Israel-Gaza war

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This does not mean that Israel is without fault in other areas. Their actions with regards to West Bank settlements are particularly egregious.

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"Large focus in U.S. coverage on Netanyahu's position, which has been the same for decades. But this is the bigger story post-10/7: "One in four Israeli adults currently support the existence of an independent Palestinian state, while most (65%) oppose it.""

"This is almost a complete reversal of where they stood on the issue a decade ago, when twice as many Israeli adults supported an independent Palestinian state (61%) as opposed one (30%)."

With similar views on the Palestinian side. Unless something major changes, in the long-term this ends one of three ways for the Palestinians - their subjugation, their expulsion or their destruction as a people.

Let me be clear, that is not a good thing to happen.

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Hamas have released propaganda denying atrocities on October 7:

https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-783233

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If your country is illegally occupied, why should one not resist and fight back?

I mean "the occupied" is being framed as the terrorist. This is similar to the nazis occupying foreign countries as well.

Indeed, your country's "francs-tireurs" in both World Wars is the reason why insurgents are eligible for POW status in certain circumstances.

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The French Resistance generally engaged in acts of sabotage and shooting of collaborators. They refrained from killing German soldiers for much of their existence because it was made clear very quickly that it would lead to reprisals against the civilian population.

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If Palestinians deserve to be bombed and starved to death for the crimes of Hamas then what should happen to Americans for the crimes of Bush or Israelis for the crimes of Netanyahu?

It seems Hamas are already applying that logic - and it's not working out for them because Israel can kill far more effectively than they can.

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Looks like the Nazi's stole it off the Arabs.

They stole lots of things from lots of people - their "kitsch" was almost entirely borrowed.

One of the Underground stations in Havering, Upminster Bridge, has a Buddhist svastika on the ticket hall floor, that now has a sign explaining why it's there and making it clear it's nothing to do with the Nazis.

Were it not for the fact Havering Council have it as a listed building, they'd have probably removed it years ago.

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Destroying Hamas, unless they surrender, is going to involve destroying Gaza.

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You know that scene in Saving Private Ryan where the Germans run out of the bunker, try to surrender, and the American GIs say "what?  I don't speak German" and gun them down while laughing?  Imagine if they were videotaping that for their TikTok to try and get likes from their buddies.

Plenty of images of the Holocaust were taken by German soldiers on their own initiative with their own cameras.

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Man GMac, that's certainly one helluva way to brush aside the fact the IDF had blown up a masjid

"Oh, soldiers throughout history have done bad sh!t, therefore we shouldn't care about another instance of it happening again"

The IDF blowing up a mosque (or masjid) as a standalone isn't automatically a bad thing.  In an ordinary war, a building like a mosque would be considered off-limits.  This isn't an ordinary war, because Hamas has decided that nothing is off-limits.

Was the mosque being used as a base by Hamas fighters?  A weapons cache?  The entrance to a tunnel complex?  If so, whether it's swarming with fighters or infested with booby traps, I'd rather it just get obliterated from afar than have IDF soldiers put their lives at risk raiding it.  You can say it's worth it to spill IDF blood to try and protect some plaster, bricks and alabaster that have sociocultural significance to the civilians of the country Israel's at war at.  But certainly you can understand why the IDF wouldn't agree.

Religious buildings tend to make very good observation posts due to their thick walls (in some cases) and often being the tallest building in a community. They're also pretty useful for a last stand.

If they're being used for a military purpose, they lose their protected status.

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If anything, Hamas' figures are probably an underestimate as they're not in control of the vast majority of Gaza anymore.

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Why can’t Israel invade/occupy through the ground? Why must they keep bombing?

No commander is going to risk his or her troops when it's quicker to bomb the building in question.

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Netanyahu is not sending a delegation to the Cairo talks today.

Not that im a Netanyahu fan, but he's clearly playing hardball. The sticking point right now is the amount of prisoners Hamas is demanding be released. If there's a breakthrough on that, then Israel will send the delegation back.

