After decades of land grabs and oppression, it seems even the hardline Palestinians realise they cannot win. They have to take any deal they can in order to survive.
It’s a disgrace
Current Affairs Israel is an apartheid state
- Thread starter Billy Dean
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It’s a disgrace
BigMick
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The Karish gas field will certainly be all Israel's but the Qana gas field is Lebanon's with a small percentage due to Israel for the bit that's in their designated waters (though it's so vaguely worded that Lebanon deny that last bit).
There has definitely been a disgusting increase in settler violence and they certainly all too often get away with it.
The UN Security Council report is a joke but I'm with you, it should have gained more publicity along with the list of countries who have disowned it and their reasons for doing so. The second half of your sentence is nonsense.
Sadly I think we will never know for certain who killed Shireen Abu Akleh after the PA somehow mangled the alleged bullet so badly it made it impossible for the US forensic scientists to examine it. What happened to the other bullets that reportedly hit the tree, or the one which hit the other journalist in the back? Who are the other journalists you refer to?
Justice for me is a free and democratic Palestinian state alongside a free and democratic Israeli state.
BigMick
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I'm sorry but the Israel-Lebanon deal has nothing to do with Palestine, that's why Hamas and Hezbollah are in favour of it - they think it's a good deal for Lebanon - which I hope it is. Not being funny but you usually make some good points on this thread - some of which I even agree with (!) - but I think you've got this one wrong. However, I'm happy to leave it there.
I think you're underestimating the spirit of the Palestinian people - they will never give up. However, away from the political activists and lying leaders, there are many who privately have had enough of the violence and fear only more violence - intra-Palestinian violence - once Abbas departs the scene, one way or another. That's partly what a lot of the current wave of West Bank violence has been about - Hamas and Islamic Jihad flexing their muscles in the West Bank and trying to undermine the PA. It's not a good prospect.
I often agree with your posts but, my point that those waters all belong to Palestine remains.
Israel profiting from gas fields in waters they stole. Just doesn’t sit right with me.
Anyhow, I’ve said my piece, let’s get back to
Saturday
BigMick
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Looking forward to mitrovic against our cb’s
Proper battle
BigMick
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Yeah now you mention it - a bit of a 1980s throwback!
Toffeeslam
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Mick
You haven’t answered my points on settler violence and Israelis inability to investigate this objectively for both settlers and IDF personnel.
Your point about journalists well there are numerous
Israel's record on investigating journalists' killings
Following the fatal shooting of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh during a raid in the occupied West Bank, AFP has looked at the Israeli army's record of probing previous journalist deaths.
amp.france24.com
Not all are due to IDF but most are so why is no one bought to justice? You telling me reporting on events is a threat to Israel’s security ? I think your very naive there and just parroting the Israeli line here.
If the UN Security Council reporting is a joke then what isn’t, only Israeli version of events because that’s an even bigger joke.
BigMick
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Some fair points there but I can assure you that's the first time in my life I've ever been accused of "parroting the Israeli line"!Mick
You haven’t answered my points on settler violence and Israelis inability to investigate this objectively for both settlers and IDF personnel.
Your point about journalists well there are numerous
Israel's record on investigating journalists' killings
Following the fatal shooting of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh during a raid in the occupied West Bank, AFP has looked at the Israeli army's record of probing previous journalist deaths.
Not all are due to IDF but most are so why is no one bought to justice? You telling me reporting on events is a threat to Israel’s security ? I think your very naive there and just parroting the Israeli line here.
If the UN Security Council reporting is a joke then what isn’t, only Israeli version of events because that’s an even bigger joke.
What I try to do on here is give a balanced view because I think some people, who perhaps only see occasional headlines when something awful happens, have a simplistic view where one side is good, the other bad. It's not like an Everton game where we view everything through blue coloured glasses. Sometimes that requires me to give the Israeli point of view simply because no-one else on here does and I think it's important to hear both sides in a situation where even the most basic everyday incident can escalate or be politicised. Believe me, both sides have very able propaganda machines which sometimes makes the truth hard to discern. I occasionally sully myself by reading some of the hardcore stuff - and the worst are the Hamas supporting outlets - and usually feel I need a shower afterwards to wash it out of my system!
I've written on here about the Israeli right-wing and recently about the dangers posed by the likes of Ben Gvir, especially if he gets into government. There's been some recent coverage in the UK press as well. What often goes unsaid though is that the equivalent to Ben Gvir hold positions of power in both Palestinian governments. Ben Gvir and Smotrich are racist. But so is, to give one example, the PA Prime Minister Shtayyeh who as well as regularly promoting the al Aqsa is in danger lie, a couple of months ago called for the boycotting of all Israeli medical schools because they 'use the bodies of Palestinians for experimenting on'. Shtayyeh is regarded as a moderate by the west. He even represented Palestine at the Queen's funeral. I was so delighted and proud to see Palestine represented, but not by him! And btw I often give the PA the benefit of the doubt because they have an almost impossible balancing act to perform, some of it through their own fault, some through their political opponents, some through Israel.
