Agree with your last point sadly. All this episode will do is take the lives of ****load of innocent people and create a whole new generation of extremists on both sides. I don't think we'll ever see a resolution in any of our life times tbh as depressing as that thought is.
Also, the Israeli Minister of National Security (Itamar Ben-Gvir) long had a portrait of Baruch Goldstein prominently displayed in his home. Goldstein is known for exactly one thing: going to a mosque in 1994 with a gun and opening fire, killing 29 civilians and wounding 125 more.
Agree. It will only end if they eradicate Israel which won’t happen due to global support. You will always have Islamic extremists that wish to genocide the Jews. The scourge of anti-semitism is showing worldwide for all to see this week. In much the same way that Hamas / Palestine is conflated, so too are Zionist’s/Israeli and the global Jewish community. Very sad.
Also appears that we may have the answer as to how the intelligence failure occurred. Egypt (effectively an Israeli ally these days) claims that they repeatedly warned Israel that something big was coming, and Israel dismissed it because their attention was on expanding their hold on the West Bank. https://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt...el-ignored-repeated-warnings-of-something-big
I still find the thought of this absolutely staggering tbh. This is a nation which has been at war essentially non stop since its creation. And the idea that they're biggest adversary could plan their biggest attack ever, which must have needed months of planning and involved external parties, and take them completely by surprise is astonishing.
Its sad but I've seen/heard a few people suggest similar things (away from here I mean) today regarding Israel and them wanting peace. Shows the job the western media have done in portraying the conflict.
Yeah, it's an apocalyptic ****-up. But believing that Hamas actually had some offensive capability ran contrary to the narrative they were trying to tell, and which they seem to convinced themselves of, which is that Hamas was cowed, and consequently they could largely ignore Gaza beyond the occasional retributive strike, and redeploy a bunch of IDF personnel to the West Bank to ensure that settlers didn't come to any harm as they carried out pogroms. There are definite parallels to the US approaching 9/11. They had strong intelligence that al-Qaeda intended to launch a strike in the US. They even had some hints of what they attack might look like, and they had some of the hijackers under surveillance. But they also, for some reason, believed that a large-scale coordinated attack on American was simply unthinkable, and interagency rivalries resulted in poor intelligence-sharing. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the story here was that the Mossad (external intelligence/security), Shin Bet (internal), IDF and the government weren't being terribly cooperative, either with each other or even within the orgs...Bibi's anti-democratic law and the resultant protests have exposed some deep divisions. In a just world, that sort of ****-up would discredit each and every member of the government, given that their whole shtick is that they need to brutalize Palestinians to keep Israel safe. In reality, it'll only make them more popular, given that they'll now argue that only brutalizing Palestinians more will keep Israel safe.
Don’t forget that it was a holiday last week in Israel, so everyone was effectively out of office. The border patrol had staff out, as did the whole IDF. Hamas timed it perfectly unfortunately
That's not quite true. The national service Israeli's are required to do is more nuanced much like the national service employed by Switzerland. For instance, my wife did hers in passport control whilst her sister worked for the prison service.
Ian Your posts on here, outside of the politics thread, are usually interesting if not a little eccentric at times but your post above is not only insensitive* but a callous disregard (and excuse) for the killing of Israeli's of all ages. * Insensitive to St Jerome who has family in Israel. I hope it's because you've missed St J's previous post and are unaware of his personal situation. If you are aware, I would say your hatred of Jews/Israel has caused you to lose sight of decency. Are you really suggesting that all Israeli's are valid targets, including babies, because at some time in their life they too will fulfil national service? Do you also consider Israelis in this and other countries to be legitimate targets? Your comments beggar belief and I'm really disappointed that no one except for Os has criticised you for it. St Jerome I am sorry that you have to read such bile as has been posted here in the last few days. I commend you for your restraint when you replied. I know you don't absolve Israel of blame in this Middle East disaster which given your family ties, it would be understandable if you did. I wish your relatives peace and safe keeping.
Fair comment, needed saying. On my own part, I didn't criticise Ian in case he replied and I had another 17 chapters to read.
I'll listen to the full PE podcast tomorrow. https://audioboom.com/posts/8382760...CeCMXvRCcEyCwQqcIpIG_A3i8rZN9C18LK1qih-sAEe-M please log in to view this image
Thanks for your considerate post. I have too many conflicting emotions to take offence. Before I was married, I dated someone who used to volunteer in Gaza and was very pro-Palestine so I'm very much aware of their side of the story. That being said I'm still as clueless now about the who situation as I was before I met either of these two women. I did once try and make sense of it as it being equivalent to Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, it turned out that my pro-Palestinian squeeze had family in the IRA and this comment didn't go down well with them. Needless to say that was the start of the end of that relationship.
https://x.com/jack_raines/status/1712153572844941405?s=46 Feel like this is pretty interesting summary of why calling Israelis “settlers” etc makes zero sense at all.
Seemed like a really awful argument to me. By his argument the British Isles could just as legitimately belong to Italy as us. The Jews were not, by his own argument, a majority in the region for 10000 years. He also proceeds to list lots and lots of islamic empires and then use this as an excuse to say the modern jewish settler is just as settled as they are. The truth is that the Jews were more accepted under the Ottoman empire, which was pretty open-minded about religion. They were allowed to live and worship, alongside Christians and Muslims, within the city of Jerusalem. People were fairly settled and people lived there for generations. Certainly not a majority Jewish. A majority muslim. The same under the British Empire, who ruled but never sought to change the population makeup. Then the British, with our Empire crumbling, gave it to the Jewish people and, all at once, people found themselves kicked out of their homes and moved. This is what makes people refer to them as settlers, as the migration of Jews to Israel is always weaponised against the indigenous population. Israel is not a shared city within an Empire. It is an ideologically defined home for a displaced people. But we are all displaced people. Most of us just don’t have a whole identity built around that displacement. None of this justifies all the atrocities Jews have faced. But it does make a little sense of why they are called settlers.
It's a terrible argument, sorry. Effectively, he's stating that Palestine is terra nullius, land simply up for grabs despite the fact that millions of people already live there. That's not how anything works...it's also an argument that directly parallels those used to justify North American settlement, which treated the people living there as non-entities because they did not have the trappings of national government in order to provide moral cover for stealing their land. And no, it is in no way compelling that the state of Israel existed thousands of years ago, unless you're cool with the Celts claiming dominion over the UK and pushing all of you jonny-come-lately Anglo-Saxon types out by force.
Not all borders are 'natural'. Borders were defined by Seas, oceans and mountain ranges and until recently dense jungle and were further defined by language and sometimes religious belief. I did notice in the 50s as a child transfixed by my Atlas and geography in general that wherever there is a straight line border it was usually man made and nearly always cut across cultural borders. This in turn increased the chances of conflict. Modern methods of transport have enhanced the challenges to borders in general, but the cultural issues remain, both in terms of language and often religion. Maybe human kind will recognise the threats to us all and see the sense in promoting cooperation. Sadly the the signs are not good. I fear my grandchildren will have a worse deal than me.. the end. .
