News/Current Affairs thread

[JLM]

“Big powers act outside of that and their allies protect them” is a huge motivator for much of the protesting you seem to be critical of though. 

Again I refute the claim that campaigning for Israel to stop the war crimes you just agreed they’re committing, is equivalent to asking them to do nothing to protect their civilians. Israel and their remaining enablers claim that it is, the rest of the world doesn’t agree. Accepting Netenyahu’s framing of the issue when he himself is a habitual liar and leader of a far right party, and has a convicted terrorist with a rabid hatred of Palestinians as his minister of national security is not something I can do. 

And once again, Israel are the occupying superpower. They control Gaza’s airspace, maritime borders, movement of goods and people, currency, electricity, phone networks… I find it extremely difficult to believe that this scorched earth approach is their only recourse. 

We shouldn’t campaign against superpowers committing war crimes because they’ll do it anyway? I guess. I don’t think the marches will fix anything but I still think that’s s very bleak view to take on people showing their humanity. 

Edited January 15 by JLM

[d-d-d-dAz]

14 minutes ago, JLM said:

“Big powers act outside of that and their allies protect them” is a huge motivator for much of the protesting you seem to be critical of though. 

Again I refute the claim that campaigning for Israel to stop the war crimes you just agreed they’re committing, is equivalent to asking them to do nothing to protect their civilians. Israel and their remaining enablers claim that it is, the rest of the world doesn’t agree. Accepting Netenyahu’s framing of the issue when he himself is a habitual liar and leader of a far right party, and has a convicted terrorist as his minister of national security is not something I can do. 

And once again, Israel are the occupying superpower. They control Gaza’s airspace, maritime borders, movement of goods and people, currency, electricity, phone networks… I find it extremely difficult to believe that this scorched earth approach is their only recourse. 

We shouldn’t campaign against superpowers committing war crimes because they’ll do it anyway? I mean I guess. I don’t think the marches will fix anything but I still think that’s s very bleak view to take on people showing their humanity. 

Israel aren't a superpower, and that's quite an important distinction - Israel are actually a fairly middling power, an extension of Western civilization, reliant on the US superpower for patronage and support. The decline of that US hegemony, the emergence of China and Russia as plausible counterbalances, and the emboldment of Iran is precisely why this issue has flared up again (and in much more brutal fashion); Israeli power is seen at it's lowest in generations, the US don't have the leverage they once did to calm tensions and the region is becoming something all actors are using as a proxy through which to pursue their own agendas. 

I absolutely think people should be free to protest, but calling for an immediate ceasefire isn't a policy position, it's a slogan.

The story of the world is the story of international relations, and the story of international relations is how the shifting tectonic plates of power affect individuals. This is a huge moment in world history, generally, as American power is waning (I don't buy the 150 year hegemony cycle that a lot of people within IR seem to), and there is both a giant game of tug-of-war happening between the major challengers to US power to become the *next* superpower, if you like (Russia, China primarily, the EU to an extent) and then there are these instances, where people that used to feel secure under the protectorate of America have to start planning for what comes next, and are trying to arrange their regional balance of power in their favour.

Also, on a far less bloody and horrific scale, it was why Brexit was such an absolutely fucking stupid idea as the next 50 years of our lives will be majorly disrupted by the jockeying and jostling for position by major powers, and rather than have a seat at the table of a big power, we've allowed ourselves to become a secondary concern, who's only role is trying to pick which horse we should hop on the back of.

Edited January 15 by d-d-d-dAz

[Loki]

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

There is conflict again now because Israel feel threatened by Iran's growing influence and the US' waning influence.

I think possibly more the move towards detente between Israel and Saudi Arabia threatened Iran's influence, and so Hamas was ordered to do something awful to derail that.  That attack came literally in the middle of the signing of a treaty IIRC, which was successfully scuppered.

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

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.

Yeah.  My personal issue with that is that I'm not convinced the Saudis are actually more palatable than the Iranians.  My brother works out there and whilst there is a lot of international smoke signals about modernising/democratising etc it's not really happening at any speed.  MBS is just a different coloured hat to the Ayatollah.  So what we are really doing is picking a side in a long-running Islamic feud, which doesn't seem wise.

Not at all an expert in this region but I've always thought that Iran might actually make a better potential ally, based on the fact that they at least have a history of democracy and Western institutions - back in the 60s Tehran was very pluralistic and international.  Whereas Saudi has always been a brutal feudalist society.

[organizedkaos]

12 hours ago, BigJag said:

A quite succinct piece on Israeli settler actions.

I'm sorry but do you honestly believe that Bath video is somehow helping or offering some understanding to the conversation? I'm not actually quite sure it was intentionally posted given it seems attached to a potentially more meaningful video?