If it sometimes appears I'm being over-critical of the Palestinian side it's because I believe violent attacks are futile. It's been tried for 75 years, it doesn't work. Also, I have friends in Israel, I have friends and relatives in Palestine and both places are important to me - I don't want them dragged into a 3rd intifada, which is what groups like the Lion's Den are trying to incite for their paymasters Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The losers if that happened would again be the general population of both communities but especially the Palestinian because they would lose and most of the conflict would take place in the West Bank because the security barrier does its job and keeps the majority of terror attacks out of Israel - see last night's attack for example. And the repercussions of the 2nd intifada are still being felt!
Last night's attack took place near Hebron and the terrorist was a brother of a Hamas operative. It appears he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and decided that he would sooner go out in a blaze of glory and die a martyr. I would like to think any decent person would condemn the attack but condemn even more the indoctrination that convinced a sick man that the best way to die is by shooting as many Jews as he can and dying a martyrs death. It goes without saying that his 'achievement' is being celebrated by the usual suspects in Palestine.
I often get the impression that some so-called Palestinian supporters - not just on GOT - are more interested in giving Israel a boot in the nether regions than they are in supporting the Palestinian people - in contrast the silence is deafening when Palestinians, be it government or individuals, do or say things which are totally indefensible, which sometimes they do.
On settler violence - I've condemned it and the lack of arrests multiple times. That's not to say there haven't been some arrests. For instance there were numerous right-wing riots in Jerusalem this summer following the death of one 'hilltop youth' after being arrested by the IDF - more arrests followed. But you are right, nowhere near enough and all I can say is that there is a growing opinion within Israel that they need to be stopped. When I refer to things the Israel government should have done since 2010 or so, that is one of the main ones. Netanyahu, a political genius who would run rings around any politician in this country, must take most of the blame as he had the power base and authority to act, unlike the Bennett/Lapid government. (Maybe one day we can have a longer discussion about settler violence and settlements in general).
But I've not seen many on here criticise the shooting at Jews who, as I said previously, visit Joseph's Tomb in Nablus - not just guns either, molotov cocktails thrown at the building while the worshippers are inside. The PA is responsible for the site's security, and protecting the Jewish worshippers who are supposedly allowed unhindered access to it. They haven't bothered for years meaning the IDF have to enter Nablus to protect the Jews. The shrine has frequently been vandalised and survived several arson attacks. Imagine if that happened to al Aqsa, or in fact any mosque in Israel! And I never even saw much condemnation of three people being literally hacked to death while having a night out sipping coffee in Elad, or five shot dead in Bnei Brak, including two Ukranians. I appreciate, though, that not everyone will have known the details of these events.
On journalists, thanks for the link and I've done a very quick check and you are right - there have been numerous cases of journalists being killed in the conflict since 2000, more than I was aware of. The numbers vary but the maximum I've seen is 32. But I can't agree that Israel deliberately kills them to shut them up - the publicity around Shireen Abu Akleh was dire for Israel, as they would have known before the incident happened. Can you imagine Israel thinking that shooting a journalist from Qatar's state owned tv channel would go unnoticed?
To put the total in context 139 journalists were killed covering the Syrian war between 2011 and 2020. In just two years in Iraq the US alone killed 13 journalists. Doesn't make the death of a single journalist in Israel or Palestine any less tragic or excusable.
Sorry for the long post - didn't mean to drone on so long. I'd better stop now as my wife's giving me earache about going out for a walk!
BigMick
Player Valuation: £20m
On the eve of the latest Israeli election the polls suggest the following (61 seats needed for a majority):
60 - Right-wing bloc led by Netanyahu and including racists ben Gvir and Smotrich.
56 - Left-ish bloc led by current PM Lapid and including Islamist party Ra'am (something that still leaves me gobsmacked!)
4 - the remnants of the Arab Joint List, with the 3rd party, Balad, failing to pass the threshold of 3.25% and thus wasting precious votes.
If correct that will mean the political stalemate continues. Netanyahu will likely spend the next few weeks trying to tempt one or more of the other bloc to jump ship. He has reportedly promised ben Gvir and Smotrich places in his government - terrifying, but a Bibi promise is way more flimsy than Johnson's promise to 'level up' society over here. Consequently there is a chance he will use the success of the racists as a threat to some of the leftish bloc and say to the likes of Benny Gantz etc, "Come and join me in a unity government or else the country will get ben Gvir!"
