'British diplomats have told me that discussions in Qatar have so far held back the Israeli ground offensive, but I am not convinced that Israel really wished to do this yet. *They are having sadistic fun shooting children in a barrel*.'
You are suggesting that Israel enjoys killing children? Have you seen the videos of Hammas terrorists 'enjoying' the raping & murdering of women & children?
People accuses us of 'both-sidism' and of not condemning Hamas. I would condemn Hamas forever if that meant the supporters of Israel would demand a just peace, and would insist that both Israel and Hamas were tried for war crimes.
But how much people enjoy killing isn't really the point ? War dehumanises.
The point is what do we do about the current and ongoing genocide of Palestinians that is taking place before our eyes. Do we condone it because of violence done to Israelis on 7th October - or do we insist on a just peace settlement. There are well over 7000 dead (mostly women and children not Hamas). What is enough? 100,000, half a million, the death and expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and then the West Bank. Is that your idea of justice?
We are living through a period of 'left' authoritarians whose identarian politics promote critical race theory and gender identity ideology - endangering freedom of speech and assembly, and generally questioning enlightenment values. The right has been challenging this as have others, particularly women, who perceive gender identity ideology as a threat to women and children.
But in the Israel-Palestine conflict we now have 'right' authoritarians trying to shut down free speech claiming we are anti -semitic if we protest against Israel's war crimes and demand a just peace. We do have a right to question Israel's policy of occupation and indeed to question the existence of the Israeli state - it is not anti-semitic to do so.
Even before Britain divided Ireland between the northern Irish protestant settler population and the native Irish catholic population James Connoly, who took part in the Easter uprising of 1916, warned of the consequences. He predicted it would “mean a carnival of reaction both North and South”. And he was right. Partition was a terrible mistake leading to 30 years of armed resistance from 1969. It is easy to empathise with the desire of jewish people for their own homeland but the land they occupied was not empty of people and in order to set up their state they committed acts of terrorism. It is a settler state - and acts like a settler state as far as I can see. And what makes it worse is USA providing the military support it needs for its own geo-political intersts. I don't know why you think there is anything about the pre-1948 history that mitigates that.
As for the toppling of Colston - that too has a history. Thanks to Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers (committed to promoting slave trading) Bristol was by the 18th century Britain's primary slave trading port. Colston made his money from trading in and exploiting slaves yet because of the Society of Merchant Venturers he was honoured all over the city as a wise and virtuous man e.g. my daughter went to Colston Primary. There had been petitions calling for his statues removal for years and in 2018 it was agreed by the City Council that the plaque on Colston's statue would be changed to explain his links to the slave trade. The Society of Merchant Venturers interfered with the wording. So it wasn't just Black Lives Matter protestors, on an impromtu demo. The protestors were taken to Court and were found not guilty by the jury determining that to convinct protestors for removing a statute that glorified a slave trader was not proportionate. We can choose to change who we honour without it necessarily being 'a cancellation'.
Human history is different. You want to believe that humans are brutal but then why argue? Surely the reason we argue is because whilst life is brutal - slavery is brutal, concentration camps are brutal - humans are capable of great acts of individual and collective humanity. We have created, however imperfect international law related to war crimes. This is an achievement and it dishonours us when Israel flouts international law and the USA and the UK encourage them to do this with impunity. If we do this, how can we hold other regimes to account without being accused of hypocrisy?
The only imaginably more enormous gap is that between the Arab elite in the region, who sold the land away decades ago - and still live in palatial splendor from it - and everyday Muslims there.
Another good sized gap is Arab media, which is about as objective as late 19th century western papers. Western media is showing both sides. Who else does that on earth??
When will local Arab elites take agency? For history? For their privilege and for their hypocrisy. No Arabs in the region care for Palestinians. They never did. And the defeat of the Ottoman/German alliance every Middle Easterner should be thanking the British/French for forever. (Hello Grand Mufti! Learning German were we??)
