Gaza

I ‘think’ that Hamas (on the 7th October) had simply had enough of the Israeli repression of them, of Muslims and of the people and state of Palestine.

The attack they launched was a desparate attempt to get the world, and the Israeli population, to realise what was happening and to intervene – in some way. They probably didn’t expect such a massive response but they obviously expected some sort of retaliation hence the hostages.

The October attack was the equivaent of squeezing a big zit or boil – it hurts like hell but you hope it leads to healing of some sort.

Couldn't disagree more, Hamas carried out that attack knowing full well how badly Israel would react to it, especially with a right wing government led by Netanyahu, everything that has happened since led from Hamas carrying out that atrocity and knowing normal Palestinians would be the ones who were punished for it.

It also completely halted any progress the left had in trying to win against Netanyahu, he basically turned into a wartime leader overnight.

@Mark

Thanks for permitting this discussion. For my own mental health, I've been avoiding most news sources about this conflict (and the Ukraine conflict) and this thread has been a useful source of context and background to me.

And thanks to the contributors here.

Genocide has a legal definition, part of which is intent. Proving genocide is difficult (especially given that Israel has nuclear weapons and could exterminate every Palestinian within minutes if that really was their intent.)

Given the UN is saying they're committing genocide means that there's probably a good case that they're committing genocide.

he basically turned into a wartime leader overnight.

That was Netanyahu's intention of not believing his intelligence reports that something was coming and also the niggling micro-provocations and  tacit encouragement of Hamas over the years. Without Hamas the current government of Israel would have collapsed in an untidy heap some years ago.

It also completely halted any progress the left had in trying to win against Netanyahu, he basically turned into a wartime leader overnight.

Netanyahu has been a warmongering despot with criminal intentions for years, the Hamas attack merely gave him the unequivocal backing from his cabinet of right wingers to carry out his vision for a greater Israel.

This is a good read - biography of the rise of Netanyahu by Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz

It's not a heavy read but it is very detailed and even handed in his interpretation of what makes Bibi tick.

Yeah, I have a fair number of books relating to the Middle East

It also completely halted any progress the left had in trying to win against Netanyahu, he basically turned into a wartime leader overnight.

Netanyahu and his increasingly right wing coalition were really struggling last year prior to the attacks - he was trying to force through legislation to reduce judicial oversight, leading to wide spread protests, as well as facing some investigations into his conduct iirc.

There seemed to be a growing consensus that he and his government had to go, and were likely to be replaced by a more moderate coalition, which may then have weakened Hamas' own position possibly?

While the damage inflicted on Israeli and Palestinian civilians has been horrific, the October attack and it's awful/illegal consequences seem to have strengthened Netanyahu and Hamas' hand in the short/medium term.

This is a good discussion with Professor Norman Finkelstein, On the Israeli/Gaza conflict having made it his lifes work with his original doctorate on Zionism in the early 1980's, its a hard read (as in intellectually way above my head - available on his website) but perhaps worth a go at.

His book The Holocaust Industry is a troubling read but more accessible

"Its because Israel is a ‘Western friendly’ foothold in the Middle East…"

This is wrong. If the objective was to further Western influence in the Middle East, then the simplest thing would have been to abandon Israel entirely and unreservedly snuggle up to the oil rich and/or Western-oriented regimes in Kuwait, Saudi, Jordan, Iraq etc. Israel was the number irritant in all those relationships up to the 1980s.

It is wrong that the UK gave Palestine to the Jews after WW1. The UK made vague and probably contradictory statements about what should happen in Mandatory Palestine (Sykes-Picot correspondence vs Balfour Declaration). And ultimately the Brits didn't really give anything to anyone: the simply abandoned the place and buggered off home after WW2.

It is also wrong that Israel would not exist without the US, or that Israel is a mere puppet of the US. In 1947, 1967, and 1973, Israel struggled and won with little support from the US.

