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

It's still not a fight to the death. Russia won't use Nuclear weapons as they know it's a dead end for them . Putin will be forced to the table eventually. You can have lofty notions about Ukraine winning and not negotiating a settlement, but real politik will kick in Washington at some stage if there is no hope of either side winning. Its not morally right, but unfortunately geo politics has little time for moral niceties

Your attempt to equate the Russians with the likes of hamas is flawed. Hamas and Hezbollah are not an existential threat to Israel. Russia at one stage certainly was a threat to the functioning of the Ukraine state, but they are not in a position to over throw the Ukranian government much less marching on other countries. This war has shown the Russian military is no match for the west's. Putin might be a lot of things, but he is not mad he will never march on a NATO country. Any suggestion that he will is nonsense

I can't speak for anyone who was in NI. I lived in England in the sixties through to the early nineties, moved to ROI for 2 years, moved to Scotland for 2 years then back to ROI permanently (bar a 6month stint in Israel with a few years on monthly travels to Israel).

You said:

"Because Israel is constantly under attack from Lebanon and is defending itself."

The poster replied

"England was constantly under attack from Ireland, you would have been fine with Dublin, Cork, Galway etc getting bombed to the stone age?"

The analogy and the question are valid. Whether England was under actual real constant attack is not relevant. The public mood was one of fear - I recall all the posters on the London Underground, the Public Information campaigns about "suspicious packages". Then there would be a bombing somewhere - London, Warrington - the fear would ratchet up a notch or two. If there were kids involved, four or five notches. The fear was very real.

In my opinion, the analogy is good because I do recall my parents and adult relatives calling for action to be taken against "Ireland". In those times, I don't believe they were talking about "negotiations" - more like direct action. The Falkand's war was in 1982 - there were parallels drawn by the common people between that and what the "Brits" should do to "Ireland".

Of course, as previously mentioned, when I came to live in ROI I learned the history. Not that the Brits were particularly lying to the population about the "troubles" - more that all I saw on TV in England was blokes in balaclavas (bad guys) and blokes in Pigs (good guys) getting petrol bombed etc. And only the educated (and the politicians) knew the distinction between the Irish and the IRA. Balaclava bad (Irish), Pig good (British).

And some Brits still think that.

So, do you care to answer the question the poster posed to you?

Some pictures of various ambassadors doesn't change the fact that the biggest group of Jews in Israel are mizrahi, who historically come from north Africa and the Middle East

There are plenty of pale skinned, light haired Palestinians also. For example

It doesn't mean anything. Why are you obsessed with skin colour?

Because he doesn’t have the good grace to concede that his point is complete and utter rubbish and that no matter how often he says it it’s still nonsense.

Oh Putler is absolutely making long term plans. Firstly, they're preparing Russian children for generations of war. They're also plotting to gain allies in the West, which is also working as Victor Orban is basically on his side in Hungary and the US with the GOP is starting to buckle in their support for Ukraine. In particular, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene (or as I call them Matt Putz and Marjorie Traitor Greene) basically wants to hand the whole thing over to Putler. If the US goes full-on isolationist, and/or if NATO is weakened by other events, then the Putler Jugend might just be up for the fight.

And there will be no end with a "negotiated settlement" as Putler has already broken a number of agreements. Two with Ukraine (the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 2014 Minsk Agreement) and another with Chechnya (then an independent country which Russia made "peace" with and recognised in the 1990s).

Any "negotiated settlement" between Ukraine and Russia would be nothing more than a ploy to give Russia time to re-arm and try again in 5-10 years when the West is distracted with something else. It would work no better than the Munich Agreement of 1938, because the word of a dictator is worth less than nothing. The only way to end this is to either cause Russia to collapse with sanctions, or to for Ukraine to put enough Russians into body bags. Or for Ukraine to surrender.

Israel is in the same predicament. Their enemies won't stop plotting and scheming against them and it's very unlikely that there is a peaceful solution. Therefore, both Ukraine and Israel have to use force.

We bombed their houses, how funny 🙄

Putin will have to abide by any agreement this time as the west won't be hood winked. Also the Russian army ,which has been decimated in Ukraine, will take years to reconstitute, even when it does, as this war has shown, it won't be a match for the west. As for Israel, The current Israeli Government is clearly not interested in peace, unfortunately, even with Hamas gone they will not tolerate a two state solution. You probably are in denial about this but the situation in the West Bank is testament to this. Indeed Bibi was so worried about Fatah becoming more powerful that he propped up Hamas in order to undermine Fatah and maintain the status quo.

Perhaps if a more centerist or left wing Government take over in Israel things might be different. It's interesting you blame the Palestinians for their current predicament, but don't blame Israelis for voting in someone like Bibi who committed fraud, acted like a dictator with regard to tearing up the Israeli Constitution in order to avoid jail and was content to prop up Hamas until it blew up in his face.

I am completely and utterly stumped.

How can Israel, who suffered unimaginably abhorrent treatment 80 years ago, do this?

Those people on TV laughing at homes destroyed, soldiers deliberately driving over an injured person, shooting a woman waving a white flag, digging up graves.

They regard the Palestinians as inferior, inhuman, animals. Like the Jews were regarded 80 years ago.

I just don't understand this inhumanity to Palestinians given the history of the Jews.

Perhaps you should have done a little more Googling. The vast majority of the world's Mizrahi Jews live in Israel. Israelis have ancestry from all over the world, including many from the Middle East North Africa region. Additionally, intermarriage has been encouraged in Israel so many Jews there are effectively of a new Israeli ethnicity.

But yes, keep up with the race-baiting.

I fear you're being a little over-optimistic about what Putler will have to do. As things stand, I fear that the Russians will be one group of leopards that will not change their proverbial spots.

As for Israel's government, they've had plenty of left-wing governments in their history, unfortunately none of them were able to change the underlying geopolitical situation.

It really is not a good analogy: for it to be so, the IRA would have had to be the government of Ireland, or at least Northern Ireland, and to have diverted most of the economy's resources into attempting to destroy England, leaving the majority of the country in poverty and depending on WHO and other NGOs for food and medical care.

There is just NO comparison with the IRA, who only sporadically (if ever) had majority support within the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, and even then they definitely had no mandate for murdering English children. I can hardly believe that people think it's similar - the people of Northern Ireland, even those who would normally vote Sinn Fein, were horrified when two children died at Warrington. Compare that to crowds in the streets of Gaza cheering and spitting on the murdered body of a young woman.

What has that got to do with anything? The vast majority of travellers live in Ireland. That isn't a proof that most Irish people are travellers.

Feel free to google the ambassadors of Israel to other countries to get a representation of who they are. The ambassadors are their representatives. It would be a bit strange for a country where "most of them are brown" to have almost exclusively white representatives ............

You guys are obsessed with this. I think it's just a strategy to create distractions everywhere and anywhere while the murdering continues apace.

Good man SeanW. Onto "your kind" posts.

I won't return in kind about "your kind", because it kinda wouldn't be very kind

Who voted for Hamas? Certainly not a single person under the age of 35.

That was sarcasm. It's one of the 'arguments' that was constantly trotted out to try to excuse mass murder, they seem to have moved on from that particular one though.

So per the original question posed to you, you are perfectly comfortable that cities in Ireland were valid targets for the British and had they been razed to the ground, you would not have been outraged?

OK.

"England was constantly under attack from Ireland, you would have been fine with Dublin, Cork, Galway etc getting bombed to the stone age?"