that people prefer low-rise detached living, but there's a case for inexpensive well-maintained blocks, and nobody seems interested. Why?
It's weird. We're building detached housing inside the Edinburgh bypass, which has a household density a 1/12th of a traditional tenement. My flat was built straight onto agricultural land 150 years ago.
The difference is that this was built specifically to provide housing for dockworkers and associated local industry, getting as many people in as possible while being reasonably attractive. I don't think they were meant to be profitable for those firms, but now are among the most desirable properties in the country.
Apparently the rule is that they should be no taller than the width of the adjacent street. That's why the density doesn't feel overbearing, except the very old tenements in the Old Town which can be 15 storeys high (with unbelievably narrow stairwells). There is also a nice consistency about them, typically being designed by one architect per area.
Manhattan proves that Anglos (as it was when these buildings were going up from c.1890 to 1930) are quite happy to live in high rises, if they can be sold as aspirational.
The first apartment block - the Dakota - better known for John Lennon’s assassination - was and is an extremely luxurious development.
Yes, I don't think there's anything unique about British people which makes them abhor density.
But in industrial cities, density generally equalled poverty - for perfectly rational economic reasons. And this made those areas undesirable.
On topic, sorry! Nobody has pointed out that NOC council areas also score more highly than average. My reasoning is that both Conservative and Labour majority councils are run to suit their own partisans, with no moderating influence. Reform run councils are equally likely to be partisan, and therefore unsuccessful. An argument in favour of PR.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
Most Reform voters don't want to be socially mobile, they want to stay in the town they were born in but keep it as it was
You seem to be confusing social mobility with geographical mobility there.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
How much does that just reflect the places with the most disadvantaged young people?
I suspect there isn't much social mobility for disadvantaged young people in my town for the simplest of reasons - there aren't really any disadvantaged youngsters in the first place.
It's a bit like the way our local secondary school got marked down by Osfstead at one point over diversity - because their student body was 100% white. I wasn't sure quite what they were meant to do about it, it wasn't a racist admissions policy, it was just that they were a smallsh secondary school in a town that at the time was 99.95% white.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
That’s true.
Logically, of course, one would have to uproot billions of people, if that principle were applied to everybody.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
That’s true.
Logically, of course, one would have to uproot billions of people, if that principle were applied to everybody.
Because of their historical treatment they feel theirs is a special case, and they need their own secure homeland.
Personally, I think the whole thing is a bit Alien v Predator, which we found out to our cost in the 1930s and 1940s, so I stay out of it.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
That’s true.
Logically, of course, one would have to uproot billions of people, if that principle were applied to everybody.
As discussed on PB a month ago, everybody a 1000 years ago is the ancester of everybody now. So we all have an equal claim.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
How much does that just reflect the places with the most disadvantaged young people?
I suspect there isn't much social mobility for disadvantaged young people in my town for the simplest of reasons - there aren't really any disadvantaged youngsters in the first place.
It's a bit like the way our local secondary school got marked down by Osfstead at one point over diversity - because their student body was 100% white. I wasn't sure quite what they were meant to do about it, it wasn't a racist admissions policy, it was just that they were a smallsh secondary school in a town that at the time was 99.95% white.
I find it hard to believe you have no disadvantaged young people. Is there no poverty in your Eden?
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
Most Reform voters don't want to be socially mobile, they want to stay in the town they were born in but keep it as it was
You seem to be confusing social mobility with geographical mobility there.
They don't want either. Most Reform voters are white working class or lower middle class and happy to stay white working class or lower middle class in the town or village they were born in but without wokeism and too many immigrants
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
That’s true.
Logically, of course, one would have to uproot billions of people, if that principle were applied to everybody.
A 1,000 years isn't true, and Gaza was rarely controlled by the Israelites in ancient times. The argument that Gaza is rightfully Israel's is questionable at best.
Soldiers are human, and contain good and bad. Whenever you get enough soldiers in a war zone, you will get crimes. Sometimes even isolated war crimes. The stress and fear in conflict increases that likelihood.
The trick is to reduce the number of incidents as much as possible. Training helps. As do rules applied stringently against it.
But the bigger issue is when war crimes become a stated aim of the state, not isolated incidents among troops. That's what Russia is doing in Ukraine; it is also, sadly, what Israel is now doing in Gaza. War crimes as a policy.
