Chinahand

This is an interesting Thread. I'm challenged by the settler colonial narratives argument. It is a very seductive world view, powerfully simplistic dividing the world into rapacious Capitalist Western Colonialist powers, and the weak exploited impoverished Global South. Please remember South Africa has hosted wanted Sudanese Genocider Omar al-Bashir in defiance of International Crimial Court warrants for his arrest. As I'm sure ANC apologists will argue deciding which of these sorts of ruling to take seriously is complicated.

Er ... We are debating a complex issue. I am able to think and reconsider the issue based on evidence and facts. There are experts on both sides, but you seem to reject listening to views contrary to your own, making noises about bias. Look in the mirror, mate.

Christ HeliX you are so predictable. Engage with her argument.

I've read experts on both sides. And, unlike you, don't pretend every prominent scholar of genocide agrees with me.

An example of a legal scholar disagreeing that Genocide is occurring in Gaza. https://www.ejiltalk.org/rebutting-allegations-of-genocide-against-israel/ A debate on the issue from PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/experts-give-2-perspectives-on-accusations-israel-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza

Erm ... No. Just the ones you agree with. Surprise, surprise this issue is contested with reasonable people coming to different conclusions. I'm seeing a very nasty war, but nasty wars are nothing new. The Korean war wasn't genocide, nor the battle for Allepo and both have civilian casualties at a per capita rate far higher than Gaza. I suspect these claims will look very silly in 5 years time. I hope I am right. Fancy a bet HeliX. I predict in 5 years time Gaza will have a larger Palestinian population than today and will either be self governing or run via the Palestinian Authority or similar. Where do you your genocidal fantasies take you?

My Xmas read: Hospital by Han Song https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09SYSD8VH/ Oh goodness how to summarise this book? I don't know if I can, let alone recommend it! It's a sort of cross between Kafka's The Castle and Voltaire's Candide, but embedded in a critique of modern Chinese society, both its domination by the CCP and its obsession with American/Western society. The way it does this is via the lens of medicine, but in a massively exaggerated near future Sci-fi world where the CCP's domination of China's society and rhetoric is replaced by a rhetoric based around industrialised-medicine. The story follows Yang Wei, the story's everyman hero (a composers of company songs), as he falls ill on a business trip and is taken to the eponymous Hospital which comes to dominate his life. To say there is a plot is a bit of an exaggeration, the story has huge changes of direction, plot-twists, random interludes; characters appear and disappear at random. I've studied the CCP for years and how it attempts to control Chinese society, and the narratives within it, and did find it fascinating seeing how Han Song had twisted this into narratives about health and medicine and you do get pulled into the story as Yang Wei's illness and treatments progress and become entwined. Does the Hospital want him to get well, is it over-treating him for profit, to control him with drugs and procedures. The plot becomes more and more bizarre and, as Yang Wei's illness and treatments progress, the boundaries of reality and sci-fi breakdown. The Hospital is now city-, then country-, then world-, then universe-spanning. As in the Culture Revolution factions vie for control and doctors use quisling patients to evangelise cures as the struggle for health becomes all consuming. Sex, incest, the genetic family as abolished or subverted, microbes are genetically altered until sentience emerges, Utopias are promised and then denied. Han Song has an incredible imagination and his critique of Chinese society and the Clinical-Academic-Industrial Complex is fascinating. It has resonances with Lu Xun, China's most famous writer of the early modern era, who also critiqued medicine in China (though in this case Chinese Traditional Medicine, not the Industrialised modern medicine) and wrote stories including cannibalism to shock and show up society's decay. But for all this the book is bizarre, hard to read with the continual wrenching plot changes and, with the boundaries of reality lost as diseases confound and confuse, the unreliable narrator makes the story almost incoherent. So, can I recommend it? There's a huge amount you can discuss and analyse within the book. It's a perfect study choice for a 3rd year Chinese literature course. It's subversion of communist rhetoric is simply brilliant and it is so left field I was reminded of my drowning within the treacle of Joyce's Ulysses. If you are an avid curious reader, fascinated by China, give it a go! I nearly gave up multiple times but persisted and am glad I did, but suspect many will give up in confusion and annoyance. 4/10

Very interesting talk on truth v. social justice especially in US universities. I know where I stand! My 1st principle is Love the Truth.

Saltburn. Yuck. Only watch if you enjoy storytelling which strips out nuance and ambiguity with shallow and clichéd characterisation, a plot with no moral arc or character growth and imagery fixated on male homoerotic imagery and sexual self-abuse.