Last, Israelis are as indigenous to the region as anyone. And their history there stretches back as far as any other group.
Its not a genocide. There was one in 1945 you might look up.
A genocide is unfolding before our eyes: deprivation of water, displacement, indiscriminate bombing are actions of genocide - an Israeli historian has long before now described Gaza is a concentration camp. The rhetoric of Israel's polticians, humiliated by the failure of their seige policy, now bares strong resemblance to the rhetoric of a final solution.
You are wrong to think western politicians and media aren't supporting one side and attacking the other. There are repeated calls from our politicians to support Israel unconditionally and the media pushes for a crackdown on free speech and the right to protest. People without a settled status are vulnerable to deportation if they protest. Despite this half a million people took to the streets of London to call for a just peace.
To claim that jewish people have a historic right to be there is incorrect - they started to settle in Palestine which had its own indigenous population in the 19th century. They didn't want to integrate they wanted their own state rather than to integrate with the local population.
And the zionists used terrorism - perhaps most shockingly when the killed Folke Bernadotte a man who had negotiated with the nazis to free jews from the concentration camps. He was chosen to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1947–1948 and was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the paramilitary Zionist group Lehi because they feared they wouldn't get what they wanted.
The people opposing Israel are anti-fascist because they understanding what happened in the concentration camps during the second world war. I recall, as a child, seeing my father weeping at the images of the emaciated people emerging from the concentraton camps as the war ended. I was bought up to have goodwill to Israel and to believe in the USA as a force for the good. But I see the USA (and the UK) behaving like hypocrites condemning Hamas and giving a free pass to Israel's war crimes. Israel has squandared the goodwill and the USA only supports Israel for its own strategic aims in the region.
Unfortunately I do believe Craig Murray's analysis may be right - there will be no intervention to stop the genocidal ambitions. There is little to rely on but public revulsion.
Its not a genocide, by any definition, of Palestinians. Its a genocide, hopefully a successful one, of Hamas. Its a strange genocide that sends in food, humanitarian help and diplomats asking for peace. Israel, even their r/wing, are clearly not very good at genocide.
I am quite right about 'western media', which is thousands of free outlets, including this one you are writing on. Spare me the notion any other part of the world, particulary the Muslim world, has ANY open media of note.
History did not start with the Naqba, only for the woke and deranged students trying to avoid class or learning. It started prior to that in this region with the Ottomans, Syria, yes Fr and Br, but also Faisal. Nobody on the far left seems to know any of this. It also goes much further back, to the Romans, and yes, to the Israelites and the Hebrews, who were just simply there 2000 years before anybody knew of Palestinians or conceived of a nation state.
Zionists do bad things too, yes. All groups do.
The people marching for genocide, river to the sea, are fascists. They are as ignorant as young Nazis were in the 30s.
It won't be genocide. It will be good for young Palestinians once Hamas are gone, and they become Israeli citizens. Face facts, you ain't having a Palestinian state now. And even if they had, in 1967, 48, or since, what? An impoverished fundamentalist Hamas hellhole? May as well move to live with the Taliban or Nigerian Islamicists.
It is tragic that people who want to support the Israeli state do so by belittling suffering pretending to themselves genocde is either justifiable because Palestinians all support Hamas or denying the level of violence. War crimes are being committed now: Israel has cut off water, fuel and the tiny amount of aid at last gettng through (whilst demanding 1 million people move whilst bombing them as they do) is not going to avert catastrope Medical treatment for injuries has collapsed - without communications they can't find the wounded and Israel has bombed 56 medical facilities. Children are having limbs amputated without anaesthetic. These are war crimes.
Murray's criticism and mine is the propaganda of our main stream media and politicians not outlets like Savage Minds. When do they condemn Israeli war crimes? Both the UK PM and the leader of the opposition have given unequivical support for Israel under the claim of the right to self-defence. But self-defence is not an excuse for war crimes.