(And yes, it is also what Hamas does. But We all know Hamas are shits. We expect better of Israel).
On topic, sorry! Nobody has pointed out that NOC council areas also score more highly than average. My reasoning is that both Conservative and Labour majority councils are run to suit their own partisans, with no moderating influence. Reform run councils are equally likely to be partisan, and therefore unsuccessful. An argument in favour of PR.
More NOC council areas are more likely to have LD councillors or Nimby Independents or Residents councillors so again more likely to be more prosperous than average
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Soldiers are human, and contain good and bad. Whenever you get enough soldiers in a war zone, you will get crimes. Sometimes even isolated war crimes. The stress and fear in conflict increases that likelihood.
The trick is to reduce the number of incidents as much as possible. Training helps. As do rules applied stringently against it.
But the bigger issue is when war crimes become a stated aim of the state, not isolated incidents among troops. That's what Russia is doing in Ukraine; it is also, sadly, what Israel is now doing in Gaza. War crimes as a policy.
(And yes, it is also what Hamas does. But We all know Hamas are shits. We expect better of Israel).
And what Israel is doing in the West Bank and in Syria.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
How much does that just reflect the places with the most disadvantaged young people?
I suspect there isn't much social mobility for disadvantaged young people in my town for the simplest of reasons - there aren't really any disadvantaged youngsters in the first place.
It's a bit like the way our local secondary school got marked down by Osfstead at one point over diversity - because their student body was 100% white. I wasn't sure quite what they were meant to do about it, it wasn't a racist admissions policy, it was just that they were a smallsh secondary school in a town that at the time was 99.95% white.
I would expect social mobility in London to be higher. If you grow up in a poor part of London, you still have access to countless opportunities. And better schools.
And then once you have accessed those opportunities and social mobilitied-up, you can move somewhere that isn't London!
(A neutral view: London is probably a great place to live if you are very rich. And probably not a bad place to live if you are poor but have aspirations not to be. But hard work if you are middling.)
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
It’s at times like this that you realise the British propensity to conveniently short memories has its pluses.
This is the Dublin Agreement nonsense again. It's been explained to you multiple times.
And Chris Philp has explained it to you again just yesterday.
As an aside. The current Government is struggling to renegotiate post 2026 fishing quotas with the EU. We apparently want a better deal than Johnson and Frost negotiated. Nigel Farage was on the EU Fishing Committee. Of the 42 meetings he could have attended on his pet subject of fishing quotas, he attended ONE!
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
How much does that just reflect the places with the most disadvantaged young people?
I suspect there isn't much social mobility for disadvantaged young people in my town for the simplest of reasons - there aren't really any disadvantaged youngsters in the first place.
It's a bit like the way our local secondary school got marked down by Osfstead at one point over diversity - because their student body was 100% white. I wasn't sure quite what they were meant to do about it, it wasn't a racist admissions policy, it was just that they were a smallsh secondary school in a town that at the time was 99.95% white.
I would expect social mobility in London to be higher. If you grow up in a poor part of London, you still have access to countless opportunities. And better schools.
And then once you have accessed those opportunities and social mobilitied-up, you can move somewhere that isn't London!
(A neutral view: London is probably a great place to live if you are very rich. And probably not a bad place to live if you are poor but have aspirations not to be. But hard work if you are middling.)
Most families in our school catchment are middling (median London wages, fair few public sector etc) and I’d say housing is hard but everything else is pretty decent. Good transport links, plenty of services and things to do on the doorstep, good state education, and these days much less polluted air.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
Realistically the claim is simply that they’re there now and they’d rather die than go somewhere else as it’s the only place they feel safe.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
That's around when Crusaders started slaughtering Jews in the area, so it's kinda true.
Mildly interesting that on several occasions Jews and Muslims combined to defend their cities and settlements against the guys in the red crosses. All killed indiscriminately when they lost of course.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
This is the Dublin Agreement nonsense again. It's been explained to you multiple times.
And Chris Philp has explained it to you again just yesterday.
As an aside. The current Government is struggling to renegotiate post 2026 fishing quotas with the EU. We apparently want a better deal than Johnson and Frost negotiated. Nigel Farage was on the EU Fishing Committee. If the 42 meetings he could have attended on his pet subject of fishing quotas, he attended ONE!