Bit of a thread resurrection, and there is a real chance Israel will get pulled in and so I should have posted this in the Israel Against the World Thread ... but the news from Iran is grim. 100s of deaths in an attack on crowds commemorating the anniversary of Qasem Soleimani's assassination by the US. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67872281 A terror attack that big is something which can lead to war. Who did it? Some will say Sunni extremists fighting against Iran's Shi'ite theocracy? Some will say the little Satan, Israel; some will say the great Satan, the US. Oh goodness. First the killings are numbered in the 10s, then 100s then 1000s then 10,000s, the 100,000s and on and on. Really really serious international situation.

We all benefit from defence. “We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” Richard Grenier paraphrasing George Orwell.

Interesting twitter thread from an anti-Hamas Gazan.

No, they are an element Israeli society but only one element of a very complex set of views all vying to voice how Israel should develop. This process has been open, contested and far more democratic than anything in the Arab world. It is easy to sneer at Israeli democracy but genuinely it is grappling with existential issues and in a very open way. I hope HeliX acknowledges many of the opinions he admires come from the diversity of Israeli opinion. That alone is a public good and an example of the strength of Israeli society. Long may it continue. I genuinely admire Israeli self knowledge and its struggles to find peace in its situation. It is far more accepting of pluralism than Palestine and I hope that diversity of view will find a path to peace. The Arab world has nothing like it.

Everything depends upon the winning of the peace after Hamas' defeat, which makes it so sad hearing Israel's embassador rejecting a two-state solution this morning. Especially as the reason given is because the Palestinians reject it. Extremist dialogue of the deaf. Oh for the victory of more moderate voices. At least with Israel democratic elections can signal policy changes. I hope Bibi really is wiped out in a post war election. But goodness it will take huge leadership and risk for moderates to try to convince the electorate that the likes of Hamas are truly gone and Israelis will be safe from terrorism from Palestinian extremists who desire their annihilation.

Serious question, why didn't this happen in 1945, when the same tactics were used on Nazi Germany?

HeliX, After Israel was established which areas were basically totally ethnically cleansed and which had mixed communities? And as people have already said don't just include Palestine and Israel include the whole Arab world in your assessment. I really find it interesting. You seem to be portraying 1948 as an entirely one sided event of Israeli aggression. Are you really sure about that.

Mind blowing blindness. Yeah cos Arab states didn't try to wipe Israel off the map in 1948 etc.

Not in favour of BDS then Teapot?

And that is wrong. Zionism is the return of Jews to their homeland. It is not and was not an Antisemitic movement. It was a Jewish movement building on millennia of Jewish aspirations to return. It didn't begin as an Antisemitic movement. Antisemites might have taken advantage of it but that puts the cart before the horse.

Deep-beath, once more unto the breach. One other point I want to challenge Helix on. Zionism as anti-Semitism. No. Jews have been exiled multiple times from their cultural focus - the city of Jerusalem and its hinterland. The aspiration to return is echoed out of their religion, literature and folk memory over millennia. Jews have desired to return and re-establish their sovereignty from the time of the destruction of the temple by the Romans and for them to be able to maintain cultural continuity in the face of terrible violence over millennia is an incredible testimony to cultural resilience. There is nothing anti-Semitic about Jews wanting to return to their origin. Now, did antisemites use Zionism as a justification to expel and seize the property of Jews. Yes, definitely, but that in no way de-legitimises Jewish desires to return and once again I find HeliX's inability to understand this concerning.

No, quite the opposite ... I'm asking for arguments which are pro Palestinian which do not support Hamas. I think that is a far better place to make your case. Hamas HAS brought disaster for the people of Gaza. They have responsibility for their actions. I don't think it is a good argument to deny that or try to explain it away and will call that out when I see it. Repudiate Hamas, acknowledge Israel's right to exist and don't tie yourself into defending extremism. I don't support settlers don't support religious extremism and am in favour of secularism. I will argue against attempts to remove Hamas' responsibility for the disaster they have brought upon the people of Gaza.

