I've only just realised that Hamas are Sunni -and yet they are (as I understand) largely funded by Iran which are Shi'i. Are the two streams of Islam coming together?
I think it's more that they have some relationships with Iran via Hezbollah, and Hamas can't be picky about where their help comes.
From a purely financial point of view Qatar probably provides more actual support.
There is an old saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Since the fall of the Shah (which the US set up when it overthrew the legitimately elected government back in the mid 50s) the present regime has long said it wanted to destroy Israel and the United States. It will use any means necessary to accomplish that.
Just a reminder, while Israeli civilian deaths in the lates fighting has been around 1400, civilian deaths in Gaza has gone beyond 4200--and still counting.
While it has been established that the destruction of the Hospital was by misfired rocket from Gaza, the recent bombing of the Orthodox church in Gaza was at the hands of the Israeli Air Force:
I am pleased aid trucks are now getting through the gate in Israel, but the people actually need more than 100 trucks a day giving aid to the civilians trapped at the southern border.
Well it's not a competition. Nobody wins when there are many dead.
I have seen and read many things in the last few days that make me so sad. I don't watch graphic stuff but I think the thing that affected me most was the doctor in a Gazan hospital trying to comfort a small boy who had lost his entire family.
And that's it for me. There are claims and counter-claims. There are people waving flags and saying the most disgusting things.
And here is a small boy who hasn't slept for weeks and has woken up today with no family. And there is a human being who can't find their family member, doesn't know if they are alive or dead.
I'm not sure about Iran using any means necessary. They are also fairly canny, and don't want to freak out Western countries. See that big US aircraft carrier off the coast?
I'm not sure about Iran using any means necessary. They are also fairly canny, and don't want to freak out Western countries. See that big US aircraft carrier off the coast?
A rather obvious point being made by some journos, that the West's support for the assault on Gaza, undermines their criticism of Putin. Well, I said it was obvious. I guess P is preening himself.
Well it's not a competition. Nobody wins when there are many dead.
I have seen and read many things in the last few days that make me so sad. I don't watch graphic stuff but I think the thing that affected me most was the doctor in a Gazan hospital trying to comfort a small boy who had lost his entire family.
And that's it for me. There are claims and counter-claims. There are people waving flags and saying the most disgusting things.
And here is a small boy who hasn't slept for weeks and has woken up today with no family. And there is a human being who can't find their family member, doesn't know if they are alive or dead.
It's beyond tragic.
How the 4311 do you think I was saying this was a competition? No, my point is that what is happening to the civilians in Gaza is more than even an eye for an eye retribution. It even violates the principles of the first covenant Israel clams to be the basis for its existence.
I believe they are clearly violating the laws of war.
Imagine, if you will, you live in Gaza. Hundreds of bombs are raining down on you every day. You never know when your building will be next. Think of the terror your family is experiencing with the loud explosions, the ground shaking, dust, foul smells. death everywhere. No food, no water, no electricity.
Children in Gaza have begun writing their names on their hands so they can be identified and buried with their families when they are killed.[/b]
I have no idea where this information came from, or if it is true...but, if it is, then Jesus also weeps...
I've seen it reported in Palestinian sources and the Mirror had an article on it a few days ago. This started as a result of the number of people being killed and bodies being mangled by high explosives, buried under buildings and becoming difficult to identify or recover as a result.
[It's not unusual for bodies/people to lose limbs or be decapitated by a blast, and this is more likely for children as they are smaller and their skeletal structure isn't fully developed yet. There's sometimes a false perception that air warfare is 'clean' because it's more impersonal]
Children in Gaza have begun writing their names on their hands so they can be identified and buried with their families when they are killed.[/b]
I have no idea where this information came from, or if it is true...but, if it is, then Jesus also weeps...
I've seen it reported in Palestinian sources and the Mirror had an article on it a few days ago. This started as a result of the number of people being killed and bodies being mangled by high explosives, buried under buildings and becoming difficult to identify or recover as a result.
