That's a funny thing to say, because ossify has been quite clear that he does know.
If you look up a few posts, you will find:
Maybe he didn't mean death. Should've thought it through a bit better then, before leading a public chant.
and
(which is IMO what "death to IDF" implies in context)
I thought it was quite clear what I meant.
When you deliberately conflate critism of the isreali government and its army with antisemitism this is what you get. You reap what you sew
But according to hanchenkuchen's post on the RAF thread, the IDF is Jewish, so criticising the IDF is antisemitic. Does that all make sense now? No - not to me either.
p.s. "sow", not "sew" FFS
We are somewhat ahead of you PrinceJohn.
Not everyone it would appear. Your description of Bob Vylan as a "dubious act" seems to echo the sentiments expressed by the plonker Mirvis.
As someone else noted......the slogan's shock lies not in its content, but in its audacity. It dares to break decorum in the name of justice. It dares to say what many feel but are too afraid to articulate.
When the media and zionist supporters treat "Free Free Palestine" as both a threat and as an example of anti-semitism then "Death Death to the IDF" is always going to be treated as a molotov cocktail and cause an extreme reaction.
Neither you or he know what was meant by the artist in question.
I am fairly confident about what was meant....... the defeat of the IDF and the triumph of Palestine. What else could it have meant?
"Viva Viva Palestina", which is a common chant at demos, expresses exactly the same sentiments, ie the defeat of the IDF and the triumph of Palestine but in a far less hard hitting way.
Had Bob gone onto the stage and shouted Viva Via Palestina it would have been mostly ignored.
Viva Viva Palestina can be treated as background noise, Death Death to the IDF is in your face.
Right now the IDF is slaughtering innocent civilians, it's not the time to worry about decorum
calling for "death to the IDF" means death, pretty obviously.
[...]
Maybe he didn't mean death
Forgive me - at this point I have no clue what you actually mean. (No - please don't explain again.)
Not everyone it would appear. Your description of Bob Vylan as a "dubious act" seems to echo the sentiments expressed by the plonker Mirvis
Dubious act as in relatively unknown.
As ot happens i quite them. I have no major issue with them, i don't think them calling something out is any ways a problem. My personal option is they didn't mean it how Ossify took it. But it was open to interpretation and life experience is likely to have a significant impact on how to take it. And I don't think raising a chant about it was particularly ****ing clever and it will, intentionally or otherwise fuel some extra hate.
Be angry, be furious scream and shout about it. I am and Ossify is happy using the term genocide. I just don't think Ossify deserves what was thrown at him, comparing him to a right wing nut job in charge of a regime intent on genocide and crying antisemitism when they are called out.
Whats wrong with that?
Let me get this right then…
By the present logic, anyone who criticises any Israeli citizen, the Israeli government or the IDF for anything at all is basically Goebbels?
Is that where we are now?
It certainly seems that way
Everyone criticises the Israeli government… impossible not to (unless you’re looking the other way).
Let me get this right then…
By the present logic, anyone who criticises any Israeli citizen, the Israeli government or the IDF for anything at all is basically Goebbels?
Is that where we are now?
It certainly seems that way
Um. You might want to read the reference to goebbels again it certainly was not directed at those speaking oit against Israel
The reference to Goebbels was mine.
I used it in the sense of Goebbels and the nazis making ordinary German citizens complicit in the crimes of the regime.
"Do you want total war?" Etc.
Mirvis is doing a similar job - by making any criticism of the IDF or Israeli government "antisemitism" he is dragging in Jewish people and Israeli citizens generally. When British jews are then, perhaps, taken to task by their friends or acquaintances it could make them immediately defensive and, to an extent, co-opted.
I most certainly would not want, for example, any criticism of the UK government for going into Iraq in 2003 characterised as anti-British. Because of the position that implicitly puts me in.
What Netanyahu is doing is disgusting, disgraceful and criminal. Arseholes like Mirvis legitimising it or seeking to silence criticism is also disgusting.
Mirvis was a regular contributor to R4 Thought For The Day when I used to commute for work. I thought he was just another fairly moderate, decent (if a little socially conservative) religious figure. But he has shown his true colours a number of times since 7th October.
You might want to read the reference to goebbels again it certainly was not directed at those speaking oit against Israel
I wasn’t actually referring to the previous reference to Goebbels. I was just commenting on the fact that anyone who says a word against Israel is labelled as antisemitic and a ‘Jew hater’. And we all know what’s implied by that, don’t we?
What is it when the actual fascists accuse everyone who speaks out against their genocide of being Nazi’s, with that word left as implied rather than spoken, there just by association?