Not just the numbers, the identities. Hamas wants to select the prisoners I believe. There's a bunch of stonethrowers in Israeli jails, but also a good number of people serving life sentences for murder.

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The number of Jews who were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the 1947-1949 fighting was much smaller than the number of Arabs displaced from inside the Green Line. Arabs constituted a much larger share of the population inside the Green Line and inside the proposed 1947 Jewish partition than Jews constituted outside the Green Line or in the proposed 1947 Arab partition. This is simple math.

The number of Jews who left other MENA countries after 1947 exceeds the numbers displaced in the Nakba. They may not have been expelled, but the environment became distinctly hostile towards them.

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Has to be true (plausibly by orders of magnitude) given American violent crime rates, right? It's not like the insurgency is really very dangerous for ordinary Israelis.

It wasn't until October 7. Based on the comparative populations, that was basically 11 or 12 9/11-sized attacks. It is probably the second biggest terrorist attack in history after 9/11.

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The main risk to civilians at the moment, as it has been in most wars throughout history, is disease and starvation.

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Should we have every state in the world have their opinion of the Israel-Gaza conflict be based on public polling? Should the state of Jordan have their foreign relations with Israel be dictated by public polling of the opinion of Jordanians?

No, although acting against the wishes of your people in foreign affairs is frequently the cause of a government's downfall.

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https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/02/20/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-the-uk-political-divide/

British political opinion on this.

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There appears to have been actual progress towards a ceasefire deal in Paris.

From the multiple sources I've read, Hamas has softened some of there demands. Most importantly: the amount of prisoners they want released and a full IDF withdrawal.

Let's hope for a peaceful Ramadan and beyond that, a peaceful Passover in April.

The casualties from an assault on Rafah would be pretty big on both sides, I'd imagine and diplomatic pressure from the West is possibly having an influence too.

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about 40k migrated before the war, from the 1880s onwards.

It was very hard for German Jews to leave Germany - they had to go through a lot of bureaucracy and pay massive exit taxes to leave, even if they could get someone to issue a visa... because they'd given up most of their wealth, they needed a sponsor.

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I...don't think Israel is defying UN Resolution 242 at all? It was, in fact, deliberately phrased in a way advocated for by Israeli government lobbyists in order to justify their presence? Certainly laws do sometimes get read in ways their writers never intended (in the US for instance the writers of the Fourteenth Amendment were quite clear that they did not intend to set a one-man-one-vote standard like the Supreme Court adopted in Reynolds in 1964, but the matter was read that way anyway), but I think there's always an element of cynicism about this.

In any event, 242 is non-binding as it was agreed under Chapter VI of the Charter, not Chapter VII.

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When Israel invades Rafah, Biden will once again be the fall guy, just like he was for inflation.

If that happens. It may not at this rate. Israel still hasn't fully secured the rest of Gaza.

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Biden announces US airdrops of humanitarian assistance into Gaza

The United States will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said the US would be “pulling out every stop” to get additional aid into Gaza, which has been under heavy bombardment by Israel since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.

Biden said aid was not flowing into Gaza quickly enough, and said he was working to broker an immediate ceasefire deal that would allow additional aid in.

The airdrops will provide some relief to those on the ground. However, their use is not a sustainable solution for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as the method can only bring in a fraction of the amount of aid that could be transported into the enclave by trucks.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/01/politics/biden-airdrops-assistance-gaza/index.html

I'd imagine the Israelis would want to inspect. They seem to be somewhat arbitrary on what they're allowing in:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/01/middleeast/gaza-aid-israel-restrictions-investigation-intl-cmd/index.html

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It's entirely possible that someone in the IDF opened fire out of fear for their own lives from the crowd and the others promptly followed.

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Fergal Keane: Aid convoy tragedy shows fear of starvation haunts Gaza