[It's not unusual for bodies/people to lose limbs or be decapitated by a blast, and this is more likely for children as they are smaller and their skeletal structure isn't fully developed yet. There's sometimes a false perception that air warfare is 'clean' because it's more impersonal]
I have to say I've never heard anything close to that -- quite the opposite really. Certainly in this day and age most people would agree that air warfare is inherently 'dirty.'
But Israeli air-strikes are seen by Western governments as legitimate, even if they mangle children's bodies. I know this is partly about motivation, here, self-defence. Palestinians are denied that privilege.
I think there's a difference of intent, and of directness of intent, that matters here.
At one end of the spectrum, you can put attacking clearly military targets. If you're engaged in some kind of war, and you bomb the other people's army base, or munitions factory or something, everyone agrees that that's a legitimate target, in so much as any kind of war has legitimacy.
Civilian casualties inflicted whilst attempting to target military targets come next on the list, I think. These often tend to get viewed as "acceptable collateral damage".
Then there's deliberate attacking of civilian targets. You could probably include the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and probably Dresden in here.
And at the other end of the spectrum, there are deliberate, personal killings of children.
Bombing a warehouse and incidentally killing ten children playing in the alley next door feels a lot less evil than walking up to five babies and shooting them at point-blank range.
Children in Gaza have begun writing their names on their hands so they can be identified and buried with their families when they are killed.[/b]
I have no idea where this information came from, or if it is true...but, if it is, then Jesus also weeps...
I've seen it reported in Palestinian sources and the Mirror had an article on it a few days ago. This started as a result of the number of people being killed and bodies being mangled by high explosives, buried under buildings and becoming difficult to identify or recover as a result.
[It's not unusual for bodies/people to lose limbs or be decapitated by a blast, and this is more likely for children as they are smaller and their skeletal structure isn't fully developed yet. There's sometimes a false perception that air warfare is 'clean' because it's more impersonal]
I have to say I've never heard anything close to that -- quite the opposite really. Certainly in this day and age most people would agree that air warfare is inherently 'dirty.'
That's acknowledged intellectually and more directly by some people in spaces like this, but the language normally used in the wider world belies this.
Even apart from the use of terms like "collateral damage" or the curiously passive voiced descriptions such as the Sky tweet that referred to the Israeli's 'killed' vs the Palestinians who have 'died' in Gaza from 'strikes' (violence by police is frequently described in the same register or similarly from the Guardian just a week prior to Hamas attack "Gaza Strip protesters received bullet wounds to ankles" - I suppose they queued up to have bullet wounds handed out?).
Some will make the difference between directness of intent but that sits uneasily alongside the rate at which strikes were launched - 6000 in the space of a week vs over 7000 for most active year in the whole of Afghanistan - at which point dynamic targeting has broken down and either the same targets are being hit repeatedly, or there's generalised targeting of infrastructure going on. This is taking refuge in stochastic processes. If a school/church is hit every 20 strikes, what exactly will happen with 6000 are launched?
Bombing a warehouse and incidentally killing ten children playing in the alley next door feels a lot less evil than walking up to five babies and shooting them at point-blank range.
If you're bombing or pulling the trigger, I guess, maybe, but they're dead either way, and gaping holes are torn in their families. I betcha the parents of the ten dead kids in the alley are going to think the bombing is evil and won't rationalize, "At least they weren't shot at point-blank range."
I get that war has rules, but at some level I think the rules are wrong. The notion that it's okay to kill certain people because they're combatants or adjacent to combatants and not others because they're non-combatants makes zero sense to me. If we think it's not right to put more value on some lives than others, I think we necessarily have to also think it's just as wrong to kill soldiers as it is to kill civilians.
Bombing a warehouse and incidentally killing ten children playing in the alley next door feels a lot less evil than walking up to five babies and shooting them at point-blank range.
