Israel / Palestine

Plus the interests and actions of the other actors in the region involved, e.g. Iran

Israel’s Govt ‘s shortsighted position of ‘with them or against them’ is not going to help anyone. Equating 3rd parties’ calls for better care for Palestinian civilians with actively supporting Hamas says a lot about where their heads are at.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/world/middleeast/bolivia-israel-gaza-ties.html

This is great analysis

Agree with this entirely.

Piers Morgan vs Bassem Youssef Round 2 -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqjO5Z9Lt_M

Definitely worth a watch. Much calmer than the 'viral' first video. 2 hours long.

Bassem is a phenomenal communicator.

Another awful stat released, with Gaza's death toll reported to be exceeding 9000.
Frightful loss of life.

Including the strikes on Jabalia refugee camp the other day.
Morally extremely challenging. IDF claiming the strikes killed Hamas leadership, and a tunnel complex beneath the camp, which Hamas deny.
Yet Hamas state that seven hostages were killed by the air strike on the refugee camp, which confirms Hamas' militants and their holding of hostages at the camp, surrounded by civilian 'human shields'.

I suppose building your infrastructure within and under refugee camps and hospitals is safer than a clearly visible miltary complex.

Morally extremely challenging

is it?

An airstrike on a densely populated refugee camp. Not exactly a quandary for the Moral Maze is it?

Children were carrying other injured children and running, with grey dust filling the air. Bodies were hanging on the rubble, many of them unrecognized. Some were bleeding and others were burnt. ... I saw women screaming and confused. They didn't know whether to cry for losing their children or run and look for them.

In my opinion, very one sided.

I will try and formulate a reply.

Feels like it with some.

challenging for his prejudices more like

As it involves piers Morgan, not a fucking chance.

If you want to know why piers is so bad....where have you been?

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJEQmArE/

Sorry for the TikTok link but I couldn’t find the interview elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II4-QFZFxX0

Not because of Piers Morgan who I am not a fan of, but because I enjoyed listening to Bassem Youssef, and for a change Piers interrupts and speaks less than he normally does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nKW8mL8pus

What a colossal liar and rent a gobshite is less than the usual level of himself.

I'm still out.

Explain to me what you perceive my prejudices to be?

An airstrike on a densely populated refugee camp is diabolical, and shouldn't happen, 100%.
Everyone has condemned it as they should.

The morally challenging bit for me is when Hamas denies that they are there, and condemns (quite rightly) the bombing of civilians and refugees. Then says basically 'oh by the way, you managed to kill 7 of your hostages too'. What are the hostages doing there, and how did you procure them in the first place? I felt that this was a throwaway news point, when perhaps it shouldn't be.

What should be done? Whats being done by Israel now is terrible and awful. Not doing anything isn't really an option either. Withdrawing from Gaza, West Bank, freeing all Palestinian prisoners would be great. That would be considered as defeat by Israel and victory by Hamas. Potentially emboldening Hamas and other hostile players for further action.

A military operation to rescue hostages held within a refugee camp would also be widely condemned, with potentially greater loss of life to both miltary, civilians and hostages.
What is the exchange rate of military lives lost to save civilian hostage lives? It is typically quite high, but soldiers on both sides have parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, children too.

Fair enough, I thought it was unusual in recent times to listen/watch something long form where people weren't shouting over each other, or accusing each other of being Palestinian haters, Zionists, Antisemites, bloodthirsty. Regardless of how much of a dick Piers Morgan is.

Very different feel to his interview with Lowkey the week ago.

And before anyone has a crack at me, I'm not a regular watcher and its not my only source of news/opinions, and I'm watching and reading media and news on as many sides as I can.

If you're having a moral quandry over blowing up dozens maybe hundreds of Palestinians in a refugee camp with bombs twice in 2 days under the thin guise of maybe killing a single Hamas commander, which Hamas haven't even confirmed, then yes I think there's some prejudice going on.

Minimising collateral damage and trying to not main civilians is a basic tenant of modern war and the Geneva Convention, so however they want to do it, boots on the ground, negotiation, smoking out the tunnels they seem to know so well, literally any option is better than just exploding the whole area.

At least that's what a military that wasn't in the act of genocide would do. But for Israel removing some more live Palestinians is in their interest.

I don't think you've realised yet that yes Hamas is real and did a terrible thing, but now just as in years gone by Israel is using them as an excuse to kill civilians and as long people blindly believe the terrorist was definitely hiding under that hospital therefore it's justified to bomb it, they'll keep getting away with it.

https://youtu.be/rqjO5Z9Lt_M?si=6sijNtdvpVuYT8AI&t=4701

Watch Bassem's answer from this time stamp

I don't think Palestinians deserved it, if that's what you think I'm saying or think it is acceptable to 'trade' hundreds of Palestinian refugees for a single Hamas commander.

I don't think Hamas confirmation on their military casualties will be very forthcoming or reliable. I do think it says something that they confirmed killed hostages, which likely means an unreported number of Hamas militants also perished. Also Hamas could be lying about the hostages being there at all, to imply that Israel doesn't really care about the hostages (perhaps true).

Seen that Braverman has close family members in the Israeli military...so her comment on hate marches seem to take a new angle

I had written a devil’s advocate post for purely discussion purposes, looking at the bomb strikes in the refugee camp from Israel and from Palestine’s point of view (not Hamas, because other than being entitled to basic human rights they can fuck right off).

I’d put quite a bit of thought into what could be Israel’s most justifiable perspective, and had written a few paragraphs before I decided to delete the entire post.

Bombing a refugee camp to kill an enemy commander and their entourage is a horrendous act that would be borderline justifiable under the laws of war, if it were an isolated incident that would change the course of a battle or war. The reality as I see it, is that it’s not close to being an isolated incident, rather Israel has very clearly not been taking care to avoid harming innocent civilians, to say the least. There’s ample evidence to suggest that Israel has been wantonly killing and destroying anything they’ve wanted, non-stop, for weeks. To top it off, nothing has been said about the strategic gain they’d claim to make by killing the unnamed commander(s), which would need to be extremely impactful to minimally justify this heinous attack.

Any moral high ground that Israel, and frankly its allies, once claimed to have, they’ve lost. For years they’ve been encroaching on Palestinians’ rights, and the world stood by. Weeks ago they suffered unforgettable horrors at the hands of a group of terrorists, and from that day they’ve been brutalising an entire population in retribution for the acts of a few, and as a warning to many.

Netanyahu needs to be replaced. The US needs to rein Israel in, or curtail their support of the Govt. The UK and France need to stop adding gunpowder to this magazine.

Bit late for that. Looks like the encirclement of Gaza City is almost complete.