The Israeli far right have weaponised the holocaust for decades to shut down any criticism of their genocidal fascism
Now their ultra-extremist views are now mainstream and they are in power. Now where have we seen that before? Hmmmmmmm
I used it in the sense of Goebbels and the nazis making ordinary German citizens complicit in the crimes of the regime.
There is a fundamental difference though imo. In Israel the crimes against Palestinians appears to be more people led than the crimes committed by the Nazis.
Sure there was well established hatred of Jews which the Nazis exploited and built on but the Holocaust didn't start until 1933 and the first extermination camp started operating in 1941, four years before the end.
In contrast although zionists have been killing Palestinians for 80 years Israel started off as a left-wing project, for the first 29 years of its existence Israel had nothing but Labour prime ministers.
However every new generation has become more extreme than the previous one and today we have such a far-right government in Israel that some ministers make Nigel Farage look like a cuddly left-wing liberal.
The extremism of the current government reflects the extremism of today's Israeli society, which was probably not quite the case with regards to the extremism of the Nazis.
The prophecy of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a Jewish Israeli intellectual ...
“The national pride that followed the Six-Day War are temporary and will bring us from proud, rising nationalism to extreme, messianic, ultranationalism. The third stage will be brutality and the final stage will be the end of Zionism.”
Somehow the actual brutal pictures of the aftermath of an israeli bombing or missile strike, where to kill one target, they target the entire block with other families living in them needs to be played on prime time media
The actual aftermath, for example child's room, there are his/her destroyed remains in the corner.
Or pulling out whole families from the collapsed buildings. As brutal as being there, nothing hidden from the eye.
That I think would turn the tide and put enough pressure on our politicians, and the American public too to pressurize who really holds the strings on israelis ability to commit these crimes against humanity.
Somehow the actual brutal pictures of the aftermath of an israeli bombing or missile strike, where to kill one target, they target the entire block with other families living in them needs to be played on prime time media
Well there’s a reason why the IDF have deliberately killed all the journalists.
The one's which they haven't managed to stop entering Gaza
These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are not brought to our screens by experienced international war correspondents - they are barred from entering Gaza - but by two British medics whose mission was to save lives not to report on the horrors of war.
Israel knows full well that they can't have the world prying as they commit genocide, nor would Western governments want that to happen (there are obvious exceptions such as Ireland and Spain)
In the history of modern warfare, the presence of journalists on the battlefield has been essential in holding the combatants to account and ensuring that war crimes and atrocities are uncovered and prevented.
But Israel's confidence in the integrity of its wartime conduct is not matched by a willingness to allow international journalists into Gaza to witness what is going on there for themselves.
So it is left to non-journalists and Palestinian journalists
And these Palestinian journalists have paid a heavy price for their work; according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 185 of them have been killed during the war and 86 imprisoned.
And of course the judicial system of the quasi fascist state which pretends to work within a legal framework falls into line.
So far, that legal action has been unsuccessful and last month the court again postponed a hearing in the case without reason or setting a new date.
Obviously if the courts ever ruled that international journalists should be permitted to enter Gaza the IDF would simply murder them, as they have Palestinian journalists.
Somehow the actual brutal pictures of the aftermath of an israeli bombing or missile strike, where to kill one target, they target the entire block with other families living in them needs to be played on prime time media
Something I've often wondered. Preserving the dignity of the victims of war is paramount, but I do honestly believe there's some power to people being shown the reality of it at peak viewing time on the news/in the media.
My experiences have certainly swayed my view of those who are quick to leap to tough talk, usually because they're a fanny and have never seen this stuff up close, hideously ill-informed, tragically naive, or a sociopath. Pick your flavour.
There's a reason 'war is hell' and why more people need an insight into the ****ing horrible reality of it, it can't hurt can it.
In the history of modern warfare, the presence of journalists on the battlefield has been essential in holding the combatants to account and ensuring that war crimes and atrocities are uncovered and prevented.
This. It's an extra layer of scrutiny that gives those not involved and line into what's going on.
On tonight @ 10pm on Channel 4
This isn't really watchable. I think it is probably too much for most people to stomach, especially the images of children.
Harrowing viewing; much like a news report from Auschwitz. Unfortunately it confirms what we know - that Israelis are rabid dogs. Regrettably we are also complicit as our government gives support to the psychopaths.
Yes a tough watch and a certain amount of leading questions going on but if nothing else a stark reminder of exactly what Palestinians are living through right now.
Guess I’m now officially a terrorist, £30 donation to Palestine Action and a screenshot of my donation sent to keir.starmer.mp@parliament.uk, obviously I included my name and address in the email so he knows where to send the police to question/arrest me for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation.
