Palestine

[LinuxGal]

[Pat Mustard]

Israeli would like to strike at key facilities serving Iran’s nuclear weapon program.   To Israeli and particularly the Nutenyahu government the chance to able to do so without incurring the diplomatic and PR fallout of a largely unprovoked attack is a god send.     Conducting such a move would also have the advantage of putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to slow its own quest to acquire nuclear weapons as part of Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. 

From a grand strategic view,  Israel’s long investment in its armed forces and its long support by the U.S. has left Israel with defensive organization and array of armament that is much cherished but significantly mismatched with the need of securing it environments and providing adequate deterrence.     A high intensity long range air war to destroy Iran’s nuclear facility along with key parts of its air defence and ground forces capabilities however will serve to justify continued investment in the existing organizational and force stricture.

Many people would be happy to see that happen but:
- The IDF has 600,000 personnel, 400,000 of these are reservists.
- Hamas has 40,000 fighters and they are defending a city still full of civilians with an underground tunnel network (a bit like Vietnam)
- The number of Hezbollah fighters is between 40,000 and 100,000. They have between 40,000 and 150,000 missiles.
- The size of the Iranian army is 600,000 + 350,000 reservists. (Roughly 1 million).
 
The last issue: We saw in the US invasion of Iraq that none of these will really matter. But I still don’t believe the Israelis can wage war with Iran all by themselves. Also: I don’t think Iran would want something like that either.
 
So I would try not moving into Gaza at all. First you need to make Hamas (and Hezbollah) unable to recruit new people. For these you need to do the opposite of what has been done in the past 75 years: You create a zone of stability and peace. With stable governments who truly care for their own people. So that people can make plans for the future instead of joining criminal activities. Than you can bring democratically elected politicians and make sincere commitments for the future.
 
But there is truth in the opposite perspective too: Israel is still a power of annexation. A force of invasion in that region. It may not be willing to stop until it takes and colonizes all of Palestine. And that’s where the international community has to come in (in this completely hypothetical scenario of course )

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Hollywood celebrities are signing a petition and sending it to Joe Biden in which they say:

 
(…)
 
   Thank you for your unshakable moral conviction, leadership, and support for the Jewish people, who have been terrorized by Hamas since the group’s founding over 35 years ago, and for the Palestinians, who have also been terrorized, oppressed, and victimized by Hamas for the last 17 years that the group has been governing Gaza.
 
 We all want the same thing: Freedom for Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side in peace. Freedom from the brutal violence spread by Hamas. And most urgently, in this moment, freedom for the hostages. (…)
 
https://www.nohostageleftbehind.com/
 
 

The problem for Israel in all this is that in order to gain peace they must give up what they most want, Eretz Ysrael. And I fear that, given the nature of Israeli politics, they will find that impossible and simply go full pelt down the route they've been travelling so far: Endlösung.

[GrandizerII]

This is sad for all the innocent people involved. Fuck what Hamas has done, and fuck what the Israeli government is doing also. Both sides are criminals. And fuck the propaganda from both sides. There should be no exclusively pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, there should be pro-peace for the people of both Palestine and Israel without blaming only one side for all the atrocities happening, and without falling prey to false rumors being spread through the media from both sides (which just aggravates the damage already being done).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is sad for all the innocent people involved. Fuck what Hamas has done, and fuck what the Israeli government is doing also. Both sides are criminals. And fuck the propaganda from both sides. There should be no exclusively pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, there should be pro-peace for the people of both Palestine and Israel without blaming only one side for all the atrocities happening, and without falling prey to false rumors being spread through the media from both sides (which just aggravates the damage already being done).

I agree completely. However, this has always been one of those conflicts that doesn't seem to allow for reasonable opinions.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

This is sad for all the innocent people involved. Fuck what Hamas has done, and fuck what the Israeli government is doing also. Both sides are criminals. And fuck the propaganda from both sides. There should be no exclusively pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, there should be pro-peace for the people of both Palestine and Israel without blaming only one side for all the atrocities happening, and without falling prey to false rumors being spread through the media from both sides (which just aggravates the damage already being done).

In my country (which is Muslim country and neither Turks nor Kurds are great fans of Israel), there is a 10 % group who want to support the Arabs. There is a 5-6 % group who want to support Israel. The rest do not want anything to do with this G.D. war.