Israel does not worry too much about "alienating Western opinion" for one simple reason: they have learned that they cannot rely on anyone except themselves. These "Western" powers are the same ones who time after time committed genocide against the Jews or stood by as it happened, and stopped Jews escaping to Palestine or friendlier countries. Israelis are surrounded by hostile territories inhabited by far larger populations on all sides. Israel's gains have been won and protected by a mass participation military. They are not going to listen to lectures from people overseas. It's ironic that Irish Republicans are so allied to the Palestinian cause when the Israeli national motto could easily be "sinn fein" - "we ourselves".

They are not going to listen to lectures from people overseas. Ask the Palestinians today what being on the right side of global public opinion gets you: slaughtered while the South Shropshire Co-Operative Party passes indignant resolutions.

What Israel is doing is both genocidal (an attempt to destroy life and settlement in Gaza) and suicidal (martyrdom creates generations of martyrs who can never be satiated). Israel and Israelis were complacent and squandered whatever hope the Oslo Accords might have had by not realising their long term interests were inextricably bound to the success of the PNA...

...but so were the Palestinians. Since 1947 when the middle classes fled to Beirut and Cairo and Amman, there has been a total failure of the Palestinian political classes to create a viable polity and push back against cronyism, clan government and rejectionism of a 2 state solution, all of which doomed hopes of statehood. Kosovo, South Africa, the Baltic Countries: they all formed liberation movements while under occupation, and formed post-liberation states even as oppressors interfered.

I have absolutely no idea how there can ever be peace now.

Hard to take issue with the gist of that ^

"A slightly childish, tongue in cheek response; SA could put their money where their mouth is…"

South African National Defence Force is already a bit busy at the moment leading the peacekeeping force in Democratic Republic of Congo - in the middle of a war that's killed 6 million people and yet rarely gets discussed in Europe.

Europe and "the West" were also too cowardly to push Israel through the international legal order they so pompously drone on about - leaving it up to an African country to litigate.

I think South Africa's pitched in quite enough for the moment, all things considered.

https://theconversation.com/south-africa-to-lead-new-military-force-in-the-drc-an-expert-on-what-its-up-against-219264

https://southafrica.un.org/en/210481-united-nations-thanks-south-africa-its-contribution-peacekeeping

Hence why it's childish. I'm aware, and much like many ongoing conflicts and insurgencies in Africa none make the news much until it impacts western interests.

But my point about the UK and a few other western nations stands, if by an extreme stretch of the imagination some form of stabilisation force was sent to the region it would highly likely be a ****ing disaster if certain nations formed part of that force.

It's got to the point where a few organised African and Asian nations forces are doing the heavy lifting with peacekeeping due to the west being quite compromised due to historical ****ery.

Edit: forget it.

"All fair points, but exactly how does this oft repeated mantra actually contribute to a solution? What value does it bring to the table?

The perspective of history is always 20/20 and too often used as a cudgel to stifle any meaningful work to a resolution and as a means to justify actions in the present.

However tenuous and fragile that argument may be."

I mention it not to justify the actions of Hamas, but to understand them and illuminate what IMO is the way forward - if you don't understand what drives people to the horrific depths of 7/10, the only solution is to wipe them out, and I don't believe Israel can ever war its way to peace. The only solution is compromise, and that takes both sides.

It is wrong that the UK gave Palestine to the Jews after WW1. The UK made vague and probably contradictory statements about what should happen in Mandatory Palestine (Sykes-Picot correspondence vs Balfour Declaration). And ultimately the Brits didn’t really give anything to anyone: the simply abandoned the place and buggered off home after WW2.

To be fair.  The British (and others) were being targeted by Zionist terrorists at the time.  The King David hotel massacre being the most well known example.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing#:~:text=Ninety%2Done%20people%20were%20killed,policemen%3B%20and%205%20were%20bystanders.

Post WW2 the British public simply didn't have the stomach to cope with the deaths of even more of their relatives and just wanted them home.  It was, in hindsight, a poor decision but very understandable after the slaughter of WW2.