**** him, **** the IDF, **** the Israeli government for supporting this, they need proscribed as a rogue nation.
Watched it. My discomfort minuscule and irrelevant to their actual experience.
Read a bit of the BBC article about the new law and Palestine action. Well done arresting a bloke on a mobility scooter ffs.
It also accuses the BBC of being “crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government” and claims the “inconsistent manner in which guidance is applied draws into focus the role of Gibb, on the BBC Board and BBC’s editorial standards committee” as “we are concerned that an individual with close ties to the Jewish Chronicle … has a say in the BBC’s editorial decisions in any capacity, including the decision not to broadcast Gaza: Medics Under Fire”.
And this has to be the icing on the cake :
Miriam Margolyes, Alexei Sayle and Mike Leigh among signatories to letter criticising Jewish Chronicle ties
It's got to hurt when prominent Jews criticise the BBC for not broadcasting the truth about Israel's genocide in Occupied Palestine.
Although it will obviously be ignored.
I'm not going to watch it. I can't if it involves kids suffering. I still remember feeling nauseous when Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain spent a couple of minutes on the Jamie Bulger case. I just can't.
I know full well what the IDF are, who they are targeting and what the results of live ordinance hitting flesh and bone are. Or collapsing buildings onto kids. Or simply denying them food.
Guess I’m now officially a terrorist, £30 donation to Palestine Action and a screenshot of my donation sent to keir.starmer.mp@parliament.uk, obviously I included my name and address in the email so he knows where to send the police to question/arrest me for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation.
* him, * the IDF, **** the Israeli government for supporting this, they need proscribed as a rogue nation.
This is where I'm at too. This is what I'm going to do as well.
I still can't quite believe this shit is going on in the 2020s and it is being supplied and excused by nations like the UK. We pontificate about the brutality of civil wars in Africa, for example. But when Israel does it, we roll over and have our (yellow) belly tickled.
I think in a way one of the most chilling bits was the interview with the Israeli soldier?medic? who said “there doesn’t need to be a cover up; nobody cares what we do to the Gazans”.
And of course that applies to our government as well (and the EU etc etc). They simply don’t give a shit about Gaza.
I'm not going to watch it. I can't if it involves kids suffering.
It does involve scenes of children suffering which I frankly had look away when they came on. I did manage to sit through it all although I initially thought I wouldn't be able to. But I did spend a lot of the time looking away from the telly and at my phone instead. The scenes showing children suffering are actually a very small part of the whole documentary.
Like you I did wonder what the point was of me watching it as I am fully aware that the IDF is a brutal terrorist organisation, I don't need convincing. But it did change my perceptions slightly - it reinforced my understanding that the dehumanisation of Palestinians and the deep hatred directed at them is very deeply ingrained in Israeli society and as the programme mentions predates the Oct 7 Hamas attack.
And as a consequence the programme also very much reinforced my belief that a two-state solution is impossible. A single secular democratic Palestine has to be the only solution, although I honestly don't know how it would cope with the level of anti-arab hatred which exists among many zionists. I guess many would simply leave to return to Europe and the United States.
Has Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis been on BBC Breakfast yet to tell us how unsafe 'British Jews' (each and every one of them, without exception, as clearly the Board of Deputies believe the UK Jewish community speaks as one single entity) are feeling after the broadcast of this clearly antisemitic documentary?
“ Those who wish to protest or express support for Palestine have always been able to and can continue to do so.”
Meanwhile in real life ....
Four people were arrested, including “a man who blocked the gates of Downing Street with his mobility scooter”, at a protest in Westminster on Wednesday evening, the Metropolitan police said.
Meanwhile in real life ....
Almost as if you can express support for Palestine in a multitude of ways without breaking the law. Of course some will choose to break the law as they feel it might be a more effective way to make their point.
And as a consequence the programme also very much reinforced my belief that a two-state solution is impossible.
Sadly many liberals in Isreal came to the same conclusion after attacks from Hamas and others. More and more people now want a single state, and support those who fight towards that end. These hardened attitudes mean decades more of killings, and existing in peace side by side looks like an impossible dream all around. Depressing times.
Almost as if you can express support for Palestine in a multitude of ways without breaking the law.
Almost as if anything you do will be found to break the law by those who want to silence you.
More and more people now want a single state, and support those who fight towards that end. These hardened attitudes mean decades more of killings, and existing in peace side by side looks like an impossible dream all around.
No the killing will eventually stop because the zionist project is not viable in the long term.
No country can exist in a permanent state of war, which is precisely why Israel is experiencing by far its greatest crisis in its entire history.