International law is not based on claims of inhabiting a region 2000 years ago. I am aware (and the left is aware) that during the first world war, in 1917, Balfour (the British PM) wrote a letter supporting the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Palestine was then an Ottoman region but with the war being lost by them the League of Nation gave a mandate to Britain to rule Palestine with a view to eventual self-determinatio; following this many Jews emigrated to Palestine and that they used terrorist violence to ensure that they established a zionist state driving Palestininans, who still hold the keys to their houses, from their land. So what have I missed? We do educate ourselves which is why we are protesting against what is happening.
The slogan from the river to the sea does not mean driving jewish people out of the region rather it means an end to the oppression of Palestinians, an end to the apartheid state of Israel.
A two state solution is no longer possible and the future lies in a single secular state. If the oppression continues (and ethnic cleansing / genocide is not successful for Israel) a new opposition will form - and if they are shot when they protest peacefully (as has happened before) then armed resistance is likely to arise again. And if we fail to find a just peace then the west will have lost all moral legitimacy (if it hasn't already in many people's eyes).
Do you have any reason to believe that Israel will incorporate Palestinians into the Israeli state in a way that will bring peace because I haven't heard this as a war aim having defeated Hamas. I have heard only that the Gaza strip will be made smaller, the walls thicker, the pain greater and amongst many the demand that Eqypt opens its borders and creates a refugee camp in the Sinia Desert.
Tragedy permeates all human life. This one is just another one. And it wouldn't be tragic if Hamas hadn't murdered 1000 innocents. Its not a genocide. Its another unequal battle, like thousands in history. Palestinians are just the victims of being poor in a non-state, run by terrorists.
Criticizing 'western media' or 'western hypocrisy' from comfortable homes in the West. How marvelous. How impactful.
Palestine was treated horribly by Ottoman Turks. It has been ignored by other Arabs, even today, Egypt doesn't care.
A single secular state is the answer. Agreed.
None of us know that Israel's horrible r/wing wants. I am confident they are all best served by integrating high birth rate, impoverished, miserable Palestinians into a wealthy, powerful modern state. Give up the ghost. Palestine was never a nation (a recent western construct) and it won't be now I assure you.
I believe in discussing with people I don't agree with to understand the points of difference and sharpen my own understanding. I do that from the comfort of my home (as I imagine you do). Whenever media values the lives of one side in a conflict more than another they risk condoing war crimes so media should be held accountable even if it is more free from censorship than in some countries. Savage Minds is one of many outlets that do just that.
From this discussion we do agree the most viable and just solution is a secular state with equal rights for all citizens. We probably also agree that is going to be difficult to achieve even if we may perceive the causes of the conflict differently.
Tomorrow I will go on a march through Bristol to support the rights of Palestine. Do I think this will make a difference? No. Anymore than when I marched against our then PM Blair taking us into a war on a lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Blair got the war he wanted but he is seen now as a liar and a war monger.
I demonstrate because I want to protest with my fellow citizens at something being done in my name, I want to show our PM, our leader of the opposition and the mainstream media that there are many of us (half a million in London today) who don't agree with genocide. I also march so that people in Palestine know that there is support for them - that they are not alone.
All quite just and virtuous. I appreciate your thoughts.
I just think - I'm a historian of 30 yrs - the protesters, US students, most poc who side with Palestine for identity plx reasons, are incredibly ignorant of the history, its complexity, particularly pre 1948. Its all white supremacy to them. They throw Israel in with the 'oppressors, colonialists'. Its moronic. As indeed were the Bristol statue/cancelations.
I admire anybody who demonstrates. I have done many of them. This situation is not black and white. And solutions such as the one you propose are the only ones. Anti-Semitism, or even Anti-Israel attitudes (even with that person in power) are wrong. Hamas started this.
If you attack a stronger animal in the wild, it will rip you to pieces. No different in human history. Cheers.