No, we want what is due under the existing arrangements, where after the current transition period there is a move to yearly negotiations, and we would typically expect more fish. The EU are trying to get us to accept a worse deal on fish than is our right under the current deal in exchange for other things we want.
You are wildly misinformed on this, as on every other brexit-related topic. Because you read trash like "The London Economic".
This is the Dublin Agreement nonsense again. It's been explained to you multiple times.
And Chris Philp has explained it to you again just yesterday.
As an aside. The current Government is struggling to renegotiate post 2026 fishing quotas with the EU. We apparently want a better deal than Johnson and Frost negotiated. Nigel Farage was on the EU Fishing Committee. If the 42 meetings he could have attended on his pet subject of fishing quotas, he attended ONE!
No, we want what is due under the existing arrangements, where after the current transition period there is a move to yearly negotiations, and we would typically expect more fish. The EU are trying to get us to accept a worse deal on fish than is our right under the current deal in exchange for other things we want.
You are wildly misinformed on this, as on every other brexit-related topic. Because you read trash like "The London Economic".
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
This is the Dublin Agreement nonsense again. It's been explained to you multiple times.
And Chris Philp has explained it to you again just yesterday.
As an aside. The current Government is struggling to renegotiate post 2026 fishing quotas with the EU. We apparently want a better deal than Johnson and Frost negotiated. Nigel Farage was on the EU Fishing Committee. If the 42 meetings he could have attended on his pet subject of fishing quotas, he attended ONE!
No, we want what is due under the existing arrangements, where after the current transition period there is a move to yearly negotiations, and we would typically expect more fish. The EU are trying to get us to accept a worse deal on fish than is our right under the current deal in exchange for other things we want.
You are wildly misinformed on this, as on every other brexit-related topic. Because you read trash like "The London Economic".
...and listen to Chris Philp?
A noted remainer? His reasoning is as motivated as yours. Or, he hasn't understood. Or both.
Do you think he's some sort of Titan of the British Political Stage? Had you heard of him before yesterday?
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Of course it is. Which is why Israel were perfectly entitled to respond with lethal force.
However as that doyen of left wing thinking Edward Leigh has claimed "genocide is genocide" and starving a civilian population is also a war crime.
It would seem any current Israeli action in Palestine is predicated on keeping Bibi out of prison.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
I'm a Reform voter in a nice place (and indeed, Reform won my council seat and council).
My logic is that the government is actively trying to turn my nice place into a shithole, most by immigration (including indirect - the place is increasingly full of southerners who have fled the disaster zone that is the SE).
I would definitely vote to build a wall at Watford Gap and make the Londoners pay for it.
Edit to add - no problem with any of the individual immigrants, not even the Londoners, the problem is the expansion of a town which cannot sustain it - what is a very pleasant place at 20k population won't be with 40k packed into the same area and that's where we're heading.
O, woe is you! London is such a terrible place that people must flee it!
New data showing social mobility highest in London:
How much does that just reflect the places with the most disadvantaged young people?
I suspect there isn't much social mobility for disadvantaged young people in my town for the simplest of reasons - there aren't really any disadvantaged youngsters in the first place.
It's a bit like the way our local secondary school got marked down by Osfstead at one point over diversity - because their student body was 100% white. I wasn't sure quite what they were meant to do about it, it wasn't a racist admissions policy, it was just that they were a smallsh secondary school in a town that at the time was 99.95% white.
I would expect social mobility in London to be higher. If you grow up in a poor part of London, you still have access to countless opportunities. And better schools.
And then once you have accessed those opportunities and social mobilitied-up, you can move somewhere that isn't London!
(A neutral view: London is probably a great place to live if you are very rich. And probably not a bad place to live if you are poor but have aspirations not to be. But hard work if you are middling.)
Most families in our school catchment are middling (median London wages, fair few public sector etc) and I’d say housing is hard but everything else is pretty decent. Good transport links, plenty of services and things to do on the doorstep, good state education, and these days much less polluted air.
Yes I'd say London is a pretty good place to be, full stop. We've been belatedly watching Adolescence (very good, bravura acting and camera work) and one of my main takeaways is I'm glad I live in London not the generic miserable scrote-ridden town it's meant to be set in.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Of course it is. Which is why Israel were perfectly entitled to respond with lethal force.
