Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted January 30 Moderators Share Posted January 30 1 hour ago, BigJag said: It's interesting how there isn't any real discussion of what is happening over in the Middle East and all the events around it. There's plenty of points for discussion. Yet nobody really seems interested. Maybe there are too many points to discuss. News media and governments seem to want to ignore or denigrate any attempts at discussion. Not saying I know the best way to go about it. Maybe it should be just left alone and allowed to play out. That does seems to be what is happening.  1 hour ago, Keith Houchen said: The closer it is to home, the more people give a fuck about it. Keep making as much noise as possible, Jag.   What are you two actually on about? It's the single biggest news story going. It gets more coverage currently than the war in Ukraine which is much closer geographically and the article you've linked to is the top story on the bbc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 1 minute ago, Chest Rockwell said: What are you two actually on about About the general public, as Jag was saying people don’t seem to be talking about it. I quoted the discourse rule of closer to home = importance.  Personally, I know a lot of people who are talking about it, maybe because most people I know are politically active and / or engaged.   Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BigJag Posted January 30 Paid Members Share Posted January 30 I probably need to find better more engaged people in my immediate circle. I do seem to be surrounded by people who either don't care. Or have an outlook that lacks knowledge. Knowledge that is readily available to them. But ignored. Or they're blinkered. The point about the topic being high on the news agenda is all well and good. However we have access to a much wider expanse of information. One that can bring forward views and points that are not always available in the more established sources. Despite this almost bottomless well of information. The actions of people who should know better can't be described as anything other than disgraceful. We've had the ICJ ruling. To which Israel have basically stuck up two fingers. Their allies have been largely derisory of the ruling. Even going as far as to tacitly support the subjugation of UNRWA. An organisation that provides humanitarian aid. I guess the true horrors of the human world are being revealed.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 PARKLIFE! But seriously, yeah. People outside of media will talk more about small boats than genocide because it’s closer to home. And in some cases, they won’t care because it’s brown skinned Muslims being slaughtered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BigJag Posted January 30 Paid Members Share Posted January 30 (edited) Can it be boiled down to simple racism? Maybe for the general public. At the political level there is definitely a sense of coordinated allowance of the Israeli action. They are literally being allowed to get away with murder. Whilst too many seem happy support them. Israel have just today carried out a triple assassination in a hospital! Ostensibly they took out three terrorists using terrorist tactics. This didn't even happen in Gaza. This whole affair is playing out on so many levels. That it is difficult to truly know what is right and wrong. Israel is continually showing its intention of clearing out Gaza and recently strongly pushed for settling the area for Israel. Are they just going to be allowed to do that?  Edited January 31 by BigJag Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Just now, BigJag said: Can it be boiled down to simple racism For a section of the public, absolutely. I’m not saying that’s the majority of people though, just to clarify. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 Not that it’ll make a tuppenny fuck of difference, like, but this statement is pretty spot on  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BigJag Posted January 31 Paid Members Share Posted January 31 Some good news on the horizon. It appears a ceasefire is imminent. Time will tell whether it will be a lasting one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d-d-d-dAz Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 (edited) 22 minutes ago, BigJag said: Some good news on the horizon. It appears a ceasefire is imminent. Time will tell whether it will be a lasting one. Given there hasn't been a lasting ceasefire since the war began in the 1940's, the current proposal is only for a 6 week humanitarian pause and Netanyahu has said he'll only stop when Hamas are all dead, I'd say the chances are pretty slim. Popular opinion in Israel is still behind the 'war', and is probably the only thing keeping Netanyahu in power, so I still think the outlook in the short to medium term is fairly bleak. Edited January 31 by d-d-d-dAz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BigJag Posted February 1 Paid Members Share Posted February 1 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/world-court-rule-whether-russia-violated-international-treaties-ukraine-2024-01-31/ The ICJ have been busy recently. They've recently ruled on this case where Russia were charged with funding Terrorism in Ukraine. The way the different players in these world affairs are viewed by ,I guess, western and eastern media. Is quite stark. China have recently voiced their support of Russia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 On 1/30/2024 at 7:10 PM, BigJag said:  I do seem to be surrounded by people who either don't care. Or have an outlook that lacks knowledge. Knowledge that is readily available to them. But ignored. Or they're blinkered.   On 1/30/2024 at 7:38 PM, Keith Houchen said: And in some cases, they won’t care because it’s brown skinned Muslims being slaughtered.  On 1/30/2024 at 8:37 PM, BigJag said: Can it be boiled down to simple racism? And you wonder why people might not wish to engage in discussion of this topic!  