This is a good discussion

Currently this thread itself (and not just what you linked) is a good discussion, whatever the decisions made by the moderation team are, it is so far reading like a good set of decisions overall.

Reading this thread with interest. Without restating some points already made, I've nothing useful to add for the time being.

I am however surprised, in a good way, that discourse has remained largely courteous and that the thread has remained open.

The forum desperately needed this pressure valve and kudos to Mark for taking the risk of providing one. And to you lot for playing ball.

Carry on....

I can wholeheartedly recommend watching the documentary “The Gatekeepers” from the always excellent Storyville series on iPlayer. It interviews the 6 former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic secret service.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lxjbf

Very enlightening.

It’s the extremists on both sides who are the problem. Netanyahu has a lot to answer for with his lust for power.

I mention it not to justify the actions of Hamas, but to understand them and illuminate what IMO is the way forward – if you don’t understand what drives people to the horrific depths of 7/10, the only solution is to wipe them out, and I don’t believe Israel can ever war its way to peace. The only solution is compromise, and that takes both sides.

Fair, and in the context of this discussion it adds context and value for sure. I was refering to the wider discourse at the level where solutions can be made. The line is fine when talking about historical context and doesn't take much to cross before it becomes a slanging match and communication breaks down. In fact, like this place in a lot of ways. 😶

Often it's simply right-fighting and in this context compounded by some rather visceral motivators and having political headbangers on both sides so you end up with the perfect recipe for conflict.

Interestingly (or otherwise...), I finished Jeremy Bowen's 6 Days this week - much to mull over from that but two particular quotes stuck with me. Deputy Chief of Staff General Ezer Weizman said to a British journalist - "don't allow yourself to be fed bullshit about Israel not being built at the expense of the Arabs, if I was Palestinian Tel Aviv would be blowing up every ten minutes." And general war hero Moshe Dayan predicted that Palestine would use terrorism to fight Israeli rule - when asked how he knew, he said "because that's exactly what I'd do if I were in their place."

That’s what the slogan, “From the river to the sea” is referring to, a single Islamist state from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea

Not really. See wikipedia "Free Palestine from the river to the sea" came to mean "one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel"

Whilst HAMAS have used the phrase leading critics to argue that it implicitly advocates for the dismantling of Israel, and a call for the removal or extermination of the Jewish population of the region, right wing Israeli politicians have also used it "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."

"one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel”

If Hamas has anything to do with it, you can scratch-out the bits of that sentence that say "democratic" and "secular" as they have zero interest in either of those.  The phrase has become a bit like the St Georges flag. You can try to reclaim it, and after all its just a flag, but even ironically; you're still using a symbol that's been hijacked by extremists. It's stopped signalling anything, other than a lack of tolerance.

f Hamas has anything to do with it, you can scratch-out the bits of that sentence that say “democratic” and “secular” as they have zero interest in either of those

if Israel would offer anything other than misery, Hamas wouldn’t get volunteers to stuff envelopes, never mind sign up for martyrdom.

Bojo's (Daily Mail) piece on not selling arms to Israel. I'd despair, but what would that achieve?

I'm not going to link it, basically we should sell them arms because they are the only democracy in the middle east.

Non Wail articles on B Jonhson today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68748251.amp

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/06/banning-arms-sales-to-israel-would-be-insane-says-boris-johnson

He added: “Is that really what you want, all you legal experts who say that Israel’s actions now necessitate an arms embargo? Do you want to hand victory to a bunch of murderers and rapists? We are being asked to shun the Israelis, to mount a total moral repudiation of Israel – when that country has only recently suffered the biggest and most horrifying massacre of Jewish people since world war two.”

Just checking in.

So far this is an exemplary thread.

Of interest.. It's easy to think you are only talking to a few people who post replies but...

