Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

I remember my reaction when hearing that the IDF was going to bomb the fuck out of Gaza without any consideration for Israelis being held hostage was one of "WTF is wrong with these people?" and thinking how little they care for human lives, including those of their own people..

Israeli state actors (politicians, soldiers and so on) are behaving like a bunch of blindfolded lunatics trying to kill a single fly by smashing the place up with baseball bats, sledgehammers and chainsaws. In the end, they fail to kill the fly.
I half agree. There are those within the government for whom killing as many people and bombing as many buildings as possible is the plan. Going after Hamas is a cover story. They may have their eyes closed as they smash the place up, but smashing the place up is the goal. They don't give a shit about the fly. Or perhaps more accurately, for them, everyone there is a fly.

Not that I think you're saying this, but the line that the way they are going after Hamas is too costly lets Israel off the hook. They're not going after Hamas. They're going after everyone. They even admit it themselves now.
 
I half agree. There are those within the government for whom killing as many people and bombing as many buildings as possible is the plan. Going after Hamas is a cover story. They may have their eyes closed as they smash the place up, but smashing the place up is the goal. They don't give a shit about the fly. Or perhaps more accurately, for them, everyone there is a fly.

Not that I think you're saying this, but the line that the way they are going after Hamas is too costly lets Israel off the hook. They're not going after Hamas. They're going after everyone. They even admit it themselves now.
Well, of course; that's my point. They don't care about the fly: they just want to smash the place up.
 
Killing civilians has been part of how IDF operate since founding of Israel. It's predecessors Haganah killed civilian Palestinians as part of the expulsion.

Whatever Hamas have done in attack in October does not mean that State of Israel are acting in any way different than it's acted in past.

What exactly were Palestinians supposed to do in face of ongoing loss of land on West Bank and violent suppression of non violent protest?

With international community and Arab states ( not Arab people) letting this happen?

( eg The march of return Gaza's "Great March of Return," six months on)

The way things were going for Palestinians prior October attack was that they were being forgotten by international community.

Dispossession of Palestinians and removal was and always has been aim of Zionism. No Palestinian is a civilian. They are a problem to be dealt with. The gradual removal may take a slow form or a drastic quick one. But it's always been present in Zionist political project.

IDF made a mistake in killing these Israeli hostages. It is however no surprise that a shoot to kill policy is in place.

The basis of this conflict is Zionism. Which would ideally want an Israel that covers all the ex British mandate.

The fact that it hasn't been able to do this entirely is down to public international pressure and Palestinian resistance.
 
Killing civilians has been part of how IDF operate since founding of Israel. It's predecessors Haganah killed civilian Palestinians as part of the expulsion.

Whatever Hamas have done in attack in October does not mean that State of Israel are acting in any way different than it's acted in past.

What exactly were Palestinians supposed to do in face of ongoing loss of land on West Bank and violent suppression of non violent protest?

With international community and Arab states ( not Arab people) letting this happen?

( eg The march of return Gaza's "Great March of Return," six months on)

The way things were going for Palestinians prior October attack was that they were being forgotten by international community.

Dispossession of Palestinians and removal was and always has been aim of Zionism. No Palestinian is a civilian. They are a problem to be dealt with. The gradual removal may take a slow form or a drastic quick one. But it's always been present in Zionist political project.

IDF made a mistake in killing these Israeli hostages. It is however no surprise that a shoot to kill policy is in place.

The basis of this conflict is Zionism. Which would ideally want an Israel that covers all the ex British mandate.

The fact that it hasn't been able to do this entirely is down to public international pressure and Palestinian resistance.
Not all Zionists would want the State of Israel to expand beyond the green line.
 
Can't see it
Me neither. Bollocks. It reads as follows:

"we were so hyped up about exterminating the racial foe we accidently shot to death three of our own civilians" is some austria-hungary 1914 clown shit. the kind of thing that gets a two-page anecdote in the good soldier svejk told by a bit character named sergeant shit-eater

Quoted by me in the spirit of "I wish I'd thought of this." The three escaping hostages shot by the IDF were waving a white flag, apparently. So it goes.
 
Me neither. Bollocks. It reads as follows:

"we were so hyped up about exterminating the racial foe we accidently shot to death three of our own civilians" is some austria-hungary 1914 clown shit. the kind of thing that gets a two-page anecdote in the good soldier svejk told by a bit character named sergeant shit-eater

Quoted by me in the spirit of "I wish I'd thought of this." The three escaping hostages shot by the IDF were waving a white flag, apparently. So it goes.
Thank you!
 
