Isn’t that like telling a woman to take the odd beating because the husband isn’t going to stop abusing her,but he might go easier on her if she just accepts it.
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The international community can try to change Israel’s behavior through censure and restricting trade and whatnot. But I don’t think it will be effective. The only way they change is if America says so, by cutting off aid, financial and military. And even then, because Israel has already received so much over the years, they may or may not change, and at that point they may look for a new big brother.
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It’s true that US holds the greatest and decisive sway over Israel. But we are well past the stage to wait for US to act in the right manner. I feel US simply doesn’t feel the need since there’s no pressure on them or any precedence. The international community, on the other hand, holds huge clout and can make a difference if they act decisively. The BDS campaign was having an impact and US and UK came down rather heavily on it.
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The US is slowly escalating its pressure on Netanyahu (too slowly, obviously) because they are increasingly frustrated that their support is acting as carte blanche, and their concerns are being ignored. Most of the fighting today is in and around Khan Younis, in the southern area that was supposedly excluded pre-truce. Civilians there, including refugees from further north, could only have known Khan Younis was now a target with a phone-based system…with most of the telephone network now knocked out.
Unfortunately, with the evidence of mass sexual violence by Hamas now seeing the first wide exposure, Biden is walking a tighter political line than three weeks ago. There is a wider tranche of American public opinion that views the conflict as deserved and proportionate than there was then. Similarly, the complicity of UNRWA in Gaza has been demonstrated enough to see UNRWA losing funding from the EU and the US in the past 10 days. It is hard to see Biden being willing to pay the high political costs necessary to actually rein in Netanyahu right now.
Biden: This too shall pass
The common response here is that Hamas says the same about Israel. People point to the words of their founding charter as evidence and shrug saying what else is Israel supposed to do. This is a largely a construction of Israel though. They have realized that as long as they paint the other party as unwilling to negotiate their pressure to do so will be close to zero. They did it to the PLO who even after they put down arms continued to be positioned by Israel as a terrorist organization with no intention of negotiating all while Israel then continued settlement building in the west bank. And if they somehow eliminate Hamas they will do the same to whatever rises in its place.
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The US congress yesterday passed a resolution clarifying that Anti-Zionism IS defacto Anti-Semitism.
No, I don’t think he is simply letting it all unfold unconcerned. His fundamental problem is that he is used to a different era of Israeli politician, where subtle phrasings from the White House or a Senate committee room would be interpreted and understood in Tel Aviv. But that just isn’t Israel today. At the same time, he is just over a month away from the beginning of primary season, which is looking more and more like it is the launch of the US presidential election campaign. If you don’t like what you are seeing now, imagine what it looks like with a second Trump administration.
What do you think, is this way of distorting words sheer stupidity, or deliberate viciousness?
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Obviously a deliberate tactic going on for years. It’s why we don’t have a Labour government in UK currently
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What do you mean by this?
More accurate to say UNRWA staff than UNRWA. There has been a massive release of compiled communications from UNRWA staff celebrating October 7 in the immediate aftermath, and at least a few that seem to anticipate events rather than react to them. I don’t entirely trust the source (UN Watch, who have their own very direct agenda), but it is absolutely getting traction in various Western capitals - most notably Washington since near the end of the truce period.
That was a rueful thinking on my part 
US has a very rigid, single-minded foreign policy which has landed it in hot waters in recent times. Israel 
is a special case, but US failed to act properly when it came to its other allies 
in the region. Case in point, the conflicts in Yemen, Sudan, Libya.
This is a statement from the UNRWA back in 2021:
UNRWA Statement on UN Watch Allegations
05 August 2021
This week, UN Watch – an organization with a deep history of unfounded and politically-driven assertions against the Agency – released a report accusing 22 UNRWA personnel of promoting violence and hate through social media channels. UNRWA confirms that 10 of the 22 persons mentioned in the report are UNRWA personnel; the others are not associated with the Agency.