The accuracy of the above poll could depend on the turnout of the Arab voters, predicted to plummet to an all-time low a few weeks ago but now thought to be rising. Campaigns have been launched to alert people to the importance of voting and seem to be having success to the extent that Balad feel they are not far from passing the threshold. The other two parties, running together, are hovering just above the threshold. The nightmare scenario would be for Balad to increase their vote but still fall short, succeeding only in taking votes away from the other two parties, causing them to also fall short and handing Netanyahu the extra seats he needs.
Ra'am's vote appears to be holding up so they should just be okay, maintaining their 4 seats. Because they are an Islamist party many Arab voters will not vote for them under any circumstances so they need to get their voters out. They have, though, faced a campaign urging people not to vote in the election, a campaign led not by Jewish extremists but by their fellow Islamists from the northern branch of the movement. The reason for that is historical.
The Islamic movement in Israel was founded by Abdullah Darwish in the 1970s. Like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, it advocates the role of Islam in public life and seeks to promote a separatist Islamic identity among Israeli Arabs. Ra’am is associated with the southern branch of the movement, which in 1996 broke from the northern branch over the question of political participation in elections and recognising the Oslo Accords - like Hamas the northern branch refused to recognise them.
The northern branch does not recognise the State of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and advocates replacing it with a Muslim state. The southern branch also does not recognise the State of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and would rather have an Islamic state in its place, but is willing to to use democratic means and even join the government to influence decisions from the inside for the betterment of their people. That explains why Mansour Abbas's recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was so sensational, controversial, and brave.
The northern branch is led by Raed Salah, the self-styled Sheikh al-Aqsa, chief modern proponent of the 100 year old antisemitic lie that "al-Aqsa is in danger from the Jews", urging followers to "redeem the al-Aqsa mosque with blood". He has also met with the Hamas leadership and called Jews 'germs' and 'monkeys'. He may be familiar to some as the man Jeremy Corbyn invited for 'tea on the House of Commons terrace' until the then Home Secretary Theresa May expelled Salah from the country. Always mystified me why Corbyn, a democratic politician, would choose to invite the man who leads a non-democratic movement rather than the leader of the democratic branch of the same movement.
Salah has been holding rallies, mainly in Ra'am strongholds, urging people not to vote because participating in the election recognises Israel's right to exist. While polls suggest Ra'am's vote will hold up it won't need too many would-be supporters to stay at home for them to fall below the threshold. Consequently Abbas has urged Jewish people who supported his role in government to vote for his party. It's not unknown - there are Jews who vote for Arab parties, and even more Arabs who vote for Jewish, or rather Zionist parties (because most of those parties contain Arabs as well), but I doubt many have voted for the Islamist party.
Another factor to bear in mind is the overall turnout - the higher the turnout, the higher the number of votes needed to pass the threshold. In the last election, the threshold was about 143,000 votes with the general voting turnout at 67.44%. If that number had been 70%, for example, the threshold would have grown by approximately 5,000 votes. This obviously affects the parties hovering just above the threshold - the Arab parties and the left wing Meretz. The ever wily Netanyahu, aware of this, has been urging every right-wing voter who stayed at home last time to get out and vote, not necessarily for him but for any of the right-wing bloc. He has ensured that the parties in his bloc which may have struggled to pass the threshold have merged with similar parties, thus ensuring they are safe. There is one exception to this, the new party formed by ex-Bennett ally Ayelet Shaked which looks doomed to fail, but, like Balad with the Arab vote, could take vital votes away from the right-wing bloc. Netanyahu never forgave her and Bennett for forming the last government so decided to try to crush her prospects and force her to pull out of the election. It's a strategy that has failed and could yet cost him that extra seat he needs.
Finally, if no side can form a coalition, it is Lapid who remains in the PM’s chair for the duration of yet another election cycle and beyond, until a new governing coalition is formed.
60 - Right-wing bloc led by Netanyahu and including racists ben Gvir and Smotrich.
56 - Left-ish bloc led by current PM Lapid and including Islamist party Ra'am (something that still leaves me gobsmacked!)
4 - the remnants of the Arab Joint List, with the 3rd party, Balad, failing to pass the threshold of 3.25% and thus wasting precious votes.
If correct that will mean the political stalemate continues. Netanyahu will likely spend the next few weeks trying to tempt one or more of the other bloc to jump ship. He has reportedly promised ben Gvir and Smotrich places in his government - terrifying, but a Bibi promise is way more flimsy than Johnson's promise to 'level up' society over here. Consequently there is a chance he will use the success of the racists as a threat to some of the leftish bloc and say to the likes of Benny Gantz etc, "Come and join me in a unity government or else the country will get ben Gvir!"