1702742631060.png:(

WRT to the hostages shot by the IDF, I am completely unsurprised. As has already been observed and another example is above, the IDF are shooting anyone not just people who they think might be Hamas.
 
Seems like international law no longer matters and war crimes are perfectly okay. :mad:
Politico in an article saying the US has endless very precise court submisable evidence that Israel has repeatedly broken international law but point out that "any pronouncement that Israel violated international humanitarian law would likely have implications for Washington as well. It could mean that the U.S. would be legally complicit given the billions of dollars it spends a year to send weapons to Israel." I mean it would never happen anyway but adds to the picture. As I say, I blame the US first and foremost, although Israel is basically a protectorate of the US
 
I think it's one of those watergate things, where they admit to it like it's an aberration from the made up "norm" of not killing innocent people to try to cover up that it happens as standard all the time
 
That's not really an equivalent to the setting up of the state of Israel though.

As most of the original settlers of that state were from Germany and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe, it would arguably have made more sense (within the logic of early/mid 20th century nation state creation) to have set up a Jewish state when Germany and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe were carved up in the aftermath of WW2.

A Jewish state could have been created, for example, in Silesia, which was instead enthically cleansed of German speakers and repopulated by Poles who in turn had been ethnically cleansed from what had been Eastern Poland. However, that was never on the the cards when the victorious powers decided which populations would be sent where. There was no safe place for Jews in Europe after WW2.
 
There was no safe place for Jews in Europe after WW2.
Is that really true? Was the UK an unsafe place for Jews after WW2? Were Italy or France or Belgium or the Netherlands unsafe places for Jews after WW2? Lots of people left, but lots of people didn't leave. Lots of people returned. Primo Levi returned to Italy from Auschwitz. Jean Amery moved to Belgium. They weren't unsafe there.
 
Is that really true? Was the UK an unsafe place for Jews after WW2? Were Italy or France or Belgium or the Netherlands unsafe places for Jews after WW2? Lots of people left, but lots of people didn't leave. Lots of people returned. Primo Levi returned to Italy from Auschwitz. Jean Amery moved to Belgium. They weren't unsafe there.
I was very struck by reading William I Hitchcock's book 'Liberation' on the fallout of the Holocaust, it made me understand a lot more why Israel came into being.

Yes, not everywhere was unsafe but a lot of Jewish communities had been utterly destroyed and, particularly in places like Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia a lot of survivors (and that was a large chunk of survivors) were understandably reluctant to return to places where their gentile neighbours had basically cheerfully waved them and their families off to their deaths. Very large numbers remained in transit camps, I think some even on the sites of Nazi camps, because they just would not go 'home', which created a massive headache.

My grandfather was one of the relatively few who returned to Czechoslovakia, now Eastern Slovakia - my mum grew up as a member of one of the two Jewish families in their town. I don't think any of us ever asked him why he didn't consider going to Israel. It may just be that he had had so much trouble post war with the communist authorities (his wife was English, and being Jewish and a bit bourgoise the secret police used to harrass him and my grandmother a lot and periodically lock him up for no reason. He and his sister actually somehow did escape the country during WWII and get to Palestine, which is how come they weren't exterminated like almost the entire rest of the family. I can only imagine he was sure any application to leave the country post war would have been blocked. Or maybe he didn't like Palestine that much. His sister remained there and was a founder member of a Kibbutz in the North. Sorry... just an aside.
 
I was very struck by reading William I Hitchcock's book 'Liberation' on the fallout of the Holocaust, it made me understand a lot more why Israel came into being.

Yes, not everywhere was unsafe but a lot of Jewish communities had been utterly destroyed and, particularly in places like Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia a lot of survivors (and that was a large chunk of survivors) were understandably reluctant to return to places where their gentile neighbours had basically cheerfully waved them and their families off to their deaths. Very large numbers remained in transit camps, I think some even on the sites of Nazi camps, because they just would not go 'home', which created a massive headache.