But regardless it absolute trash..   I know someone acting like they're a government and being all nonsensical makes for funny viral videos but in the middle of a conversation trying to deal with some degree of nuance in this horrible situation why would adding a completely reductionist "The Jews arbitrarily and unilaterally decided to take Isreal cos of old history" seem like it's aiding the conversation? I disagree fully with the genocide in Gaza but I also think it behoves us to try and understand the situation properly?  Ignoring the reasons why it happened along with the part the international community played is at best ignorant and worst willfully misleading (and in that videos case incredibly hypocritical coming from a British mouth)

Edited January 15 by organizedkaos

[d-d-d-dAz]

34 minutes ago, Loki said:

I think possibly more the move towards detente between Israel and Saudi Arabia threatened Iran's influence, and so Hamas was ordered to do something awful to derail that.  That attack came literally in the middle of the signing of a treaty IIRC, which was successfully scuppered.

Yeah.  My personal issue with that is that I'm not convinced the Saudis are actually more palatable than the Iranians.  My brother works out there and whilst there is a lot of international smoke signals about modernising/democratising etc it's not really happening at any speed.  MBS is just a different coloured hat to the Ayatollah.  So what we are really doing is picking a side in a long-running Islamic feud, which doesn't seem wise.

Not at all an expert in this region but I've always thought that Iran might actually make a better potential ally, based on the fact that they at least have a history of democracy and Western institutions - back in the 60s Tehran was very pluralistic and international.  Whereas Saudi has always been a brutal feudalist society.

I think on the first point, it's different sticks of celery in the same soup but yes i'd agree with that. I think Saudi Arabia and Israel were normalising relations as part of Israel's goal of shifting the balance of power in the region, downwind of the decline in US power, and Saudi were playing their part as they believe they can be a bridge between the various major powers that emerge in the wake of the end of US hegemony. In many ways, Saudi see themselves as becoming the world superpower by the backdoor, by being the gobetween for the US, Russia and China.

Iran don't really share that view of a passive, puppeteering Middle East, and want the ME to be a much more aggressive force in International Relations and disrupted that process accordingly.

On the last point, I think the Saudi's are currently a more likely ally because of their willingness to open their economy. Any alliance would be predicated on the West, or anyone, not trying too hard to influence their internal politics - which is where I think people will struggle. That said, there is a strand of liberal internationalist thought that thinks liberalisation happens not down the barrel of the gun, but through the process of opening your economy and would argue that Saudi either will have to accept that eventually, or turn into a more Iran-like force, rejecting 'modernity' and embracing the anti-West forces more closely.

I think the Obama administration, on balance, shared your view of the region, hence the Iran nuclear deal, but that was blown up by Trump, and the lack of any real meaningful support for the Iranian's from Canada, the EU, us or Aus/NZ probably sealed our fate with Iran for another generation.

I tend to think Saudi's are the short term answer, but I probably do share the belief that eventually - by opening up their economy - the population may start to ask questions of their system, which they can't answer and that will probably be the end of any partnership. China have managed their emergent Middle Class pretty well though, so maybe there's a lesson there. I dunno. I think that's probably 'tomorrows problem', and the Saudi's are the prize relationship everyone's fighting for at the minute.

Edited January 15 by d-d-d-dAz

[Keith Houchen]

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

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?

Any CEASEFIRE (no idea why you keep capitalising that) that is being called for is just the beginning. To use an oft seen phrase, “Stop killing people, you twats” is the launchpad for diplomacy and peace. 
 

And this didn’t begin on October 7th. I’ll reiterate my earlier point of how any Israeli violence is characterised as retaliation to Palestinian aggression whereas Palestinian violence  is never framed this way. So I’ll turn your question around. What happens when Israel continues its decades long apartheid and murder / genocide / ethnic cleansing? Would retaliation to that be justifiable? 
 

Objecting to innocent people being slaughtered, regardless of which side they’re on, isn’t controversial, it’s the human response. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

14 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Any CEASEFIRE (no idea why you keep capitalising that) that is being called for is just the beginning. To use an oft seen phrase, “Stop killing people, you twats” is the launchpad for diplomacy and peace. 
 

And this didn’t begin on October 7th. I’ll reiterate my earlier point of how any Israeli violence is characterised as retaliation to Palestinian aggression whereas Palestinian violence  is never framed this way. So I’ll turn your question around. What happens when Israel continues its decades long apartheid and murder / genocide / ethnic cleansing? Would retaliation to that be justifiable? 
 

Objecting to innocent people being slaughtered, regardless of which side they’re on, isn’t controversial, it’s the human response. 

I'm capitalising because i'm not actually talking about sober discussions of how a real, meaningful ceasefire could work. I'm talking primarily about people who deal in slogan's, not actually thinking about what they're asking for or how it works.

