BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024

Subject: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Oct 24 - 11:11 AM

I have no idea what Hamas was at, this time last year. It seemed a lunatic attack, targeting the nearest Israelis, the ones who were most decent towards their Palestinian neighbours. You'd wonder why they didn't target the illegal settlements - but maybe they weren't so near. You'd wonder why the Israeli army didn't arrive for so very long. The whole hideous thing is baffling.

Subject: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Oct 24 - 11:12 AM

”Of course "...eviction of Palestinians from their homes..."
was one of the issues, but Hamas was not exactly acting just for the good of the Palestinians... they had a far wider agenda.”

Which makes the immensely disproportionate Israeli retaliation, their slaughtering of Gazan non-combatants in their tens of thousands, the displacement of a million others, and now the starvation of those who remain, no better than vengeance and, as such, utterly reprehensible.

Subject: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Oct 24 - 11:22 AM

”> there will be no winners

*Disagree*: Vlad.”

Good point, MaJoC!

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Oct 24 - 04:27 PM

Israel is now saying that 80% of the 42,000 killed were "Hamas or family members" - meaning that either Hamas had 33,600+ members or Israel is openly admitting driving a coach-and-four through the Geneva Convention agreed by civilised countries after World War I.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Oct 24 - 07:16 AM

Apparently a "former US policy advisor" called Matthew RJ Brodsky tweeted that "Israel should carpet bomb the Irish area [of Lebanon] and then drop napalm over it." Tweet, now deleted, in reply to someone who uses the nick @weatherwar.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 08 Oct 24 - 07:47 AM

The Irish area?

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Oct 24 - 10:00 AM

Sorry, Backwoodsman.
* In Lebanon 10,000 troops from 50 countries are serving as UNIFIL observers - as they serve in many countries where conflict is present.
* The Irish and Polish are in an area in the south.
* The Israeli Defence Force told them withdraw, and the UN said no. (Newspapers announced this as "Irish refuse to withdraw troops".)
* The IDF have now set up a post with tanks near the Irish UNIFIL post.
* Hezbollah have said they won't attack the Irish base.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Oct 24 - 01:51 AM

Rashid Khalidi's next book will focus on Ireland, and how it was a laboratory for Palestine. It stems from a fellowship he had recently at Trinity College, Dublin. He says that to understand Palestine, you have to understand British colonialism more broadly. He is hoping to examine key figures in the British aristocracy whose Irish experience was central to everything they did afterwards – people such as Arthur James Balfour, Sir Charles Tegart and Gen Sir Frank Kitson. He is hoping to show how the Irish experience was exported to India, Egypt and Palestine, and then returned to Ireland again during the Troubles, having been magnified in the colonies. “It is astonishing how personnel and counter-insurgency techniques, like torture, assassination, find their roots with the British in Ireland,” Khalidi says.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Oct 24 - 11:02 AM

How strange that Marmite has invaded this thread!
Here's a truly decent person, Roni Keidar: “I see the people as people, not just as an enemy. I could see their faces. I could see their smiles. I could see the look in their eyes. Most Israelis, especially the younger generation, don’t have that opportunity.”

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Oct 24 - 04:23 PM

Marmite was just in the thread before SRS transferred stuff below it.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Oct 24 - 04:43 PM

Ah, didn't know that, thanks, BillD

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Oct 24 - 01:23 PM

should Ireland boycott Israel?
According to the Examiner
Israel fired on UN peacekeepers

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 12 Oct 24 - 02:15 PM

Biden is "absolutely, positively" urging Israel to stop shooting at UN observers, according to the BBC.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: robomatic
Date: 12 Oct 24 - 07:18 PM

After a couple visits to New Zealand, I was under the impression that everyone there was a partisan of either Vegamite or Marmite. So introducing them to the Middle East will only foment additional strife.

I used to love marmite which seemed to have no expiration date, though my jars have long since turned crusty. The brand was named "Sanitarium" (which might be a good brand to try out in the ME).

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Oct 24 - 11:27 PM

There was a video on Instagram posted by NPR (National Public Radio - so they will have vetted it) showing Israeli settlers attacking a primary school in the West Bank.

Israel (the government) behaves badly. The government never does anything about the encroachment and violence of the thuggish "settlers" and the vast amount of territory they have now taken over in what should be Palestinian lands. If they'd get them all out of there and stop the second-class citizenship for the non-Jewish citizen, they'd go a long way to calming the animus from their neighbors. Netanyahu is keeping the war going because when it is settled he will probably be sent to jail. He will certainly continue being tried for crimes while in office. He'd love for Trump to be put back in power, another reason to keep people churned up about a war.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Oct 24 - 05:03 AM

BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme this morning had interviews with Christians in Gaza which would make the tears drop from your face.
As for the brutal illegal settlers, the trouble is that as far as I can see they are the government now; Palestinians describe mobs of thugs coming to beat them as they try to harvest their olives, to burn their homes and steal their land - and the army supporting the thugs, not the home owners.
More settlers are flooding into tiny Israel from settlements abroad, according to this Maariv which claims to be sourced from the Hebrew-language paper Maariv.
For the "religious right" and it is increasingly clear, for the Government of Israel, the plan is ethnic cleansing: settlers in Gaza.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Oct 24 - 03:45 PM

Oh, lord, no: Hezbollah has struck Binyamina, a military town about halfway between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, killing four and injuring 60, some of the injuries critical or severe.
And earlier Israeli tanks smashed through the entrance of a Unifil base; when they left there were explosions, with smoke spreading through the base and UN soldiers with "unusual symptoms" despite using gas masks.
The UN says no food has entered northern Gaza this month…

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Thompson
Date: 15 Oct 24 - 04:27 AM

Land grab: "Netanyahu mulls plan to empty northern Gaza of civilians and cut off aid to those left inside".

Subject: RE: BS: Israel & Hamas & gaza strip 2024
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Oct 24 - 06:00 AM

Oh, what a surprise! NOT.