Hamas attack on Israel

[Duke of Marmalade]

No I don't think so. I think the monster Israel fed has bitten back.

Israel are making a release of the hostages as a condition for a ceasefire. Isn't that reasonable? Why do Hamas not grab that? Why do these demonstrations calling for a ceasefire not also demand the release of the hostages?
I note that we have really identified ourselves in Israeli eyes as an "enemy". We can be grateful that our leaders didn't do the opposite and pointedly support Israel. Then we would be at serious risk of a terrorist attack.

 

[Purple]

Hamas has been a useful tool for Israel, allowing it to divide Palestinians. Hamas acted as a counter to the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu's strategy has been to keep Hamas alive so he could use them to weaken the Palestinian Authority.

Yes, as I noted above, it's not an uncommon view that the policy of Netanyahu's government(s) has been to keep them at each others throats. That said the secularist Fata and the Islamic Fundamentalist Hamas were never going to be friends. Thinking that they were allies would be as stupid as thinking Saddam Hussein was as ally of Al Qaeda...

The only way to stop Hamas in the medium term is to show the Palestinian people some hope for the future.

No, there is no hope for the Palestinian people as long as Hamas are in charge. That has to change first.

Raining bombs down on them only drives people into despair.

See that's the narrative that I don't accept. Israel could certainly be behaving better but they are not "raining bombs down" on Gaza as that would mean indiscriminately bombing them. They simply are not doing that. They are targeting military and strategic targets without, in my opinion, taking anywhere near enough account of the civilian casualties that will be caused but they are not engaged in indiscriminate bombing.

 

[Sophrosyne]

The only way to stop Hamas in the medium term is to show the Palestinian people some hope for the future.

Raining bombs down on them only drives people into despair.

I have heard that said, but the world can’t parent Palestinians.

In the 75 years since the creation of the State of Israel, they have been portrayed or portrayed themselves as helpless victims, while at the same time harbouring terrorists whose sole purpose is the obliteration of Israel and rally like-minded terrorists to do the same. Hamas is just the latest.

It is up to them to accept that Israel exists and move on. Most Arab states have, with the exception of backward-looking Iran.

They are either serious about an incorrupt and credible self-governing State of Palestine or they are not.

If they were and borders were agreed, then Israeli settler encroachment would stop and blockades would be lifted.

If they were not, then they condemn themselves to destruction.

 

[cremeegg]

Why do these demonstrations calling for a ceasefire not also demand the release of the hostages?

In my opinion they certainly should.

 

[cremeegg]

It is up to them to accept that Israel exists and move on.

Why should they ? Because Israel has bigger guns? Other than that there is no reason why Palestinians should accept the existence of the state that drove them from their homes.

Let me quote David Ben Gurion, born in Plonsk about 50 miles NW of Warsaw, really he sums up the position very effectively.

Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

 

[Sophrosyne]

Why should they ? Because Israel has bigger guns? Other than that there is no reason why Palestinians should accept the existence of the state that drove them from their homes.

What would you have them do?

Continue to sacrifice their children to the consequences of the failed terrorism tactics of the last 75 years?

You say they need some hope for the future. But that cannot be the false hope that Israel will somehow cease to exist.

If they are to have any hope, they must aspire to other ideals for their future.

 

[Purple]

Why should they ? Because Israel has bigger guns?

Because we all have to live in the real world.

Other than that there is no reason why Palestinians should accept the existence of the state that drove them from their homes.

That's a totally inaccurate and grossly simplistic reading of history.
In summary:

There is no monopoly of right or wrong on either side. There is no clear historical claim that puts one side above the other. There is a history of hatred and violence which is unfettered by any sense of humanity because both sides are fighting for an absolute victory in the belief that their actions, any actions, are justified by a mandate from heaven to do what they must.

It is worth reminding the Israelis that their State was founded in blood and that the people who became their leading politicians conducted their own massacres . Menachem Began was the leader of Irgun, the Jewish extremist group that carried out the Deir Yassin massacre in which at least 107 villagers, including men women and children, were murdered in a reprisal attack. Menachem Began was the founder of the Likud Party and was Prime Minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983.

 

[Purple]

Israel are making a release of the hostages as a condition for a ceasefire. Isn't that reasonable? Why do Hamas not grab that?

Because Hamas want as many dead Palestinian children as possible. It is their blood sacrifice for the glory of the cause. That's been a thing forever.

At least nutters like Patrick Pierce, obsessed with blood sacrifice and of the opinion that the million dead young men in France and Belgium in 1915-1916 was a glorious thing, weren't actively throwing children into the meat grinder.

 

[Purple]

It is good to see a reasonable and balanced response by a group of university employees in response to the childish and hysterical letter from their colleagues last week.

Edit: Link

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

It is good to see a reasonable and balanced response by a group of university employees in response to the childish and hysterical letter from their colleagues last week.