However as that doyen of left wing thinking Edward Leigh has claimed "genocide is genocide" and starving a civilian population is also a war crime.
It would seem any current Israeli action in Palestine is predicated on keeping Bibi out of prison.
So perhaps the only way out of the current mess is to find an off-ramp for Bibi somewhere?
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I certainly agree with your last point. But my view is that Israel/Palestine needs some sort of Belgian solution
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Of course it is. Which is why Israel were perfectly entitled to respond with lethal force.
However as that doyen of left wing thinking Edward Leigh has claimed "genocide is genocide" and starving a civilian population is also a war crime.
It would seem any current Israeli action in Palestine is predicated on keeping Bibi out of prison.
So perhaps the only way out of the current mess is to find an off-ramp for Bibi somewhere?
Well most disgraced Dictators (even temporary ones) decamp to Dubai. I'm not sure that works. A palace in Florida maybe, until the Dems win the Presidency.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
I was looking forward to the subtle music reference in the thread title - disappointed once again. About as subtle as a survey telling us LDs do better in areas with less concern over crime and immigration and greater availability of secure, well paying jobs.
Yes, we know all this - indeed, some on here have harped on ad nauseam about LD constituencies having a Gail's bakery and all the LD voters (ex Tories of course) can be found in there etc, etc.
The alternative headline was shitholes vote Reform, nice places vote Lib Dems.
Well true - because things are clearly working out pretty well for people who live in nice places, who have an interest in conserving the status quo, and people who live in shitholes have rather more to be angry about.
It is the "shitholes" that have shaped the results of the last few GEs far more than naice home counties. It is them who have created a status quo where government is weak, divided, uninterested and incompetent, not LD voters.
They will shape the next one too, give us Farage, and then moan when he doesn't deliver what is promised, ignoring that what he promises is clearly impossible.
So where do they go then ? We may well have an increasingly divided and polarised society and at the root of it will be the uneven distribution of wealth in the country. Other stuff like migration is merely a symptom. Quite frankly why shouldn’t people in left behind areas moan when society clearly doesn’t deliver for,their communities ?
It is not an easy question to answer, but choosing another charlatan salesman with good spiel, a complete lack of interest in detail, who falls out with all their colleagues is definitely not the answer. We have seen that movie before and don't need a sequel.
At the moment, the best of a bad bunch is Starmer's Labour.
It really isn’t to many people. It is just more of the same. Here’s a radical idea. Labour, instead of taking these regions and their voters for granted as they have historically, actually do,something to improve them.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that Labour (and the Tories, LDs and Greens) should all do more for them. I agree with that. It does not follow that Reform will improve things rather than make them worse.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
I am Jewish and I have some distant uncles and cousins who have fought for the IDF in the past. Some might remember I supported Israel’s actions early in the war but not anymore.
One of the reasons I’ve been posting a lot less frequently is that I’ve been unexpectedly seconded INTO the IDF and I’m right here in Beit Hanoun in Gaza, even though I’m not Jewish or Israeli and I’m not a soldier, and despite the fact I’m known for making up ludicrous or surreal stories when I haven’t got anything else to say
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I certainly agree with your last point. But my view is that Israel/Palestine needs some sort of Belgian solution
This is the Dublin Agreement nonsense again. It's been explained to you multiple times.
And Chris Philp has explained it to you again just yesterday.
As an aside. The current Government is struggling to renegotiate post 2026 fishing quotas with the EU. We apparently want a better deal than Johnson and Frost negotiated. Nigel Farage was on the EU Fishing Committee. If the 42 meetings he could have attended on his pet subject of fishing quotas, he attended ONE!
No, we want what is due under the existing arrangements, where after the current transition period there is a move to yearly negotiations, and we would typically expect more fish. The EU are trying to get us to accept a worse deal on fish than is our right under the current deal in exchange for other things we want.
You are wildly misinformed on this, as on every other brexit-related topic. Because you read trash like "The London Economic".
...and listen to Chris Philp?
A noted remainer? His reasoning is as motivated as yours. Or, he hasn't understood. Or both.
Do you think he's some sort of Titan of the British Political Stage? Had you heard of him before yesterday?
