News/Current Affairs thread

[Vamp]

3 hours ago, Carbomb said:

From what I've seen, there's not much evidence that most right-wing gentiles give a fuck about Jews, either - it's just the most convenient form of racism to weaponise as a stick to beat the left with. Any other form of racism, particularly that against people of colour, is a vote-winner for such types.

Oh, absolutely. 

Part of the problem for the left, or anyone critical of Israel, is that Israel is the Jewish state in a way that's fairly unique. You can criticise a 'Muslim country' but you're not criticising every 'Muslim country'. You can criticise a 'Christian country' but you're not criticising every 'Christian country'. 

 

[BomberPat]

That kind of goes both ways, though - David Baddiel spends half his book talking about how he doesn't give a fuck about Israel, and that it's antisemitic to equate Judaism and Israel and demand that a non-Israeli Jewish person should answer for Israel's actions (and he's correct to do so), but then the other day he was complaining that the recent cover of Private Eye (which carried a "warning" that the magazine contained criticism of the Israeli government) was antisemitic for suggesting that Jews were tetchy about criticism. Except the cover never mentioned Jewish people, and was pretty clearly a response to the light touch treatment the conflict was receiving from other media. So now who's equating Jews and Israel, Dave?

A lot of it comes down to the fact that we, as a culture, still have very colonialist and orientalist attitude towards the Middle East in general - I've hard far too many do the equivalent of shrugging their shoulders and saying, "well, they've been killing each other for centuries", or "somebody needs to go over there and sort that mess out", with no attempt to reconcile that with how many of the problems of the Middle East are caused by western powers going over there and "sorting things out". We treat Middle Eastern countries as a cultural bloc in a way we rarely would with European countries - especially on the right-wing, you always see the argument that refugees from the Middle East are dangerous because they "don't share our values", with right-wing commentators pointing to oppressive policies in the countries they're fleeing; to which I would suggest that, if you think conditions in that country are so awful, surely you'd welcome someone who agrees with you to the extent that they'd want to escape them?

But we, generally, don't draw the distinctions between government and media on one side and the people of a country on the other - which is frankly ridiculous. We don't assume that everybody in this country shares the values and beliefs of Suella Braverman, but we tend to assume that the views of people in Middle Eastern countries are reflected through their government and media spokespeople. It's always worth remembering that Netanyahu was extremely unpopular in Israel even before the current conflict, and that being on a war footing hasn't given him the boost that wartime leaders normally get. There are anti-Zionist Israelis, non-Jewish Israelis, and so on, and likewise to Palestine, it's not a homogenous bloc. But there's always a tendency to broad strokes this stuff.

 

Obviously, a lot of people don't help the equation of antisemitism and anti-Israel activities. There is a nasty streak of antisemitism in left-wing politics - not as nasty as in right-wing politics, but that's where you expect to find antisemitism - and I do find single issue Free Palestine activists a bit troubling. 

[Keith Houchen]

15 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

So now who's equating Jews and Israel, Dave?

This is something quite a few right wing Jews are doing, despite it being something they’ve beaten the left with recently. They also equate pro Palestinian, or wishing no more people would be killed, as being pro Hamas. 
 

One thing that’s gone absent as well is all the sensibles who were showing support for the anti Netenyahu protests over the judicial reforms. He had lurched too far to the right with that but now he’s back to killing brown people? Silence. It’s exactly as @Loki said. He and Hamas are coming out of this stronger and using it to solidify support. 

[Keith Houchen]

On 10/30/2023 at 6:31 PM, Keith Houchen said:

Not really. Celtic issued a statement to fans asking them not to display Palestinian flags but given the number, they couldn’t throw them all out. 
 

Personally I think it was to mitigate the inevitable fine from UEFA, they can say “Well, we did ask!” And get the fine reduced. 

@BigJag An update on this. 

I mean, the Green Brigade are pretty embarrassing what with their self importance. 

[BigJag]

That is horrendous! Are Celtic FC that scared of blow back? What is wrong with showing support for Palestine?

I'm not aware of who the Green Brigade are. I'm assuming they're a Celtic supporters group. Can this suspension of their season tickets be fully attributed to the protest in support of Palestine?

Edited November 2, 2023 by BigJag

[Keith Houchen]

55 minutes ago, BigJag said:

I'm assuming they're a Celtic supporters group.

They’re a bunch or arseholes who are so self important and deluded that they think they have a say in how the club should be run. They’ve been banned before and will no doubt be banned again. 

I mean, they call themselves “Ultras” for fucks sake  

 

(No it’s not like a mouthy non paido and the UKFF at all, shut yer face)

[Loki]

Yeah, the "backlash" against pro-Palestinian support is quite worrying, with the Home Secretary making noises about it (being the fascist she is).  Even if you don't agree with it, it's a fundamental right in the UK to protest and conflating pro-Palestine with pro-Hamas is intellectually dishonest.

