Palestine 🇵🇸 = Ukraine 🇺🇦 ?

Careful with all the arm-waving, thols, if the wind changes you risk taking off. We get it – the Palestinians are to blame for everything, OK?

Palestinians are probably a bit like the Native Americans in that regard…

So the fact that for whatever murky reason the international community fails to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state is the reason Israel can continue a campaign of war crimes with impunity?

Quite the opposite. If the two countries were at war, Palestinians would be guilty of war crimes for attacking civilians and Israel would be justified in invading. Because Palestine isn’t recognized as a state, the legal basis for Israel’s behaviour is much murkier. Whatever the case, there won’t be any peace deal until Palestinians agree to recognize Israel as a state and stop indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians. Sending weapons to help them do that won’t improve things, it would just give right-wing Israeli’s the best propaganda they could wish for.

Whatever the case, there won’t be any peace deal until Palestinians agree to recognize Israel as a state

Stop that nonsense. There won’t be any peace until a Jewish homeland is built somewhere other than on Palestinian land.

The idea that someone from New York or London can claim to be Jewish and kick Palestinians off their land and set up home there, due to a ridiculous claim concerning what God might have said a few thousand years ago (made all the more ridiculous by the fact that most Israelis don’t consider themselves to be religious) is by any measure a gross injustice of monumental proportions.

It is an undeniable fact that injustice breeds violence……there can never be peace without justice.

Quite the opposite. If the two countries were at war, the Natives would be guilty of war crimes for attacking civilians and the Colonizers would be justified in invading. Because Native land isn’t recognized as a state, the legal basis for Colonizing behaviour is much murkier. Whatever the case, there won’t be any peace deal until Natives agree to recognize Colony as a state and stop indiscriminately attacking Colonizing civilians. Sending weapons to help them do that won’t improve things, it would just give right-wing Colonizers the best propaganda they could wish for.

Just a little experiment to see how it reads from a generic perspective…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/12/lost-banksy-piece-sprayed-in-palestine-reappears-tel-aviv-art-gallery-slingshot-rat

“According to the 1954 Hague Convention governing cultural property to which Israel is a signatory, occupying powers must prevent the removal of cultural property from occupied territories.”

Ironic when you consider that this year there have been several stories like this one:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/france-to-return-15-works-of-nazi-looted-art-to-jewish-families-180979487/

Edit: Re:

“Slingshot Rat passed at least one military checkpoint to reach Tel Aviv. Both the Israeli military and Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for civilian governance in the West Bank, said they had no knowledge of the artwork or its journey.”

It brings into question how tight security on the West Bank/Israeli border is. Presumably if a huge lump of concrete can be smuggled in small weapons shouldn’t be a problem?

There won’t be any peace until a Jewish homeland is built somewhere other than on Palestinian land.

That’s right. Moderate Israeli’s recognized that back in the 1990s and there was a real hope of a land-for-peace deal. The basic idea was that Israel would return to its pre-1967 borders and Palestinians would recognize Israel and stop calling for its destruction. Hard-liners on both sides rejected this and kept brutally attacking civilians on the other side in order to derail the peace process.

Attacks on Israeli civilians are not intended to have any military purpose, their effect is just to harden right-wing Israeli opinion against any peace deal. Every time a Palestinian fires a rocket at an Israeli city, the right-wingers say, “I told you so, we can never trust the Palestinians to live in peace.” Sending weapons to Palestinians would make things worse for Palestinians, not better, because Israel would be fully justified in attacking those weapons and killing or capturing anyone involved with using or supplying them. It’s a spectacularly bad idea.

Say for example Palestine was recognized as a state and was then able to form an army with which to defend it’s civilian population from bombardment by Israel’s huge and subsidized arsenal… surely Israel would then lose the right to dictate what weapons Palestine was allowed to defend itself, which would give them the ability to use something other than crude rockets that are as much a show of defiance as any significant threat to lifestyles in the constantly expanding Israeli settlements?