UNRWA is upholding the values of the United Nations and has a zero-tolerance policy for hatred. The Agency takes each allegation seriously. It has immediately launched a thorough investigation through due process to determine if any of these 10 persons, out of more than 28,000 personnel, violated the Agency’s social media policies that prohibit personnel from engaging in non-neutral behaviors online. We are concerned that some of the posts violate our rules and policies, and should misconduct be found, UNRWA will take immediate administrative or disciplinary action.
In previous reports over a five years period, UN Watch identified a total of 101 cases where UNRWA personnel allegedly posted content on social media that was in breach of its Regulatory Framework, including the neutrality policy. Upon investigation of these cases, UNRWA found that 57% of the allegations could not be tied to personnel employed by the Agency at the time of the reported incident. Personnel who were found in breach, then, where either censured and/or subjected to financial penalties.
To suggest that hate is widespread within the Agency and schools is not only misleading and false, but validates sensationalist and politically-motivated attacks that deliberately harm an already vulnerable community: refugee children. UNRWA’s mandate is to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to over five million Palestine refugees, a responsibility the Agency takes very seriously. The Agency has invested immense efforts in training its personnel to promote their understanding of neutrality and the vital role it plays in their daily work and of their obligations in that regard, including through courses on social media and neutrality, ethics trainings, and in-person field trainings on neutrality. Oversight and accountability of any organization is vital, and UNRWA welcomes future opportunities of assessment and looks forward to continued partnerships with all parties engaging with UNRWA to ensure every Palestine refugee child has access to quality education.
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa-statement-un-watch-allegations
I wouldn’t trust UN Watch for one second to be honest.
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You are not wrong about UN Watch, but their compilation of material from right around October 7 has already made it to the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Lindsey Graham has been hammering away at the idea that the line between Hamas and UNRWA is so thin as to be non-existent. That rebuttal statement from UNRWA itself doesn’t hold up particularly well under scrutiny, because it takes responsibility only for people employed at the time of the statements.
The fact that a US GOP politician (and Trump supporter) says that Hamas = UNRWA doesn’t mean that it is true. In fact, I’d say that it adds even more emphasis on UN Watch being a highly suspect source.
But as (according to @Limiescouse) the US have apparently decided that the word anti-zionist has now the same meaning as anti-semite, I’m unfortunately not surprised that such a nasty comparison is put forward as well. Meanwhile, hundreds of UNWRA-employees in Gaza suffer and die from Israel’s indiscriminate bombing.
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You are stating this as truth at the start of this post and in your previous post. If you don’t trust the source then why spread potential misinformation?
but, how does all this anti-Zionist dialogue affect what’s happening outside of the Matrix?
Does Neo still save the humans from the machines?
I don’t think it is misinformation per se, but it is definitely propaganda, and it is definitely effective right now. The information appears substantially accurate. It is the UNWatch agenda that I distrust. The one example I have seen that might have been advance knowledge is not the smoking gun it is presented as, not to me at least.
Unlike @Iftikhar , I don’t think the international community is in a particularly powerful situation here. The only capital that appears to matter right now is Washington. Nowhere else has the combination of interest and influence needed to redirect the course of events. These damning quotes from UNRWA employees (granted, something like 30 of out 30,000) along with graphic images of sexual violence have shifted the American conversation dramatically. The Democratic left has been put on the defensive, which really limits Biden’s already weak ability to escalate. That has occurred almost in lockstep with the end of the ceasefire. That’s why I am pointing to the significance of the information/propaganda/misinformation, whatever term we wish to use - it is working.
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Also , Israel to a large extent has succeeded in localizing the conflict. There’s not nearly as much response from Arab countries as Hamas would like. (No doubt US positioning it’s warships is a deterrent)
The ROW doesn’t really bother (except crocodile tears) right now. The only reason why we see some condemnation is because of the fear in European countries that some religious nutcase would go on a mindless killing spree.