The Middle East Thread

I think the situations are so different as to make the comparison not particularly useful.

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I am going to unilaterally lock this thread for a while, to let tempers cool and hope that we can restore a reasonable foundation for dialogue.

The bitter irony of this thread is that it is full of posters asserting that Israel and/or the Palestinians need to look at the bigger picture and find common ground in a mutual desire for peace, yet here we are tearing ourselves apart in something as trivial as a football forum.

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This thread is now reopened, but please everyone, think about the sensitivity of the matter at hand before posting something. The situation there is already dismal enough.

Thank you.

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Early Sunday morning (1:10 am) , Benjamin Netanyahu posted a tweet effectively absolving himself of any blame for the Oct 7 attack , whilst simultaneously fingering his military and security chiefs.

The backlash was instant and included a furious response, including from within Mr. Netanyahu’s own war cabinet. The post was deleted, and the Israeli leader apologized in a new one. “I was wrong,”

Netanyahu’s original post came after the NYT had asked his office for comment on this article that they were about to publish. It’s not hard to see why it provoked such a knee-jerk reaction and neither is it improbable to suggest that his days are surely numbered.

(The article is free for all to read because my subscription allows me to ‘gift’ a number of articles each month , so there’s no need to circumvent the paywall.)

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What could possibly go wrong?

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They let anything onto Twitter these days


Yes, from the perspective that the extreme elements of both sides only exist because of the other. Neither care about civilian deaths. Hamas knew what they did would provoke a massacre. Israel know what they’re doing now will only embolden Hamas and other armed resistance. They need eachother and don’t give a fuck about consequences for innocents.

But
the 2 sides of coin aren’t the same size in his analogy. It’s not a war between 2 countries. It is an occupier/oppressor with incredible military might bombarding a people that aren’t allowed to have an proper army to protect them, and aren’t allowed to leave

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This was already a big problem long before the Oct 7 attack. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had earlier this year already proposed easing gun ownership regulations so more Israelis could arm themselves. Just imagine how the pogroms across the West Bank in June might have turned out had the settlers been armed. And now they’ve handed out assault rifles , wtf !

For anyone unfamiliar with Israeli Government Minister Ben-Gvir , here he is earlier this year pulling a gun out and exhorting the police to shoot Palestinian protestors ;

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Anti-Semitism is thoroughly insidious.

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Insidious? I would say it’s often, as in this case, open and blatant.

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Here in France we have the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel and the US. To describe the situation at the moment as tense would be an understatement. Most people expect something (else) dreadful to happen pretty soon.

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There’s something especially terrifying about the Islamofascism coming out of the Caucuses and being exported into Europe. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the GRU have a hand in what’s going on.

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My bad, mind fog and I used the wrong word.

Often radical islam and anti semitism are connected. It’s really not surprising considering how much the religious nutcases masquerading as leaders rant against Jews

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Fascism (I guess it will cover all sorts of nastiness religion, ethnicity, gender, and etc.) feeds off each other. It’s not surprising that we are witnessing simultaneous rise/strengthening of extreme versions of several religions at the same time.

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Hatred begets hatred. End of.

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It’s cyclical. People fail to learn the lessons of the past and are doomed to repeat the mistakes again.

We can speculate as to why this (any) hatred was allowed to take deeper roots and go for the causes and the responses.

End of , People and more importantly the leaders are fuckwits.

The Israeli response to this has to some extent been shaped by their experiences in their war and subsequent dealings with the Arab Nations. Thats something undeniable.

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Possibly because they don’t have lived experience of what has gone before and only retain romantic notions of war and honour?

I was speaking to my mother last week who lived through the second world war and has direct memories of being bombed, relatives dying and the terror of not knowing what what will happen. As she put it, no one could possibly want to relive that but too many people now seem to think that “Lest We Forget” means “Two World Wars and One World Cup.”

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