In the meantime, the Israeli action against Gaza has now killed as many civilians in a few weeks as Russia has killed in 18 months of war in Ukraine.  And that's with the relatively unsubtle urging of their main ally (US) to be more selective.  Netanyahu is trying to bomb his way out of unpopularity.

[Keith Houchen]

5 minutes ago, Loki said:

Netanyahu is trying to bomb his way out of unpopularity.

No doubt I’ve got this arseways but is there something about his corruption trial can’t continue whilst he is PM, so the longer he is PM, the longer he avoids jail?

[Dead Mike]

19 minutes ago, Loki said:

 Even if you don't agree with it, it's a fundamental right in the UK to protest and conflating pro-Palestine with pro-Hamas is intellectually dishonest.

.

Given their previous 'culture war' attempts have failed to resonate I can see the Tories going all in on the Palestine marches/Armistice day shit and I think it might get traction. There's little appetite for nuance in British politics & this is a gift for the Government. Hope I'm wrong.

[SuperBacon]

The videos of the bombings yesterday on the "ambulance carrying Hamas" were just something else. It's really hard to be shocked at any of this, but it really was. My heart breaks for the Palestinian people.

Also, and I think I know the answer and slightly off topic, but the amount of videos showing dead bodies and the like on Twitter without any warning is mental. I assume this is because there is no to little moderation of the platform anymore?

 

[The Gaffer]

41 minutes ago, Dead Mike said:

Given their previous 'culture war' attempts have failed to resonate I can see the Tories going all in on the Palestine marches/Armistice day shit and I think it might get traction. There's little appetite for nuance in British politics & this is a gift for the Government. Hope I'm wrong.

This is what I see too. It's definitely going to gain traction. You can already see the conflict has become another piñata for people who are essentially victims of identity politics. To march on Armistice day is not only pro-Hamas but anti-United Kingdom. 

I mean a display of free speech largely in support of a ceasefire seems like a pretty good use of Armistice day to this non-Brit. Some of the mental gymnastics this must be giving the wor-it's-all-gone-woke self-professed free speech fundamentalists must take quite the amount of cognitive doping.

[BigJag]

It's very worrying with the way pro-palestinian support is being gaslit by powerful elements of government and media. I guess it shows the pervasiveness of Israeli lobbying. You'd think though that the optics of the news coming out of Gaza would make these people see sense, and bring some balance to their rhetoric.

[Carbomb]

18 minutes ago, BigJag said:

It's very worrying with the way pro-palestinian support is being gaslit by powerful elements of government and media. I guess it shows the pervasiveness of Israeli lobbying. You'd think though that the optics of the news coming out of Gaza would make these people see sense, and bring some balance to their rhetoric.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it would not surprise me if it turned out that this was what Hamas was gambling on when they attacked Israel - that they wanted to provoke the kind of vicious response they're getting, something so brutal that even the West might, for once, try to hold the Israeli government to account, rather than allow its usual combination of racism, geopolitical machination, and Holocaust guilt to reflexively back Israel in whatever it does, while paying lip-service to the "both sides" narrative.

But that means things will have to get much, much worse before they get better. As that comedian who debated Morgan said: "We just need to figure out what is an acceptable exchange rate of Palestinian lives to Israeli ones". Thus far, it doesn't appear to be skewed enough yet for the West to get directly involved past hand-wringing calls for a cease-fire.

[CavemanLynn]

1 hour ago, BigJag said:

It's very worrying with the way pro-palestinian support is being gaslit by powerful elements of government and media. I guess it shows the pervasiveness of Israeli lobbying. You'd think though that the optics of the news coming out of Gaza would make these people see sense, and bring some balance to their rhetoric.

But the Palestinians are brown.

[Loki]

On 11/4/2023 at 3:12 PM, BigJag said:

It's very worrying with the way pro-palestinian support is being gaslit by powerful elements of government and media.

This cuts both ways.  Look at this - 
 

Putting an explicitly anti-semitic slogan at the top of your newspaper invalidates any "Middle East coverage or analysis" you might then go on to publish.

And this is why I wouldn't go on a pro-Palestinian march even though I support their right to nationhood and abhor the savagery of the Israeli response to Hamas' terror attack.  Because far too many people on those marches will not separate the nuances of this political situation and just end up parroting Hamas slogans, and I want nothing to do with that.

On 10/31/2023 at 9:44 AM, BomberPat said:

Obviously, a lot of people don't help the equation of antisemitism and anti-Israel activities. There is a nasty streak of antisemitism in left-wing politics - not as nasty as in right-wing politics, but that's where you expect to find antisemitism - and I do find single issue Free Palestine activists a bit troubling. 

Here's a sit-in this week from Charing Cross Station - chanting about the destruction of Israel.  Idiots (second video down, X embeds are shit).
 

Edit: for the sake of balance, worth noting that the phrase, as well as being used by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others, has ALSO been used by far-right Zionist groups to call for the eradication of the Palestinian people.  A hate-filled phrase whichever way you look at it.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Loki