Israel will never ever have peace, if that wasn't 100% certain before the current genocide it certainly is now.
As you rightly point out even many of the so-called "liberals" in Israel don't want peace now, I they won't get it.
They can't defeat Hamas and they can't stop their growing international isolation, eventually they will have to throw in the towel as the previous apartheid regime did.
That feeds into the "existential war" argument that hard right Israeli politicians use to justify their unbalanced and disproportionate offensive war to their public. Awful stuff.
Has Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis been on BBC Breakfast yet to tell us how unsafe 'British Jews' (each and every one of them, without exception, as clearly the Board of Deputies believe the UK Jewish community speaks as one single entity) are feeling after the broadcast of this clearly antisemitic documentary?
two-bit gobshite preacher, he can get in the ****ing sea.
Am I the only one that watches the likes of the slug Danny Danon (Israeli UN ambassador) spew his bilious lies whilst dreaming of dropping him into what is left of Gaza?
Harrowing viewing; much like a news report from Auschwitz. Unfortunately it confirms what we know - that Israelis are rabid dogs. Regrettably we are also complicit as our government gives support to the psychopaths.
All Israelis?
Starting to see the veil slipping from one or two posters here. Unsurprising, but depressing all the same.
That feeds into the "existential war" argument
Absolutely what Israel is facing is the greatest existential threat in its entire history.
Although I don't think that the far-right/ultra-zionists in Israel have fully grasped that reality, they are still dreaming of a Greater Israel. Apparently God will save them
The only way that peace will ever come to the Middle East is when the zionist experiment ceases. In the 21st century you cannot have a colonial settler project which involves grabbing land off indigenous people and expect a peaceful existence.
If not everyone is yet convinced of that they will eventually be.
All Israelis?
Did you actually watch the documentary? I suspect not.
DrJ's comment is with regards to the documentary which used Israeli witness accounts, and as one IDF soldier said “there doesn’t need to be a cover up; nobody cares what we do to the Gazans”.
No one is wearing any veils on this thread.
All Israelis
According to polls, a significant majority support the current depravity.
While you’re here - the ritual accusation of antisemitism is meaningless these days. Maybe try actually engaging with the issue.
All Israelis?
Starting to see the veil slipping from one or two posters here. Unsurprising, but depressing all the same.
I certainly wouldn't say all Israelis given the protests within the country - there is a minority who are very vocal in the opposition to the current slaughter however they appear to be considered with almost the same disgust as what is held for inhabitants of Gaza, however I am perfectly content with deeming a significant proportion of the Israeli population as evangelical zionist genocide/apartheid enablers
Pretending that criticising Israel's behaviour is the equivalent of criticising all Israelis is as disingenuous as pulling up someone for calling Israel a Jewish state when it is obvious that not all Israelis are Jewish.
Still, I guess that making wild and unfounded allegations of anti-semitism is the only intellectual defence that zionists have these days.
Has Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis been on BBC Breakfast yet to tell us how unsafe 'British Jews' (each and every one of them, without exception, as clearly the Board of Deputies believe the UK Jewish community speaks as one single entity) are feeling after the broadcast of this clearly antisemitic documentary?
I think 10, 20 years ago, the BoD was seen as a reasonably liberal organisation that did represent British Jewry. Likewise the CAA, CST, New Isreal Fund and several others. Sadly, many of these organisations have become hijacked by very right wing people who do wish to use them to promote their own agendae, and this has seen a decline in their popularity and legitimacy. The stunts that Gideon Falter tried pulling at a pro-Palestine demo last year, for example, indicated the fact that such once respected organisations are now little more than shills for the Israeli government. Unfortunately, such groups had significant influence over the Labour right, as we are seeing now with Starmer's total weakness to stand up against Israeli state aggression. This is compounded by the perennial problem of the fractious nature of the 'Left', with to many small organisations always disagreeing and bickering over who is the most righteous. So there's been no united voice to stand up to such right wing influence. The Jewish Labour Movement, once a real socialist organisation, is now a very right-wing one. The Labour right have effectively forced out any left-wing Jewish activists, even expelling some for 'antisemitism', which is utterly absurd. So there is now no longer a viable left wing Jewish voice in the Labour movement; JVL are a tiny, insipid and ageing group who are noting more than a fringe organisation with no political clout at all.
