Wasn’t sure where to post this article, as it relates to sexism, geopolitics and how some people/states should be failing any “fit and proper” ownership test.
It’s a long, sometimes difficult, but ultimately most rewarding read.
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Well it certainly was a long read , but very interesting / disturbing.
I recall both the cases ; i.e. the fugitive princesses and the record divorce settlement but admit I’d kinda forgotten about them , and now I know why. It looks like the bastard finally broke her , and I’d suspect it was with the help of the ‘psychiatrist’ who was appointed and some psychoactive medication.
I wonder when the last Labour government will be investigated for their role in this?
Oh wait, they won’t, because it’ll just be opening up that can of worms that reveals how complicit this country’s politicians are in the corruption.
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… and gradually the Arab Spring becomes little more than a distant memory.
A marked escalation in the armed conflict from both sides. The Israelis using attack helicopters , for the first time in twenty years , to fire missiles into Jenin , and the Palestinian resistance using IED’s for the first time to take out the occupiers’ military vehicles.
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’ National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says Jenin should be “a military operation, to take down buildings, exterminate terrorists – not one or two but tens and hundreds, if necessary thousands”.
This is the language of pogrom, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, not legitimate counter-terrorism. Yet that, it seems, is what extremist settlers contemplate when they talk of outright annexation, mass evictions of Palestinian West Bank residents and thousands of new Jewish homes.’
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The extreme voices in Israeli politics have become increasingly more powerful and you can see very clear changes in the way the government now speaks about things. Even using words like Jenin is a change, positioning it as israeli teritory rather than the West Bank. This is also reflected in their actions, and rather than the international community responding in a meaningful way to this, tellingly you say many on the right in the us adopting the same shift in language.
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I have to say that I’ve been impressed by Biden’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu so far , although yesterday’s anodyne statement about supporting Israell’s right to self-defence showed a striking lack of awareness for the new reality. I get the diplomatic niceties , but if the US cannot explicitly criticise this present administration for its recent actions then they really should remove themselves from the equation altogether. The idea of them being an honest broker lost any credibility. a long time ago.
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Biden is a about 100 years old and doesn’t know the time of day.
Netanyahu has been through more US Presidents than I care to remember.
Israel won’t twiddle their thumbs while Arabs plan to murder Jews.
Agreed. I think a big part of the middle east regimes would not shed a tear if the entire Israel and the Jewish people eradicated tomorrow. And the scary thing is substantial numbers of common people would take that stand in some parts of the Arab world. I always shared my work presentation I had once to my Middle East office and in the boardroom I saw a map that conspicuously had an empty space of the Middle East region. I casually asked half expecting a funny answer. Until one of my local colleagues said coldly, that’s Israel, they should not have existed. And that to me is the reason that if Israel showed even an ounce of weakness or retreat, they will be bombed out of their shit by the Arab world.
Of course while saying that, I also oppose Israel becoming exactly what they claim to protect themselves from. In defending against terrorists, does that give an excuse to become one yourself. I don’t know. The fact is none of us or at least most of us, while agreeing thst killing innocent commoners are wrong in all senses, we do not understand the threat and fear each side fear of not even having a home the next day because someone decides to bomb you out of your shit.
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Israel started going down this slope once a moderate like Rabin was silenced.
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Biden is old enough , and wise enough , to realise that lending legitimacy to an administration that was cobbled together from an assortment of religious extremists , racists , and political firebrands (now ministers) who at one time belonged to a terrorist organisation is probably not the greatest look for the leader of the free world. He also knows that this unholy alliance was formed with the overriding intention of keeping its leader out of jail.
Netanyahu’s attack on the rule of law , giving himself the power to overrule the Supreme Court and appoint judges , is also something Biden felt he couldn’t countenance and had to speak out about. The extraordinary sight of a US President seeming to interfere in domestic Israeli politics is testament to the seriousness of the situation.
But they (the IDF) will turn a blind eye and even join in when Jews take it upon themselves to murder Arabs. Settler attacks and vigilantism has rocketed since Netanyahu made his comeback , which is hardly surprising considering that the ministers now in charge of security in the West Bank are themselves from the religious extremist / settler community. The Israeli State which had long been suspected of tolerating nationalist terrorism is now actively complicit in it.
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Some radicalized palestinians*
Most of the other Arab countries have made their peace with Israel.
‘Some radicalised Palestinians’ - sadly , many of the defenders and apologists of the State of Israel are all too happy to go along with the racist trope that all Palestinians are terrorists.
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Also they ignore the reason why a section of Palestinians have become radicalized.
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The hatred of the “Jew” propagated in quite a lot of places in ME and Asia is unnerving. No doubt that’s a factor in Israel taking a harder line. But when does it come to the stage of enough being enough ?
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Biden can do the public posturing. But end of, USA will still be giving Israel aid by the billions every year. Biden does his public posturing for popularity but like the case with Saudi Arabia , he or any other President will not take too much action against Netanyahu or MBS for that matter.
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I remember going to Israel during Rabin’s time. I met a girl there, who was preparing herself for her two-year obligatory military service (two years for girls, three years for boys). I asked her if it was bothering her. She answered no, that Israel was in a state of war, and that it was natural for her to help protecting her country. She said that if people refused to serve, Israel would be rapidly eradicated.
In that moment, I realised the level of fear these people are accustomed to live with.
Certainly. That is a reason why in the early days of Singapore independence, we sought the help of Israel to train our first conscripted men in the army. Because they fully know and experienced what it means to be a small country that is surrounded by countries who will destroy them if they could.
It has been a long time since and while I can’t agree with everything the current Israeli government is doing, we cannot just ignore the fear they have been living in ever since. These are real and even for Singapore, the threat is low now but we still have the odd ‘let’s take Singapore’ rhetoric from big neighborly politicians