Hamas strike on Israel - Threadbans in op - mod warning in OP updated 19/10/23

Fr D Maugire

Interestingly BBC saying Israel is trying to control the media narrative, refusing to let international reporters access to Gaza.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67687628?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=657979b287855b2dac7d42b6%26Israel%20is%20trying%20to%20control%20the%20media%20narrative%262023-12-13T11%3A12%3A07.585Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:3ea3bfbc-0f46-4871-a440-5ffe8c3721db&pinned_post_asset_id=657979b287855b2dac7d42b6&pinned_post_type=share

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491066#Comment_121491066

”Israel's basic law defines it as a Jewish state. A Jewish state for a Jewish people, just like Northern Ireland defined itself as a Protestant state for a Protestant people.”

Is this analogy accurate? Many Jews express themselves in terms of ethnicity and culture, especially secular Jews. Judaism is the religion and would probably be the more accurate term to use if one is going compare it to other religions like Protestantism. One can be British and/or a Unionist and be a Catholic too.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491587#Comment_121491587

The reality of everyday life was what made Northern Ireland a Protestant state for a Protestant people. Recognising that does not equal "good Republican" (a clear reference to Slab Murphy and to tar me as of his ilk). It means you recognise the bleedin' obvious. Like John Hume did. See what I think of the Provos in my posting history.

Hamas were a reaction to decades of Israeli brutality, just like the Provos were a reaction to decades of Unionist oppression. Hamas were openly fomented and primed by Israel in an effort to destroy the cause of Palestinian statehood. Israel enabled Hamas's funding. The people who enabled Hamas are in power right now in Israel.

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711329340804186619

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/buying-quiet-inside-the-israeli-plan-that-propped-up-hamas/

Allowing the payments — billions of dollars over roughly a decade — was a gamble by Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching point of the Oct. 7 attacks, and keep Hamas focused on governing, not fighting.

The Qatari payments, while ostensibly a secret, have been widely known and discussed in the Israeli news media for years. Netanyahu’s critics disparage them as part of a strategy of “buying quiet,” and the policy is in the middle of a ruthless reassessment following the attacks. Netanyahu has lashed back at that criticism, calling the suggestion that he tried to empower Hamas “ridiculous.”

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491835#Comment_121491835

Unlike you, I think neither the PIRA nor Hamas were a justifiable reaction to anything. Both should be condemned unequivocally.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491791#Comment_121491791

In Northern Ireland "Protestant state for a Protestant people" was exactly interchangeable with "Unionist state for a Unionist people" or British state for a British people". Protestant state for a Protestant people did not include, say, the Lutherans of Sweden.

But what it did mean was that if you were the minority you kept your fcuking head down or else. It's the same inside Israel. What goes on in Gaza and the West Bank is a whole other kettle of fish to what happened in Northern Ireland, bad as Northern Ireland was and to an extent remains.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491840#Comment_121491840

Another lie thrown in there that " you (I) think the actions of the PIRA and/or Hamas were justifiable." Fairly pathetic stuff on your part.

Neither the actions of the PIRA nor Hamas were/are justified. But if you decide to suppress discussion of the underlying reasons why such groups emerged in the first place, you are doomed to repeat the cycle. Fundamental injustice if perpetuated long enough will usually lead to such groups emerging. Address the fundamental injustice and you lessen the likelihood of such groups emerging and you lessen the likelihood they will attract support of they do emerge.

Making the same mistakes over and over and over again will lead to the same outcomes.

Very basic stuff.

brickster69

A wild interview just now on Sky for 10 minutes. No wonder most the world consider them a pariah.

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1734982762208113039

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491946#Comment_121491946

They actually make apartheid South Africa look positively benign by comparison, which is some feat.

South Africa were banned from most international sport for decades, even rugby relented in the end and ostracised them.

Israel will produce a shiny pop act for the Eurovision in May and they'll be all smiles and leotards and white teeth and lovely make up and pink puffer jackets and we'll all be told to cheer and vote for them and believe that this is a perfectly normal country like any other. Pass the effing sick bucket.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121490296#Comment_121490296

Since Leftists like to make everything about race, the data I provided demonstrate that the majority of Israeli Jews have Middle Eastern ancestry. If "white people" are uniquely guilty of settler-colonialism wherever they go, then Israeli Jews are only 30% full blooded white Jews. Furthermore, support for the right wing parties in Israel such as Likud primarily come from the Mizrahi community - as the white Jews such as the Ashkenazi minority tend to vote Left. Again this bears repeating, but in all 80% of Israeli Jews of all backgrounds were born there.