I'm certainly somewhat reluctant to discuss it on here because if anyone's opinion doesn't align with the prevailing sense of outrage displayed in all the tweets you post, some will be outraged by their lack of outrage. There's lots of reasons people might not be as engaged in any story as you, that doesn't involve them being a racist, ignorant or blinkered. As Keith said himself, its immediate impact on the UK isn't as noticeable to people's lives as, say, the largest war in Europe since 1945, or the failing economy, or visible demographic changes in their local community.  It's natural for people to be more interested in local issues than those elsewhere in the world. Secondly, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians/Arab nations has been going on since I was -32 years old.  It's a long and complicated story of competing interests over territory in which many bad people have committed enormous sins on both sides.  I'm old enough to remember Palestinian terrorists hijacking European passenger planes.  Slightly before my time but I know that older Israelis still remember the country being simultaneously invaded in 1967 by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. There's an enormous amount of blood, ill will, grievances that stretch back decades that informs the situation of the last few months.  At some point in the last few decades I stopped being outraged by every individual incident and realised that my feelings on the situation were entirely irrelevant and somewhat a waste of my emotional energy. I have a friend who lives just south of Jerusalem.  His neighbourhood has been hit on more than one occasion by Hamas rockets.  I try to imagine how I'd feel if the Germans were still lobbing V2s into southern England - the retribution we British rained down on them in response to the Blitz makes Gaza look like a small squabble.  Or if Plaid Cymru still refused to countenance the existence of the English state, how we might feel towards them. All of this to say, whilst I don't support what the Israelis are doing, I don't pretend this is happening in a vacuum and I try to understand WHY this is happening and why the Israeli population is still generally in support of it.  And understanding the complexities means recognising when certain bits of outrage are unwarranted - such as the news story about the UN's Palestinian Agency, which has been utterly corrupt for many years and infiltrated by Hamas (who are both government and military in Gaza).  It's been an issue for a long time, and a lot of UN aid money destined for the Palestinian people has ended up in bank accounts in Qatar to fund senior Hamas leaders' lavish lifestyles (which IS worthy of outrage) but was allowed to continue because the UN, US, UK etc didn't want to rock the boat. TL:DR, it's a massively complex, deep-rooted and utterly vile situation and most of the outrage Tweets you post here simplify it for easy clicks and don't engender a discussion of the wider issues.  I like the UKFF and the people here, and want to continue to chat about wrestling but if they all hate me because I have different political views on things like this, I'll be sad.  So that's why maybe your posts don't get engagement.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted February 1 Moderators Share Posted February 1 Despite that being the perfect opening for me to bang my usual drum about Twitter I won't go off on one, but just to say it really shouldn't be your only news source @BigJag, or what you use to judge the general public's opinion or level of discourse on a topic. It's not a good representation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d-d-d-dAz Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 (edited) Just to add one more log to the fire, this idea that 'no one is discussing it' is a red herring, as what it usually means is 'no one is providing the answers I want'. Look at last week, and the scramble from areas of the press to discuss World War 3 and conscription; lots of people on social media desperate for answers, complaining that no one was taking it seriously or talking about it properly. What they really meant was 'i'm shitting myself, and I want someone I trust to tell me whether this is or isn't possible'. It's the same in Israel/Gaza, people are looking for an authoritative voice to descend from the heavens and tell us one way or another what's going to happen. But no one knows, it's messy and horrible and everything is possible from Israeli's turning on Netanyahu and the war fizzling out, to Israel never stopping and it escalating wildly out of control as Iran, America et al enter the conflict. No one knows. Everything is possible. There are no answers. If the discussion feels hollow, that's why. Edited February 1 by d-d-d-dAz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted February 1 Paid Members Share Posted February 1 Above absolutely everything else we should not get away from the fact that it's "massively complex" through no fault of the Palestinian people. They are the innocent party in this and always will be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d-d-d-dAz Posted February 1 Share Posted February 1 (edited) 8 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said: Above absolutely everything else we should not get away from the fact that it's "massively complex" through no fault of the Palestinian people. They are the innocent party in this and always will be. Whilst I agree with the principle and spirit of this, Hamas did win a Parliamentary election in 2006/7 - at which point they seized control of Gaza. The charter they stood behind in that election called for the destruction of Israel, an incitement of violence against all Jews and the rejection of any peace initiatives; and successive Israel politicians have been keen to make that clear to normal Israeli's. So, it's probably not as easy for a normal Israeli to call the Palestinians 'innocent' in the same way we can. Edited February 1 by d-d-d-dAz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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