Israel vs. the rest of the world?

[P.K.]

3 hours ago, HeliX said:

Ilan Pappe, rather more eloquently than me, writes:

"Another way of judging what the real Israeli intentions have been since 1967 is to look at these policies from the point of view of the Palestinian victims. After the occupation, the new ruler confined the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in an impossible limbo: they were neither refugees nor citizens—they were, and still are, citizenless inhabitants. 

@HeliX

I notice the author fails to mention the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria where Palestinians are also stateless and going nowhere. He also fails to acknowledge that the Gaza enclave was created by Egypt.

There is also no mention of the Arab League invasions which created them.

When are you actually going to face up to reality? If the Arab League had assisted the Palestinians to consolidate territory things would be very different. But instead they chose to go to war instead. To destroy the fledgeling State of Israel and carve up the territory amongst themselves.

Despite repeated attempts they failed hence the mess we have today.

[P.K.]

4 hours ago, HeliX said:

The difficulty is that it won't stop until enough of the world can agree that Israel should stop violating international law and end its occupation of multiple lands to pressure them into actually doing so. Agreeing to disagree can't resolve this.

@HeliX

Not again!

The Israelis are not occupying mulitple lands illegally because there is no such thing as a Palestinian State. They have occupied the Golan Heights because it is highly strategic and the Syrians simply can't be trusted. This is tacitly acknowledged by the UN hence the occupying UNDOF. There is also the total none issue of some 14 square miles on the Lebanon / Syria border that was eventually sutveyed and set out by the UN. But according to you it is enough of an issue for Lebanon to be able to legally fire rockets at Israel in "self defence" which is up there with some of the worst of your drivel.

[HeliX]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

@HeliX

I notice the author fails to mention the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria where Palestinians are also stateless and going nowhere. He also fails to acknowledge that the Gaza enclave was created by Egypt.

There is also no mention of the Arab League invasions which created them.

When are you actually going to face up to reality? If the Arab League had assisted the Palestinians to consolidate territory things would be very different. But instead they chose to go to war instead. To destroy the fledgeling State of Israel and carve up the territory amongst themselves.

Despite repeated attempts they failed hence the mess we have today.

I'm sure Israeli historian and political scientist Ilan Pappé who has spent his life studying Israeli history would yield to your superior knowledge on the causes of the conflict.

[HeliX]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

@HeliX

Not again!

The Israelis are not occupying mulitple lands illegally because there is no such thing as a Palestinian State. They have occupied the Golan Heights because it is highly strategic and the Syrians simply can't be trusted. This is tacitly acknowledged by the UN hence the occupying UNDOF. There is also the total none issue of some 14 square miles on the Lebanon / Syria border that was eventually sutveyed and set out by the UN. But according to you it is enough of an issue for Lebanon to be able to legally fire rockets at Israel in "self defence" which is up there with some of the worst of your drivel.

"Israel isn't occupying except the bits where it is which I refuse to count" didn't fly several pages ago and still doesn't now.

[P.K.]

7 hours ago, HeliX said:

I'm sure Israeli historian and political scientist Ilan Pappé who has spent his life studying Israeli history would yield to your superior knowledge on the causes of the conflict.

I should hope so to. After all, I wouldn't call the last eighty years "history" and neither should anyone else...

Noticed you couldn't actually challenge anything.

[P.K.]

7 hours ago, HeliX said:

"Israel isn't occupying except the bits where it is which I refuse to count" didn't fly several pages ago and still doesn't now.

Have to say your claiming 14 square miles on a part of the Lebanon / Syrian border that was never delineated until the UN did it is the most pathetic excuse for Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel yet!

Sure Lebanon has a right to defend itself. After all it has it's own military (note it's "military" and not "militia") but you can be surè they will not interfere while Israel does everything it can to degrade Iran's funded and armed militia in Lebanon known as Hezbollah.

[HeliX]

51 minutes ago, P.K. said:

I should hope so to. After all, I wouldn't call the last eighty years "history" and neither should anyone else...

Noticed you couldn't actually challenge anything.

I didn't think there was any point having the same conversation from half a year ago about how the surrounding countries giving Palestinians citizenship would damage the push for a Palestinian state.

[P.K.]

3 minutes ago, HeliX said:

I didn't think there was any point having the same conversation from half a year ago about how the surrounding countries giving Palestinians citizenship would damage the push for a Palestinian state.

Excuse me but Israelis are Palestinians as well...

[Freggyragh]

17 hours ago, HeliX said:

The difficulty is that it won't stop until enough of the world can agree that Israel should stop violating international law and end its occupation of multiple lands to pressure them into actually doing so. Agreeing to disagree can't resolve this.

Makes it sound so easy, except Hamas was founded on the principle that it should have sovereignty over the entire area 'from the river to the sea'. So, it's very difficult to allow free movement to people who will send suicide bombers amongst you, or to concede any territory to terrorist organisations whose entire raison d'etre is to dismantle your country. A measure of the extremism Israel is up against is the hostage situation — if Hamas wanted peace they would have released all the hostages. Iranian Islamic ideology is not about compromise and peaceful coexistence — from an Israeli point of view giving them any kind of victory would be stupid.

[HeliX]

3 minutes ago, Freggyragh said:

Makes it sound so easy, except Hamas was founded on the principle that it should have sovereignty over the entire area 'from the river to the sea'. So, it's very difficult to allow free movement to people who will send suicide bombers amongst you, or to concede any territory to terrorist organisations whose entire raison d'etre is to dismantle your country. A measure of the extremism Israel is up against is the hostage situation — if Hamas wanted peace they would have released all the hostages. Iranian Islamic ideology is not about compromise and peaceful coexistence — from an Israeli point of view giving them any kind of victory would be stupid.