If you're bombing or pulling the trigger, I guess, maybe, but they're dead either way, and gaping holes are torn in their families. I betcha the parents of the ten dead kids in the alley are going to think the bombing is evil and won't rationalize, "At least they weren't shot at point-blank range."
Yeah, at that point you are litigating what height the grenade has to be dropped from before intent is 'indirect'.
I think we necessarily have to also think it's just as wrong to kill soldiers as it is to kill civilians.
I'm really torn about this, because "killing people is wrong" is a very attractive statement to me. Yet I can't help thinking that, had an Israeli sniper happened to have in their sights one of the Hamas members heading to a kibbutz on 7th October, armed to the teeth, I don't think I could look them in the eye and tell them they'd be wrong to pull the trigger. Is it ok to kill someone who is an imminent threat if you have no other way of stopping them? How imminent does the threat have to be? Can the whole IDF (and reserves?) be considered a threat to Palestinians, given the last 50 years of history?
I used to be stridently pacifist. I'm still anti-war, but I'm much less willing to judge the actions of others in a much less comfortable situation than mine.
This very short poem doesn't reflect a direct parallel with today's situation, but it came to my mind anyway:
Christmas: 1924
by Thomas Hardy
" Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
(BTW, I don't think Hardy was having a pop at just the RC Church, by the use of priests and mass, but was generally fed-up with organised religion per se).
I don't think pacifists have to judge other people's actions. I think we have to advocate for peace, for what we think is right.
Always the challenge to pacifism seems to be something along the lines of what you've asked, @Arethosemyfeet, and it's usually not an unreasonable question in whatever circumstances it's posed, but the thing is that it accepts those circumstances -- it's always "would you kill the person about to kill another person?" or "didn't we have to fight Nazi Germany?" or the like, with the line always drawn at that crisis point, and there's not enough questioning of how we contributed to the circumstances that brought Hamas to killing civilians or that brought Hitler to power in Germany -- how that crisis point arrived. We don't have to judge others. We have to judge ourselves.
"Would you kill the person about to kill another person?" is not the right question. The right questions are: why did we allow things to get to the point where one or both parties finds that violence is the only way forward? Will we advocate for a moral foreign policy that puts a priority on peace, that looks for peace-seeking people and encourages them, funds them, helps raise them to power? Would I tell the IDF soldier not to pull the trigger with the Hamas militant in their sights? Probably not. But I'm literally not in a position to judge the IDF soldier. I'm also literally not in a position to judge the Hamas militant. But I am in a position to judge the American administrations that helped Netanyahu and the Israeli government do the wrong thing again and again and again. Ezra Klein had two American Jewish leftist thinkers on his Oct 24 podcast (transcript here). Peter Beinart made the point that an important difference between the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the Palestinians' struggle is that the ANC was able to largely maintain a moral code of not targeting civilians because their moral strategy was working -- there was an anti-apartheid movement around the world in the 80s -- but that the US has not supported people speaking for ethical Palestinian resistance. My words: we've been happy to help pay for the Iron Dome, but haven't done a damn thing for the people driven to shooting off the rockets that make it necessary.
The thing that struck me even more was something Spencer Ackerman said: "What's possible is very often different from what's necessary, and only when people of conscience hold true to what's necessary can we start to expand the limits of what's possible until finally a way pointing out of this horrific reality can come to pass." Pacifism seems so impossible sometimes, but it's necessary to advocate for non-violence, for ethical struggle, for peace.
I agree with pretty much all of that, but when you're at the crisis point it sounds a lot the old joke about asking for directions and being told "I wouldn't start from here".
The ANC had a paramilitary wing and apologised at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for targeting civilians. And there were many instances of mob and vigilante violence against alleged collaborators in the townships.
Can we judge those who attack civilians - or who sit back and don't do enough to stop it? Yes. Yes we can.
