News/Current Affairs thread

[Loki]

25 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Anyone who thinks there is an easy answer to this, or it's as simple as the singular bad guys putting down their guns, is kidding themselves.

Going back to what I said at the very start of the thread also, there are no good guys in this current conflict, only bad guys really.  A ceasefire with no plan for a solution to even just the security situation in Gaza, achieves nothing barring a temporary cessation in killing, a cessation which might well increase the likelihood of more deaths in the future, so it's not even as simple as "stop killing".

There's no scenario under which Hamas are a partner in a sustainable peace.  They exist only to wage war on Israel.  But I do think that there is still a chance of a sustainable peace between Fatah and Israel, as there was a chance between PLO and Israel.  Just not with Netanyahu in charge in Israel.

What the details of that are, I've no idea.  It will involve eventually elections in Gaza and in West Bank,but how do you get to that?  At a very minimum you need to guarantee security in Gaza, and Israel has to commit to rolling back the illegal settlements in WB which have underpinned so much of the recent tensions.  The poor Gazans are paying the price really for what's been happening on the West Bank, as Gaza itself has been (relatively) untouched since 2016.

I keep returning to the thought that it requires an international, nominally neutral force present on the ground in Gaza.  And that, I guess, would have to be the UN.  But we're a million miles away from that atm.

Definitely no easy answers, and no simple questions either.

[d-d-d-dAz]

22 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Don't think I've seen anyone anywhere say that there is an easy answer to this.

Anyone saying/chanting CEASFIRE NOW and not fleshing out what that means in practice, or what they expect of Israel when it happens again (beyond 'just take it on the chin, lads'), is implicitly suggesting there's an easy answer.

Edited January 14 by d-d-d-dAz

[SuperBacon]

17 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Anyone saying/chanting CEASFIRE NOW and not fleshing out what that means in practice, or what they expect of Israel when it happens again (beyond 'just take it on the chin, lads'), is implicitly suggesting there's an easy answer.

I think that's an incredibly disingenuous way of looking at that to be honest with you.

[BigJag]

Unfortunately for Israel. The optics are that they are going way too far with their actions. It's not clear to anyone what they are planning to achieve. They keep shouting out that they are fighting Hamas. Yet we keep seeing civilian casualties. We keep hearing reprehensible rehetoric from Israeli hierarchy. A lot of what Israel is doing in other areas of the middle east is being masked by the current focus. 

Israel are allowing their enemy to be seen as the underdog. Not as an organisation that carried out atrocious acts in some bizarre attempt at revenge/instigation.

Nobody will win. Only innocents will suffer. 

[Keith Houchen]

41 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Anyone saying/chanting CEASFIRE NOW and not fleshing out what that means in practice, or what they expect of Israel when it happens again (beyond 'just take it on the chin, lads'), is implicitly suggesting there's an easy answer.

Wouldn’t be much of a catchy, easy chant if they did, to be fair. Plus it implies that those of us wanting a ceasefire want a ceasefire one way, we don’t. We want Hamas to fuck off as well. And also, should the Palestinians just take it on the chin again and again like they’ve been doing for decades? 
 

And do you know what? Those of us wanting a ceasefire don’t need to have the answers, we aren’t the diplomats, the politicians, the leaders, the lawyers. We just want innocent people to stop being killed. 

[BigJag]

A quite succinct piece on Israeli settler actions.

[JLM]

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Edited January 15 by JLM

[d-d-d-dAz]

10 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

And do you know what? Those of us wanting a ceasefire don’t need to have the answers, we aren’t the diplomats, the politicians, the leaders, the lawyers. We just want innocent people to stop being killed. 

But, to circle back to my original point, if Israel did agree to this CEASEFIRE NOW that lots of people are screaming for, would you support them carrying on where they left off if Hamas repeated the atrocities of October 7th?

Because if the answer is no, then you are implicitly asking a nation to accept that, sporadically, large numbers of their population will be attacked and killed.

