Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...

[BruceVC]

34 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

The immediate and complete disarmament of Israel would be a good start.

 I know you want to but please dont quit your job to become a ME negotiator 

I hate to destroy  people's dreams but think of it like those people who cant sing and there friends and family never tell them they cant sing.....sometimes the truth is better 

[melkathi]

 

We here a lot that the Hamas attack on the 7th of October started this, and saying otherwise is called antisemitism.

 

Food for thought:

The 7th of October is not a random date.

7. October 1985 was the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. 

 

 

Ignore me if this has been brought up.

[Gfted1]

3 hours ago, BruceVC said:

 I know you want to but please dont quit your job to become a ME negotiator 

Of course that would never happen, but the point was, theres never really "negotiation" when one side has the other in a choke hold. Then that side has no choice but to accept whatever scraps are offered. "A good compromise is when both parties are disappointed".

[Gorgon]

I can't help but notice that the only western world leader of note to call for a humanitatian ceasefire and any inclination to critique Israel is Macron, who is a lame duck on his last term. I think we need more lame ducks on their last term.

[BruceVC]

22 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Of course that would never happen, but the point was, theres never really "negotiation" when one side has the other in a choke hold. Then that side has no choice but to accept whatever scraps are offered. "A good compromise is when both parties are disappointed".

Well  its more nuanced  than believing a peace deal  is unlikely because  Israel has the Palestinians at  a resource advantage,  Israel  does have the support of  the  US  and  it has an obvious advantage of being an established  country with a well  trained military

Those arent reasons  there can't be peace,  and these include the following

• the  US believes in a 2 state solution and is  has for decades tried  to broker  peace 
• there have been times where  peace was   nearly achieved like with the Oslo Accords, take  5 minutes  to read  this link to see how  close they came and how it fell  apart

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oslo-Accords

The main problem is leadership.  Netanyahu has demonstrated he has been terrible for sustainable  peace and once hes gone,  which is almost a given once this current war is over, we will hopefully see  a  new PM who is serious about negotiations 

Also there are lots of Israelis who want peace  and  so do large parts of the Jewish diaspora, like the US Jewish community,  who mostly also believe in a 2 state  solution

But then on the Palestinian side we need one official and recognized authority. And groups like Hamas  wont be part  of that and then the Palestinians need  to recognize Israel has a right  to exist and be prepared to compromise 

Its  not insurmountable,  if  SA could do it after  45 years of Apartheid then I   do believe  the Palestinians and Israelis can do it?

 

 

[BruceVC]

On 11/24/2023 at 6:36 PM, melkathi said:

 

We here a lot that the Hamas attack on the 7th of October started this, and saying otherwise is called antisemitism.

 

Food for thought:

The 7th of October is not a random date.

7. October 1985 was the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. 

 

 

Ignore me if this has been brought up.

I didnt realize that, interesting. But the military  offensive  against Gaza was a direct consequence  of 7 October,  Im  not sure who could argue thats not true? But you can argue 7 October was because of the Israeli occupation and the reality of the hopelessness  of Palestinians but that doesnt mean 7 October is not the direct reason of the Israeli  offensive on Gaza. Two things can be true  at  the  same time  

 

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by BruceVC

[Malcador]

https://www.dw.com/en/israel-hamas-war-live-november-27/live-67559384

Truce extended 2 more days, that's good if so.  Maybe we'll get a ceasefire just due to humanitarian pause creep.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Malcador

[melkathi]

Doubt it, since the humanitarian pauses haven't stopped Israel from shooting people. They paused the bombings, they haven't paused ground operations.

They even shot at UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon.

[uuuhhii]

On 11/25/2023 at 10:28 PM, Gorgon said:

I can't help but notice that the only western world leader of note to call for a humanitatian ceasefire and any inclination to critique Israel is Macron, who is a lame duck on his last term. I think we need more lame ducks on their last term.

didn't pope also do that

one could argue if pope count as world leader now

[Zoraptor]

I'm as religious as a slab of concrete but the Pope is definitely a world leader. It's more whether he'd count as 'western'. On the narrow level, Francis is from South America, so not really western; on the broader level I doubt the secular west regards the RCC as being western (too 'backwards') and I doubt the church regards itself as western either since that's limited and they think they're universal. Indeed I'd suspect the church would actively reject the description.

