Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

[Pickman's model]

No. “Terrorism” is defined as a violent action by a non-state actor, with the aim of changing the political dispensation. It is not defined by the nature of the target. It is not a term of moral condemnation.

is defined by who as?

 

[Pickman's model]

Does the bombardment of the crossing into Egypt have some particular significance?

the lols no doubt

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Terrorism is what the other bloke does. Defence and deterrence is what we do.

With respect, I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. A concept being invoked in a selective and hypocritical way in political discourse doesn't make it worthless - we'd have very few concepts left if it did! We need some kind of vocabulary for endorsing or opposing certain uses of physical force in political resistance. For me, one important line in the sand when assessing political uses of force is whether innocent individuals are deliberately targeted. Such means can seldom, if ever, be justified for me.

 

[Pickman's model]

With respect, I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. A concept being invoked in a selective and hypocritical way in political discourse doesn't make it worthless - we'd have very few concepts left if it did! We need some kind of vocabulary for endorsing or opposing certain uses of physical force in political resistance. For me, one important line in the sand when assessing political uses of force is whether innocent individuals are deliberately targeted. Such means can seldom, if ever, be justified for me.

yeh, who decides who is innocent and who guilty, or at least complicit?

 

[Ax^]

But this is an ultimate act of depravity. When you've reached the stage where you feel killing and raping your opponents kids is your only course of action, you've lost. It's time to throw-in your hand and either capitulate, or pursue less immoral means, regardless of how futile.

Unfortunately the bad guys sometimes win.

hmm go to Google and look up IDF shoots child

sometime the bad guys do win

 

[Flavour]

I wonder how egpyt would react to a mass breakout of refugees, something which bombing the infrastructure of the border crossing only makes easier

 

[TopCat]

Far-right Israeli minister says he will 'massively' arm civilians with assault rifles​

The national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has announced his ministry is buying 10,000 rifles to arm “civilian security teams” across Israel and the occupied West Bank, the Times of Israel reports.

The report said the rifles, 4,000 of which have already been bought, will go to Israeli towns close to the borders, but also to mixed Jewish-Arab cities inside Israel and West Bank settlements.

Ben-Gvir is a hardline Jewish settler who has past convictions for supporting terrorism and incitement against Arabs.

He was quoted as saying the weapons and equipment will be distributed to “hundreds of towns that have civilian security teams linked to the Israel police’s border police force”.

Civilian security teams provide security to small towns and communities but in the West Bank, some have attacked Palestinians.

“We will turn the world upside down so that towns are protected,” Ben Gvir was quoted as saying. “I have given instructions for massively arming the civilian security team.”

 

[Gramsci]

Here you go, knock yourself out.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1547213?scroll=top&needAccess=true

(Not the specific study I had in mind, I should note, but this was another one I was reading at the time and is the rather more comprehensive explanation of the analytical framework)

I don’t think “understand” means what you think it means. Hint: it doesn’t mean excuse, endorse or accept.

I was interested in reading the article but can't seem to access it.

 

[Serge Forward]

No. “Terrorism” is defined as a violent action by a non-state actor, with the aim of changing the political dispensation. It is not defined by the nature of the target. It is not a term of moral condemnation.

I think you'll find that a fairly modern definition. Historically, terrorism mostly referred to terroristic actions by nation states.

 

[Lurdan]

I was interested in reading the article but can't seem to access it.

Link to 'evaluation copy' (PDF)

 

[Jeff Robinson]

yeh, who decides who is innocent and who guilty, or at least complicit?

Great question, it's up to us collectively, 'there's no justice, just us!' as the saying goes.

There will be clear-cut examples and trickier ones. Personally speaking, I don't think members of the Israeli government, IDF or state security services count as 'innocent', nor do settlers in the West Bank, though the children of settlers present a more challenging example. Personally though, if an Israeli settlement gets attacked and settler children die in the cross fire, I think the principal blame lies with their parents for taking them there in the first place.

Some people go further though and say that the entire Israeli Jewish population are fair game. They claim that because Israel is a settler colonial state and has military conscription, every Israeli is a combatant in waiting. I think this is very wrong. It discounts the descendants of Jews who lived in Palestine prior to colonisation, children, Refusniks, peace activists, tourists etc. and just that most of people who live there were born there and are just growing up in their culture where their family and friends are. The idea that none of these people can be unjustly maimed or killed is insane, genocidal logic, not dissimilar from that motivating the fascistic Israeli government and its terror campaign against Palestinians.

 

[likesfish]

yeh, who decides who is innocent and who guilty, or at least complicit?

Millions of people have their lives shattered by armed conflict every year. their you go basic rules of armed conflict both sides a guilty of breaching it

 

[The39thStep]

Harvard and other US institutions of the enlightened have a sketchy history when it comes to Jews. Where everyone else zigs, they zag.

The Nazi Sympathizers Who Ran American Universities

Whilst that book is a good read I'm not convinced it explains why, according to the Guardian article, the University supports Ukraine and that the signatures to the statement on Palestine included a whole set of organisations including those representing Black, Asian and Jewish students. The article points out that during the years that the book is set Jewish refugee scholars were welcomed in Southern black colleges,

The facts are that attitudes towards Palestine in the US are shifting, possibly but unlikely imo due to Nazi influence. This year for the first time, according to Gallop, Democrat voters were more likely to be sympathetic to the Palestinians than Israelis by a margin of 49% to 38%. Across U.S. adults support for Israel has in the last decade declined from 64% to 54%. whereas support for Palestine has risen to 31% from 12% .