To your second question, retaliation is the rational response yes. It's a war. It's always been a war, and for various reasons, there's been periods of protracted 'peace'. It's a war that unfortunately pits a military strong nation against a small group of radical ideologues, with a lot of innocent people in the middle. But it's still a war, and if Hamas started firing on Israel today, i'm not sure Israel could clutch their pearls at the UN.

I agree with your latter point, too. 

But I don't think an immediate ceasefire solves any problems, nor is it as easy as saying Israel just need to 'stop killing people' for there to be a launchpad for peace, as the stated position of Hamas is death to all Israeli's and that there can never be peace. If this was happening in the UK, there'd be vast swathes of people who would want the UK government to keep killing until there was no one left to threaten their lives too.

I don't think there will be a ceasefire. It's not going to happen, but there may be more humanitarian pauses until something shifts on the backend and the various actors can agree on a new balance of power in the region that the Israeli's deem acceptable. Hopefully before a second Trump Presidency.

The killing will probably only stop when Israel no longer feel they need to kill any more people, or there's no one left to kill. And a Republican White House, in trying to reassert Western dominance in as sledgehammer-y way as possible will probably enable and encourage the latter.

Edited January 15 by d-d-d-dAz

[Chris B]

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

If this was happening in the UK, there'd be vast swathes of people who would want the UK government to keep killing until there was no one left to threaten their lives too.

Terrorist attacks certainly happened in the UK with a close neighbour (and a disputed territory). Those terrorists blended in with the civilians as well. While I'm sure there were some people more in favour of a more aggressive approach in Ireland, I don't think it was as widespread as you're suggesting. But ceasefire was, inevitably, the only approach that could work.

I'm not generally in favour of comparing the two situations, as I think the issue in Palestine is more complex, especially when you zoom out at the wider geographic and cultural groups. But the UK is definitely an area with experience in dealing with a terrorist group that hide within civilian groups.

[Keith Houchen]

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

But I don't think an immediate ceasefire solves any problems, nor is it as easy as saying Israel just need to 'stop killing people' for there to be a launchpad for peace

I’m getting the impression you think that I think the Israelis are the only ones who should stop killing people. This isn’t the case. 
 

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

I'm talking primarily about people who deal in slogan's, not actually thinking about what they're asking for or how it works.

I’m asking for an end to the slaughter of innocent people. Not much to unpick there. 

[Carbomb]

10 minutes ago, organizedkaos said:

But regardless it absolute trash..   I know someone acting like they're a government and being all nonsensical makes for funny viral videos but in the middle of a conversation trying to deal with some degree of nuance in this horrible situation why would adding a completely reductionist "The Jews arbitrarily and unilaterally decided to take Isreal cos of old history" seem like it's aiding the conversation? I disagree fully with the genocide in Gaza but I also think it behoves us to try and understand the situation properly?  Ignoring the reasons why it happened along with the part the international community played is at best ignorant and worst willfully misleading (and in that videos case incredibly hypocritical coming from a British mouth)

It's also equally reductionist to try to make out that that is the reason why people are protesting against Israel's actions. It plays into the Zionist far-right's attempts to colour the narrative as an anti-semitic attempt to de-legitimise Israel's right to exist, which too many people buy into.

In almost every other part of the world, any time a country commits atrocities against a smaller, weaker population, we don't get a highly-developed narrative and discourse of justification for it. China in Tibet - it's unequivocally wrong, even after we take into account the depredations and corruption of the theocratic Tibetan government against its population, including an entrenched system of virtual serfdom which saw a stream of children sent to monasteries to be indentured and raped by the monks, amongst many other horrendous things. Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya is pretty much considered to be abhorrent, even though a big part of the Myanmar government's motivation is that there were instances of radicalisation and terror attacks committed by nascent Daesh or Al-Qaeda cells in that population. In both these cases, we recognise that the history of it should have no bearing on the actions of those governments on the civilian populations. But because Israel is a Western ally and a spearhead for Western interests in the ME, not to mention a physical representation of the Christian West's penitence for the Holocaust, it always gets a pass.

Put it this way: if a Tibetan independence paramilitary group led an attack against a Chinese civilian population in the way Hamas did, and China responded the way Israel has, the howls of genocide from Western voices and from most of the world's would be immediate and deafening, followed by some attempts at a sanction, the way it's supposed to be. 