I agree with pretty much all of that, but when you're at the crisis point it sounds a lot the old joke about asking for directions and being told "I wouldn't start from here".
It does. But in six months or six years or however long this conflict lasts, a whole lot of people will be dead, a whole lot of money will have been spent, and a whole lot of land will be despoiled, and the problem of how the various people in the Middle East are going to get along will still be there. Israeli leaders say they're going to destroy Hamas, as if that's going to solve anything, as if terrorizing hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza weren't going to produce the next Hamas. The cycle of violence just keeps turning, and nothing's going to change if no one ever tries something else.
I agree with pretty much all of that, but when you're at the crisis point it sounds a lot the old joke about asking for directions and being told "I wouldn't start from here".
It does. But in six months or six years or however long this conflict lasts, a whole lot of people will be dead, a whole lot of money will have been spent, and a whole lot of land will be despoiled, and the problem of how the various people in the Middle East are going to get along will still be there. Israeli leaders say they're going to destroy Hamas, as if that's going to solve anything, as if terrorizing hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza weren't going to produce the next Hamas. The cycle of violence just keeps turning, and nothing's going to change if no one ever tries something else.
Not only but also - the repercussions amongst expatriate communities. The march in London that I saw at the weekend attacted thousands. If you can see a stream of people walking past with banners for an hour and a half or more and no sign of it ending, it says something about the level of concern and indignation, and that's just in one city in one country.
I make no comment about what ++Welby says (whatever he says will be anathema to someone ), but at least we can hear what Christians on the ground are thinking...
Apparently acknowledging there's a wider context is unacceptable to Israel now.
To be fair that's not a new phenomenon. For decades the only acceptable narrative has been Israel responding to attacks, Israel defending itself from these people who inexplicably arrive into the world fully formed with a pathological hatred of Jews.
Apparently acknowledging there's a wider context is unacceptable to Israel now.
To be fair that's not a new phenomenon. For decades the only acceptable narrative has been Israel responding to attacks, Israel defending itself from these people who inexplicably arrive into the world fully formed with a pathological hatred of Jews.
That latter point fits in with a demonisation of Palestinians I've noticed here as well. I notice Farage has been running around with a (no doubt cherry picked and utterly misleading) statistic about over half of 300 Palestinian refugees in Denmark having a criminal conviction within X years - "including their children".
Isn't implying a particular group is intrinsically criminal or murderous a form of racism?
If there is indeed going to be legal rules against flying Palestinian flags, that'll be 100% before long.
In a way, that train has left the station. There were so many Palestinian flags being waved last weekend that even Braverman couldn't arrest everybody involved.
That latter point fits in with a demonisation of Palestinians I've noticed here as well. I notice Farage has been running around with a (no doubt cherry picked and utterly misleading) statistic about over half of 300 Palestinian refugees in Denmark having a criminal conviction within X years - "including their children".
I have no time for Farage.
I am going to say that people coming out of a war zone where they've had to live with restrictions and a burning sense of injustice for years might well have some problems settling in and adapting to a completely different culture, and that once they're free to express how they feel, that expression might take some less socially acceptable forms. You're dealing with traumatized people who have suffered losses. They aren't all immediately going to put all that behind them, settle down and instantly become cheerful, happy citizens. The young ones particularly will be struggling with questions of identity and what culture they're supposed to fit into now, and teenagers and youths can be problematic in any culture anywhere. Most will do their best to adapt but there will always be some who go a bit off the rails.
But I don't think insight is Farage's strong point and I doubt if the figures are anything like as high as he claims they are. I would also want a comparison with your average Danish youth crime figures.
Banning the UN emissaries is not really the best way to go.
Israel basically going full Millwall at this point.
Could you explain this please? AIUI, Millwall is a UK soccer team/club, but that's about as far as it goes.
Their football chant goes "No one likes us, we don't care" based on a reputation for football hooliganism back in the day. No idea whether that's still a thing but there you are.