 

[JimW]

Kadryov offering Chechen peacekeepers: Kadyrov calls for end of Israel-Hamas conflict, offers to send Chechen peacekeepers to ‘restore order’ — Meduza Says something when he's low down on the nutball hit parade in a conflict.

 

[Pickman's model]

Millions of people have their lives shattered by armed conflict every year. their you go basic rules of armed conflict both sides a guilty of breaching it

so amnesty international decide i suppose

 

[Pickman's model]

Kadryov offering Chechen peacekeepers: Kadyrov calls for end of Israel-Hamas conflict, offers to send Chechen peacekeepers to ‘restore order’ — Meduza Says something when he's low down on the nutball hit parade in a conflict.

safer than in ukraine

 

[not-bono-ever]

For some reason this just popped up in my monkey mind. Long story but I was given a copy by barking mad pro RAF german about 30 years ago as light comedic reading when I was travelling

 

[not-bono-ever]

Met him on the Cyprus to Israel ferry - he was going to volunteer for bother with the Palestinians apparently. Fucking hell. I have just remembered this.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Sorry for derail

 

[likesfish]

so amnesty international decide i suppose

nah they copy from the general accepted rules of warfare not targetting civillians no perfidy etc etc it's not exaclty complex

 

[Idris2002]

"The ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for man.
But one thing is beyond his reach.
The ogre cannot master speech.

Upon a subjugated plain,
Among the merciless and slain,
The ogre stalks with hands on hips
While drivel gushes from his lips"

 

[zahir]

This is interesting on Netanyahu and Hamas.

The end of the Netanyahu doctrine

The prime minister's claim that Middle East peace was possible without the Palestinians has been shattered by Hamas' incursion, and the ensuing war.

www.972mag.com

“Netanyahu wants Hamas on its feet and is ready to pay an almost unimaginable price for it: half the country paralyzed, children and parents traumatized, houses bombed, people killed,” Israel’s current information minister, Galit Distel Atbaryan, wrote in May 2019, when she was yet to enter politics but was known as a prominent Netanyahu supporter. “And Netanyahu, in a kind of outrageous, almost unimaginable restraint, does not do the easiest thing: getting the IDF to overthrow the organization.

“The question is, why?” Distel Atbaryan continued, before explaining: “If Hamas collapses, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] may control the strip. If he controls it, there will be voices from the left that will encourage negotiations and a political solution and a Palestinian state, also in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] … This is the real reason why Netanyahu does not eliminate the Hamas leader, everything else is bullshit.”

Indeed, Netanyahu himself had effectively admitted as much a couple of months before Distel Atbaryan made her comments, when he declared in a Likud meeting that “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas. This is part of our strategy, to isolate Palestinians in Gaza from Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.”

 

[nino_savatte]

A few minutes into Starmer's conference speech and it's the usual condemnation of Hamas and the senseless killing of Israeli civilians, but typically no mention of the events that led up to the massive breakout and assault on Israel, nor was there any mention of the Palestinian people and their 50+ years of suffering under the Israeli occupation. Presumably, Starmer and his arsehole party are, for the most part, okay with the siege of Gaza and all the likely hundreds of thousands of deaths that will inevitably result from it.

Racist Labour: pretty cool with mass murder when it's the colonialists who are doing the killing.

 

[Pickman's model]

#

 

[Kid_Eternity]

I don’t see how anyone can defend this as ‘resistance’ or anything other than terrorism.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Terrorism is what the other bloke does. Defence and deterrence is what we do.

With respect, I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. A concept being invoked in a selective and hypocritical way in political discourse doesn't make it worthless - we'd have very few concepts left if it did! We need some kind of vocabulary for endorsing or opposing certain uses of physical force in political resistance. For me, one important line in the sand when assessing political uses of force is whether innocent individuals are deliberately targeted. Such means can seldom, if ever, be justified for me.

I agree. This isn't how I think about things, but how the protagonists in so many conflicts behave. As far as I'm concerned innocent bystanders in both Israel and Palestine are not any more legitimate a target than innocent bystanders in Luton .

 

[Idris2002]

Far-right Israeli minister says he will 'massively' arm civilians with assault rifles​

The national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has announced his ministry is buying 10,000 rifles to arm “civilian security teams” across Israel and the occupied West Bank, the Times of Israel reports.

The report said the rifles, 4,000 of which have already been bought, will go to Israeli towns close to the borders, but also to mixed Jewish-Arab cities inside Israel and West Bank settlements.

Ben-Gvir is a hardline Jewish settler who has past convictions for supporting terrorism and incitement against Arabs.

He was quoted as saying the weapons and equipment will be distributed to “hundreds of towns that have civilian security teams linked to the Israel police’s border police force”.

Civilian security teams provide security to small towns and communities but in the West Bank, some have attacked Palestinians.

“We will turn the world upside down so that towns are protected,” Ben Gvir was quoted as saying. “I have given instructions for massively arming the civilian security team.”

Rwanda, '94.

 

[emanymton]

I don’t see how anyone can defend this as ‘resistance’ or anything other than terrorism.

I think we need to be carful assuming every story we hear is true.

This has a bit of a smell of Iraqi soldiers turning of babies incubators.

False info will spread like wildfire, some deliberate some not.

I think what we already know as true is bad enough anyway.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don’t see how anyone can defend this as ‘resistance’ or anything other than terrorism.

That smells of bullshit.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I think we need to be carful assuming every story we hear is true.

This has a bit of a smell of Iraqi soldiers turning of babies incubators.

False info will spread like wildfire, some deliberate some not.

I think what we already know as true is bad enough anyway.

As Kid_Eternity himself said earlier, folk will believe whatever supports their position.