The hope lies in some of the younger, decent humanitarian groups such as Standing Together, Na'amod, Yachad, Jewish Socialists group and a few others. The JLM work hard to actively exclude such groups for many discussions within Labour, about antisemitism, Palestine etc, as they don't follow the right-wing pro-Israeli state narrative. Any such group that dares criticise theIsraeli state, finds themselves ostracised and marginalised. But then there's also attacks from the so-called 'Left'; Standing Together have been 'cancelled' by the BDS movement, as apparently they 'normalise Zionism'. Absolute nonsense and quite the opposite. Organisations such as the BDS and PSC are just as bad as the JLM etc, as they will not listen to anyone who dares question their vehemently anti-Israel narrative. Most Jewish organisations won't have anything to do with the PSC and BDS as those organisations are infected with virulent antisemites from top to bottom. So this leaves no coherent left-wing united force against the Labour right. As with so many aspects of life, the true thinkers are often a tiny minority. But there is a new, growing strain of dissenters who are turning away from the PSC and BDS, and seeking less antagonistic ways of addressing the issues. For a peace movement to succeed, it has to be about peace, and it has to include a spectrum of voices, and not be exclusive.
All Israelis?
The impression that i get, is that the culture and the, i cant think of the word im thinking of, lets say "narrative" that has been propogated within Israel for the past 50-60 years, has been one of dehumanising and "othering" the Palestinian people. Compulsary national service wont hurt that process either.
Using the words "brain washing" pushes you into conspiracy theory nutjob territory, but i have no doubt the Israeli people honestly believe they have the moral highground, because thats how theyve been brought up over the past few generations. Is that their fault that they dont adhere to our idea of tolerance?
from the videos of the israeli troops, they do seem to be enjoying themselves.
And to blame this all on the 7th October events is absurd. When you use the might and funding of the American war machine, to bully a people into the dirt, what more do the have other than guerilla warfare and "dirty" tactics? Do you expect the Palestinians to run out of tanks and missiles (if they ever had any) and then thrown down their small arms and admit defeat? Did they learn nothing from Vietnam?
Lifted from al jazeera,
At least 33 aid seekers are among 73 Palestinians killed in Gaza since dawn, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, with witnesses describing “horror scenes” after “unprovoked gunfire” at the controversial Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites.
- More than 300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the last 48 hours
Meanwhile Israeli settlers have just stormed Al Aqsa mosque in the West Bank, and I figure everyone (sic) has been following the villages in the West Bank that were recently burned then destroyed by the Israeli forces with their caterpillar supplied equipment as the area is now deemed to be an army range
And finally the leading antisemite/or hero to to the rest of us who are not genocidal ****s Francesca Albanese has published a new report
‘For some genocide is profitable’, says Francesca Albanese
“There have been people and organisations that have profited from the violence, the killing, the maiming, the destruction in Gaza and other parts of the occupied Palestinian territory”, the UN’s special rapporteur tells reporters in Geneva.
“In the past 20 months…the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange soared by 213 percent, amassing over $220 bns in market gains, including [a] $76.8 bn in the past month alone; so clearly, for some genocide is profitable”, Albanese stated.
She said her latest report “exposes a system, something that is so structural and so widespread and so systemic that there is no possibility to fix it”, adding that if the corporate sector had observed due diligence, it “would have disengaged completely and totally from its entanglement with the Israeli economy”.
She added that if Palestine were a “crime scene”, it would have “the fingerprints of all of us through what we purchase…the banks where we put our money, the investments we make”.
UN expert accuses Israel of weapon-testing in Gaza amid 85,000-tonne explosive devastation
As we just reported, UN expert Francesca Albanese has presented a report to the Human Rights Council. Here are key takeaways from her speech:
- Arms companies have turned near-record profits by equipping Israel with cutting-edge weaponry to unleash 85,000 tonnes of explosives – six times the power of Hiroshima – to destroy Gaza.
- The report also pointed to gains on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since October 2023, describing a stark contrast: “One people enriched, one people erased.”
- Accusing Israel of using the war to “test new weapons, customized surveillance, lethal drones, [and] radar systems”, Albanese warned that Palestine’s defencelessness had made it “an ideal laboratory for the Israeli military-industrial complex”.
- She named 48 corporate actors, including arms manufacturers, banks, tech companies, energy giants, and academic institutions, alleging that they are directly linked to a broader “economy of occupation, sustaining the Israeli state’s actions”.
- “Weapons and data systems brutalize and surveil Palestinians,” she said. “Colonies spread – financed by banks and insurers, powered by fossil fuels, and normalized by tourism platforms, supermarket chains, and academic institutions.”
- Under international law, she said, even a minimal connection to this system carries clear responsibility. “There is a prima facie responsibility on every state and corporate entity to completely abstain from or end their relationships with this economy of occupation.”
- In a direct appeal to states, Albanese called for bold steps. “Member states must impose a full arms embargo on Israel, suspend all trade agreements and investment relations, and enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law.”