Israeli Jews are not "committing genocide against the native population" they ARE the native population, at least in part. But hey, I'm sure you can blame all that on "white supremacy" or some such nonsense.

As to your repeated claim that supporters of Israel's right to exist engage in "anti-Semitism" again, the data don't agree with that. It bears repeating that a plurality of the worlds Jews live in Israel or the Disputed Territories - most of whom are native to the Middle East - and that there are 7.4 million of them in all. And and all of them would be gravely imperilled if the State of Israel were to be weakened, by people who want to "drive the Jews into the sea" or Leftists like to say "From the River to the Sea."

You cannot propose to gravely endanger 7.4 million Jews and then be surprised if someone thinks you're an anti-Semite. It is complete nonsense.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492017#Comment_121492017

That post is a load of hot air. Remember what this exchange was about: the anti-Semitic trope that "Jews = Israel".

Jews do not equal Israel.

You still maintain they do.

This is prima facie anti-Semitism.

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121475581#Comment_121475581

Does taking photos and publishing then help in the fight against suicide bombers too??

Snooker Loopy

Palestinians have been saying it for weeks because its been happening for months. Now Israel is literally telling you its bombing is indiscriminate. They aren't hiding their aim of obliterating Gaza and the people within it. They haven't hid it since the start.

https://twitter.com/Ha_Matar/status/1734984350343537090

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491946#Comment_121491946

She is unbelievably argumentative and combative for a so called "diplomat". She sounds more like a member of Netanyahu's party.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492024#Comment_121492024

My post was facts. You cannot deny the facts. I never said "Jews = Israel" I said that a plurality of Jews are Israeli. You or your side also brought race into it (surprise, surprise) and claimed that Israeli Jews were settler colonialists and from European/American cities despite the fact that the majority of them are of partial or full Middle Eastern ancestry and by far the vast majority in all are born in Israel.

You cannot actively work to gravely endanger 7.4 million Jews and then be surprised if you get called an anti-Semite.

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121476618#Comment_121476618

Let’s see what the chief rabbi of the IDF said when asked in 2002, if it was ok for the IDF to rape women/girls. Take it away Eyal…

as part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers’ morale during fighting, it is permitted to “breach” the walls of modesty and “satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will, out of consideration for the difficulties faced by the soldiers and for overall success.”

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492105#Comment_121492105

You engaged with me because you objected to me saying that the trope you used that conflates Jews worldwide with Israel is an anti-Semitic one.

Since then you've been performing ever more spectacular mental gymnastics to weasel out of the fact you used an anti-Semitic trope, usually repeating the trope in the process.

With "friends" like you, Jews hardly need enemies.

dmcdona

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492105#Comment_121492105

Genuine question. Can I ask what you mean by a "plurality of Jews"?

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492162#Comment_121492162

A plurality means the largest grouping, but not an outright majority. There are some complexities regarding the criteria and the basis for various estimates, but it's likely that the largest national cohort of Jews in the world lives in Israel.

Jews - Wikipedia

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492084#Comment_121492084

Pretty much all Israel's talking heads be they spokespeople, politicians, diplomats or general boosters in the media sphere are highly aggressive to the point it's often pretty much impossible to have a civil discussion with them. They shout, they interrupt, they heckle, they accuse, they recite empty slogans endlessly. They "gish gallop", ie. fire out unsubstantiated nonsense and allegations and bogus "facts" like that sewage hose on the truck fired sewage in Father Ted's face. It's a concerted strategy very reminiscent of the American right-wing and also the British right-wing.

The American right-wing and the British right wing are both full of utter bullshlt and so are Israel's speakers. Being highly aggressive in the manner I've described is a strategy you only need when your position is a bullshlt one.

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121476755#Comment_121476755

Unless of course you are a Somali Jew, in which case you’ll be sterilised on arrival without your knowledge, to keep racial purity. I’m fairly sure there was another maniacal figure from history that was into that too. Haaretz broke this story too.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491985#Comment_121491985

An Arab supreme court judge recently sentenced an ex Israeli pm.

Apartheid State, don't make us laugh.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492201#Comment_121492201

There were Catholic judges in Northern Ireland too. What's your point?

South Africa even picked the odd coloured player for the Springboks in the apartheid era.

What Israel is is actually far worse than what apartheid South Africa was. At least apartheid South Africa didn't pen 2.3 million people into a strip of land less than half the size of Louth and then bomb them into oblivion.