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I certainly agree with your last point. But my view is that Israel/Palestine needs some sort of Belgian solution
In principle, I agree. I don't see a two-state solution as remotely viable and I suspect the international community mostly only continues to push it out of habit and the lack of courage to revisit the question.
However, while a one-state solution, with Palestinian devolved areas, is the most practical solution that might work, I really don't see how it could after this war. The bitterness on the side of the Palestinians and the entitlement on the side of the Israelis would rule that out. Even if the Israelis suffered sufficiently to be shocked into making decent concessions, Palestinian radicals would be more than ready to exploit any easing in security. I suspect it'd take several years of quasi-peace before even floating such an option.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Of course it is. Which is why Israel were perfectly entitled to respond with lethal force.
However as that doyen of left wing thinking Edward Leigh has claimed "genocide is genocide" and starving a civilian population is also a war crime.
It would seem any current Israeli action in Palestine is predicated on keeping Bibi out of prison.
So perhaps the only way out of the current mess is to find an off-ramp for Bibi somewhere?
Or for the Israeli political system to push him, and offer him up as a concession.
It would be helpful if the global community stopped looking for off-ramps for people who have consistently sought on-ramps, and having found them, have then fucked a load of stuff up.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I certainly agree with your last point. But my view is that Israel/Palestine needs some sort of Belgian solution
In principle, I agree. I don't see a two-state solution as remotely viable and I suspect the international community mostly only continues to push it out of habit and the lack of courage to revisit the question.
However, while a one-state solution, with Palestinian devolved areas, is the most practical solution that might work, I really don't see how it could after this war. The bitterness on the side of the Palestinians and the entitlement on the side of the Israelis would rule that out. Even if the Israelis suffered sufficiently to be shocked into making decent concessions, Palestinian radicals would be more than ready to exploit any easing in security. I suspect it'd take several years of quasi-peace before even floating such an option.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
Aside from the abominations going on in Gaza, what is preposterous is the "right to return" (And claim a random Palestinian's house in the West bank) for 'settlers' from Brooklyn or wherever. The "right to return" made sense in the early days of the formation of Israel but we're almost 80 years on now. Anyone who wanted to err "return" should have gone there ages ago quite frankly and the only people taking up the right are ultra-right nutters now.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
It is, which is why the International Criminal Court indicted Mohammed Deif.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Well said.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Well said.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Saying Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza is rather damning with faint praise.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I certainly agree with your last point. But my view is that Israel/Palestine needs some sort of Belgian solution
In principle, I agree. I don't see a two-state solution as remotely viable and I suspect the international community mostly only continues to push it out of habit and the lack of courage to revisit the question.
However, while a one-state solution, with Palestinian devolved areas, is the most practical solution that might work, I really don't see how it could after this war. The bitterness on the side of the Palestinians and the entitlement on the side of the Israelis would rule that out. Even if the Israelis suffered sufficiently to be shocked into making decent concessions, Palestinian radicals would be more than ready to exploit any easing in security. I suspect it'd take several years of quasi-peace before even floating such an option.
A three state solution seems the best solution to me, as existed before 1967.
Gaza returns to Egypt, the Palestinian parts of the West Bank get returned to Jordan. Israel takes the Israeli parts of the West Bank.
If after some years of peace Egypt and Jordan wish to grant the Palestinians independence, they could do, without Israeli involvement.
The problem is that Egypt and Jordan don't want the Palestinian population, and you can't blame them for that.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Well said.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Saying Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza is rather damning with faint praise.
It's an existential battle for them like it was for us in 1945.
America was right to bomb Japan. Israel is fighting a horrific war better than we did.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Well said.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Well said.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Saying Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza is rather damning with faint praise.
I'm not sure it's praise. It's the reality of how close they are. Had Iran has somehow managed to bomb Tel Aviv and killed many hundreds/thousands of civilians, then I suspect we'd have seen nukes used.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.
Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?
Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?
Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
Well said.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Saying Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza is rather damning with faint praise.
The fallout would hit Ashkelon and you wouldn't fancy being in Tel Aviv if the wind blew the wrong way.
Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.
It's interesting just how many pro-Israeli people are condemning Israel now, when you've lost Edward Leigh you know they've gone too far, Kit Malthouse speaks for the party.
Edward Leigh(Tory MP): "I've been a member of the Conservative friends of Israel for over 40 years... when is genocide not genocide?"
