How does Israel Get way with this

Its not "financial power" as such. Its groups like AIPAC which are organised to funnel that financial power to back or attack candidates in both parties based solely on their total subservience to Israeli interests. If a US politician even dares to criticise Israel they are going to face an avalanche of heavily funded rival candidates and attack ads for their next election. If they're even seen to be not pro-Israeli enough, they face being dropped in favour of a candidate who is. And the most bemusing thing is they get mocked for their subservience - Sacha Baron Cohen did a skit a few years back where he utterly humiliated US lawmakers by posing as an IDF anti-terrorist expert, trading on their deference to Israel.

Secondly, there is in no way shape or form that US national interests are aligned with the existence of Israel. The relentless US support of Israel is completely against the interests of the US as a state, and Americans as a people. The Middle East has energy. The US wants energy. The US has money. The Middle East wants money. The US buys the energy. Everyone wins. That is the beginning and end of a sane, coherent, peaceful, low cost US policy in the Middle East. Instead the US has embroiled itself in hugely draining (in terms of wealth, human life and prestige) self defeating conflicts against at least three regional powers - Iran, Iraq and Syria - which pose no threat to the US. These conflicts make no sense in terms of US national interests. They only make sense if you recognise that while none of those countries ever posed a threat to the US, they do - or at least did - pose a threat to Israel and Israeli expansion. So from the Israeli perspective they have to be destroyed. Then the US actions begin to make sense when you consider the power of the Israeli lobby in filtering out any US politician whose not completely beholden to Israeli interests.

Finally there is no mutual benefit. Israel gives nothing to the US. Israel is a unbearable burden to the US, and it makes the lives of ordinary Americans worse. It's never deployed troops to fight with the US (even when the US is fighting for Israeli interests) whereas the UK actually has (and that's a whole other mess in its own right) and instead Israel has actually attacked and killed dozens of US servicemen. It drains US wealth by constantly taking out loans which are always forgiven. It constantly spies on the US. It is a constant embarrassment to US diplomats who have to constantly cover for its latest outrage, which then alienates and undermines other countries from the US by association.

Assad was and is appalling. I remains surprising to me how many Syrians still support him but that is the case. Every Syrian Christian I have met is a fan, some emphatically so. For all its sins in Iraq and Syria, the Ba’ath party protected Christians from the mob.

Enjoy this thread while it lasts. Helen McEntee looking to stamp out all the holocaust denial being discussed here on a daily basis 😋

Assad made public comments criticizing Israel in the early 2000s to Tony Blair, thinking that it would send a message about Syria's standing in the world. You could see Tony Blair's face drop with despair. He knew it would mark the end for Assad and Syria.

It would be like blaming Zelenskyy for the war in Ukraine.

How would you know? Your just some nameless poster on boards! Mark is a decent guy and posts on here sometimes. He does great work highlighting the anti-semites in Ireland

The word "antisemite" is like the word "hate". Nobody knows what it means and yet is only ever used as a tool to silence opposing or dissenting views...

Equating been anti-zionist with holocaust denial is exactly the problem that people are highlighting. To even suggest that been anti-zionist makes you a holocaust denier is pathetic.

They want the Palestinian land to be part of an expanded Israel.

At the same time they want Israel to be a Jewish state (despite the fact that 27% of the population are not Jewish).

They can't have it both ways.

Either go with a 2-state solution (Netanyahu clearly has zero actual interest in implementing this) or else absorb the entire of Palestine into a new pluralist, secularist country.

They won't do either of those things though. Instead they'll pay lip service to the 2-state solution, while continuing to steal Palestinian land, compressing Palestinians into a smaller and smaller territory while smashing the inevitable eruptions of fury from them. They even have a disgusting name for this practice - "mowing the lawn".

Probably not no, although it's a moot point since it won't ever be on the table due to the diluting effect on the Jewish majority that it would have.

I'm not really sure what the end game is here. Will the Israelis compress the Palestinian occupied sections of the West Bank down and down until it's effectively a Gaza II? I'm sure they'd love if they'd all flee to neighbouring countries but that's not a realistic option either (especially given that many of them are already saturated with Syrian refugees and previous waves of Palestinians).

A EUROPEAN ENVOY has blasted Israel today over the “proportionality” of the force it uses, as international envoys toured Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, following this week’s deadly raid.

His remarks echoed UN chief Antonio Guterres who on Thursday told reporters “there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces” in its 48-hour operation, the largest Israel has staged in the Palestinian territory for years.

It included air strikes and armoured bulldozers ripping up streets.

Jenin is a centre for multiple armed Palestinian groups, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the refugee camp a “terrorist nest”.

European Union representative to the Palestinian territories Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff made his comments as he led a delegation of UN officials and diplomats from 25 countries to the camp in the northern West Bank.

“We are concerned about the deployment of weaponry and weapons systems which question the proportionality of the military during the operation,” Kuehn von Burgsdorff said of the operation in which 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed.

“This cycle of violence has to end, it cannot continue. If there is no political solution to the conflict, we are going to stand here in a week’s time, in a month’s time, in a year’s time, with nothing changed,” he added.

As the delegation toured the camp, residents peered out of holes left in the walls by Israeli rockets, and local authorities tested a new camp-wide alarm system to warn of future raids.

United Nations condemnation

Yesterday, Israel’s United Nations ambassador called on secretary-general Antonio Guterres to retract his condemnation of the country’s excessive use of force in the military operation that targeted a refugee camp in the West Bank.

But a UN spokesperson said yesterday the secretary-general “stands by those views”.

Guterres, angered by the impact of the Israeli airstrikes and attack on the Jenin refugee camp, said the operation left more than 100 civilians injured, uprooted thousands of residents, damaged schools and hospitals, and disrupted water and electricity networks.

He also criticised Israel for preventing the injured from getting medical care and humanitarian workers from reaching everyone in need.

Israel’s two-day offensive, designed to crack down on Palestinian militants, destroyed the Jenin camp’s narrow roads and alleyways, forced thousands of people to flee their homes and killed 12 Palestinians. One Israeli soldier also was killed.

Guterres said: “I strongly condemn all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror.”

Asked whether this condemnation applied to Israel, he said: “It applies to all use of excessive force, and obviously in this situation, there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces.”

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the UN chief’s remarks “shameful, far-fetched, and completely detached from reality.”

He said the Israeli military action in Jenin “focused solely on combating the murderous Palestinian terror targeting innocent Israeli civilians.”

UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said the secretary-general “clearly condemns all of the violence that has been affecting the civilians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, regardless of who is the perpetrator”.

The UN Security Council discussed Israel’s military operation in Jenin behind closed doors on Friday at the request of the United Arab Emirates and received a briefing from assistant secretary-general Khaled Khiari.

Erdan sent a letter to the 15 council members and Guterres before the council meeting saying that over the past year, 52 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, and many attacks were carried out from Jenin or from the area.

“The international community and the Security Council must unconditionally condemn the latest Palestinian terror attacks and hold Palestinian leadership accountable,” he said.

The Security Council took no action.

I might observe that the occupation as it is at the moment already seperates the Israeli state from modern western democracies.

Academics represent their institutions; there really isn’t a solid line anymore between their careers and private lives. The comments Humphrys made about the death of George Floyd are not the sort of thing that escapes notice these days.

...mostly because Saudi - bad as it is - is not colonising areas outside it's borders. Other reprehensible regimes, like in Syria and Russia, are already under international sanctions and rightly so. India and Indonesia are better examples of states that fly under the radar in terms of condemnation and ostracism.

"Arabs" is a term to be used like "Europeans", rather than to denote some monolithic bloc.