Not that I favour escalation; surely de-escalation is key to peace, as opposed to lining the pockets of the ghouls who profit from war, conflict and land grabbing

Just a little experiment to see how it reads from a generic perspective…

You’re applying 20th century legal doctrine to 18th century situations. I think you’ll find that governments around the world have recognized that the treatment of indigenous peoples was genocide and would not be tolerated today.

The situation in Israel is that there was no state there pre-1948. There was a brutal war between Muslim and Jewish Palestinians over territory. The Jewish side won and Israel was created. It’s a member of the United Nations and Muslim countries have mostly recognized it too so its existence is a fact that has to be accepted before any peace deal is possible. Because Israel is a Jewish state, a one-state solution is untenable. A two-state solution with a Palestinian state neighboring Israel would require Palestinians to formally recognize Israel and to stop attacking Israeli civilians. In exchange, Israel would have to return annexed territory. That seemed possible 30 years ago, but it doesn’t seem possible now. Attacking Israeli civilians serves no military purpose, it’s just one more thing that is making a peace deal impossible. Encouraging it is not doing Palestinians any favours.

Say for example Palestine was recognized as a state and was then able to form an army with which to defend it’s civilian population from bombardment by Israel’s huge and subsidized arsenal… surely Israel would then lose the right to dictate what weapons Palestine was allowed to defend itself, which would give them the ability to use something other than crude rockets that are as much a show of defiance as any significant threat to lifestyles in the constantly expanding Israeli settlements?

Where would they get those advanced weapons? How would they finance and train that army? What would they do when the Israeli military noticed hundreds of tanks, helicopter gunships, combat aircrafts, etc. on Palestinian territory and destroyed them? The Palestinian territories are pretty small and it would be impossible to build up a military capable of challenging Israel without it being noticed. No Arab country would supply it with weapons and train it because they do not want another war with Israel. Iran would definitely do that if they thought they could get away with it, but Israel has atomic weapons and Iran is not going to provoke Israel by doing something open like that.

Point here is that the idea of Palestinians beating the Israeli military is a childish fantasy. Nobody is going to supply those weapons and, if they did, Israel would destroy them the moment they were spotted out in the open.

It brings into question how tight security on the West Bank/Israeli border is. Presumably if a huge lump of concrete can be smuggled in small weapons shouldn’t be a problem?

Interesting question… after all, we know Israel was involved in Hamas’ creation; whatsmore, there’s evidence of agent provocateurs:

But surely Israeli security forces wouldn’t stoop so low as to arm the militants who do so much for the cause of hard line settlers colonizers?

Point here is that the idea of Palestinians beating the Israeli military is a childish fantasy.

The United States provides Israel with approximately $4 billion of mostly military aid annually.

The US doesn’t do this because it has a few spare $billions washing around which it doesn’t know what to do with. It provides that unprecedented level of aid to Israel because it believes that it is absolutely vital to Israel’s survival, it wouldn’t do it otherwise.

The question is how long can the United States maintain that level of crucial support? The simple answer is not for ever.

The United States is widely seen as having peaked in its position of global dominance and is now experiencing a slow but irreversible decline. Some have compared it with Great Britain’s peak in 1900 and its subsequent post-World War One decline.

Like Great Britain previously the United States’s global dominance is totally centred on its financial strength.

Don’t expect the United States to prop up non-viable countries in 50 years time in the way they currently do today.

Israel as it exists today will eventually no longer exist, it is just a matter of time.

The question is how long can the United States maintain that level of crucial support? The simple answer is “not for ever”.

FTFY. Economically, the U.S. can easily afford that. Politically is a different question.

Israel as it exists today will eventually no longer exist, it is just a matter of time.

Israel has a large weapons industry of its own, it is at the cutting edge of military technology. If, for some reason, the U.S. refused to supply weapons, Israel would turn to Russia, or China, or India, or Korea, or Taiwan, or Japan, or Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Brazil, or Saudi Arabia, or the UAE, or some other country that wants access to Israeli technology and will cooperate on manufacturing.

Keep in mind, Israel has nuclear weapons that it can launch from submarines. Even if they lost the support of the U.S., no other country in the region would dare to try and invade because a successful invasion would result in Israel unleashing their nuclear arsenal.