Yesterday: Topic page views: 2487

Viewers: 799

Again, anyone new to the topic should make sure you read my OP before you consider contributing

"if Israel would offer anything other than misery, Hamas wouldn’t get volunteers to stuff envelopes"

This is reductionist and oversimplified, and you can tell that by looking elsewhere:

1) to Lebanon, which is a chaotic, vibrant, pluralist semi-democracy, and where Hamas's sister organisation Hezbollah is an important political force. Its ascendancy after the Israeli withdrawal cannot be explained by "Israel offering only misery" to Lebanese voters; and

2) to the West Bank, where Hamas didn't traditionally enjoy much support, despite Palestinians there living under the same conditions - and in fact subject to more interference by the Israeli occupying forces after Israel withdrew from Gaza.

The rise of Hamas as a political force in Palestinian politics was a reaction against Fatah's failure n government to either secure a final resolution OR to be competent in the provision of services in the interim. Obciously if you as an ordinary Palestinian have lost faith in any peace process then you might as well support the guys who are at least doing something to hit back (but of course Hamas aren't asking for support - it's not a democracy) instead of the inept old men who got fat in the 1990s and 2000s.

That's why there was a Hamas-Fatah war, why Gaza and the West Bank were governed separately, and why there haven't been elections in years. Fatah and Hamas have failed at the number one requirement in a liberation movement, which is to maintain unity and work out the differences after your enemy has departed...

...and Israel was too happy to let Fatah keep ****ing everything up "in the interim" that they didn't realise it undermined their long term interest in having a minimally competent and sane Palestinian administration next door. Building a big wall and thinking you can just wall the problem out hasn't worked.

Israeli actions over the past few months seem nothing but counter-productive and against their long-term strategic interests. Launching strikes on international embassies, massacring international aid workers, and starving a civilian population is reckless, cruel, unnecessary, but most of all, ineffective. I can only surmise that this strategy is for the long-term political survival of Netanyahu rather than securing long-term security for the Israeli state. 

Netanyahu’s aim appears to be total war, bringing Hezbollah and direct confrontation with Iran into the crisis, even before they have eliminated Hamas, which although weakened, still has the majority of its leadership intact, enjoys widespread support in Gaza, and now has undoubtedly many thousands of young, angry men as potential conscripts. These are men who will not easily forget bearing witness to nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters being blown into bloody bits while IDF troops dance, laugh and joke as they loot homes and humiliate a broken people on social media. 

Israel bleeds support now, and this is clear through high-profile judges, Tories, and even the US Democratic establishment turning against her. Netanyahu and his political supporters are reckless, incompetent, fanatical and criminal. What is staggering is his historical support and funding for Hamas. In this way, Netanyahu is Hamas’s best asset, providing them with funding, widespread support domestically while isolating Israel abroad.

The phrase has become a bit like the St Georges flag. You can try to reclaim it, and after all its just a flag, but even ironically; you’re still using a symbol that’s been hijacked by extremists. It’s stopped signalling anything, other than a lack of tolerance

Is the issue that flags/slogans get hijacked by extremists, or is it because we then choose to only consider it as being used by extremists?

May not translate well to the Palestinian context.  St Georges flag means different things to different people - if we abandon it to nationalist headbangers then that is all it will be going to be going forward and we've let the headbangers win.

Tldr: why the support for the regime?

In simple terms an awful lot of UK politicians have Israeli donors, be they industrialists, companies or wealthy individuals who are courting those in power to help influence UK policy towards the Middle East

having political headbangers on both sides so you end up with the perfect recipe for conflict.

And not as the result of one country being invaded by a people who then took over the entire area. This being the case, no person of a country that is being oppressed has any requirement to play fair.

.

Of course theres going to be people who will not agree with sharing their land with an invader.Probably everybody, but only some will be able or willing to do anything about it, even at great cost. Britain was invaded a number of times - Normans, Vikings,Romans. Did the British people think they should submit to these invaders, or did they rise up and try to fight them, and thus expel them from their land.

.

Perhaps thats why in Britain, its traditional to favour the underdog.