Banning the UN emissaries is not really the best way to go.
Israel basically going full Millwall at this point.
Could you explain this please? AIUI, Millwall is a UK soccer team/club, but that's about as far as it goes.
Their football chant goes "No one likes us, we don't care" based on a reputation for football hooliganism back in the day. No idea whether that's still a thing but there you are.
The US has now bombed sites in Syria, a missile has struck a medical facility in Egypt, and Iran is warning that it's ready to retaliate if necessary. The UN is trying to pass resolutions for ceasefires which get vetoed - and what use are they anyway when the main players ignore them? Meanwhile aid is barely getting through to the Gazans, who are now in a desperate state with nowhere to go that can be considered safe, and thanks to a blockade, can't escape by sea either. Protests are taking place across the world. How is this conflict not going to spread beyond its borders? It already has.
One thing I hate is seeing powers using major crises elsewhere to boost their own election prospects or popularity ratings. Johnson did this by visiting Ukraine when things got particularly difficult at home (he became so popular there they even renamed a street in Kyiv after him) and I'm now wondering if this is partly why Biden is taking the stance he is.
I think it's more Biden's age and political background. For decades the US line on Israel-Palestine has been simple: back Israel in everything. Veto anything requiring Israel to obey international law, blame Palestinians for any violence, blame Palestinians for any failed negotiations, pressure other countries to abandon the Palestinians (even to the point of backing a coup in Egypt to install a pro-Israel regime) etc etc. It's only in the last few years that younger Democrats on the left of the party have started to openly challenge this, but Biden belongs to an older generation and reverts to unquestioning support for Israel.
I was watching a foreign policy commentator yesterday describe how this conflict is impossible to win. Basically he said that support of surrounding countries for Palestine only really exists symbolically (because they all got comprehensively beaten in the Yom Kippur war) and because continual low intensity conflict suits their purposes - which are economic distraction of Israel.
Mix into this the stubbornness of Palestinians and the (likely inaccurate) continual belief of the Israelis that they could possibly 'win' with overwhelming military force.
Then sprinkle on the goading by Palestinian militants to get an overwhelming military response - because somehow they seem to believe that there will eventually be something that Israel does that will force another power (such as Iran) to act.
And then mix in the reality that Iran knows it can't act without complete destruction.
And what you get are increasingly more and more dangerous positions taken by the Israeli government and Hamas (and/or other militant groups) which simply keep feeding off each other.
I think it's more Biden's age and political background. For decades the US line on Israel-Palestine has been simple: back Israel in everything. Veto anything requiring Israel to obey international law, blame Palestinians for any violence, blame Palestinians for any failed negotiations, pressure other countries to abandon the Palestinians (even to the point of backing a coup in Egypt to install a pro-Israel regime) etc etc. It's only in the last few years that younger Democrats on the left of the party have started to openly challenge this, but Biden belongs to an older generation and reverts to unquestioning support for Israel.
Biden even said in a speech last week what many of us have been thinking - that we have to learn from the mistakes the US made in responding to Sept. 11. And yet our actual military aid to Israel doesn't seem to have changed at all. He's now talking more about giving humanitarian aid and asking Israel not to target civilians, but as far as I know it's only talk.
I wonder if US planes could do any kind of airdrop of food and water into Gaza without being shot down? The Israeli military probably wouldn't shoot at us... but is there any air base we could take off from without entering the airspace of someone who would?
Comments
I think it's more that they have some relationships with Iran via Hezbollah, and Hamas can't be picky about where their help comes.
From a purely financial point of view Qatar probably provides more actual support.
Since the fall of the Shah (which the US set up when it overthrew the legitimately elected government back in the mid 50s) the present regime has long said it wanted to destroy Israel and the United States. It will use any means necessary to accomplish that.
Just a reminder, while Israeli civilian deaths in the lates fighting has been around 1400, civilian deaths in Gaza has gone beyond 4200--and still counting.