The idea that Palestinians are going to militarily defeat Israel is a fantasy. That fantasy has to be rejected before any realistic peace settlement is possible.

The Colony has a large weapons industry of its own, it is at the cutting edge of military technology. If, for some reason, the U.S. refused to supply weapons, The Colony would turn to Russia, or China, or India, or Korea, or Taiwan, or Japan, or Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Brazil, or Saudi Arabia, or the UAE, or some other country that wants access to Colony technology and will cooperate on manufacturing.

Keep in mind, The Colony has nuclear weapons that it can launch from submarines. Even if they lost the support of the U.S., no other country in the region would dare to try and invade because a successful invasion would result in The Colony unleashing their nuclear arsenal.

The idea that Natives are going to militarily defeat The Colony is a fantasy. That fantasy has to be rejected before any realistic peace settlement is possible.

Does it alter the perspective somewhat? Personally, I’m not sure, what do you think?

The idea that Palestinians are going to militarily defeat Israel is a fantasy. That fantasy has to be rejected before any realistic peace settlement is possible.

Ther real fantasy here is that Israel will ever of its own volition agree to live in peace with the Palestinians. Whether that means that it can be forced to (unlikely) or that it will eradicate the Palestinians in its own version of a Final Solution (current policy) remains to be seen.

no other country in the region would dare to try and invade because a successful invasion would result in Israel unleashing their nuclear arsenal.

Yup, it is widely seen that Israel is quite unique in the world as the only country with nuclear weapons, not as a deterrent against the possibility of a nuclear attack, but as viable weapons in a conventional war. A truly deplorable nuclear weapons doctrine so thank you for highlighting it thois.

But you have completely missed the point concerning Israel’s dependence on the United States. It is not that Israel can’t manufacture its own weapons or buy them from elsewhere.

It is that Israel needs to rely on the sort of vital military strength which only large and extremely wealthy countries can afford.

The total population of Israel is about the size of the population of Greater London – what sort of world class military super power do you imagine Greater London could afford to be if it was an independent state?

And good luck with a declining US global power pumping $billions into Israel. Israel’s final demise is unlikely to occur because of an invading force, as you seem to think.

It is much more likely to occur because as Israel becomes weaker and less of a military super power life will become less pleasant for Israelis. Immigration into Israel will stem whilst those leaving will increase, presumably with US passport holders at the head of the queue.

This will result in an increasingly militarily and economically weaker and less secure Israel, leading to even less immigration and more exodus, and so on. People who immigrate and live in Israel don’t do so because they are fleeing persecution.

They do so because they want to enjoy the good life – they certainly don’t want to live like Palestinians and be subjected to violence and poverty.

Nuclear weapons won’t come into it and they won’t save them. In the same way that nuclear weapons didn’t save Israel’s very close friends the brutal white supremacist racists of apartheid South Africa, with whom they shared nuclear secrets.

Ther real fantasy here is that Israel will ever of its own volition agree to live in peace with the Palestinians.

In the 1990s, moderate Israelis realized that a peace settlement was the only long-term option if they didn’t want to be in a permanent state of war. The only way to achieve that was through some sort of land-for-peace deal. That was sabotaged by extremists on both sides. The right-wing Israelis refused to accept the return of land on the grounds that Palestinians could never be trusted and giving up land would be a suicide pact for Israel. On the Palestinian side, extremists refused to accept Israel as a legitimate state and vowed to destroy it (and implicit in that is a promise of a second holocaust). Both sides brutalized civilians as provocations to derail the possibility of any peace deal.

I am very pessimistic that any peace deal will be possible in our lifetimes, the last thirty years have just cycles of violence with both side pointing to atrocities by the other. Any moderates on either side who argue for the compromises that would be needed for a peace deal are denounced (or murdered) by the extremists on their own side.

What is clear is that nothing is going to be possible while people think that indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians are acceptable. They achieve no military purpose, they aren’t going to force Israel to the negotiating table, they just harden opinion among Israelis that the world doesn’t care about the murder of Jews. So, supplying Palestinians with weapons is just a terrible idea. Not because Israel should be annexing Palestinian territory, but because Israelis will never trust any peace negotiations while attacks on civilians are ongoing.