Mass starvation is a savage weapon of war, which no government should resort to.
It’s not a “savage weapon of war”
It’s a war crime.
I believe it is explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions.
It is both. And, yes, it is illegal.
One can debate allegations of genocide. But, the IDF is certainly guilty of indiscriminate mass murder.
To describe a war crime as a “weapon of war” implies that there are circumstances that it might be acceptable. That is not the case.
It seems to me that the easy part of the discussion is for most non aligned people to agree that both sides have committed war crimes. We also have no difficulty in knowing we are being systematically lied to by all sides.
The harder part comes in two questions: How should each side have acted instead? And secondly, from where we are right now, what is the process, stage by stage, which peacefully gives the best possible outcome to good people of all backgrounds wherever they currently live?
If the answer is that there is no such possible process, then violence is going to continue. But, fatally, so are war crimes. If there is no peaceful process involving real change that can be worked on, then war crimes are going to continue as the political constraints, geography and history of the region does not allow this war to be conducted, by both sides, without them.
Allowing food and medicines to be delivered to Gaza, and punishing soldiers who do stuff like murdering medics, and then lying about it, don’t seem a lot to ask for.
There are plenty in Israel who welcome the ethnic cleansing, on the grounds they were unlawfully ethnically cleansed out 1,000 years ago and they're now retaking what is rightfully theirs.
A 1000 years ago?
The entire Jewish claim on Palestine is that the land was given to them by God several thousand years ago.
That is not the entire Jewish claim. One can recognise that Jewish people have lived in the area for millennia without having to accept religious doctrine.
Relatively few, they were a minority with others - Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Druze, whatever you are if you speak Syriac, etc. Their right to a Jewish "homeland" is based on religious doctrine, Western Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries taking advantage of Ottoman weakness buying land and settling there (ie colonialism) and post-Holocaust guilt.
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Jews have a right to a place of their own because of 2000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It is a legitimate national aim and one necessary for self-protection. Without the sanctuary of their own state, how can they ever be, or feel, safe with that history (and, indeed, not just history). Did it have to be in Palestine? Not necessarily, but it is there now, which is a reality that has to be lived with.
I certainly agree with your last point. But my view is that Israel/Palestine needs some sort of Belgian solution
In principle, I agree. I don't see a two-state solution as remotely viable and I suspect the international community mostly only continues to push it out of habit and the lack of courage to revisit the question.
However, while a one-state solution, with Palestinian devolved areas, is the most practical solution that might work, I really don't see how it could after this war. The bitterness on the side of the Palestinians and the entitlement on the side of the Israelis would rule that out. Even if the Israelis suffered sufficiently to be shocked into making decent concessions, Palestinian radicals would be more than ready to exploit any easing in security. I suspect it'd take several years of quasi-peace before even floating such an option.
A three state solution seems the best solution to me, as existed before 1967.
Gaza returns to Egypt, the Palestinian parts of the West Bank get returned to Jordan. Israel takes the Israeli parts of the West Bank.
If after some years of peace Egypt and Jordan wish to grant the Palestinians independence, they could do, without Israeli involvement.
The problem is that Egypt and Jordan don't want the Palestinian population, and you can't blame them for that.
But those territories weren't part of those countries; they were just administered by them and they - understandably - don't want them back.
And Palestinian independence is always going to be a massive, and legitimate, concern for Israel given the undoubted right of sovereign states to sign military alliances, which potentially puts an Iranian army a few miles from Jerusalem. After all, after what's currently going on, why *wouldn't* Palestine want a powerful backer as an open, and present, military ally?
I'm less fussed about the Israeli West Bank settlers, who'd be operating under Palestinian rule. Tough. Concessions have to be made. Maybe that can be traded in return of an end to the right of return to descendants of refugees from the 1940s (as is the norm for displaced populations).
Comments
Then the global community needs to obliterate Hamas. They have demonstrated they are beyond the pale. Targeted sanctions, international arrests, moral suasion.
At the same time put in an interim government into Gaza with a fuck ton of money for reconstruction. A plan for a transition to the election of a new Palestinian authority as well.
In parallel a truth and reconciliation commission for everyone except the political and military leadership.