While it has been established that the destruction of the Hospital was by misfired rocket from Gaza, the recent bombing of the Orthodox church in Gaza was at the hands of the Israeli Air Force:
I am pleased aid trucks are now getting through the gate in Israel, but the people actually need more than 100 trucks a day giving aid to the civilians trapped at the southern border.
I have seen and read many things in the last few days that make me so sad. I don't watch graphic stuff but I think the thing that affected me most was the doctor in a Gazan hospital trying to comfort a small boy who had lost his entire family.
And that's it for me. There are claims and counter-claims. There are people waving flags and saying the most disgusting things.
And here is a small boy who hasn't slept for weeks and has woken up today with no family. And there is a human being who can't find their family member, doesn't know if they are alive or dead.
It's beyond tragic.
But they will fund Sunni paramilitaries.
The Christian Phalangists certainly conducted human rights violations in the Lebanon civil war. They were funded and were proxies of Israel.
Sickening.
There is a TikTok link here.
How the 4311 do you think I was saying this was a competition? No, my point is that what is happening to the civilians in Gaza is more than even an eye for an eye retribution. It even violates the principles of the first covenant Israel clams to be the basis for its existence.
I believe they are clearly violating the laws of war.
Imagine, if you will, you live in Gaza. Hundreds of bombs are raining down on you every day. You never know when your building will be next. Think of the terror your family is experiencing with the loud explosions, the ground shaking, dust, foul smells. death everywhere. No food, no water, no electricity.
Who will stop the rain?
The Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft told the Commons:
Children in Gaza have begun writing their names on their hands so they can be identified and buried with their families when they are killed.
I have no idea where this information came from, or if it is true...but, if it is, then Jesus also weeps...
I've seen it reported in Palestinian sources and the Mirror had an article on it a few days ago. This started as a result of the number of people being killed and bodies being mangled by high explosives, buried under buildings and becoming difficult to identify or recover as a result.
[It's not unusual for bodies/people to lose limbs or be decapitated by a blast, and this is more likely for children as they are smaller and their skeletal structure isn't fully developed yet. There's sometimes a false perception that air warfare is 'clean' because it's more impersonal]
I have to say I've never heard anything close to that -- quite the opposite really. Certainly in this day and age most people would agree that air warfare is inherently 'dirty.'
At one end of the spectrum, you can put attacking clearly military targets. If you're engaged in some kind of war, and you bomb the other people's army base, or munitions factory or something, everyone agrees that that's a legitimate target, in so much as any kind of war has legitimacy.
Civilian casualties inflicted whilst attempting to target military targets come next on the list, I think. These often tend to get viewed as "acceptable collateral damage".
Then there's deliberate attacking of civilian targets. You could probably include the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and probably Dresden in here.
And at the other end of the spectrum, there are deliberate, personal killings of children.
Bombing a warehouse and incidentally killing ten children playing in the alley next door feels a lot less evil than walking up to five babies and shooting them at point-blank range.
That's acknowledged intellectually and more directly by some people in spaces like this, but the language normally used in the wider world belies this.
Even apart from the use of terms like "collateral damage" or the curiously passive voiced descriptions such as the Sky tweet that referred to the Israeli's 'killed' vs the Palestinians who have 'died' in Gaza from 'strikes' (violence by police is frequently described in the same register or similarly from the Guardian just a week prior to Hamas attack "Gaza Strip protesters received bullet wounds to ankles" - I suppose they queued up to have bullet wounds handed out?).
Some will make the difference between directness of intent but that sits uneasily alongside the rate at which strikes were launched - 6000 in the space of a week vs over 7000 for most active year in the whole of Afghanistan - at which point dynamic targeting has broken down and either the same targets are being hit repeatedly, or there's generalised targeting of infrastructure going on. This is taking refuge in stochastic processes. If a school/church is hit every 20 strikes, what exactly will happen with 6000 are launched?