Even if one accepts for the sake of argument that every action taken in the creation of Israel was justified, that does not justify the decades of oppression of the Palestinians since 1967, or the continued encroachment of illegal settlements that the West has refused to do anything about. It's all very well going on about Hamas like they and the Palestinian people are interchangeable, but Hamas is what you get when the big powers frequently and without fail side either side with Israel or just ignore or gloss over its depredations. People vote for the ones who shout loudest about standing up for them, and even more for those who are seen to be doing it; as far as the Palestinian people are concerned, Hamas are the lesser of two evils, because they're the only people who have ever been seen to stand up for them. I don't want them there any more than I want Al-Qaeda, Daesh, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Saudi tyranny, or Iran's theocratic regime to have any kind of power, but when their very lives are at stake, why would they listen to anyone from a world that has given them nothing over those have at least promised them something (and have been seen to try to deliver that)?

 

Ultimately, I would argue the history is now largely irrelevant. When a conflict goes on for long enough, it stops being about what it was originally about, and then becomes about who killed whose family.

I don't know what the solution is - anybody claiming to have it right off the top of their head is a liar or deluded - but I'm fairly confident that the first step begins with a ceasefire. As for a road to peace, the first step has always been incumbent on Israel and the West: stop the illegal settlers and remove them. They are the biggest problem - as long as Israel continues to abrogate the borders that they themselves agreed to in 1967, and the US continues to refuse to bring pressure to bear on Israel to stop it, the Palestinians will not consider any treaty with them to be worth the paper it's printed on, which will cause them to continue in their resistance, which will cause Israel to keep sending its forces into Gaza and the West Bank to harass, beat, kidnap, and murder ordinary Palestinians, which will cause Palestinians, particularly Gazans, to continue to vote for Hamas, which will cause the aggression to continue, leading to more atrocities like 7th October.

[Keith Houchen]

5 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

As for a road to peace, the first step has always been incumbent on Israel and the West: stop the illegal settlers and remove them

I think this emphasises how this isn’t just about removing Hamas. There is no Hamas in the West Bank yet Israel continually commit atrocities in the West Bank. 

[JLM]

Quote

Even if one accepts for the sake of argument that every action taken in the creation of Israel was justified, that does not justify the decades of oppression of the Palestinians since 1967, or the continued encroachment of illegal settlements that the West has refused to do anything about. It's all very well going on about Hamas like they and the Palestinian people are interchangeable, but Hamas is what you get when the big powers frequently and without fail side either side with Israel or just ignore or gloss over its depredations. People vote for the ones who shout loudest about standing up for them, and even more for those who are seen to be doing it; as far as the Palestinian people are concerned, Hamas are the lesser of two evils, because they're the only people who have ever been seen to stand up for them. I don't want them there any more than I want Al-Qaeda, Daesh, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Saudi tyranny, or Iran's theocratic regime to have any kind of power, but when their very lives are at stake, why would they listen to anyone from a world that has given them nothing over those have at least promised them something (and have been seen to try to deliver that)?

“The oppressed people with no right to self determination being kept in an open air prison in their own country by a fanatical far right regime went and elected TERRORISTS, what is the fanatical far right regime supposed to do?” 

Again I feel the need to clarify I don’t condone civilian murder by Hamas, but it’s not just a conflict between a militarily strong nation and a group of radical idealogues, is it? 
 

Sure, Israel and Hamas are both bad guys. In the “conflict” between Israel and the Palestinian people though, I think it’s ludicrous to try and both-sides it and, as Carbomb says, if it wasn’t Israel committing these atrocities it would barely even be a discussion. 
 

 

 

[SuperBacon]

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

I'm capitalising because i'm not actually talking about sober discussions of how a real, meaningful ceasefire could work. I'm talking primarily about people who deal in slogan's, not actually thinking about what they're asking for or how it works.

Again, I think this is really disingenuous and disparaging to a lot of people.

You're basically generalising millions of people with quite a condescending tone, whether you mean it or not.

[Carbomb]

For clarity, just so there's no confusion: I recognise the right of Israel to exist, without question. After everything the Jews have gone through over the past two millennia, culminating in one of the very worst things that can befall any group of people, I do not begrudge them their right to say "We cannot trust anyone, and we need our own place where no-one can ever do this to us ever again". 

What the Israeli government has done to the Palestinians for the last several decades is not that. 

As I've mentioned earlier in the thread, there are many Israelis who oppose what their government is doing, and there are many who have always opposed it, because what they're enacting isn't the simple creation of a Jewish state, but essentially the Israeli far-right's Jewish supremacism.

A pre-weirdo era Christopher Hitchens supplied the perfect answer to the usual question: "I recognise the right of Israel to exist within its borders - the problem is they've been persistent in refusing to confirm what those borders are".

[organizedkaos]

Oh agreed on all points, my issue there was particularly with reducing the idea to a rather cartoonish version a more complicated conversations is already ongoing. Not suggesting everyone is being ignorant to the history of Israel but also not suggesting that explanations for Israel's actions could any way be an endorsement (or an attempt to excuse)