Chinahand

Err what ....! Approximately 1million Muslims alone have died in wars in the last 25 years. Iraq 300k Syria 600k Afghanistan 200k Myanmar 30k Gaza is just one of countless cities destroyed in conflict. Khartoum, Grozny, Allepo, Mariopol, Mosul. I realise the west has an obsession with Israel but it is a rounding error in the annuals of destruction written this century. I fully get in a pluralistic society individuals are allowed to prioritise their causes but genuinely remove your blinkers. When it comes to blood shed the world is a nasty place with many many far worse things happening in the world which you've shrugged about in helplessness rather than got so exercised about.

From the river to the sea, Palestinians and Israelis living together peacefully.

This one tends to increase the average speed when played in the car:

I think this is my favourite Pogues song. RIP Mr McGowan ... kiss my arse. Edited to add. All you rambling boys of pleasure And ladies of easy leisure We must say adios! until we see Almeria once again

I don't know, HeliX will probably get this song, not certain about PK. I get it that the people of Gaza are down trodden and see Israel as their oppressor. But those kids with their slings were dangerous ,were politicised, would in glee blood their hands with their enemies' gore. I don't think the comparison with 3 year olds orphaned by their kidnappers is particularly strong. I think the young people being released by Israel have been terribly misguided and rather than building a coherent prosperous state they have been sacrificed to poverty and zealotry by an absolutist rejectionist philosophy of hate. Just give peace a chance people say. And watch others twist this post to claim the death cult is Israel. It isn't. An absolutist rejectionist philosophy with no care for either its victims or its footsoldiers is a thing of evil and can be very successful at breeding the conditions where it spreads.

Just watched a Linda Flint compilation on YouTube. There's no doubt the humour is in the shock value of what is being said. For those of a "modern" sensibility is it more or less unacceptable that they portray characters not only of different races but also of different sexes? I'm not a new puritan so my opinion of them is based on whether they are funny or not, not the complexities of race or gender politics. Little Britain was subversively funny but not surprisingly it also ran out of steam. I am intrigued by the idea that you CANNOT dress up as another race and doing this CANNOT be funny. It seems self evident that you can and it can be. I fully accept lazy caricatures are possible, but that isn't good humour. Why censor what can be good because some are bad at it?

I'm not a football fan and wasn't in the UK during the bloke-ish phase of Baddiel's career but I've enjoyed his erudition and find him worth listening to. The list of people who have blacked up is long. I intrigued how it is now such an issue. I laughed and enjoyed it when David Walliams did it on Little Britain. I don't see him regularly pulled up for doing it. Though he's also grovelled his apologies. Is blackface intrinsically racist? Lenny Henry did whiteface? Ah, Race nowadays is a huge Shibboleth ... as is attitudes towards Jews.

Ah ... now there's a name full of memories for me. Joel was my tutor while studying International Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. We didn't do much Israeli history beyond some stories about how a review of his latest book caused a stir but I've very happy memories listening to him explaining International Political Economy. I love it when small world syndrome hits.

Sadly though this doesn't change Israel's war aims. The military defeat of Hamas and it's removal from power in Gaza. There is a very large difference between anti-terrorist actions meant to deter terror attacks via what basically becomes an agreed and accepted level of violence (something, just, surviving on the Lebanon border) and war fighting. The Israelis aren't interested in deterring Hamas any more. The war aim is the destruction of their military and political power. Temporary ceasefires aren't going to change that. Pity the people of Gaza.

I don't know what to make of all this. For me, I can understand why the Israelis are being slow getting into the tunnel system. It'll likely be full of bobby traps and they don't want to needlessly lose people. The problem with that is it is highly likely everything will have been cleared out prior to then gaining control and the likes of HeliX will never accept it was a command post without capturing a Hamas commander pouring over missile launch plans with a hostage in the corner. That ain't going to happen so HeliX et al will claim the cleared out, debris strewn rooms (from both boobytraps and blasting through blast doors, and ensuring "clear" etc) couldn't possibly ever have been used by Hamas and we're actually built by the Jews. This is the question to Teapot Helix HeteroErectus etc. What evidence would you accept that Hamas were using the Hospital site for nefarious purposes?