That was truly brilliant.
I couldn't believe Saturday's letter from the good professors and 600 others including a guy out of Ulysses who was an anti-semite. They depicted the Hamas massacre as "some criminal acts against civilians"; hey, no more than you would expect in O'Connell Street of a Saturday night. On the other hand they accused Israel of genocide, 11 times.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

Why should they ? Because Israel has bigger guns? Other than that there is no reason why Palestinians should accept the existence of the state that drove them from their homes.

Let me quote David Ben Gurion, born in Plonsk about 50 miles NW of Warsaw, really he sums up the position very effectively.

Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

Very interesting quote from BG. I guess Cromwell said something similar to his mate. The following description of the situation in 17th century Ulster has very interesting parallels here.

The Portadown massacre took place in November 1641 at Portadown, County Armagh, during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Irish Catholic rebels, likely under the command of Toole McCann, killed about 100 British Protestant settlers by forcing them off the bridge into the River Bann and shooting those who tried to swim to safety. The settlers were being marched east from a prison camp at Loughgall. This was the biggest massacre of Protestants during the rebellion, and one of the bloodiest during the Irish Confederate Wars. The Portadown massacre, and others like it, terrified Protestants in Ireland and Great Britain, and were used to justify the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and later to lobby against Catholic rights.

Note that the Hamas massacre is on a different scale to this 17th century barbarism.
You really have to look toward some plausible happy ending (well maybe not happy but at least on a par with the outcome of the Protestant plantation of the 17th century.) That ending surely involves a two state solution. Hamas will never accept that and have vowed to repeat the barbarity until Israel is wiped off the map, or until they themselves are wiped off the map. Complex situation but I am for Hamas being wiped out.

 

[Purple]

Very interesting quote from BG. I guess Cromwell said something similar to his mate. The following description of the situation in 17th century Ulster has very interesting parallels here.

It's not a quote from Ben Gurion.
It's a synopsis of what he is alleged to have said in a conversation with Nahum Goldmann, one of his fiercest critics.

Ben Gurion was a moderate during the Arab-Jewish revolt in 1936-1937 in which he supported a policy of non-retaliation (unlike people like Menachem Began a decade later). He was also a secularist and a socialist (and former communist). He was a supporter of a Jewish country rather than one shared between Jews and Arabs because he saw the way Jews were treated in Arab countries around the rest of the Middle East. He supported the 1948 Mandated Palestine partition in which there was to be both Jewish and Arab countries.

 

[Firefly]

"Dáil will vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich"

Dáil will vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich

The Dáil will hold a vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich after the Social Democrats tabled a motion seeking to oust the diplomat.

www.independent.ie

I would have thought the Russian ambassador would have been expelled first...

 

[odyssey06]

"Dáil will vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich"

Dáil will vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich

The Dáil will hold a vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich after the Social Democrats tabled a motion seeking to oust the diplomat.

www.independent.ie

I would have thought the Russian ambassador would have been expelled first...

Agreed. Russian state media has been dog whistling military threats to Ireland. Israel has done no such thing.

And we, through the EU, have a formal political treaty of association with Ukraine.

 

[cremeegg]

Agreed. Russian state media has been dog whistling military threats to Ireland. Israel has done no such thing.

Ah now !

Ireland orders Israeli diplomat out of embassy over forged passports

Move follows alleged Irish passport misuse in killing of Hamas official in Dubai

www.theguardian.com

Expelling ambassadors is a juvenile idea.

 

[Purple]

"Dáil will vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich"

Dáil will vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich

The Dáil will hold a vote next week on expelling Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich after the Social Democrats tabled a motion seeking to oust the diplomat.

www.independent.ie

I would have thought the Russian ambassador would have been expelled first...

Yea, and what about the Saudi's and the Iranians who between them have killed nearly 400,000 people in their proxy war in Yemen?
Where are the protests in the streets about that war? Where are the calls for boycotts of goods and expulsions of diplomats for the well over 100,000 dead Muslim children there? I haven't seen any Marxist politicians in Ireland wearing Yemenis scarfs or spouting ignorant racists nonsense about Saudi or Iran in the way I've heard one disgorge himself about Israel.

Anyone, here on this site or elsewhere, who isn't at least as exercised and engaged in that conflict as they are about the Hamas-Israel war really has to sit themselves down and ask themselves some serious questions about whether they really care about injustice in the Middle East or whether they are just anti-Semitic.

I presume the same people, if they are old enough, were all over the Congolese War from 1998-2003. Never heard of it? Oh, well it was the biggest war since the Second World War with 5.6 million dead and 2 million displaced. But there were no Jews doing any of the killing so it doesn't count.

I presume all the bleating protestors are also aware that more people have died in the armed conflict in Myanmar this year than in the Hamas-Israel war. What's that Comrade, you'd forgotten that there was a conflict there?
What's Their opinion on the conflict in the Maghreb? What about the war in Sudan? Both of those have seen higher casualties this year than the Israel-Hamas war. Who are the good guys and bad guys in those conflicts? If the Ethiopian Civil War kicks off again who should we blame? That little doozy killed over 600,000 people, 100,000 last year. Who did they protest against during that one? Do they know where the Ethiopian Embassy is? Do they know if they have one here? (Yes, it's in Baggott Street) Who should we boycott? Which ambassadors should we expel?