In much the same way that Al-Qaeda and ISIS owe their origins to western intelligence services (and helped fuel profitable wars), Hamas wouldn't exist without the influence and funding of Israel's own covert programmes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/

It also obscures Hamas's curious history. To a certain degree, the Islamist organization whose militant wing has rained rockets on Israel the past few weeks has the Jewish state to thank for its existence. Hamas launched in 1988 in Gaza at the time of the first intifada, or uprising, with a charter now infamous for its anti-Semitism and its refusal to accept the existence of the Israeli state. But for more than a decade prior, Israeli authorities actively enabled its rise.

This isn't just distant history though, the relationship continues to the present day:

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolstered-hamas/

The same is true of Netanyahu’s longstanding policy of bolstering Hamas rule in Gaza, including encouraging Israel’s de facto ally Qatar to finance the terrorist organization. While the much-respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz has covered this issue, it has been largely ignored by the international press.

On Sunday, The New York Times gave new prominence to the long-standing Netanyahu-Hamas connection in a detailed and lengthy report. According to the newspaper:

Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials.

For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip—money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.

According to the Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money. Retired Israeli general Shlomo Brom described the logic of Netanyahu’s position: “One effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” If the extremist Hamas ruled Gaza, then the Palestinian Authority—a compromised comprador government with a tenuous hold on the West Bank—would be further weakened. This, according to Brom, would allow Netanyahu to say, “I have no partner.”

Hamas were the effective government in Gaza, money went through them to help the people that lived there. Is the complaint is that Israel "allowed" other states to put money into Gaza, via Hamas who were running it in the main? That money didn't all go to help the people of course...

Normans, Vikings,Romans. Did the British people think they should submit to these invaders, or did they rise up and try to fight them, and thus expel them from their land.

In the examples provided, it depends at what point in the timeline you're looking at, and which tribe you was in for the Roman one. But that's way OT.

For a degree of balance in the thread, from a Palestinian perspective Hamas are an authoritarian entity with no regard for democracy amongst the Palestinians and are brutal in shutting opposing views/voices in Gaza, There are a few links below to offer an insight into their brutality.

Link to AP report on Hamas and their actions on October 7th

Amnesty : state of Palestine as of 2022

Amnesty : Link to 270+ articles on The state of Palestine

And if you want independent journalism on a range of topics free from influence then the French "The Conversation" is worth watching/reading.

How Hamas weaponised Palestinians despair

If Biden continues to shield Israeli atrocity from global opinion, the American public, and even the highest machinery of his own party, and Netanyahu unleashes the IDF into the south, kills another 10,000 civilians, and raises the last of Gazan infrastructure, leaving it a smouldering, starving and hopeless ruin, where and to what do these two million destitute peoples go back to?

So essentially, the Israeli intelligence services helped form a militant ruling faction that not only supresses the occupied population of Gaza, but gives Israel's leaders the perfect excuse to bolster support for continued genocidal bombardment and collective punishment, allowing Israel to expand it's territory in pursuit of it's ongoing colonial settlement policy...

Given the vast amount of military aid Israel receives:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.yPnMjreppKi5W-heWTLQkgHaFR%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=555011d50da92a88554289716fa5199f83f63baa33b357aac4001356fbbf6e70&ipo=imagesac4001356fbbf6e70&ipo=image s" alt="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.yPnMjreppKi5W-heWTLQkgHaFR%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=555011d50da92a88554289716fa5199f83f63baa33b357aac4001356fbbf6e70&ipo=images" width="474" height="337" />

are Palestinian authorities allowed any access to military hardware to resist the occupation?

This is just the “Israel are behind the attack on themselves, they made it (or allowed it to) happen to justify more military operations” conspiracy theory.

My bad, as usual, I'm just seeking out the facts and seeing where they lead...

On which note:

are Palestinian authorities allowed any access to military hardware to resist the occupation?