Of course I support a ceasefire, but one that applies equally on both sides. And it doesn’t feel like most people want that. They want Israel to stop (and for good reason, obviously, as Loki said they’ve acted as just another bad guy in the conflict) and stop for good, regardless. That just isn’t going to happen. Israel, naturally, don’t really care about international howls of indignation, they care about Israeli’s.

To an Israeli, especially one living near Gaza, this is probably far less of a clear cut issue as they also have to contend with the possibility that they or their families could be next.

Edited January 15 by d-d-d-dAz

[BigJag]

The killing has to stop. I think we can all agree on that. Unfortunately there are too many idiots involved in the decision making for that to happen. Absolute despots on both sides. Peace agreements have been brokered before. Only to be scuppered by one element or another. Both sides seem intent on destroying eachother and themselves. 

 

[JLM]

A few things, reposting as I wanted to source some stuff rather than post an incoherent ramble at 2am. 
 

Firstly, asking for a ceasefire now is oversimplifying the issue, but suggesting that killing 20,000 civilians or doing nothing are the only two options isn’t?? 
 

One option Israel have is to kill every single Palestinian in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. They could kill carry out a full, less ambiguous genocide and ensure they definitely get the Hamas militants. We could agree that this is wrong even if we don’t have another perfect solution ready to go right? That’s what people on the streets asking for ceasefire are doing. 
 

We don’t know what the solution is, but it doesn’t mean we have to buy that Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza is the only option. Israel have infinitely more resources than Hamas. The October 7th attack succeeding has been at least partly attributed to a failure of their intelligence service, or a failure of their command to listen. They do have other options available. 153 nations backed the ceasefire, it’s not jut blue haired social justice warriors and lefty appeasing virtue signallers; much of the world views this as an atrocity and are calling it as such. 
 

The framing of Israel acting as “another bad guy” is a very biased take on the issue. Yes Hamas and Israel are both bad guys. However, in “Israel vs The Palestinian people” Israel have been by far THE bad guys.  Ethnic cleansing, committing apartheid, bombings, extrajudicial detentions, illegal invasions and occupations. 
 

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702

I certainly agree that Israel don’t care about international indignation. 

When we ask, “what should Israel do if it happens again?” Remember we are also asking “what is Israel supposed to do when the people living in the open air concentration camp in their own country created by Israel elects a regime that’s hostile to Israel?” 

There are many many things Israel could do or could stop doing to stop regimes like Hamas taking hold, but they’re run by far right lunatics who barely see the Palestinians as human beings. 
 

I know obviously it’s too late to stop Hamas being elected now, but I’m just wanting to keep expressing my frustration with this Western-centric framing that Israel (the occupying superpower) is just doing what it has to do and are purely acting in self defense. Other nations have and continue to deal with hostile neighbours and threats of terror attacks, and it has been possible to do so without the slaughter of civilians on this scale. Other nations have also carried out illegal and unjustifiable wars and atrocities under the banner of a war against terroir/terrorism and have been rightly condemned for it on the international stage. 
 
If Israel stopped committing genocide and Hamas attacked them again, I would not support Israel resuming the genocide. I agree they have to protect their civilians and I do not condone Hamas kidnapping and murdering civilians, but I don’t have to have another perfect solution ready to go )nobody does of course ) to refuse to buy that this is Israel’s only option. I am even less inclined to believe it’s their only option when it’s Netenyahu saying it is. Again, much of the world currently agrees. 

Edited January 15 by JLM

[BomberPat]

4 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Because if the answer is no, then you are implicitly asking a nation to accept that, sporadically, large numbers of their population will be attacked and killed.

Wait until you hear what Israel have been getting up to.

[d-d-d-dAz]

44 minutes ago, JLM said:

I know obviously it’s too late to stop Hamas being elected now, but I’m just wanting to keep expressing my frustration with this Western-centric framing that Israel (the occupying superpower) is just doing what it has to do and are purely acting in self defense. Other nations have and continue to deal with hostile neighbours and threats of terror attacks, and it has been possible to do so without the slaughter of civilians on this scale. Other nations have also carried out illegal and unjustifiable wars and atrocities under the banner of a war against terroir/terrorism and have been rightly condemned for it on the international stage. 
 
