Israel-Gaza war

[CumbrianLefty]

Well, all Netanyahu's recent dicking around probably hasn't helped here has it?

[CumbrianLefty]

I was also thinking of his getting so chummy with Russia and similar stuff.

[CumbrianLefty]

Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the PMF, Russia, Belarus, Chechnya, and China I think will use human wave attack to humiliate the IDF and will be in control of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in a few days after utilizing those tactics.

Your faith that "human wave attacks" can achieve anything save wanton mass slaughter, is touching.

[CumbrianLefty]

What the hell was Hamas hoping to gain from this?

Brownie points from online "holy warriors" worldwide?

[CumbrianLefty]

Great job on the thread everyone! Congratulations due all around.

I can confidently say that after keeping up with this all day, that I hardly know more from this thread than I did at 10:00am. On the plus side I now know what an East German apartment looked like.

As predicted, we reach page 25 on same day.
I've never seen a thread in IGD move this quickly.

Russia Ukraine?

The only singular day I ever recall things moving remotely this quickly was the Prigozhin "mutiny" and even then I don't think it moved this fast. The 20,000+ posts in the RU-UA war megathread built up over many months and practically two years, didn't they?

Russia-Ukraine pushed 35 pages on Feb 24, 2022.

But the thread was started a few months before the actual war began.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well, if Israel is going to have a position (from 2016) that "We Don’t Want ISIS Defeated in Syria" which I totally understand from a geopolitical perspective then they should not complain when now others might say "We do not want Hamas defeated in Gaza"

And on this occasion, you make a not unreasonable point. In several respects, these horrible events are the "cleverness" of certain prominent people in Israel coming back to bite them.

Which does not alter the need for Hamas to be crushed, just in case anyone misunderstands.

[CumbrianLefty]

And as for that (predictable as clockwork) Jezza tweet - yes it is crassly simplistic and totally misreads how most people in the UK (including Labour supporters) currently see this.

But actually, obviously anti-Semitic? Not convinced tbh - and to the extent Corbyn *is* AS, it is rather more a process of omission than commission. He doesn't actually hate Jews in the overt way that a completely rancid bigot like Chris Williamson does. But he doesn't really care about them either.

[CumbrianLefty]

I don't think there's actually been a political victory for the Palestinians of any kind since...uh...I guess the specifics of Barak's offer at Camp David in 2001? And there hasn't been a military victory in longer; if you don't count the other Arab states -- which you really shouldn't given how anti-Palestinian they were and are -- I think plausibly not since before the establishment of the State of Israel. I'm drawing a post-1930s blank.

Well there is certainly an argument that the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was basically a failure - even if they had some success in selling it otherwise.

[CumbrianLefty]

For all that you've called me a Nazi or whatever, I'd like to point out that the father of an Israeli hostage has shown more humanity than all the blue and half of the red avatars on this forum.
https://twitter.com/tamars/status/1710964645425467880?t=02idx95FiKJyOnDn-J2RZg&a...

Actually, a lot of the worst stuff has come from red avatars.

Whereas quite a few of the blues have been (surprisingly?) reasonable.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, Hamas are animals. Amalekites, even. The videos they themselves released all weekend show this quite clearly.

Dehumanising rhetoric is how we beat dehumanising rhetoric, well done.

[CumbrianLefty]

In Israel there is talk about RZ and Otzma having to leave the government for the sake of national unity, but I would actually argue it's the Haredim who need to go now. You don't deserve to decide on the (way of) deployment of the army if you fight vehemently to have everyone in the country serve in it except for your own community.

Yeah, I've been wondering if this will be the moment that would finally force the Haredim to do their fair share to defend and support the country that protects their way of life. I agree with them that Torah study should be part of the fabric of a Jewish state, but certainly not at the expense of literally everything else. Their kollelim don't defend themselves.

Military needs are much higher than they were 3 days ago, and Israel can't afford to have 20% of its Jewish population not contributing.

So you want Israel to be even more of a theocracy than it already is.

Do you know what the term "theocracy" means? Because Israel is currently light years away from being one.

But, well, this is a board where everything is also a "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" these days...

I totally agree Israel is not a theocracy *now*, but that's not the point really.

Much more it is the direction of travel, which does worry many of us.

[CumbrianLefty]

A restrained American response to 9/11 would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. The brave few who stood against the hysterical bloodlust, like Susan Sontag, were the ones vindicated.

Given what happened, the US response arguably *was* fairly restrained. Don't know if you were around then, but neocons were ranting in the immediate aftermath about basically going to war with everybody.

The madness that was attacking Iraq only came later.

[CumbrianLefty]

The settlers must be stopped if Israel doesn't want to find itself fighting a three front war. It is what they seek and it would be catastrophic.]

I don't think they care. Biden has said we will stand with Israel "no matter what" and nothing they do will change that.. Rhetoric like that is is emboldening them to turn this into a three front war.

Expect a lot more of this from the settlers.

Rhetoric is rhetoric, designed for public consumption. I think the chances that the US are telling Israel something at least slightly different in private, must be non-negligible.

[CumbrianLefty]

https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1712944821701111875

Genuine question: obviously Hamas have always been a genocidal totalitarian terror cult, but were they always this bad or did the events of last weekend surprise even by their standards?