Oh come on. I find this deliberate blindness and that type of mentality is a serious block to solving the crisis. Militaries work in the basis of deterrence and escalation. Let's shift the focus a little for an informative example: the conflict with Hezbollah on the Israel Lebanon border. There is currently an understood modus operandi in the border. Often that is implicit, but you'd be surprised how often communication takes place between belligerents via spies, diplomats and intermediaries. Patterns of action and reaction are within known boundaries and so escalation can be constrained. It isn't peace but it is bounded and creates a space for politicisation and normalisation. Hezbollah has very different political aims than Israel and continues to push them via what it says is legitimate violence but that violence is calibrated so as not to cause an escalation. Israel deters Hezbollah with its own military actions which are also calibrated to prevent escalation. Seeing this playing out at the moment as both sides work through the implications of what is happening in Gaza is fascinating. So coming back to Gaza. There wasn't peace but there were bounded limits to the action reaction cycle to stop escalation. If Hamas did A or Israel B a calibrated response would maintain the status quo. To say Hamas didn't entirely shred this status quo on October 7th is to be willfully blind. It was a deliberate planned escalation. To try to claim Hamas didn't proactively escalate violence is wrong. And let me also say this. Yes, Bibi was provocative in the UN but he wasn't militarily escalating, he was crowing that a non violent political process was making progress with Arab states. Why? Because Arab states have increasingly rejected the absolutist violence of Hamas as being counterproductive and hence were willing to advance an outward first normalisation process. It really says something that Hamas' reaction to this was a huge escalation in violence. I very strongly disagree this was justifiable or that it wasn't massively escalatory. The only reason Gaza is the way it is today is because Hamas' actions on October 7th. If they hadn't done what they did Israel would not have mobilised and Gazans wouldn't have been displaced. Hamas acted because their violent rejectionist approach was losing support to a wider non-violent international process. HeliX genuinely are you sure you want to side with Hamas in claiming legitimacy in rejecting this process in favour of escalation on October 7th? October 7th is a big deal and just saying it's just a part of the same old same old of the Palestinian Israeli conflict is in my view highly misguided. I hope it was the last failed desperate bid of the violent rejectionists and a more pragmatic approach will result from Hamas' defeat which understands Israel cannot be wiped out of existence.

How to start? I fervently wish a state of war did not exist between Israel and Gaza, but as I've repeatedly said I'm not surprised at all that such a state of war exists as a result of the deliberate decisions of Hamas. No nation on earth would allow an enemy to remain in power after an act of the scale Hamas committed on 7 October. Hamas deliberately started a war. That was a choice and has had terrible terrible consequences. I'm hugely relieved that so far the situation in the West Bank and Lebanon border hasn't resulted in the war spreading. The settlers' despicable behaviour in the West Bank trying to take advantage of the conflict for their own ends is outright wrong (as are the settlements overall and their ongoing expansion) and I'm glad the US has made that clear sanctioning settler leaders. I'm not convinced by claims of genocide. I'm seeing a war being fought not that much different to Mariupol, though I do find things like the deliberate destruction of the University, law courts and seat of government very worrying signs. The casualties are terrible, but too be frank, not excessive for an army level assault on a defended city. I think it is really important to note Hamas had created massive tank traps with culvert bombs etc and strong defensive positions with its tunnels thinking they could make an Israeli advance very costly. They are also likely inspired by the success of ISIS taking out Turkish German-made Leopard main battle tanks with similar defences and rocket propelled grenades. I think it is clear the IDF had thought a lot about this and their tactics have shown they've worked out how to nullify Hamas' advantage. I really want to challenge HeliX etc to explain what Israel was doing when it withdraw from Gaza back in 2005. My understanding was that it was a very genuine attempt to find a path to peace and if Hamas terrorism hadn't been the answer to it there was a reasonable chance that a peaceful settlement could have resulted. Trying to twist it into a bluff would take quite a cynical mindset. The only way I can see any solution to this is an initial agreement for separation and normalisation. There is no way a single state will emerge without peace coming first and that peace being shown to be enduring over a long period. My view is you start with two states and peace between them. People on both sides can then peacefully campaign for a union of these states, but that will not come if the populations of one feel threatened by the other. Without the ending of the cycle of violence peace will never come and I think the Palestinian side need to understand the reality that Israel isn't going to be violently wiped out. Their political rhetoric of "from the River to the Sea" is a path to failure. Israel will be a reality as long as Jews feel their existence is under threat. Hamas' violence justified by that rhetoric strengthens the political case for Israel's existence. It is only by showing that both communities can live peacefully that reconciliation can come. And the record for that is poor on both sides. Doesn't bode well.

I read After Victory and met John Ikenberry while studying in the US. The most pressing issue Israel faces is exactly the same one Colin Powell raised prior to the invasion of Iraq. "You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it." What Israel is going to do once they've removed Hamas from power will be a defining moment in Middle East history. Likely as important as 1967 or 1973. Israel IS going to remove Hamas from power. But that's not the important issue. The question is what then. Goodness I hope there is some wise leadership from both sides. I just don't know. It seems rather absent up to now.