'British diplomats have told me that discussions in Qatar have so far held back the Israeli ground offensive, but I am not convinced that Israel really wished to do this yet. *They are having sadistic fun shooting children in a barrel*.'
You are suggesting that Israel enjoys killing children? Have you seen the videos of Hammas terrorists 'enjoying' the raping & murdering of women & children?
People accuses us of 'both-sidism' and of not condemning Hamas. I would condemn Hamas forever if that meant the supporters of Israel would demand a just peace, and would insist that both Israel and Hamas were tried for war crimes.
There are Israels that enjoy killing children (we know they are watching war 'porn' site) and we know that they sat on plastic chairs eating popcorn whilst Israel bombed Gaza in 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
But how much people enjoy killing isn't really the point ? War dehumanises.
The point is what do we do about the current and ongoing genocide of Palestinians that is taking place before our eyes. Do we condone it because of violence done to Israelis on 7th October - or do we insist on a just peace settlement. There are well over 7000 dead (mostly women and children not Hamas). What is enough? 100,000, half a million, the death and expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and then the West Bank. Is that your idea of justice?
We are living through a period of 'left' authoritarians whose identarian politics promote critical race theory and gender identity ideology - endangering freedom of speech and assembly, and generally questioning enlightenment values. The right has been challenging this as have others, particularly women, who perceive gender identity ideology as a threat to women and children.
But in the Israel-Palestine conflict we now have 'right' authoritarians trying to shut down free speech claiming we are anti -semitic if we protest against Israel's war crimes and demand a just peace. We do have a right to question Israel's policy of occupation and indeed to question the existence of the Israeli state - it is not anti-semitic to do so.
Even before Britain divided Ireland between the northern Irish protestant settler population and the native Irish catholic population James Connoly, who took part in the Easter uprising of 1916, warned of the consequences. He predicted it would “mean a carnival of reaction both North and South”. And he was right. Partition was a terrible mistake leading to 30 years of armed resistance from 1969. It is easy to empathise with the desire of jewish people for their own homeland but the land they occupied was not empty of people and in order to set up their state they committed acts of terrorism. It is a settler state - and acts like a settler state as far as I can see. And what makes it worse is USA providing the military support it needs for its own geo-political intersts. I don't know why you think there is anything about the pre-1948 history that mitigates that.
As for the toppling of Colston - that too has a history. Thanks to Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers (committed to promoting slave trading) Bristol was by the 18th century Britain's primary slave trading port. Colston made his money from trading in and exploiting slaves yet because of the Society of Merchant Venturers he was honoured all over the city as a wise and virtuous man e.g. my daughter went to Colston Primary. There had been petitions calling for his statues removal for years and in 2018 it was agreed by the City Council that the plaque on Colston's statue would be changed to explain his links to the slave trade. The Society of Merchant Venturers interfered with the wording. So it wasn't just Black Lives Matter protestors, on an impromtu demo. The protestors were taken to Court and were found not guilty by the jury determining that to convinct protestors for removing a statute that glorified a slave trader was not proportionate. We can choose to change who we honour without it necessarily being 'a cancellation'.
Human history is different. You want to believe that humans are brutal but then why argue? Surely the reason we argue is because whilst life is brutal - slavery is brutal, concentration camps are brutal - humans are capable of great acts of individual and collective humanity. We have created, however imperfect international law related to war crimes. This is an achievement and it dishonours us when Israel flouts international law and the USA and the UK encourage them to do this with impunity. If we do this, how can we hold other regimes to account without being accused of hypocrisy?
The only imaginably more enormous gap is that between the Arab elite in the region, who sold the land away decades ago - and still live in palatial splendor from it - and everyday Muslims there.
Another good sized gap is Arab media, which is about as objective as late 19th century western papers. Western media is showing both sides. Who else does that on earth??
When will local Arab elites take agency? For history? For their privilege and for their hypocrisy. No Arabs in the region care for Palestinians. They never did. And the defeat of the Ottoman/German alliance every Middle Easterner should be thanking the British/French for forever. (Hello Grand Mufti! Learning German were we??)