The accuracy of the above poll could depend on the turnout of the Arab voters, predicted to plummet to an all-time low a few weeks ago but now thought to be rising. Campaigns have been launched to alert people to the importance of voting and seem to be having success to the extent that Balad feel they are not far from passing the threshold. The other two parties, running together, are hovering just above the threshold. The nightmare scenario would be for Balad to increase their vote but still fall short, succeeding only in taking votes away from the other two parties, causing them to also fall short and handing Netanyahu the extra seats he needs.
Ra'am's vote appears to be holding up so they should just be okay, maintaining their 4 seats. Because they are an Islamist party many Arab voters will not vote for them under any circumstances so they need to get their voters out. They have, though, faced a campaign urging people not to vote in the election, a campaign led not by Jewish extremists but by their fellow Islamists from the northern branch of the movement. The reason for that is historical.
The Islamic movement in Israel was founded by Abdullah Darwish in the 1970s. Like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, it advocates the role of Islam in public life and seeks to promote a separatist Islamic identity among Israeli Arabs. Ra’am is associated with the southern branch of the movement, which in 1996 broke from the northern branch over the question of political participation in elections and recognising the Oslo Accords - like Hamas the northern branch refused to recognise them.
The northern branch does not recognise the State of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and advocates replacing it with a Muslim state. The southern branch also does not recognise the State of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and would rather have an Islamic state in its place, but is willing to to use democratic means and even join the government to influence decisions from the inside for the betterment of their people. That explains why Mansour Abbas's recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was so sensational, controversial, and brave.
The northern branch is led by Raed Salah, the self-styled Sheikh al-Aqsa, chief modern proponent of the 100 year old antisemitic lie that "al-Aqsa is in danger from the Jews", urging followers to "redeem the al-Aqsa mosque with blood". He has also met with the Hamas leadership and called Jews 'germs' and 'monkeys'. He may be familiar to some as the man Jeremy Corbyn invited for 'tea on the House of Commons terrace' until the then Home Secretary Theresa May expelled Salah from the country. Always mystified me why Corbyn, a democratic politician, would choose to invite the man who leads a non-democratic movement rather than the leader of the democratic branch of the same movement.
Salah has been holding rallies, mainly in Ra'am strongholds, urging people not to vote because participating in the election recognises Israel's right to exist. While polls suggest Ra'am's vote will hold up it won't need too many would-be supporters to stay at home for them to fall below the threshold. Consequently Abbas has urged Jewish people who supported his role in government to vote for his party. It's not unknown - there are Jews who vote for Arab parties, and even more Arabs who vote for Jewish, or rather Zionist parties (because most of those parties contain Arabs as well), but I doubt many have voted for the Islamist party.
Another factor to bear in mind is the overall turnout - the higher the turnout, the higher the number of votes needed to pass the threshold. In the last election, the threshold was about 143,000 votes with the general voting turnout at 67.44%. If that number had been 70%, for example, the threshold would have grown by approximately 5,000 votes. This obviously affects the parties hovering just above the threshold - the Arab parties and the left wing Meretz. The ever wily Netanyahu, aware of this, has been urging every right-wing voter who stayed at home last time to get out and vote, not necessarily for him but for any of the right-wing bloc. He has ensured that the parties in his bloc which may have struggled to pass the threshold have merged with similar parties, thus ensuring they are safe. There is one exception to this, the new party formed by ex-Bennett ally Ayelet Shaked which looks doomed to fail, but, like Balad with the Arab vote, could take vital votes away from the right-wing bloc. Netanyahu never forgave her and Bennett for forming the last government so decided to try to crush her prospects and force her to pull out of the election. It's a strategy that has failed and could yet cost him that extra seat he needs.
Finally, if no side can form a coalition, it is Lapid who remains in the PM’s chair for the duration of yet another election cycle and beyond, until a new governing coalition is formed.
Netanyahu is disgusting. He thinks he's the King of Israel.
If he had a shred of decency he'd walk away from politics.
If he had a shred of decency he'd walk away from politics.
BigMick
Player Valuation: £20m
You're right. Ignore those early projected results though - most Arabs vote late so fingers crossed - last two elections they predicted Netanyahu victories.
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Toffeeslam
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Unfortunately the evil one BiBi has won with the Kahane sect in toe with him, if you’re an Arab then you should fear the worst,
This is the most right wing and openly racist government ever elected in Israel and reflects a society willing to endorse racist and apartheid policies and rule.
Who will have the guts to apply sanctions on an apartheid racist country ?
This is the most right wing and openly racist government ever elected in Israel and reflects a society willing to endorse racist and apartheid policies and rule.
Who will have the guts to apply sanctions on an apartheid racist country ?
Tragic
Netanyahu incited Kahanists to murder Yitzhak Rabin, now he's invited them into government.
He is a despicable piece of [Poor language removed] who is unleashing powers he won't be able to control.
He is a despicable piece of [Poor language removed] who is unleashing powers he won't be able to control.
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