And ultimately a single state with a consociational democratic structure, the abolition of list PR and the introduction of a German style minimum threshold for Knesset representation
Ref +4%
Lab -1%
Con -4%
LD +1%
Green nc
They should follow the rule of law while doing so, and I oppose the blockade of aid - that is a far more legitimate criticism.
But continuing the war until the aims are achieved? So long as the law is followed, that is entirely just.
There is however recent evidence that they are starting, however tentatively, to right the ship somewhat. The strategy of slow, incremental, unflashy improvement might yet yield dividends down the line, but we are in a waiting game now.
Make clear no intention to annex territory or to carry out ethnic cleansing
Provide aid for Gaza
Stop bombing civilians in Gaza
Win over "hearts and minds" of Gazan population
Leverage good relationship with Trump and Trump's good relationship with Qatar to put pressure on Qatar to stop supporting Hamas or to get Qatar to get Hamas to release the remaining hostages
Stop bombing and invading Syria in order to build good relations with new Syrian government and to build better relations with Turkey, so they too do not support Hamas/get Hamas to release the remaining hostages
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=18&LAB=25&LIB=13&Reform=30&Green=7&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
Proportionality is one of the key criteria and Israel is not behaving proportionally.
The Conservatives should still reclaim a reasonable number of seats from Labour that ought never to have been lost in anything like 'normal' circumstances but it looks as those Con Gains will serve as electoral handmaidens to Nigel.
Proportional doesn't mean a 1:1 ratio or no casualties, it means doing what is necessary but not more to achieve the aims of the war.
That is what Israel should do. Until Hamas surrender unconditionally, disarm, and release all hostages.
I recently read Eric Newby's memoirs - and his description of his (middle class) upbringing in London in the (30s?) sounds not too dissimilar from yours - and jarringly alien from mine.
There is very little of this elsewhere in the UK. Up until very recently there was almost no housing close to Manchester City centre which I would describe as 'high density middle class family housing' - that's changing, and I went for a little walking tour of some last night (I posted a picture at about 7pm if you're interested) but it is still the exception rather than the rule.
My explanation is that the UK is unusual in that most of its big cities are industrial revolution cities. (Contrast this to almost any sizeable city on the continent - nine times out of ten they have been a big and important city for much longer than say, Manchester has) All except London and Edinburgh, really. And while in pre-industrial towns and cities the highest value housing was closest to the centre (so you didn't have to walk far), in industrial cities the highest value housing was - in general - on the edges - so you were furthest from the grime and the squalor. And so outside London and Edinburgh, quality density has never really appealed. That's changing a bit, but slowly.
So basic answer: it's because of the UK's particular economic history!
(Glasgow is an interesting exception: an industrial revolution city which developed high-quality high-density housing in inner areas).
The difference is that this was built specifically to provide housing for dockworkers and associated local industry, getting as many people in as possible while being reasonably attractive. I don't think they were meant to be profitable for those firms, but now are among the most desirable properties in the country.
Apparently the rule is that they should be no taller than the width of the adjacent street. That's why the density doesn't feel overbearing, except the very old tenements in the Old Town which can be 15 storeys high (with unbelievably narrow stairwells). There is also a nice consistency about them, typically being designed by one architect per area.
It's Labour who will solidify and consolidate Brexit.
The first apartment block - the Dakota - better known for John Lennon’s assassination - was and is an extremely luxurious development.
But in industrial cities, density generally equalled poverty - for perfectly rational economic reasons. And this made those areas undesirable.
I suspect there isn't much social mobility for disadvantaged young people in my town for the simplest of reasons - there aren't really any disadvantaged youngsters in the first place.
It's a bit like the way our local secondary school got marked down by Osfstead at one point over diversity - because their student body was 100% white. I wasn't sure quite what they were meant to do about it, it wasn't a racist admissions policy, it was just that they were a smallsh secondary school in a town that at the time was 99.95% white.
Logically, of course, one would have to uproot billions of people, if that principle were applied to everybody.
Personally, I think the whole thing is a bit Alien v Predator, which we found out to our cost in the 1930s and 1940s, so I stay out of it.
The trick is to reduce the number of incidents as much as possible. Training helps. As do rules applied stringently against it.
But the bigger issue is when war crimes become a stated aim of the state, not isolated incidents among troops. That's what Russia is doing in Ukraine; it is also, sadly, what Israel is now doing in Gaza. War crimes as a policy.