Yup, it is widely seen that Israel is quite unique in the world as the only country with nuclear weapons, not as a deterrent against the possibility of a nuclear attack, but as viable weapons in a conventional war. A truly deplorable nuclear weapons doctrine so thank you for highlighting it thois.

Israel has them as a deterrent. They are a doomsday weapon, they ensure that any country that defeated Israel would also be destroyed. They aren’t intended to be used as a battlefield weapon in the way that NATO and Warsaw pact tactical weapons were.

So it’s better to let apartheid continue unabated and unchallenged?

So it’s better to let apartheid continue unabated and unchallenged?

This thread spilled over from the Ukraine thread. People asked why Palestine is different from Ukraine and why the West isn’t supplying Palestinian fighters with weapons. The two situations are not the same. Ukraine has a very good chance of forcing Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory if they are supplied with weapons. They are also the unambiguous victim in that war and are not deliberately targeting civilians as part of their strategy. The situation in Palestine is not as simple, the Palestinian territories aren’t a formal state. There are multiple armed groups operating there and there is a strategy to deliberately target civilians.

Western democracies are not going to supply weapons to non-state groups that deliberately target Israeli civilians. That’s pretty much it. That has to stop before anything else is going to happen.

Israel has them as a deterrent

Not as a deterrent to nuclear war – you have just admitted it yourself that Israel would use nuclear weapons in a conventional war.

And a deterrent is only effective if it is publicised – who has ever heard of a judge passing a sentence as a deterrent but insisting that it is not reported in the media?

Israel won’t even admit to having nuclear weapons, never mind flaunting them.

What is clear is that nothing is going to be possible while people think that indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians are acceptable.

But at the same time it’s fine for Israel to bomb apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shoot children, nurses, journalists, drive bulldozers over peace activists and so on ad nauseam. Yes – it all makes sense now.

People asked why Palestine is different from Ukraine and why the West isn’t supplying Palestinian fighters with weapons

Not exactly. People (or me, anyway) asked why it is that Ukrainians are seen as the victims and given unlimited support, whereas the Palestinians are seen as the villains and their murderers excused. Your contributions to this thread have provided ample evidence of this phenomenon

And a deterrent is only effective if it is publicised

They aren’t officially acknowledged. Everyone knows Israel has them. That suits everyone. If Israel officially acknowledged them, the other countries in the region couldn’t pretend Israel didn’t have them and they would be under intense political pressure to get them too. That would trigger a nuclear arms race which every country knows would be a catastrophe. Once a Muslim country got nukes, there would be constant pressure from hot-heads to use them to destroy Israel.

The other countries are clearly not thrilled about Israel having them but they understand that Israel will only use them in response to an existential threat to Israel. Much safer for everyone to go along with the pretense that they don’t exist than to have a nuclear arms race.

whereas the Palestinians are seen as the villains and their murderers excused.

Ordinary Palestinians are seen as the victims caught in a terrible conflict. The Palestinians who launch rockets at Israeli cities aren’t seen as the victims. They are committing war crimes. The West is not going to supply weapons to them because of that.

So thols, since you chose not to answer the question regarding apartheid (and misrepresented the nature of this thread), is it safe to say that you yourself support apartheid?

Ordinary Palestinians are seen as the victims caught in a terrible conflict.

Clearly not, or the e.g. Palestinian-American journalist recently murdered by the Israelis would have been avenged by the US.

They are committing war crimes. The West is not going to supply weapons to them because of it

But, as previously noted, it’s OK to supply the bombs that Israel drops on children.

They aren’t officially acknowledged. Everyone knows Israel has them. That suits everyone.

What do you mean it suits everyone? It very obviously does not suit everyone.

And what sort of duplicitous regime has a secret nuclear weapons programme? One which treats international law and UN Resolutions with complete contempt. Dispite your absurd claim that Israel studiously commits itself to complying with international law.

Palestinians are probably a bit like the Native Americans in that regard…

Sad, but true.

Have been boycotting Isreal ever since I can remember. Have a look at the country of origin of your peppers, tomatoes and other veg. Surprising amount comes from there.