Last, Israelis are as indigenous to the region as anyone. And their history there stretches back as far as any other group.
Its not a genocide. There was one in 1945 you might look up.
A genocide is unfolding before our eyes: deprivation of water, displacement, indiscriminate bombing are actions of genocide - an Israeli historian has long before now described Gaza is a concentration camp. The rhetoric of Israel's polticians, humiliated by the failure of their seige policy, now bares strong resemblance to the rhetoric of a final solution.
You are wrong to think western politicians and media aren't supporting one side and attacking the other. There are repeated calls from our politicians to support Israel unconditionally and the media pushes for a crackdown on free speech and the right to protest. People without a settled status are vulnerable to deportation if they protest. Despite this half a million people took to the streets of London to call for a just peace.
To claim that jewish people have a historic right to be there is incorrect - they started to settle in Palestine which had its own indigenous population in the 19th century. They didn't want to integrate they wanted their own state rather than to integrate with the local population.
And the zionists used terrorism - perhaps most shockingly when the killed Folke Bernadotte a man who had negotiated with the nazis to free jews from the concentration camps. He was chosen to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1947–1948 and was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the paramilitary Zionist group Lehi because they feared they wouldn't get what they wanted.
The people opposing Israel are anti-fascist because they understanding what happened in the concentration camps during the second world war. I recall, as a child, seeing my father weeping at the images of the emaciated people emerging from the concentraton camps as the war ended. I was bought up to have goodwill to Israel and to believe in the USA as a force for the good. But I see the USA (and the UK) behaving like hypocrites condemning Hamas and giving a free pass to Israel's war crimes. Israel has squandared the goodwill and the USA only supports Israel for its own strategic aims in the region.
Unfortunately I do believe Craig Murray's analysis may be right - there will be no intervention to stop the genocidal ambitions. There is little to rely on but public revulsion.
Its not a genocide, by any definition, of Palestinians. Its a genocide, hopefully a successful one, of Hamas. Its a strange genocide that sends in food, humanitarian help and diplomats asking for peace. Israel, even their r/wing, are clearly not very good at genocide.
I am quite right about 'western media', which is thousands of free outlets, including this one you are writing on. Spare me the notion any other part of the world, particulary the Muslim world, has ANY open media of note.
History did not start with the Naqba, only for the woke and deranged students trying to avoid class or learning. It started prior to that in this region with the Ottomans, Syria, yes Fr and Br, but also Faisal. Nobody on the far left seems to know any of this. It also goes much further back, to the Romans, and yes, to the Israelites and the Hebrews, who were just simply there 2000 years before anybody knew of Palestinians or conceived of a nation state.
Zionists do bad things too, yes. All groups do.
The people marching for genocide, river to the sea, are fascists. They are as ignorant as young Nazis were in the 30s.
It won't be genocide. It will be good for young Palestinians once Hamas are gone, and they become Israeli citizens. Face facts, you ain't having a Palestinian state now. And even if they had, in 1967, 48, or since, what? An impoverished fundamentalist Hamas hellhole? May as well move to live with the Taliban or Nigerian Islamicists.
It is tragic that people who want to support the Israeli state do so by belittling suffering pretending to themselves genocde is either justifiable because Palestinians all support Hamas or denying the level of violence. War crimes are being committed now: Israel has cut off water, fuel and the tiny amount of aid at last gettng through (whilst demanding 1 million people move whilst bombing them as they do) is not going to avert catastrope Medical treatment for injuries has collapsed - without communications they can't find the wounded and Israel has bombed 56 medical facilities. Children are having limbs amputated without anaesthetic. These are war crimes.
Murray's criticism and mine is the propaganda of our main stream media and politicians not outlets like Savage Minds. When do they condemn Israeli war crimes? Both the UK PM and the leader of the opposition have given unequivical support for Israel under the claim of the right to self-defence. But self-defence is not an excuse for war crimes.