Many a slip between cup and lip. It will be good news if and when it happens ... but many many risks it'll take longer than hoped.

Hostage brought to the hospital... Suppose people will say the gunmen were concerned he had a medical condition and were bringing him to be checked out.

Are you still doubting this, Helix? Especially now you are posting Xcretes which say it has been well known for years. Just wondering your motivations about posting that ... You are aware the Israelis build the entire hospital, right?

But the dilemma IS what do you do about Hamas.

He doesn’t say that. He says that the Hamas bogeyman is hiding under the bed and that the only solution is to blow up the bed; those babies were warned not to stay in that hospital, the idiots. Israel has offered to evacuate the babies: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-hospital-israel-evacuate-al-shifa-b2445994.html and prior to that had actually delivered fuel to keep their incubators running, but the head of the Hamas Health Ministry, Yosef Abu Rish, forbade the hospital from receiving the fuel.

This works for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9PKQbkJv8 although I actually torrented the whole show seeing as it doesn't get broadcast in the UK and the youtube versions are normally clipped. It is pretty easy to find if that link doesn't work, its S10 E17. It is, of course, John Oliver, so it isn't exactly perfect. But he's right, both populations have been and continue to be failed by their appalling leaders. Still dead ... possible because i am in the UK and you are not?

It was a dead link for me.

Who is doing this? I am not, and I think it is clear I am not. To attempt to brand me a supporter of genocide is sick. Please withdraw this remark, it is entirely misdirected to any posters on this forum.

I've not listened to this yet, but it is recommended by someone I respect and these quotes make me think it is worth listening to: Israel’s behavior is not what explains the suicidal and genocidal inclinations of a group like Hamas. The Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad do. These are religious beliefs, sincerely held. They are beliefs about the moral structure of the universe. And they explain how normal people—even good ones—can commit horrific acts of violence against innocent civilians—on purpose, not as collateral damage—and still consider themselves good. When you believe that life in this world has no value, apart from deciding who goes to hell and who goes to Paradise, it becomes possible to feel perfectly at ease killing noncombatants, or even using your own women and children as human shields, because you know that any Muslims who get killed will go to Paradise for eternity. If you don’t understand that jihadists sincerely believe these things, you don’t understand the problem Israel faces. The problem isn’t merely Palestinian nationalism, or resource competition, or any other normal terrestrial grievance. In fact, the problem isn’t even hatred, though there is enough of that to go around. The problem is religious certainty. ... watch “Hotel Mumbai” or read a book about the Islamic State so that you can see jihadism in another context—where literally not one of the variables that people imagine to be important here [in the current conflict] is present. There are no settlers, or blockades, or daily humiliations at check points, or differing interpretations of history—and yet we have same grotesque distortion of the spiritual impulse, the same otherworldliness framed by murder, the same absolute evil that doesn’t require the presence of evil people, just confused ones—just true believers. ... Our streets have been filled with people, literally tripping over themselves in their eagerness to demonstrate that they cannot distinguish between those who intentionally kill babies, and those who inadvertently kill them, having taken great pains to avoid killing them, while defending themselves against the very people who have just intentionally tortured and killed innocent men, women, and yes… babies. And who are committed to doing this again at any opportunity, and who are using their own innocent noncombatants as human shields. If you’re both sides-ing this situation—or worse, if you are supporting the wrong side: if you are waving the flag of people who murder noncombatants intentionally, killing parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, burning people alive at a music festival devoted to “peace”, and decapitating others, and dragging their dismembered bodies through the streets, all to shouts of “God is Great.” If you are recognizing the humanity of actual barbarians, while demonizing the people who actually worry about war crimes and who drop leaflets and call cell phones for days, in an effort to get noncombatants to leave specific buildings before they are bombed, because those buildings sit on top of tunnels filled with genocidal lunatics—who again, have just sedulously tortured and murdered families as though it were a religious sacrament, because for them it is a religious sacrament. If you have landed, proudly and sanctimoniously, on the wrong side of this asymmetry—this vast gulf between savagery and civilization—while marching through the quad of an Ivy League institution wearing yoga pants, I’m not sure it matters that your moral confusion is due to the fact that you just happen to hate Jews. Whether you’re an anti-Semite or just an apologist for atrocity is probably immaterial. The crucial point is that you are dangerously confused about the moral norms and political sympathies that make life in this world worth living.