(And yes, it is also what Hamas does. But We all know Hamas are shits. We expect better of Israel).
(Unless you meant to add something like "cat" or "hampsters" *.)
* Lib Dems should do the Hampster Dance at the Glee Club.
https://youtu.be/c4OS17lqHiE
They must have just loved anything British
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/senior-tory-chris-philp-admits-brexit-made-it-harder-to-return-asylum-seekers-393184/
Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.
Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.
Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.
And then once you have accessed those opportunities and social mobilitied-up, you can move somewhere that isn't London!
(A neutral view: London is probably a great place to live if you are very rich. And probably not a bad place to live if you are poor but have aspirations not to be. But hard work if you are middling.)
As an aside. The current Government is struggling to renegotiate post 2026 fishing quotas with the EU. We apparently want a better deal than Johnson and Frost negotiated. Nigel Farage was on the EU Fishing Committee. Of the 42 meetings he could have attended on his pet subject of fishing quotas, he attended ONE!
Mildly interesting that on several occasions Jews and Muslims combined to defend their cities and settlements against the guys in the red crosses. All killed indiscriminately when they lost of course.
You are wildly misinformed on this, as on every other brexit-related topic. Because you read trash like "The London Economic".
They live there, and I wouldn't change that - we should accept population movements have happened - but they live in a historically multi-ethnic area that has become progressively less and less Jewish since AD 70.
The English have more right to Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein.
Do you think he's some sort of Titan of the British Political Stage? Had you heard of him before yesterday?
However as that doyen of left wing thinking Edward Leigh has claimed "genocide is genocide" and starving a civilian population is also a war crime.
It would seem any current Israeli action in Palestine is predicated on keeping Bibi out of prison.
Con fifth!
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=18&LAB=25&LIB=13&Reform=30&Green=7&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.
* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.
Lab 464
Con 65
LD 71
SNP/PC 21
Reform 6
Green 3
Minority (Galloway in fact) 1
Speaker 1
Yougov (The most accurate MRP) gave
Lab 425
Con 108
LD 67
SNP/PC 24
Reform 5
Green 2
Speaker 1
Result
Lab 411
Con 121
LD 72
SNP/PC 13
Reform 5
Green 4
Minority 5
Speaker 1
I note Baxter (EC) is currently forecasting
Rfm 245
Lab 177
Con 94
LD 60
Green 4
SNP 43
Plaid 4
Which looks like a Farage minority Gov't supported by Bobby J (Kemi is surely not long for this political world)'s Tory rump to me.
The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.
No, never heard of him.
However, while a one-state solution, with Palestinian devolved areas, is the most practical solution that might work, I really don't see how it could after this war. The bitterness on the side of the Palestinians and the entitlement on the side of the Israelis would rule that out. Even if the Israelis suffered sufficiently to be shocked into making decent concessions, Palestinian radicals would be more than ready to exploit any easing in security. I suspect it'd take several years of quasi-peace before even floating such an option.
It would be helpful if the global community stopped looking for off-ramps for people who have consistently sought on-ramps, and having found them, have then fucked a load of stuff up.
Anyone who wanted to err "return" should have gone there ages ago quite frankly and the only people taking up the right are ultra-right nutters now.
We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.
The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.
At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Gaza returns to Egypt, the Palestinian parts of the West Bank get returned to Jordan. Israel takes the Israeli parts of the West Bank.
If after some years of peace Egypt and Jordan wish to grant the Palestinians independence, they could do, without Israeli involvement.
The problem is that Egypt and Jordan don't want the Palestinian population, and you can't blame them for that.
America was right to bomb Japan. Israel is fighting a horrific war better than we did.
And Palestinian independence is always going to be a massive, and legitimate, concern for Israel given the undoubted right of sovereign states to sign military alliances, which potentially puts an Iranian army a few miles from Jerusalem. After all, after what's currently going on, why *wouldn't* Palestine want a powerful backer as an open, and present, military ally?
I'm less fussed about the Israeli West Bank settlers, who'd be operating under Palestinian rule. Tough. Concessions have to be made. Maybe that can be traded in return of an end to the right of return to descendants of refugees from the 1940s (as is the norm for displaced populations).