If you're bombing or pulling the trigger, I guess, maybe, but they're dead either way, and gaping holes are torn in their families. I betcha the parents of the ten dead kids in the alley are going to think the bombing is evil and won't rationalize, "At least they weren't shot at point-blank range."
I get that war has rules, but at some level I think the rules are wrong. The notion that it's okay to kill certain people because they're combatants or adjacent to combatants and not others because they're non-combatants makes zero sense to me. If we think it's not right to put more value on some lives than others, I think we necessarily have to also think it's just as wrong to kill soldiers as it is to kill civilians.
Yeah, at that point you are litigating what height the grenade has to be dropped from before intent is 'indirect'.
I'm really torn about this, because "killing people is wrong" is a very attractive statement to me. Yet I can't help thinking that, had an Israeli sniper happened to have in their sights one of the Hamas members heading to a kibbutz on 7th October, armed to the teeth, I don't think I could look them in the eye and tell them they'd be wrong to pull the trigger. Is it ok to kill someone who is an imminent threat if you have no other way of stopping them? How imminent does the threat have to be? Can the whole IDF (and reserves?) be considered a threat to Palestinians, given the last 50 years of history?
I used to be stridently pacifist. I'm still anti-war, but I'm much less willing to judge the actions of others in a much less comfortable situation than mine.
Christmas: 1924
by Thomas Hardy
" Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
(BTW, I don't think Hardy was having a pop at just the RC Church, by the use of priests and mass, but was generally fed-up with organised religion per se).
Always the challenge to pacifism seems to be something along the lines of what you've asked, @Arethosemyfeet, and it's usually not an unreasonable question in whatever circumstances it's posed, but the thing is that it accepts those circumstances -- it's always "would you kill the person about to kill another person?" or "didn't we have to fight Nazi Germany?" or the like, with the line always drawn at that crisis point, and there's not enough questioning of how we contributed to the circumstances that brought Hamas to killing civilians or that brought Hitler to power in Germany -- how that crisis point arrived. We don't have to judge others. We have to judge ourselves.
"Would you kill the person about to kill another person?" is not the right question. The right questions are: why did we allow things to get to the point where one or both parties finds that violence is the only way forward? Will we advocate for a moral foreign policy that puts a priority on peace, that looks for peace-seeking people and encourages them, funds them, helps raise them to power? Would I tell the IDF soldier not to pull the trigger with the Hamas militant in their sights? Probably not. But I'm literally not in a position to judge the IDF soldier. I'm also literally not in a position to judge the Hamas militant. But I am in a position to judge the American administrations that helped Netanyahu and the Israeli government do the wrong thing again and again and again. Ezra Klein had two American Jewish leftist thinkers on his Oct 24 podcast (transcript here). Peter Beinart made the point that an important difference between the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the Palestinians' struggle is that the ANC was able to largely maintain a moral code of not targeting civilians because their moral strategy was working -- there was an anti-apartheid movement around the world in the 80s -- but that the US has not supported people speaking for ethical Palestinian resistance. My words: we've been happy to help pay for the Iron Dome, but haven't done a damn thing for the people driven to shooting off the rockets that make it necessary.
The thing that struck me even more was something Spencer Ackerman said: "What's possible is very often different from what's necessary, and only when people of conscience hold true to what's necessary can we start to expand the limits of what's possible until finally a way pointing out of this horrific reality can come to pass." Pacifism seems so impossible sometimes, but it's necessary to advocate for non-violence, for ethical struggle, for peace.
Can we judge those who attack civilians - or who sit back and don't do enough to stop it? Yes. Yes we can.
It does. But in six months or six years or however long this conflict lasts, a whole lot of people will be dead, a whole lot of money will have been spent, and a whole lot of land will be despoiled, and the problem of how the various people in the Middle East are going to get along will still be there. Israeli leaders say they're going to destroy Hamas, as if that's going to solve anything, as if terrorizing hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza weren't going to produce the next Hamas. The cycle of violence just keeps turning, and nothing's going to change if no one ever tries something else.