[GrandizerII]

This is sad for all the innocent people involved. Fuck what Hamas has done, and fuck what the Israeli government is doing also. Both sides are criminals. And fuck the propaganda from both sides. There should be no exclusively pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, there should be pro-peace for the people of both Palestine and Israel without blaming only one side for all the atrocities happening, and without falling prey to false rumors being spread through the media from both sides (which just aggravates the damage already being done).

In my country (which is Muslim country and neither Turks nor Kurds are great fans of Israel), there is a 10 % group who want to support the Arabs. There is a 5-6 % group who want to support Israel. The rest do not want anything to do with this G.D. war.

I'm from Lebanon, and the typical Lebanese is culturally conditioned to be anti-Israel. In fact, I have family that are strongly anti-Israel, and I've had arguments with them because I think both the Israeli side and the Arab/Muslim side are to blame for the continual fuck ups in Israel/Palestine.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^My wife is a descendant of Syrian Jews and is absolutely appalled by Israel’s policies and actions regarding Palestine.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

I cannot be Pro-Israel in a world in which even Israelis are not completely pro-Israel.
 
Yet, did you see these images:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-hamas-...20579.html
 
- Christian / Jew or Muslim there is a definition for groups of men who do such things. And these are the kind of people you have to go after and eliminate. I do agree with the Israeli Prime Minister on that.
 
Still: After this is done, If you do not want A Hamas 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 etc. you need to look at the roots of these organizations. You need to ask question “Why do people who are born as humans, become something like that”.
 
Meaning: All the Arabs of Palestine need to be given a prospect for a decent life. So politicians will have to solve that. I don’t know what the solution might me. But you cannot have a whole geography full of states and non-states in which young man are brought to conclusions like “This is the only thing I can do”. This should not be the only thing somebody could do for anybody.
 
To me this means stronger and more secular Middle-Easter governments + a Stronger / secular Palestinian state and (probably) the withdrawal of Israeli colonies and/or some other sort of permanent solution.
 
My point is, if you push people into the arms of political Islam (which is seen by many as the only possible way forward). You can expect them to become animals. And they will than act like animals. SO you have to solve the root of the issue or there will not be a Geography left for the state of Israel to exist.
 
(I mean, who does that?)

[Leonardo17]

Here is another interesting Comment by Ali İbrahimi (Newsweek):
 
If the tables were turned and Palestine were the occupier, the Palestinians would be implored to stop bombing the homes, schools, houses of worship and evacuation zones of a captive and impoverished population. They would be urged to revive a political pathway for ending the occupation so that all can live in peace and with dignity. And so that extremists in Palestine, Israel and beyond can be marginalized and frozen out.
 
https://www.newsweek.com/even-hamas-atro...on-1839958
 

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My view is that Bombs alone will not solve anything by themselves. See after WWI Germany was humiliated by the allies and treated like some sort of colony in some place in Africa. This caused the Germans to become really desperate and made them vulnerable to populist propaganda. Hitler was even put to prison during that time. But this resulted in even more support for Hitler, especially from the German conservative elites who longed for the country’s would-be glory in imperial times.
 
After WWII however, the allies did the opposite. They actively participated in the rebuilding of defeated countries like Japan and Germany (making them the second and third economic power of the world in the 80’s and 90’s). They also started the Marshall Plan, all over Europe, to create some sort of future and development to all these regions that had been devastated by war.
 
The Result was a stable and unified Europe, that leaves a limited space for populism to exist, that has become unified enough to even integrate countries that were a part of the communist block and absorb migration shocks generated far from its borders in places like Syria and Afghanistan.
 
So I am suspicious on certain things. I believe that Israel + the USA have backed political Islamist movements all over the world in the past and turned it into the super-beast it has become today (in an effort to counteract Moscow’s influence in the region in the 80’s and 70’s). So this has to stop. Now political Islam has clearly turned into some sort of communist block, or third Reich of it’s own (if you are willing to see things straight). So this has to be understood very well.
 
2) This whole “Muslim Geography” has to be dealled with. I don’t know if it takes the form of aid or assistance of some sort. You can’t just have some spoiled elites who live on Oil and Gas revenues with many generations of people who are completely uneducated, stricken by poverty and totally open to anti-Semitic / Political Islamist propaganda. This cannot simply go on like this anymore.
 