Not sure what to say about that. I've made it very clear that war is a terrible terrible thing full of evil deeds. I'm one of the main people on this site putting the case that Hamas started a war on the 7th of October and that in the context of a war what is happening in Gaza isn't so different from countless wars ongoing and in the past. One typical example, these are the death tolls in Syrian cities as Assad fought his way through them: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/presentation-report-civilian-deaths-syrian-arab-republic The highest estimated civilian deaths were recorded in Rural Damascus (61,800), Aleppo (51,563), Deir ez-Zor (38,041), Idlib (36,536) and Homs (29,983). And Assad very deliberately did target hospitals. Hamas' deliberate strategy was that it could commit atrocities against Israel (and note the attacks were the 3rd worst terrorist attack of all time): https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330395/deadliest-terrorist-attacks-worldwide-fatalities/ ... and Israel would not move against Hamas because it was embedded within a city. I do not think any country could face a terrorist attack on the scale Israel has faced and leave the perpetrators holding power. I can think of no comparable example and though hugely saddened by the events unfolding I'm not surprised that this is what is happening. The British Army committed multiple human rights abuses in response to terrorist provocations basically orders of magnitude less significant. I am hugely conflicted, I'm just a bloke on the internet ... what my personal opinion is, is basically irrelevant. And not going to be so pious as to go "oh I wish Israel had turned the other cheek, had shown restraint, had attempted to find a political way forward other than war." If I had a magic wand, I would definitely wave it and all would be roses in Palestine with Jew and Arab living peacefully together and there would be no more war, but I don't. But I'm not going to hold Israel to a standard that I would not apply to any other country. I'm not surprised when faced with a genocidal enemy which has gained significant political power as a result of state capture the result was war. I'm trying to work out how to respond to your statement that " ... anyone who defends it, for whatever reason, is also wrong." Looks like I might be guilty as charged. I think it would be a racist double standard for me to condemn Israel for fighting a war started due to an event which I am pretty sure would have resulted in a war in any other country in the world. Putin, Assad, even Bush started wars for lesser causes (Al Qaeda did not have the proximity, or resources to repeat 911, Hamas could repeat October 7th with far greater ease). All I can hope for is that this war is followed by a just peace. I am hugely troubled because that I doubt this will happen ... it will take immense political leadership and I do not think either side has the leadership to build something lasting from the ruins they have created. The whole world is fucking wrong ... and I fervently wish that was not the case. Wrighty, have hospitals been directly targeted by Israel? They have a lot of intelligence, and now quite a lot of evidence that Hamas does have tunnel complexes under Gaza's hospitals ... and they haven't just bombed those complexes. If Hamas wants to ensure those hospitals are safe ... they could withdraw their forces from around them and allow Israeli troops to occupy them. I don't think any member of the IDF wants to blow up neonates, but also they know Hamas isn't just a bogeyman.

I don't understand what you are trying to say. Nazism was forged in the street battles between revolutionary communism and the SA in the 1920s. That polarisation destroyed German democracy and lead to the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship. 1933 is the end of that process, not the beginning. You can play counterfactuals where the Spartacus League or Roter Frontkämpferbund were successful in their fight against the fascists, but to pretend there was no far left party influencing and being influenced by the Nazis is massively politically naive.