Off Topic Politics Thread

Its looking like Labour's decision to give 16 year olds the vote is going to well and truly kick the in the teeth. When it was either Labour/Tory that were the only realistic options to vote for a "contender" the majority were virtually nailed on Labour votes but now the Greens have entered contention and this generation looking like they are much more ideological either way (right or left) they may just have added more green votes to their left!

 

Assuming quoted correctly, unequivocal imo. I suppose the next question will be the ref / ratio of “part” but 68k is pretty damning. Thanks for sharing.

 

Primarily because a number of their citizens were massacred and a number taken hostage.

Hamas held those hostages, triggered a war and then left their own citizens in harms way.
Those hostages were not returned, because it suited them politically to hold them as they strangely gained support the longer they held them to keep the war going.

 

Hamas weren't gaining support, the Palestinians at the receiving end of a disproportional response did.

 

you might see the distinction, but Hamas dont

 

Interesting point, which reminds me of a visit I made to Israel in 1980. I was working as an Engineer on a P&O refrigerated cargo ship loading citrus fruit to take back to North Europe. We were in Haifa and a few of us blagged a day trip into Jerusalem to visit the sights (Bethlehem, wailing wall, Mount of Olives etc). Anyway, what I`ll never forget is that every taxi I saw in Jerusalem was a Mercedes - this was only 35 years after the end of the war. I was stunned at the time what short memories the Israelis seemed to have. I`m not surprised 45 years on that they are seemingly oblivious that their actions on Gaza may seem like genocide.

 

Anti Trump protests in America have attracted huge numbers but reports of some governors bringing in the civil guard to police the demonstrations. I think the anto Trump movement will grow to the extent that Trump will impliment legislation to make this illegal. Just have a feeling that Trump will clamp down and we won't see these protests in 12 month's time.

Just wonder how quickly we will see a MAGA counter protest.

 

It’s strange how we need concrete blocks and steel bollards around our capital city. Strange how we need armed police officers at Christmas markets. Strange how we need armed police officers in railway stations and airports. Strange how we cannot take certain items on planes. Strange how certain members of society cannot walk our streets without fear of attack. This country needs to wake up and address the one issue blighting British society.

 

The Trumper's cease fire has had a number of breakdowns amid accusations from both sides. Who would have foreseen that? No surprise, pity those caught up in the tragedy.

 

Israel holds thousands of Palestinian hostages detained in jail - critically, without a case, charge, or legal representation. This "administrative detention" equals captivity. Rape and humiliation by captors is reported to be widespread. The use of the word "prisoners" to describe these faceless and nameless captives implies they have faced trial and been found guilty, with the further implication of terror crimes. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-rele...ture-against-palestinians-custody-preventable

Those who are put on trial - meaning ANY Palestinian on trial - face exclusively military courts with absolutely no due process; there is no civilian court option for Palestinians. The conviction rate in Israeli military courts for Palestinians is a frankly ludicrous 99.74%. According to internal IDF documents reported by Haaretz, in 2010 ... years before the October 7th Hamas atrocity escalated the situation: 99.74% of trials ended in convictions: just 25 acquittals out of 9,542 cases. (Sources: NGO Yesh Din, Haaretz & Times of Israel) https://www.yesh-din.org/en/ https://www.haaretz.com/2011-11-29/...z-learns/0000017f-e7c4-da9b-a1ff-efef7ad70000

Israel also tries children from the age of 12 in military court (again the only court) as adults, while Israeli children cannot face any prosecution in a juvenile court until age 14. A Palestinian child accused of throwing a stone at a heavily armoured tank can receive up to 20 years in prison - the sentence varying based on whether the tank was moving or stationary. Random, abstract, humiliating, cruel and unusual punishments.

During the October 2025 ceasefire exchange, when Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian captives in return for 20 Israeli hostages, Israeli authorities explicitly banned Palestinians from celebrating their loved ones' return. Families were ordered not to host gatherings, distribute sweets, raise Palestinian flags, or speak to media - all under direct threat of re-arrest. These threats were enforced: one man was arrested simply for welcoming his released brother with green flags. Meanwhile, thousands of Israelis gathered openly in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square, with celebrations broadcast globally and emotional reunions covered extensively by international media. The asymmetry was deliberate; Israel wanted the narrative focused entirely on Israeli victims and Israeli relief, with all the humanity and sympathy that entails. The 2,000 Palestinians, many held for years without charge, were to disappear quietly into the night, denied even the basic dignity of reuniting joyfully with their families. The celebration ban wasn't merely ... cruelty; it was narrative control, ensuring that only one side's freedom would be visible, mourned for, or considered worthy of public joy.



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Netanyahu arranged for $30m via Qatari envoy Mohammed al-Emadi to be driven into Gaza to give to Hamas every month for two years 2018-20. But why??



Lets spring open the suitcase (above) and consider the most revealing contradiction in Netanyahu's Gaza policy may be this: his government proved more willing to facilitate funding for Hamas - a designated terrorist organization - than to work constructively with the Palestinian Authority, the very body created under the Oslo Accords to serve as a partner for peace.