My grandfather was one of the relatively few who returned to Czechoslovakia, now Eastern Slovakia - my mum grew up as a member of one of the two Jewish families in their town. I don't think any of us ever asked him why he didn't consider going to Israel. It may just be that he had had so much trouble post war with the communist authorities (his wife was English, and being Jewish and a bit bourgoise the secret police used to harrass him and my grandmother a lot and periodically lock him up for no reason. He and his sister actually somehow did escape the country during WWII and get to Palestine, which is how come they weren't exterminated like almost the entire rest of the family. I can only imagine he was sure any application to leave the country post war would have been blocked. Or maybe he didn't like Palestine that much. His sister remained there and was a founder member of a Kibbutz in the North. Sorry... just an aside.
I get why people wanted to leave, of course. And why people felt that they needed to leave to find somewhere safe. But that's a bit different from looking back at that time from the present and stating that nowhere in Europe was safe for Jews post-WW2. It can be part of a narrative that says that Israel had to happen, that there was no other option.
 
I guess there was also the sad truth that I'm sure a lot of 'safe' countries didn't want thousands of Jewish immigrants and thus Israel started to look like a good idea.
 
Regarding the events at the church that I posted above, this statement has been published. Appaling:

View attachment 404582

I think they are separate killings to the two Layla Moran mentioned, at least looking at the dates.

FWIW it should also be pointed out that the Pope himself is in either daily or weekly (I forget which) phone contact with the deacons and nuns running the church (the priest was in Jerusalem on October 7th and hasn't been able to get back), and it has been repeatedly made clear to the world that the only people sheltering there are local Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic families. There is (sadly) probably no place in Gaza City where they are more likely to incite an international incident as the result of attacking it.
 
Is that really true? Was the UK an unsafe place for Jews after WW2?
Depends what you mean by safe. At the end of July 1947 the British authorities in Palestine executed three members of Irgun. In retaliation Irgun hanged two British army sergeant's (one of them of Jewish heritage). On the 1st August the Daily Express published a photograph on it's front page
yIz7CZF.jpg

Over the Bank Holiday weekend there was anti-Jewish violence in a number of places across Britain.

Here's an account in the New Statesman in 2012: Britain's last anti-Jewish riots (archived)
On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for 12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

Arsonists in West Derby set fire to a wooden synagogue; workers at Canada Dock in Liverpool returned from the holidays to find “Death to all Jews” painted above the entrance. And in Eccles, a former sergeant major named John Regan was fined £15 for telling a crowd of 700: “Hitler was right. Exterminate every Jew – every man, woman and child. What are you afraid of? There’s only a handful of police.”

Just two years after British troops had liberated Bergen-Belsen, the language of the Third Reich had resurfaced, this time at home. Anger about what had happened in Palestine was one thing, but it seemed to have unleashed something far more vicious.

Account in the Belfast Telegraph 4th August 1947:
XrAHkGd.jpg

There were indeed far less safe places than the UK - but it's all relative.
 
Depends what you mean by safe. At the end of July 1947 the British authorities in Palestine executed three members of Irgun. In retaliation Irgun hanged two British army sergeant's (one of them of Jewish heritage). On the 1st August the Daily Express published a photograph on it's front page
yIz7CZF.jpg

Over the Bank Holiday weekend there was anti-Jewish violence in a number of places across Britain.

Here's an account in the New Statesman in 2012: Britain's last anti-Jewish riots (archived)
On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for 12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

Arsonists in West Derby set fire to a wooden synagogue; workers at Canada Dock in Liverpool returned from the holidays to find “Death to all Jews” painted above the entrance. And in Eccles, a former sergeant major named John Regan was fined £15 for telling a crowd of 700: “Hitler was right. Exterminate every Jew – every man, woman and child. What are you afraid of? There’s only a handful of police.”



Account in the Belfast Telegraph 4th August 1947:
XrAHkGd.jpg

There were indeed far less safe places than the UK - but it's all relative.
I am shocked by this. I knew that Mosely was trying to make a comeback at the time in East London, trying to take advantage of the events in Palestine, but I never knew that there was this amount of anti-Jewish attacks. It is hard to believe.
 
I think they are separate killings to the two Layla Moran mentioned, at least looking at the dates.

FWIW it should also be pointed out that the Pope himself is in either daily or weekly (I forget which) phone contact with the deacons and nuns running the church (the priest was in Jerusalem on October 7th and hasn't been able to get back), and it has been repeatedly made clear to the world that the only people sheltering there are local Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic families. There is (sadly) probably no place in Gaza City where they are more likely to incite an international incident as the result of attacking it.
Yeah sorry about that, the way I worded it makes it look like I think they are the same killings. I do not, They are connected to the same location though but the rubbish collector and the janitor that Layla Morgan speaks appear to be staff whereas the mother and daughter are not. They are definitely more war crimes though.
 
Back
Top Bottom