International law is not based on claims of inhabiting a region 2000 years ago. I am aware (and the left is aware) that during the first world war, in 1917, Balfour (the British PM) wrote a letter supporting the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Palestine was then an Ottoman region but with the war being lost by them the League of Nation gave a mandate to Britain to rule Palestine with a view to eventual self-determinatio; following this many Jews emigrated to Palestine and that they used terrorist violence to ensure that they established a zionist state driving Palestininans, who still hold the keys to their houses, from their land. So what have I missed? We do educate ourselves which is why we are protesting against what is happening.
The slogan from the river to the sea does not mean driving jewish people out of the region rather it means an end to the oppression of Palestinians, an end to the apartheid state of Israel.
A two state solution is no longer possible and the future lies in a single secular state. If the oppression continues (and ethnic cleansing / genocide is not successful for Israel) a new opposition will form - and if they are shot when they protest peacefully (as has happened before) then armed resistance is likely to arise again. And if we fail to find a just peace then the west will have lost all moral legitimacy (if it hasn't already in many people's eyes).
Do you have any reason to believe that Israel will incorporate Palestinians into the Israeli state in a way that will bring peace because I haven't heard this as a war aim having defeated Hamas. I have heard only that the Gaza strip will be made smaller, the walls thicker, the pain greater and amongst many the demand that Eqypt opens its borders and creates a refugee camp in the Sinia Desert.
Tragedy permeates all human life. This one is just another one. And it wouldn't be tragic if Hamas hadn't murdered 1000 innocents. Its not a genocide. Its another unequal battle, like thousands in history. Palestinians are just the victims of being poor in a non-state, run by terrorists.
Criticizing 'western media' or 'western hypocrisy' from comfortable homes in the West. How marvelous. How impactful.
Palestine was treated horribly by Ottoman Turks. It has been ignored by other Arabs, even today, Egypt doesn't care.
A single secular state is the answer. Agreed.
None of us know that Israel's horrible r/wing wants. I am confident they are all best served by integrating high birth rate, impoverished, miserable Palestinians into a wealthy, powerful modern state. Give up the ghost. Palestine was never a nation (a recent western construct) and it won't be now I assure you.
I believe in discussing with people I don't agree with to understand the points of difference and sharpen my own understanding. I do that from the comfort of my home (as I imagine you do). Whenever media values the lives of one side in a conflict more than another they risk condoing war crimes so media should be held accountable even if it is more free from censorship than in some countries. Savage Minds is one of many outlets that do just that.
From this discussion we do agree the most viable and just solution is a secular state with equal rights for all citizens. We probably also agree that is going to be difficult to achieve even if we may perceive the causes of the conflict differently.
Tomorrow I will go on a march through Bristol to support the rights of Palestine. Do I think this will make a difference? No. Anymore than when I marched against our then PM Blair taking us into a war on a lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Blair got the war he wanted but he is seen now as a liar and a war monger.
I demonstrate because I want to protest with my fellow citizens at something being done in my name, I want to show our PM, our leader of the opposition and the mainstream media that there are many of us (half a million in London today) who don't agree with genocide. I also march so that people in Palestine know that there is support for them - that they are not alone.
All quite just and virtuous. I appreciate your thoughts.
I just think - I'm a historian of 30 yrs - the protesters, US students, most poc who side with Palestine for identity plx reasons, are incredibly ignorant of the history, its complexity, particularly pre 1948. Its all white supremacy to them. They throw Israel in with the 'oppressors, colonialists'. Its moronic. As indeed were the Bristol statue/cancelations.
I admire anybody who demonstrates. I have done many of them. This situation is not black and white. And solutions such as the one you propose are the only ones. Anti-Semitism, or even Anti-Israel attitudes (even with that person in power) are wrong. Hamas started this.
If you attack a stronger animal in the wild, it will rip you to pieces. No different in human history. Cheers.
Nuke Iran