I remember this from Ukraine, and I think, Bosnia.
Not only but also - the repercussions amongst expatriate communities. The march in London that I saw at the weekend attacted thousands. If you can see a stream of people walking past with banners for an hour and a half or more and no sign of it ending, it says something about the level of concern and indignation, and that's just in one city in one country.
Yes, but, for some reason, it really gave me a shock this time, IYSWIM.
As regards an *own voice* view of the conflict, I was interested in this reminder that there is a Christian community in both Israel and Gaza:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/25/justin-welby-accused-of-relegating-plight-of-palestinian-christians
I make no comment about what ++Welby says (whatever he says will be anathema to someone ), but at least we can hear what Christians on the ground are thinking...
To be fair that's not a new phenomenon. For decades the only acceptable narrative has been Israel responding to attacks, Israel defending itself from these people who inexplicably arrive into the world fully formed with a pathological hatred of Jews.
That latter point fits in with a demonisation of Palestinians I've noticed here as well. I notice Farage has been running around with a (no doubt cherry picked and utterly misleading) statistic about over half of 300 Palestinian refugees in Denmark having a criminal conviction within X years - "including their children".
Isn't implying a particular group is intrinsically criminal or murderous a form of racism?
No surprise, coming from Farage.
In a way, that train has left the station. There were so many Palestinian flags being waved last weekend that even Braverman couldn't arrest everybody involved.
Israel basically going full Millwall at this point.
I have no time for Farage.
I am going to say that people coming out of a war zone where they've had to live with restrictions and a burning sense of injustice for years might well have some problems settling in and adapting to a completely different culture, and that once they're free to express how they feel, that expression might take some less socially acceptable forms. You're dealing with traumatized people who have suffered losses. They aren't all immediately going to put all that behind them, settle down and instantly become cheerful, happy citizens. The young ones particularly will be struggling with questions of identity and what culture they're supposed to fit into now, and teenagers and youths can be problematic in any culture anywhere. Most will do their best to adapt but there will always be some who go a bit off the rails.
But I don't think insight is Farage's strong point and I doubt if the figures are anything like as high as he claims they are. I would also want a comparison with your average Danish youth crime figures.
Are you on about everything he says ?
Discussing Nigel Farage in general requires a new thread. He is not an own voice source for the conflict.
Please do not discuss Nigel Farage on this thread.
Thanks!
Louise
Epiphanies Host
Could you explain this please? AIUI, Millwall is a UK soccer team/club, but that's about as far as it goes.
Their football chant goes "No one likes us, we don't care" based on a reputation for football hooliganism back in the day. No idea whether that's still a thing but there you are.
Yep, this. Apologies for not explaining.
Mix into this the stubbornness of Palestinians and the (likely inaccurate) continual belief of the Israelis that they could possibly 'win' with overwhelming military force.
Then sprinkle on the goading by Palestinian militants to get an overwhelming military response - because somehow they seem to believe that there will eventually be something that Israel does that will force another power (such as Iran) to act.
And then mix in the reality that Iran knows it can't act without complete destruction.
And what you get are increasingly more and more dangerous positions taken by the Israeli government and Hamas (and/or other militant groups) which simply keep feeding off each other.
Something has to change or this will never end.
Biden even said in a speech last week what many of us have been thinking - that we have to learn from the mistakes the US made in responding to Sept. 11. And yet our actual military aid to Israel doesn't seem to have changed at all. He's now talking more about giving humanitarian aid and asking Israel not to target civilians, but as far as I know it's only talk.
I wonder if US planes could do any kind of airdrop of food and water into Gaza without being shot down? The Israeli military probably wouldn't shoot at us... but is there any air base we could take off from without entering the airspace of someone who would?