The civil service in Gaza still, by and large, consists of employees loyal to the former Palestinian Authority (PA) government, who now live under Hamas rule. These workers long depended on salaries sent from the PA in the West Bank - though the PA was under no binding obligation to continue paying them.

From 2017 onward, Mahmoud Abbas and the PA began cutting those wages as a strategy to weaken Hamas politically and militarily. The aim was twofold: either force Hamas to divert scarce resources into paying civil servants (at the expense of arms and tunnel-building), or else stir public unrest that might undermine Hamas’s grip on Gaza.

This created a dangerous vacuum. To prevent total economic collapse - and fearing that the PA might use the crisis to claw its way back into Gaza (an outcome that could revive international pressure for Palestinian unity and statehood) - Netanyahu stepped in. Realising it would be politically untenable to finance Hamas directly, his government instead approved Qatari cash transfers as a workaround. Suitcases of Qatari money, entering Gaza with Israel’s blessing, helped sustain Hamas’s governance indirectly, while insulating Israel from direct responsibility.

This arrangement was particularly murky. Delivering millions of dollars in untraceable cash, via suitcases, to a group internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation created an obvious contradiction. Hamas openly neglected to pay much of Gaza’s civil service or invest in public infrastructure, choosing instead to channel resources into its military wing and tunnel network. Yet the Netanyahu policy was sold publicly under the banner of “Cash for Calm” or “Cash for Peace” - as though it were a stabilising humanitarian measure. In reality, it blurred the line between humanitarian relief and direct financing of Hamas, leaving both Israel and Qatar open to accusations of propping up an armed faction while ordinary Gazans continued to live amid failing services and collapsing infrastructure. Israel’s choice to allow the funds to enter as cash rather than through transparent banking channels only deepened the ambiguity, ensuring there was no clear record of where the money ultimately went - and making it easier to maintain plausible deniability over the policy’s real consequences.

When Israel bombards Gaza in its war with Hamas, much of the destruction falls not on Hamas’s own installations - since Hamas as Netanyahu keenly knows invests diddly-sqaut on civilian institutions - but on the PA-built infrastructure that still runs the Strip: schools, ministries, hospitals, and utilities. Publicly, however, much of this is spun as “Hamas infrastructure,” as though every functioning institution in Gaza were a militant asset. In reality, what is being destroyed are the very institutions the Palestinian Authority established and maintained - the tangible foundations of governance, not just a symbolic claim to authority. In effect, Israel’s campaigns erode the PA’s legacy and infrastructure in Gaza, even as Netanyahu’s government propped up Hamas financially. To a large degree Israel's the war against Hamas and Palestinian civilians has also functioned as a proxy war against the Palestinian Authority and the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood.





TL;DR

A Times of Israel piece one of many journalistic authorities supporting this:

For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces

The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

 

Saintly sez...


"as they strangely gained support the longer they held them to keep the war going."

Yes, the Prolonged Assault of Gaza has changed everything...

The extended bombardment of Gaza is major miscalculation for Israel's international standing. The longer the war went on was better for Netanyahu personally/politically but bad for Israel. Previously, the "mowing the lawn" strategy - brief incursions involving targeted killings, murders and arrests of Palestinians, including children - generated temporary outrage that quickly faded from news cycles while providing just enough fear and sense of security action to be politically advantageous for Israeli leaders domestically.

Many in the outside world really didn't grasp what was going on in what is a complex and deeply troubling situation. But the prolonged assault changed everything: it gave people time to educate themselves beyond headlines, to follow Palestinian voices directly on social media, to understand the historical context of the Nakba, the decades-long occupation, and the blockade.

Yet even as millions developed this deeper understanding, Israeli propaganda and sympathetic Western media worked to dismiss and delegitimize dissenters - mocking humanitarian flotillas as "selfie ships" full of virtue-signalling middle class on a cause de jour, conveniently ignoring that sailing to Gaza had been proven deadly after Israeli forces stormed the 2010 Mavi Marmara in international waters, assassinating nine activists. When mockery didn't suffice, the framing escalated to labelling the later convoy as "The Hamas Convoy," conflating Palestinian solidarity with terrorism itself.

This crude propaganda extended to equating Hamas with ISIS and al-Qaeda, deliberately erasing crucial distinctions - however brutal Hamas's tactics and ideology, it emerged from decades of occupation with specific territorial goals, fundamentally different from transnational jihadist death cults; (to explain context is not to lend any support). The conflation serves to justify collective punishment of all Gazans and short-circuit any discussion of context or proportionality. But the transparency of these tactics - calling Greta Thunberg a terrorist supporter, framing hospital bombings as fighting ISIS-style barbarism - has itself become radicalizing, as people recognize the desperation of a narrative that cannot defend the actual policies (some detailed this evening) and must instead attack those questioning them.