Well, they're armed, so yes. I dont think anyone that's tried has successfully stopped them. (Increasingly Israeli stuff apparently)

That's odd...

The State of Palestine has no land army, nor an air force or a navy. The Palestinian Security Services (PSS, not to confuse with Preventive Security Service) do not dispose over heavy weapons and advanced military equipment like tanks.

In the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, Israel has consistently demanded that the Palestinian state would always be demilitarized. Israeli negotiators demanded to keep Israeli troops in the West Bank, to maintain control of Palestinian airspace, and to dictate exactly what weapons could and could not be purchased by the Palestinian security forces.<sup id="cite_ref-carlstrom_2011_4-0" class="reference">[4]</sup> In June 2009 at Bar-Ilan University, Benjamin Netanyahu said: ″We cannot be expected to agree to a Palestinian state without ensuring that it is demilitarised,″<sup id="cite_ref-carlstrom_2011_4-1" class="reference">[4]</sup>

Meanwhile...

We are being asked to shun the Israelis, to mount a total moral repudiation of Israel – when that country has only recently suffered the biggest and most horrifying massacre of Jewish people since world war two.”

If that's the criteria, massacre, when do the Palestinians get armed? 30,000, 40,000, 80,000?

basically we should sell them arms because they are the only democracy in the middle east.

So everyone living, involuntarily, under an autocratic regime deserves to die at the hands of Isreal/A.N.Other?

And Isrealis have the power to change the direction of its policies and stop killing thousands of Palestinians, yet choose not to.

That’s odd…

Nobody is denying the heavily lopsided state of "armed"

But Hamas ARE armed. If they weren't this would be over already.

Ah yes, silly me, and there was I thinking it had all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated purge of territory for colonial purposes, but let's not forget, this is a war and even children may have dangerous thoughts of seeking freedom from occupation...

are Palestinian authorities allowed any access to military hardware to resist the occupation?

They have a very generous benefactor in that regard, Iran.

Ah yes, silly me, and there was I thinking it had all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated purge of territory for colonial purposes, but let’s not forget, this is a war and even children may have dangerous thoughts of seeking freedom from occupation…

Eh? That's very similar to what I think it looks like.

Doesnt mean Hamas are unarmed. Which was what you questioned.

Tbh, I've literally no idea what you're doing  now so will move on.

Bloody hell, so Gazans and Palestinians are armed to the teeth then?

Maybe we should join our special relationship buddies in the US and forego our healthcare system to free up enough taxpayer money to ensure Israel has enough weapons to stop the Palestinians escaping in dinghies and coming over here and killing us all with their advanced automated drones integrating into society with their strong work ethic.

"We are being asked to shun the Israelis, to mount a total moral repudiation of Israel – when that country has only recently suffered the biggest and most horrifying massacre of Jewish people since world war two.”

What is being asked is that a country and nation state which is a regional superpower act within international law and not prosecute a genocide on a people who are stateless and defenceless. This is what is being asked of Israel and this is what is being ignored.

And with all due respect, what apologists for Israel demand is selective outrage and condemnation. Condemn the Hamas attacks and be outraged by them, but not by Israeli murdering many thousands of innocent children, as though the current theatre of atrocity is somehow justified by the atrocity the other.

With regards to accusing people of conspiracy theory by stating well-reported facts that Hamas were funded for political reasons is false equivocation. I don’t think anyone is saying that. Here, the facts speak for themselves. 

Bloody hell, so Gazans and Palestinians are armed to the teeth then?

Not compared to Israel, nobody said they were. You asked "are Palestinian authorities allowed any access to military hardware" and I answered.  I'm not casting judgement or expressing an opinion, just stating a fact in an attempt to answer your question.

Please for the sake of the thread dont go down that road.

But it doesn't take long for a few people to push that line though. Selective quoting, dishonest inference and flat out shitposting.

Not surprising, but when you've supplanted a personality for politics, this is the way.

How are we all doing?
still good?

Banging. Bloody lovely ride today.