Lame duck doesn't mean much. Can't get any lamer or duckier than Rishi Sunak yet he's cheerleading children getting blown up and hospitals destroyed as much as Biden so long as it's Israel doing it (and he thinks he can leverage it against Labour). Macron probably thinks he'll be able to sell a few more Rafales to the arabs (and tamp down some unrest in the banlieues) rather than having any genuine moral qualms about the situation. The only western nation that seems to have genuine moral qualms is Ireland due to its history. Might have been NZ too if our outgoing PM had his way, but our incoming PM is a loony tunes death cult evangelical* so no chance of it now.

*who of course owns 7 houses and coincidentally has landlord rights as #1 priority. Funny how they always forget about rich men, camels and eyes of needles...

Edited November 28, 2023 by Zoraptor

[xzar_monty]

There is no question that the Pope is a world leader.

As for these two conflicts now, by the way: I wonder if we can apply N. N. Taleb's mathematical logic of "that which has already lasted longer will probably continue to do so in the future, too" to answer the question of which problem[*] can be solved quicker: the difficulties in the Middle East or Russia's general duplicity. Using that logic, the problems in Middle East will resolve earlier, because they are not that old at all.

 

[*] The use of this word obviously already implies a point of view.

[Gorgon]

Did you see this though. Probably his French genes shining through, but I appreciate the zero ****s given. 

 

[Zoraptor]

That's from 3 years ago and he admitted to thinking about Chirac doing something similar beforehand. It's also, most significantly, not really a 'moral qualm' situation: it's a situation of France's (and his own) 'honour' which he knows will play well domestically.

It's better than some, certainly, since a lot of people let Netanyahu humiliate them then thank him for the honour.

[Gorgon]

It looks like Ursula von der Leyen has made her first major miscalculation in going to Israel and pretending to speak for the whole of Europe. It didn't go over well. Europe is divided on the question of Palestine. The political elite are generally pro Israel because that's where national interests like, the populations much less so. 

Our Danish PM blankly refused the thought of going to a memorial service for civilian Palestinian victims of the bombing campaign stating that there was "no comparison" to the wound inflicted on Israel. 
 

[Gorgon]

ahh so he was playing to the crowd. Political theater. 

[Zoraptor]

The mention of von der Leyen reminds me that Borrell- whose job it actually is to speak for the EU on such matters- deserves a mention for being far more even handed than most. Not really outright condemnation of Israel's appalling approach to civilian casualties* but certainly a recognition of how it plays to people outside the western bubble (and makes his job a lot harder as a consequence). Guterres too, though his position at least officially isn't 'western' even if he is Portugese.

*if Israel were bombing Ukraine in proportion to Palestine they'd have killed ~1.8 million (! no typo) women and children over 20 months, to put it in perspective. Though that relies on Ukraine's nominal last (2001) census' ~44 million population and it may be as low as half that now. Or to compare it with the allies' strategic bombing campaign in WW2 civilians (and that's excluding any male civilians, plus of course deaths are only those reported at hospitals and not anyone buried under rubble either, hence Israel targeting them as a matter of policy. Can't count deaths if there's nowhere to count them {taps head}) are dying at between 6-12x the rate from the precise and proportionate strikes from the most moral army in the world as opposed to, well, indiscriminate area bombing deliberately targeting civilians with incendiaries and the like in thousand bomber raids.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Zoraptor

[HoonDing]

Macaroni likes to act tough whenever his wife allows him from under her skirt.

Anyway, one of the released "hostages" was a girl and her dog, both in prim and proper condition after a couple of weeks in a tunnel somewhere. I think we're all being had.

Edited November 29, 2023 by HoonDing

[Malcador]

Hamas obviously has Terror Hiltons in their Terror Tunnels.

[Malcador]

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/biden-netanyahu-gaza-israel-military-palestinian-civilians

I am sure Bibi will listen to Biden.

[pmp10]

Putin just ordered another army expansion.
He didn't even bother to wait until Russian elections were done with.

A bad sign for any near-term freezing of this war. 

[Sarex]

Wrong war.

[Malcador]

Fighting back on. Israel now telling people to go further towards Egypt. 

 

Good thing they are on Blue Team.

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Malcador

[Zoraptor]

Decomposing babies found at al Al-Nasr Children's Hospital.

Honestly at this point you have to wonder if the Rules Based Order's accusations function solely as projection. Though I guess, technically, Israel didn't turf the babies out of incubators; just attacked the hospital and its staff, forced them out and made it impossible for anyone to evacuate the babies and for their incubators to run.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Zoraptor

[Malcador]

15 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Though I guess, technically, Israel didn't turf the babies out of incubators

Exactly, will be chalked up as Hamas' fault and then people will say "war is hell" or something. 

[Malcador]