Israel

The superciliousness and ad hominem argument doesn't hide the fact that you simply don't want to discuss the other side of the matter at all because you know you'll have trouble.

 

I know I’d have trouble because of the reasons I gave, end of, whatever big words you Chuck about . So there’s absolutely no point

 

Coward.

 

See what I mean!

 

No. By refusing to even engage with the other side of the matter you're basically just sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala I'm not listening"

 

Israel blockading Gaza for 20 years or more was aggregavating the situation, Hamas's response was beyond the pale, but it was predictable.

 

no argument about that,I just can’t believe why they would do what they did knowing the grief they were going to impart on their own people.

 

I wouldn’t want to let the UK off the hook, but what a lot of people seem to forget is that in 1947 while still under the British mandate a two state agreement was drawn up and voted for at the UN - both the USSR and the USA voted for it, which then the zionist Jewish representatives accepted but which was rejected by the Arab representatives. Britain was left to implement a resolution rejected by one side ( and therefore Britain refused) and so probably in an example of realpolitik in action set the deadlines for the end of their mandate and when that date happened, shuffled off.
The real missed opportunity lies with the Arab league and their hubristic anti-Jewish racism, who assumed they could rollover the Jews and take the whole lot.

 

Sadly, desperate people in desperate situations do desperate things. As I've said before, Hamas is the poison fruit on a crooked tree grown by Israeli oppression and the stealing of Palestinian land.

 

The saddest observation I heard - by someone who knows far more than me - is ‘Hamas is a force made up of orphans.’ Why? Because Israel has been killing Palestinians in their thousands for decades. (Not that it gets reported or remembered)

And Israeli children? In 2002 during the second intifada, a Tel Aviv newspaper published a letter by Israeli children titled: “Dear soldiers, please kill a lot of Arabs”. Dozens of such letters were sent by schoolchildren. Some of those children are now IDF soldiers.

Thanks to the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, a new generation of orphans has been created. And so, the cycle of violence will go on.

 

You can go back again though and say why did Israel do what they did for decades knowing the grief they were going to impart on their own people.

It goes back and forward like that for decades until you reach the foundation of the Israeli state which should never have happened.

 

That's just what it's all about Israel has declared war on all Palestinian people not just Hamas "If it moves in Gazza shoot it" That is genocide in anyone's book, as for Iran, Israel should not have targeted the Iranian embassy. And god only knows what will happen if it spills over into this country with this band of Tory idiots in charge, and its far-right media spouting lie after lie.

 

On a geopolitical level the US is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It knows Netenyahu is a nasty, vile, crook of a man who, along with his supporters inside Israel would extinguish Gaza entirely if he could get away with it. It also has to defend Israel because it's a proxy client state in the middle east and there's too much resting on its survival, least of all given the horrors of the holocaust.

Netenhayu of course knows this, and he's trading on the fact the US has little choice but to keep arming Israel despite it's objections. I've no idea how you unwind this mess on a political level and get a long term peaceful solution. Worrisome given the nuclear options floating about.

 

This is a great, and incredibly sad point.

 

I think in any conflict we all tend to look at ‘men with guns’ on both sides and decide who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.

But the seeds of future conflicts are sown in children who suffer or who absorb the hatred of a previous generation. And so it goes on.

 

Just wait until you hear what Palestinian children are taught in school or what goes on at Hamas summer school (yes it’s real)

 

Yes, of recent times, apart from North America,it's not been a great place to be a Jew. I suppose it's the idea of a Jewish homeland, a place where they are free from persecution. Europe didn't fare well for them. I think there's about 16 million Jews in the world, about half in Israel, a tiny fraction of the World's population. Is there a Christian or Muslim homeland? or for any other religion?

 

A child orphaned at the hands of an oppressor has learned quite a big lesson without going to school.

 

Ditto Israel.

 

The key player at the moment is Netanyahu. Nasty, aggressively anti-Palestinian politician who is pushing military solutions rather than diplomatic and is trying to manipulate western support based on the fact that the west have tied their sails to the Israeli mast. He's also using aggression as a subtle/not so so subtle way of keeping himself in power. The man is a nasty piece of work.