What Israel is doing is comparable to what the Nazis did to the Jewish ghettoes in Europe.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_120923&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=63f928d318b08a53f202acd6&cndid=73020245&hasha=f9f32c671f3e231b94498e6795451442&hashb=246f1d11785dd42c88a52b707816bacef197553d&hashc=833907525a7ed9da50588421f9a328c4ffe67eebcd2f30e04f9a17ca5f772e12&esrc=MARTECH_ORDERFORM&mbid=CRMNYR012019

For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time—in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every ten minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of ten Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety.

The term “open-air prison” seems to have been coined in 2010 by David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary who was then Prime Minister. Many human-rights organizations that document conditions in Gaza have adopted the description. But as in the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe, there are no prison guards—Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term “ghetto” would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492183#Comment_121492183

It's weird to watch. I'm not sure I've ever seen a serving ambassador be so loud, aggressive and argumentative in a TV interview before (and she's like this in every interview she gives).

brickster69

All of the interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYOv_Jb8cA0

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492256#Comment_121492256

Tzipi Hotovely openly supports annexation and apartheid. She has been on the record about this for over a decade.

A disgusting piece of work.

Snooker Loopy

Netanyahu in 2014. Why does the US give unconditional military aid to a country which opposes the US's stated policy on the region?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-finally-speaks-his-mind/#ixzz392DqMJCW

Quote

He made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank. He indicated that he sees Israel standing almost alone on the frontlines against vicious Islamic radicalism, while the rest of the as-yet free world does its best not to notice the march of extremism. And he more than intimated that he considers the current American, John Kerry-led diplomatic team to be, let’s be polite, naive.

Quote

Netanyahu has stressed often in the past that he doesn’t want Israel to become a binational state — implying that he favors some kind of accommodation with and separation from the Palestinians. But on Friday he made explicit that this could not extend to full Palestinian sovereignty. Why? Because, given the march of Islamic extremism across the Middle East, he said, Israel simply cannot afford to give up control over the territory immediately to its east, including the eastern border — that is, the border between Israel and Jordan, and the West Bank and Jordan.

Quote

The priority right now, Netanyahu stressed, was to “take care of Hamas.” But the wider lesson of the current escalation was that Israel had to ensure that “we don’t get another Gaza in Judea and Samaria.” Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492238#Comment_121492238

Northern Ireland, for all its faults, was not an apartheid state - that's why you could have Catholic judges passing sentence on Protestants. Something that you couldn't have in an actual apartheid state like South Africa.

There may have been the odd "coloured player" in the Springboks: but were they African, or only classified as "Coloured"? They had a very different, and preferable, status in apartheid SA compared to black Africans. Either way though, that's nothing like having a black person passing judgment on a white person. That couldn't happen under apartheid, and doesn't happen in Israel, where Arab judges have become not just a judge at a small court, like the Catholic judges in Northern Ireland in the Stormont era, but even sit on the Supreme Court.

As for Gaza being like the Jewish ghettos - saying it doesn't make it true: Gaza has four and five star hotels, https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g6697294-zff12-Gaza-Hotels.html, beachfront residences and modern, well-stocked shopping centres.

It was funny to see some of the very same people on Twitter who'd been posting on how awful conditions in Gaza were before the war, then posting photos of the terrible damage Israel had done destroying a beautiful, modern shopping centre - with no apparent awareness of the contradiction.

It's crazy to compare Gaza to the Nazi ghettos where conditions were deliberately atrocious.

(I know they're atrocious now, but that's as a result of Hamas' attacks. Whatever one thinks of Israel's response to them, that's still not comparable to the ghettos, which were intended to harm Jews, just because they were Jews.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492363#Comment_121492363

The amount of killings by Israel in Gaza just since October 7th is well on course to exceed the total amount of deaths from political violence in South Africa between 1948 and 1994 (21,000) if indeed it has not already exceeded it.

Apartheid was evil. But even that horrific regime never did what Israel is doing now.

Snooker Loopy

This was covered on Channel 4 News tonight. Israeli tanks drove through and desecrated the Al-Fallujah graveyard, crushing headstones everywhere and disinterring bodies. The place looked like an abandoned building site at the end of it.

"The most moral army in the world" how are ya.

https://twitter.com/BobbyMcDonagh1/status/1735019507070967998

riffmongous

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492150#Comment_121492150

Jaysus

I see he's also made some lovely comments about women, homosexuals and Palestinians