That was removed from their charter (it's in the Likud one, mind).

Hamas have repeatedly offered deals to release the hostages and Netanyahu has declined them. This has understandably caused much outrage among the hostages families.

Nobody is suggesting Hamas are good. But it's worth remembering they only exist because of the occupation, and they also were supported by the Netanyahu Government as a tactical decision to make a Palestinian state less likely.

The options available to Israel (outside of their current incursion are):

1. Continue to provide the same "inputs" with regard to their treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and their illegal occupation thereof, and hope that the "outputs" spontaneously change for no reason.

2. Change the inputs and hope the outputs change to what is desirable.

Edited October 6 by HeliX

[Chinahand]

Interesting NYT opinion piece by Benny Gantz. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/05/opinion/iran-israel-benny-gantz.html

 

A year [after Oct. 7, 2023), one must ask: What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?

 

What the Israeli military and political establishment failed to understand, in part, was the extent to which Hamas was driven by the goal of waging religious war. “The intel was there, but I underestimated the jihadi component of Hamas’s and Sinwar’s calculus,” a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander told me early in the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.

 

We also failed to act on the warning on the extent to which Hamas interpreted Israel’s domestic instability as a weakness that would impede Israel’s resolve and ability to respond to an attack. Intelligence has since shown how the heads of Hamas believed that at our weakest, we would not be capable of uniting.

 

According to Hamas’s plan, after its attack on Israel, the remaining components of Iran’s axis of evil — Hamas in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq and Iran — would join in a regional war with the ultimate goal of destroying the one and only Jewish state. A secret Hamas document reportedly uncovered in Gaza testified to such assertion: Written by the Hamas leader on Jan. 8, 2023, in it he claimed to have received a commitment from Iran that the axis would join the attack against Israel once Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood plan to invade Israel was activated.

 

So three rationales stood behind Hamas’s attack: jihadi fanaticism, an assessment that Israel was at a point of weakness and loyalty to Iran and its axis of evil. It is for these reasons that Oct. 7 and Iran’s subsequent attacks on Israel must serve as a stark warning to the region and the world regarding the Islamic republic’s uncompromising intentions and its outlook on the West.

 

. . . In a post-Oct. 7 reality, it is clear that Israel must — and the world should — be proactive and determined in the face of the threat the Iranian regime poses to Israel’s existence and the region’s future. The world cannot overlook Iran’s role in the strangling of freedom of navigation and the harming of global commerce in the Red Sea or its technological and military support for Russia in Ukraine. The regime and its axis must face a strong and united Middle East, led and supported by the United States, that is ready to take the initiative to prevent the realization of the Iranian vision of a regional Oct. 7. Now is the time to bolster regional cooperation and make a broad effort to confront Iran.

 

. . .Israel experienced its most painful tragedy on Oct. 7 but also underwent a ringing awakening: A fundamentalist terrorist state cannot acquire lethal capabilities and be expected to act rationally, as we once expected of Hamas. As someone who has served as Israel’s minister of defense and the 20th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I believe Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, fighting a just war for the nation’s future and its citizens, and that’s why it will emerge victorious.

 

Israel learned the lesson of Oct. 7; we now bear the responsibility of sharing the lesson with the world. The time to act against Iran is now. It’s not only a matter of necessity for Israel but also one of strategic imperative for the region and moral clarity for the world for the sake of peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

[Freggyragh]

Unfortunately, I think Gantz is correct.

Hamas might have removed its aim for the immediate removal of the State of Israel from its charter, but you don't have to dig deep to find speeches, protests and communiques calling for exactly that. I might accept the point about the hostages — but I don't know what the risk to Israel would be if Hamas' conditions (eg; complete withdrawal from Gaza) were met.

[Chinahand]

When Israel withdrew from Gaza Hamas had an opportunity to show it was a partner for peace. Bus bombings, rocket attacks and terrorist infiltrations poisoned the peace plan ... and showed Hamas' true colours. 

Helix seems to defend this, I don't understand why he trusts their words while ignoring their actions. 

Did they ever try to make a go of peace? 

I don't see it. All I see is uncompromising violence with claims of wanting peace thinly wrapped over a maximalist violent reality for propaganda value and to lead on the useful idiots. 

There will not be peace while Hamas has power, is my prediction. 

 

[HeliX]

3 minutes ago, Chinahand said:

When Israel withdrew from Gaza Hamas had an opportunity to show it was a partner for peace. Bus bombings, rocket attacks and terrorist infiltrations poisoned the peace plan ... and showed Hamas' true colours. 

Helix seems to defend this, I don't understand why he trusts their words while ignoring their actions. 

Did they ever try to make a go of peace? 

I don't see it. All I see is uncompromising violence with claims of wanting peace thinly wrapped over a maximalist violent reality for propaganda value and to lead on the useful idiots. 

There will not be peace while Hamas has power, is my prediction.

What peace was on offer? As Pappe points out, existence in the Gaza Strip is not an existence at all. It's not like Israel withdrew, left everything rosy and Hamas just started attacking Israel for a laugh. Israel exerted brutal control over the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants, and still does. Despite this, there have been many attempts at peaceful protest and political change from the Palestinian side, including the Great March of Return, and all of these efforts have been met with either violence or brutal slaughter by Israel. Expecting anything but a violent response to that is at best naive or at worst willfully evil.

[Shake me up Judy]

Pappe is a well known Marxist with the usual Marxist theoretical baggage. You repeatedly quote him as the key source for your understanding of the conflict. It's student politics Helix and you need to grow up.