If Israel stopped committing genocide and Hamas attacked them again, I would not support Israel resuming the genocide. I agree they have to protect their civilians and I do not condone Hamas kidnapping and murdering civilians, but I don’t have to have another perfect solution ready to go )nobody does of course ) to refuse to buy that this is Israel’s only option. I am even less inclined to believe it’s their only option when it’s Netenyahu saying it is. Again, much of the world currently agrees. 

Israel definitely isn't just doing what it has to do, it's operating a scorched earth policy based on the presumption that Hamas hides behind civilian populations. Independent verifiers are somewhat mixed on whether that's true, but enough seem to think it is to make it a plausible claim.

It's the Gordian knot of international relations precisely because if you don't think loss of civilian life en masse is permissible, but Hamas use civilians as shields, then Israel can never act, but if Israel don't act then Israeli civilians will lose their lives. And, crucially, Hamas were elected on a platform of killing all Israeli's and Netanyahu was elected on a platform of responding to Hamas with maximum toughness and rejecting a two state solution. A ceasefire doesn't solve anything besides briefly changing the answer to the question 'which civilian lives are most at risk?'; and whilst we non-Israeli and non-Palestinian's can come up with our own answers to that question, internally the Israeli's think a single Israeli loss of life is unacceptable and the Palestinian's the same.

I suspect all roads to anything resembling a sustainable peace lead through Saudi Arabia, and trying to turn the balance of power in the Arab peninsula towards them and away from Iran. And I suspect a lot of us in the West are going to have to choke back our cynicism as the US and EU push to have the Saudi's become one of the key global allies of the West.

[BomberPat]

In no other context has the acceptable response to a bad actor using a civilian as a human shield been "well, better kill the civilian as well, then". Even if you take Israel at their word about what they're doing, they're still committing war crimes. 

[Chris B]

4 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Of course I support a ceasefire, but one that applies equally on both sides. And it doesn’t feel like most people want that.

What are you basing this on? I'm not seeing much support for terrorist activities. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

34 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

In no other context has the acceptable response to a bad actor using a civilian as a human shield been "well, better kill the civilian as well, then". Even if you take Israel at their word about what they're doing, they're still committing war crimes. 

Yeah, they probably are. I agree with that. But civilians always die in wars, and people just decide the amount that they think is acceptable, and currently Israeli maths are different to global maths, and international law is proving - again - to be based solely on consensus and there's not a lot you can do when big powers act outside of that, and their allies protect them.

Whilst the US, or the West, power in the Middle East was incontrovertible, a bumpy, unhappy 'peace' was maintained through fear of reprisals. But, now that the US is on the wane, Iran is ascendant and China and Russia are proving decent counter balances, both sides of the conflict feel emboldened to 'finish the job'.

And, until someone comes up with a solution for the Israeli's that guarantee's their own security and safety, a ceasefire isn't going to happen. That's all I'm saying.

@Chris B - the focus of the debate is on Israeli genocide, and CEASEFIRE filtered through a prism of them stopping what they're doing immediately. Very little thought is being given to what happens if they do, and Hamas go again. People are unilaterally asking for Israel to put down their arms - and my point is, that isn't really a ceasefire. A ceasefire, actually, would be predicated on both sides agreeing to a lasting peace - and if that's what people want, then they have to accept Israel will continue where they left off if Hamas do go again, as per their stated position.

There is no ceasefire, there has never been a ceasefire in the region; there have been strategic breaks in conflict based on realpolitik analysis of where the global power lies. There is conflict again now because Israel feel threatened by Iran's growing influence and the US' waning influence. Until the balance of power in the region is restored in a way that's acceptable to the Israeli's, there won't be a ceasefire - their current position is the only way they can restore that balance is by eradicating Hamas, but if the US can flip Saudi and the UAE, and move them closer to the West than they are the BRICS, then maybe that's the way you can find a resolution.

Edited January 15 by d-d-d-dAz