Israel / Palestine

Considering the depth of this issue as @mmccarthy suggeted it needs it's own space

Alas, it doesn't look to have taken off unfortunately!

Can we just agree... no? Oh

Not wanting to get into mud slinging, but the reporting on this is eye-opening (from the same page on the BBC)

More than 700 people have been killed in Israel since Saturday, including 260 people massacred by Hamas gunmen at a music festival.

More than 500 people have died in Gaza since Israel began striking the area.

Edit: I guess maybe not clear; but the differentiation, accidental or otherwise, between Israelis being killed and Gazans dying is not great

We're in the fog of war period.
Can't trust any of the numbers from any source at the moment.
I've been listening to Galei Zahal, the (strangely) left leaning Israeli Army radio.
A phone in from parents pleading for sighting of their kids whether civilians or soldiers.

I suspect the numbers on both sides will be horrendous. Such an awful situation

For context and Background listen to Origin Story pod, on Zionism
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/zionism-part-1/id1624704966?i=1000618863154
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/zionism-part-2/id1624704966?i=1000619512519

I was not trying to get involved in the conversations on the forum about this, but the one thing I do want to say is that the reporting - especially on the BBC is extremely bad.
In the quote above,

More than 700 people have been killed in Israel since Saturday, including 260 people massacred by Hamas gunmen at a music festival.

More than 500 people have died in Gaza since Israel began striking the area.

, we can see an extreme example of 'passive voice'.
People in Israel have been "killed" in a "massacre". In Palestine people have "died" in a "strike".
This seemingly minor inconsistency reveals a great deal of bias in the reporting.
Violence directed at Palestine in retaliation for the attacks is implicity considered to be justifiable, whereas Hamas' actions are considered evil; that is to say, for the sake of violence and terror itself.
We can go futher - the language used to describe Israel's counter-attacks are that of methodical, almost surgical precision whereas the initial attack is described in terms of barbarian-like slaughter.

You will be hard pressed to find any political analyst employed by large media outlets arguing that Israel does not have right to fight back against the attacks. But does Palestine not have a right to fight back against the decades of terror emposed upon it?
If you frame this recent violence as beginning yesterday it would seem commonsense to assume Hamas' began the fight. But when you frame it within the context of the occupations and settler-colonial project you can see a more truthful picture of who is 'at fault'.

And as I final note I want to say this: there is a lot of vague statements floating around, on this forum and elsewhere, gesturing towards an idea that 'this is a complex issue' and that 'both sides need to cease the violence' and this mythical 'peace process'.
This issue is not complex.
One nation involved (the nation of wealth, intergovernmental support and massive weapons capability) is commited to the complete erradication of the other. Borders agreed upon by international law have been continually encroached upon for decades and decades. Apartheid is policy.
War, and war crimes are commited everyday in the occupied territories. Gaza itself is well known as 'the largest open air prison in the world'. Palestine has a right to fight back.
To keep asking the oppressed to only resist in ways you consider to be moral, while never expecting the oppressor to be moral is a biased, inconsistant, and ultimately reactionary way of viewing the conflict.

To return to a state of generalised 'peace' is for peace to return to Israel, the violence (physical and economic) will continue in Palestine.

I'm not usually prone to conspiracy theories (I think!) but the fact that I have an intuitive feeling about all this that I can't see reflected in the 'mainstream media' makes me feel that I might have unconsciously fallen into conspiracy/irrational thinking and could do with a sense check.

The narrative seems to be that this was an unprecedented and historical 'failure' of Israeli intelligence, who would normally provide pre-warning of attacks from Palestine/the occupied territories. The alternative/conspiracy version would be that Netanyahu is anomalous in recent terms in being an Israeli leader facing a precariouspolitical mandate and popular dissent and protest at home, for whom an all out war against Hamas/Iran would be politically advantageous in the short/medium term.

Is considering the idea that Israeli intelligence DID know about the planning of this offensive but calculated that it would ultimately be beneficial basically doing an anti-semitism, or is it in the realm of possibility?

People were saying similar about the Israeli attacks in 2021, as long as they continued Bibi would keep office. This time it seems to be blowing back on him so even if the conspiracy theory were true, it hasn't worked. https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1711185184177975447

The alternative/conspiracy version would be that Netanyahu is anomalous in recent terms in being an Israeli leader facing a precarious political mandate and popular dissent and protest at home, for whom an all out war against Hamas/Iran would be politically advantageous in the short/medium term.

I can't fathom that this could be true, that a leader would purposefully allow this to happen to his people and the people in Gaza.

I think Netanyahu has blood on his hand recent and previously stirring up the extremists for his political gain and survival.

Put very well by Simon Tisdall in the guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/09/war-netanyahu-liability-must-go-israel-palestine-hamas

Hmm, I don't know. Isn't history absolutely littered with leaders who have developed an ability to psychologically hand-wave away thousands or even millions of deaths on both their side and the enemy's? Industrial-scale war could barely exist without this phenomenon, no?

Just to take two examples, Henry Kissinger's deliberate prolonging of the Vietnam war and George W Bush's determination to complete his father's 'unfinished business' in Iraq. Both condemned thousands to death on both sides of each conflict.

In Kissinger's own words, these are "men able to create their own reality", and my (under-informed) intuition tells me Netanyahu is in this mould.

Industrial-scale war could barely exist without this phenomenon, no?

On reflection you have a point.
In fact the canon fodder for (almost) every war has always been the people least likely to benefit from its spoils.

I agree with you and echo your comments. You word it far better than I can.

Both condemned thousands to death on both sides of each conflict.

I think the latest best guess is a total death toll for Iraq/Afghan of 750k humans. Directly. Indirect deaths will surely take this number over 1M

Not nit-picking. But there is some gravity to the size of the number that is not appreciated when it is so poorly reported.

You have to remember how this all started and how the UK were involved. To understand how the Arabic people of that area were fucked over you need to look back. But even then there are three versions of the history. Which is true?

agree with this too

Yes, sorry, should have said hundreds of thousands. Pretty inarguably true in both cases.

Well put

deleted because: what do i know?!

They have one committed a drop in the ocean of terror that has been caused by Israel. Israel has said “we are at war” for the past 48hrs. What was it before then? Israel are acting like a bully that has been slapped then ran to the police.

I can't fathom that this could be true, that a leader would purposefully allow this to happen to his people and the people in Gaza.

Putin's 1999 apartment bombings?

"On 13 September, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made an announcement in the Duma about receiving a report that another bombing had just happened in the city of Volgodonsk. A bombing did happen in Volgodonsk—but only three days later—on 16 September."

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Obviously no analysis of this asymmetric situation will be perfect, but I think this (like most of this channel's output) is pretty fair, accurate and thought-provoking:

https://youtu.be/INCXqWzH5vk?si=GTpnmWn0-K7DB265

This might also be a good place to distinguish between complicated and complex issues. The heavily asymmetric conflict between Israel and Palestine is complicated (lots of moving parts, hard but not impossible to map results to actions predictably) but it isn't complex (so many known and unknown factors that an input will never have a predictable outcome).

Slightly alarming that this could turn into a direct confrontation between the US and Iran.

Currently, the Israeli and US’ official line is that there’s no evidence of direct involvement from Iran, which sounds a bit like an off-ramp for the latter to call off Hezbollah involvement.
Bibi has wanted a war with Iran for years and I really can’t see any other reason for the US to move a load of its navy to the area - it’s not like they’re going to use that stuff on Hamas.

Given the wider context, with Iranian drones being used to attack Ukraine, this does start to look a bit fucking snowbally.

Grim speculation, but can’t help be a bit worried about where this goes.