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

Yea, and what about the Saudi's and the Iranians who between them have killed nearly 400,000 people in their proxy war in Yemen?
Where are the protests in the streets about that war? Where are the calls for boycotts of goods and expulsions of diplomats for the well over 100,000 dead Muslim children there? I haven't seen any Marxist politicians in Ireland wearing Yemenis scarfs or spouting ignorant racists nonsense about Saudi or Iran in the way I've heard one disgorge himself about Israel.

Anyone, here on this site or elsewhere, who isn't at least as exorcised and engaged in that conflict as they are about the Hamas-Israel war really has to sit themselves down and ask themselves some serious questions about whether they really care about injustice in the Middle East or whether they are just anti-Semitic.

I presume the same people, if they are old enough, were all over the Congolese War from 1998-2003. Never heard of it? Oh, well it was the biggest war since the Second World War with 5.6 million dead and 2 million displaced. But there were no Jews doing any of the killing so it doesn't count.

I presume all the bleating protestors are also aware that more people have died in the armed conflict in Myanmar this year than in the Hamas-Israel war. What's that Comrade, you'd forgotten that there was a conflict there?
What's Their opinion on the conflict in the Maghreb? What about the war in Sudan? Both of those have seen higher casualties this year than the Israel-Hamas war. Who are the good guys and bad guys in those conflicts? If the Ethiopian Civil War kicks off again who should we blame? That little doozy killed over 600,000 people, 100,000 last year. Who did they protest against during that one? Do they know where the Ethiopian Embassy is? Do they know if they have one here? (Yes, it's in Baggott Street?) Who should we boycott? Which ambassadors should we expel?

You have highlighted a very weird contradiction here. And it is not just Boyd Barret who displays the syndrome. Yours truly had only a vague idea of the wars you describe (I presume it is not fake news). But I am not entirely to blame - these wars get scant coverage in our news media. It reminds me of the Northern Troubles. A mere bunfight in the scheme of things, yet it attracted the (western) World's attention. What we are seeing is a sort of supremacist attitude here. NI and Israel are civilised, those other folk having wars are barbarians. And Boyd Barret and Mary Lou is as guilty as the rest of us of this supremacist attitude. (I sort of doubt that they are actually anti semitic.) Hugging the Palestinian ambassador is really just supremacist condescension.

 

[Purple]

You have highlighted a very weird contradiction here. And it is not just Boyd Barret who displays the syndrome. Yours truly had only a vague idea of the wars you describe (I presume it is not fake news). But I am not entirely to blame - these wars get scant coverage in our news media. It reminds me of the Northern Troubles. A mere bunfight in the scheme of things, yet it attracted the (western) World's attention.

Yes, "Tribalism" is a word used by racists who are too stupid and/or lazy to understand the historical, ethnic, economic and political history and context of conflicts involving people who are darker skinned.

The first time I became aware of that was when a friend from Belfast said that the Rwandan Genocide was a result of tribalism. Now I can talk about the history of that region of Africa all day as it's a subject that fascinates me and it's as complex as any region anywhere but the sheer audacity and blindness of someone from Northern Ireland to claim any other conflict was tribal was staggering. Northern Ireland is the most tribal place I've ever been to.

What we are seeing is a sort of (not quite White) supremacy here. NI and Israel are civilised, those other folk having wars are barbarians. And Boyd Barret is as guilty as the rest of us of this Supremacist attitude. (I sort of doubt that he is actually anti semitic.)

Israel is seen as a Western Colonial power in the last of the colonial wars which are actually being fought by the colonialists. In the rest of the world the wars are fought by proxy; France in West Africa (and their complicity in the aforementioned Rwandan Genocide), The UK in East Africa, America just about everywhere.
This is the modern day version of Kipling's taking up the White Mans Burden, but while he was talking about the Americans in their colonial war with the Spanish over the control of the Philippines now it's selective moral outrage when the White Man doesn't Play the White Man. It's racist and nasty and disgusting.

 

[WizardDr]

Excellent article in the Irish Times today - sorry that its behind paywall (!)

In Gaza, one commodity is not in short supply: self-delusion

The mindlessness of appeals to Islamic jihad finds an echo in the farcical biblical inspiration for the ever-expanding Israeli seizure of the occupied territories, which belong to the Palestinians

www.irishtimes.com

 

[Purple]

On the nutters in the West Bank murdering Muslims and stealing their land, they have a mandate from God:

And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest inherit his land. Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz. And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.

— Deuteronomy 2:31-34

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.

— Deuteronomy 7:1-2

Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

— Deuteronomy 13:15

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee

— Deuteronomy 20:16-17

If you're a Christian then, obviously, you have to support the Jewish settlers as their God is your God and that's the the word of God from the Old Testament.

If you've an ounce of decency or compassion or humanity then you'll reject that sort of nonsense.