And: That’s what Zionist extremism wants as well: If the whole region is like this. If the average Arab remains as a bigot with 4 wife’s and 20 or so children, they won’t have a problem dehumanizing them and say things like “Yeah, I killed children in Gaza, but see, half of them are children anyways”
 
- I think the world lost many opportunities that were offered by the Secular leaders of the Past. This Jamal Abdel Nasser (died:1970) was one these opportunities in the past:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamal_Abdel_Nasser
 
This Ahmad Shah Messoud (who was assassinated by political Islamists a few days before 9/11) was another such opportunity:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud
 
His son is still resisting the Taliban. And I’m sure he is not getting the same kind of support as Vlodimyr Zellensky.
 
The saddest event is that of the FLN (Algerian Liberation Front: 1954-1962). Some 400,000 people died in order to end the French occupation / colonization. Thousand had to be relocated. Those who had collaborated with the French Army were butchered etc. Yet, today all they have is a weak and corrupt government with an increasing presence of political Islam in all levels of life. Bars and night-life outlets are said to have been closed.
 
The only ones who are doing relatively well are Morocco + Saudi Arabia and its satellites. But these last one are a problem to the world because of their way of doing things.
 
So I don’t know about the method to be used. All I know is that, people living in these places are still people. And many (younger generations in particular) will not reject the prospect of change. And no war is going to make anything better.
 
See: Lebanon for instance is a dead man walking. The whole state apparatus has collapsed. Today many Sub-Saharan African countries are in a better place then say, Egypt or Libya.
 
So I believe in some sort of international conference on this, with the cooperation and participation of China and other major economies like Brazil for instance. The entire area needs to be geo-engineered from top to bottom. Than you can create a secular / strong government in Palestine. Then there can be negotiation and durable peace with Israel.
 
But does Israel want that?
- Probably not. They want us to become like animals, to not receive any type of compassion from the rest of the world. Thus continue their colonization of all of Palestine. That’s how I would think If I was them.
 
But the issue is this: This is starting to hit me in a very serious manner. I’m being ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood since 23 years now. I cannot Say Turkey was such a wonderful place in the 90’s and 80’s. But I can see how political Islamists are getting organized and gradually putting us on a path of becoming a more middle-eastern state.

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And one thing I can say on this is: We don’t want that. I don’t want to be something like east-European countries in 1920’s and 1930’s that were meant to serve as a quarantine line against Bolshevism. We all sort of want to live our live and the hell with this type of Zionism and the hell with Political Islam which are nothing but the Yin and Yang of middle-eastern religious populism.  
 

[Leonardo17]

Sometimes the US position on the issue is not so easy to understand. Joe Biden did say one month ago that “The US stands with Israel”.
 
Than we are also reading that:
 
"We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again." Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and President Joe Biden agreed to commit to "ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation," Biden said on Oct. 29.
 

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In order for these people to stop dying there is but two solution:
 
1) The IDF has to stop dropping bombs on them. So there is an immediate cease fire now. But even if this is done Half of Gaza’s infrastructure is already damaged beyond repair. So most of these people don’t have a home to go back to.
 
+ Even before this war 90% of Gaza’s economy was based on foreign aid flowing to the region. You cannot help 2,5 million people like this indefinitely. It’s not OK for children to grow up in a place like this.
 
+ Israel is intending to control the region after the war, than transfer this control to an international force, than transfer the authority back to the Palestinian authority.
 
The second solution is:
 
2) To displace anyone who is willing to be displaced. If “Arabs would die rather than give up their territory” than can anyone explain to me why some 3 million Arabs fleeing the regime of Assad are still in turkey right now? Why are they living in Turkey (+ 1 million of them are in Germany + 3-4 million of them are in other countries including 500,000 in Iraqi Kurdistan etc.).
 
So I don’t agree with Biden on this one.
+ Another repeated issue is “Middle eastern governments are being pressured by their population to support Palestinians or whatever”.
 
- I don’t agree with that one either. Arab population are undereducated people who are being exposed to Medias that are conveying only one aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I was talking to a cab driver yesterday. Many people in Turkey do not even know that Hamas has murdered 1300 Israelis / captured 250 and injured some 3500 people including old people, children and even infants. The pro-government media here is selling it as “Israelis have nothing better to do with their lives than bombing innocent civilians”. Than would be leaders are ending up making comments glorifying the Hamas instead of describing it as a terrorist organization.

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So I think the focus of diplomacy now should be to let people out. It’s not OK for civilians do not stay in a warzone.

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Also it’s amazing: There are protests in Washington, Toronto, Berlin, Budapest, Paris.
 
In short nobody is willing to witness all of this barbary anymore:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/protest-march...39807.html