Basically no, that's why last weekend was so shocking.

A simplification as these things always are - but one analogy I have seen is that they roughly started out as Sinn Fein in the pre-NI ceasefire days, but have now become close to ISIS.

[CumbrianLefty]

You might consider the historical and cultural reasons why a Hindu wouldn’t want Hindu women to marry Muslim men.

Enlighten us.

Muslim men are permitted to marry non-Muslim women, while Muslim women are forbidden to marry non-Muslim men, because (among other reasons) it’s assumed that the children of an interfaith marriage will inherit the religion of their father. So, if you’re a native population trying to maintain its identity in the face of centuries of colonization by an alien power, you might want to minimize such marriages.

How is this line of thinking any different from the people who think the same about interracial marriage "diluting" the white race?

Race and religion isn’t the same thing

The very existence of "the Jewish people" shows that it isn't quite as simple as that.

[CumbrianLefty]

I hate how the worst people are on the right side of the argument in this conflict.

The fact this post can be interpreted several ways tells you all you need to know, really.

[CumbrianLefty]

It certainly did not help Israel's narrative when they ordered the hospitals to evacuate and threatened to bomb them in the past few days.

Yeah, Israel really showing that they weren't the villain at this particular hospital on this particular day.

This is the key thing—an evidence-based approach to this specific enormity exonerating the IDF does not mean that the broader Israeli approach is Okay, Actually.

Absolutely.

And that means Israel's "broader approach" both currently and in the longer term.

But HAVING SAID THAT, there is no doubt a number of supposedly reputable media outlets really did get it wrong last night. Was it as simple as the need for outrage clicks over actual accuracy? Ironic if it turns out to be that impulse - rather than climate change, say - that brings our civilisation to epochal disaster.

(to be clear, however bad it gets the present conflict is unlikely to do that - but in the future.....)

[CumbrianLefty]

The wording of Biden's "other team" comment strikes me as unpleasantly flippant, by the way.

I don't disagree, but can also sort of see why he did it.

[CumbrianLefty]

Under normal international law the area would belong to Israel anyway. Conquering Gaza is no more (...also no less, I guess) illegal than establishing settlements in the West Bank.

Well, the latter is also widely regarded as illegal.

[CumbrianLefty]

People need to be fired at the BBC and Reuters. Synagogues and embassies across the Middle East are being attacked because of their fake reporting.

Well tbf for pretty much all journalistic agencies it is really hard to get the kind of real time reporting, boots on the ground, etc... from Gaza.

Well yes obviously, which arguably makes caution more than less important.

The fact is that several reputable media outlets (BBC, Reuters, NYT) ran straightforward headlines of the "ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE FLATTENS HOSPITAL AND KILLS HUNDREDS" variety. Yes they then added the almost invisible qualification of "according to Palestinian sources" but leaving aside who precisely those "sources" are, who is actually going to take notice of such a feeble caveat?

To 99% of those seeing them, the message was simple and unequivocal - Israel did it.

The ensuing consequences were entirely predictable, and showed it up as irresponsible journalism.

[CumbrianLefty]

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/reiterated-indias-principled-position-pm-modi-speaks-to-palestine-president-4497010

""Shared Our Deep Concern...": PM Modi Speaks To Palestinian President"

Modi came out strong for Israel at the beginning of the conflict for mostly domestic reasons.  As time passed, he must have received a lot of pressure from Arab Gulf states.  A key part of the Modi economic strategy does involve India-Gulf states investment and integration to counter PRC.  So after some time, he is pivoting somewhat.  The various pro-Modi Hindi media had been super gun-ho for Israel in the beginning are showing signs of toning it down to align with Modi to now mostly focusing on "watching the chaos in the Middle East makes one see how safe Modi made India in comparison"

As with other countries who were "1000% pro-Israel" at the start of this war.

[CumbrianLefty]

How do you negotiate with this?

You don't.

That doesn't mean you can't negotiate with Palestinians.

[CumbrianLefty]

Tbh if anything I am more bothered about the poster spamming us jaichind in Ukraine thread style.

[CumbrianLefty]

Israeli military analyst: The legitimization window is closing quickly the longer Israel waits (CNN, Youtube)

Reminds me a bit of the July Crisis of 1914. Had Austria-Hungary acted immediately by invading Serbia right after the Sarajevo assassination, they might have gotten away with it without a world war. Russia had already thrown the Serbian cause under the bus once in 1908 when they had recognised Bosnia's annexation into Austria-Hungary. But in 1914 Vienna waited a month before taking action, and by that point Russia had decided to stand with Serbia, and France had decided to stand with Russia.

This is starting to seriously concern me. If they dawdle too long about going in, it'll be a massive clusterf**k, and if they never go in, this whole thing will have essentially been for nothing (and Hamas will inevitably do something like the initial attack again in a few years anyway, and Israel will inevitably respond with collective-punishment-oriented shock and awe again, and and and...).

Altertnatively, after literal Hamas enabler Netanyahu is deposed Israel can go about finally pursuing a political solution - with its neighbours - to all this (one that isn't "expel millions of people" btw)

[CumbrianLefty]

OK then.

Still literally zero evidence that it was caused by "an Israeli airstrike that killed 500 people".

And if not that, then what?