Israelis I’ve met have been mostly fascist Tuesdays…. Actually, I met one girl and she was ashamed about the conduct of her country. The rest seem to be indoctrinated.

As I’m now officially German that probably makes me a nazi.

Now get off my allotment.

why it is that Ukrainians are seen as the victims and given unlimited support

The support given to Ukraine has been very much “limited”. Substantial, but limited. Why have other countries limited what kind of help they will supply? Because Russia is a nuclear power.

But, as previously noted, it’s OK to supply the bombs that Israel drops on children.

Israel has lawyers who have looked carefully at what is legal and not legal (which is not the same as moral or wise). It is legal to target sites used to launch, store, or manufacture weapons. If one combatant side parks a missile launcher at a hospital, that missile launcher is a legitimate target. The responsibility for that lies with the side who put the missile launcher there. This means that the side who uses human shields are in the wrong, not the side that attacks a weapons facility.

I think Israel is being extremely stupid here. They have lawyers pointing to what is legal but ignoring the optics that hospitals and schools are being bombed. They think they are being clever but they are just being stupid.

However, that’s why nobody will supply weapons to Palestinians. The Palestinian strategy is to deliberately target Israeli citizens. The Israeli strategy is to edge right up to the legal grey zone of what is allowed which gives them just enough plausible deniability that other countries will complain but won’t cut ties. The Palestinian policy of indiscriminately attacking Israeli citizens is not helping Palestinians, it’s making it much easier for Israel to deflect criticism.

For heavens sake stop talking rubbish. As I said before, all you’re doing is being a textbook example of a person excusing anything Israel does.

For heavens sake stop talking rubbish. As I said before, all you’re doing is being a textbook example of a person excusing anything Israel does.

Not at all. Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territory is one of the major obstacles to any peace deal. Reversing that is the only way that any peace deal can work. Another major obstacle is Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. Israel is not going to accept any peace treaty with groups that advocate the destruction of Israel and attacks on Israeli civilians. Sending weapons to groups that attack Israeli civilians will just make things worse. That’s why the West will not do that, it’s a terrible idea, all it would do is get more Palestinians killed and turn every Israeli against any peace deal.

If you say things like this, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

DrJ
Free Member
Maybe if the US supplied Palestine with tanks and HIMARS the Palestinians would not be reduced to attacking civilians. Note also that the attacks on civilians produce far fewer casualties than “surgical” attacks on Palestinians.

Sending weapons to groups that attack Israeli civilians will just make things worse.

But it’s OK to send weapons to groups that attack Palestinian civilians. Double standard noted.

Let’s put it another way. Which specific Palestinian groups would you advise sending weapons to with confidence that they would only be used to attack military targets and wouldn’t be passed on to Iran, Russia, or China to reverse engineer the technology? Western countries aren’t going to just parachute crates of advanced weapons to random Palestinians, they need to know exactly who they are supplying. So, who do you recommend?

I’m not advising sending any weapons to anyone. I’m pointing out that what Palestinians can do is limited by their inaccurate weaponry on the battlefield, and by the refusal of Israel to make any meaningful attempt to end their policy of brutal subjugation. I’m also pointing out the double standard vis a vis Ukraine.

DrJ
Free Member
I’m not advising sending any weapons to anyone.

Guess your account was hacked then.

DrJ
Free Member
Maybe if the US supplied Palestine with tanks and HIMARS the Palestinians would not be reduced to attacking civilians. Note also that the attacks on civilians produce far fewer casualties than “surgical” attacks on Palestinians.

And the silence regarding apartheid continues…

So thols, since you chose not to answer the question regarding apartheid (and misrepresented the nature of this thread), is it safe to say that you yourself support apartheid?

No, but your reading compehension was maybe hacked.

Maybe if the US supplied Palestine with tanks and HIMARS I nail your bollocks to a tree the Palestinians would not be reduced to attacking civilians. you’ll stop spouting nonsense.

I’m not actually advocating shutting you up in this manner.

So, we agree. Sending weapons to Palestinians would be spectacularly stupid. That’s why the West doesn’t do it.