Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East
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@paekakboyz said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@gt12 and how many moderate Jews and Arab Israeli's get fucked over while the Haredi continue to push. I've got a bunch of Israeli and Arab Israeli mates (best mate at Uni married a Israeli Jew, she also converted but that's another story) and they are continually frustrated at the groups who agitate so hard (Haredi + some others) but don't have to serve in the military due to religious reasons. So others get to carry the can for what another group is initiating. Many, many layers of suckiness to this
I am sure there are groups on both sides who want to keep on fighting each other forever, while a large proportion are stuck in the middle just wanting to get on with living
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@canefan it does have some upsides though - the people I hung out with at the wedding and stuff knew how to PARTY. I reckon a good dose of hedonism is just what is needed when living in an environment like that!
I just don't see there being any internal political will to reverse some of the incursions into the East or other areas they are technically occupying illegally. I'm not sure if Israeli control of all of Jerusalem would trigger a war or something, but if they keep pushing something has to give at some point. Terrifying stuff.
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@paekakboyz said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@canefan it does have some upsides though - the people I hung out with at the wedding and stuff knew how to PARTY. I reckon a good dose of hedonism is just what is needed when living in an environment like that!
I just don't see there being any internal political will to reverse some of the incursions into the East or other areas they are technically occupying illegally. I'm not sure if Israeli control of all of Jerusalem would trigger a war or something, but if they keep pushing something has to give at some point. Terrifying stuff.
Who would fight against Israel outside of the Palestinians?
The Palestinians would be obliterated wouldn't they? -
@Frank if Israel has effectively destroyed Palestine, or any hope of it being a functional country/entity, then some of those anti-Israel countries might consider it moot as there isn't anything to lose. Not sure if that means open season on Israel, or if they'd give up as there was no internal element to support. So does Palestine existing in some form actually keep Israel safer in a perverse way? the country I mean, I suspect however things pan out life will always be riskier in that part of the world
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@paekakboyz said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@Frank if Israel has effectively destroyed Palestine, or any hope of it being a functional country/entity, then some of those anti-Israel countries might consider it moot as there isn't anything to lose. Not sure if that means open season on Israel, or if they'd give up as there was no internal element to support. So does Palestine existing in some form actually keep Israel safer in a perverse way? the country I mean, I suspect however things pan out life will always be riskier in that part of the world
As long as the world depends on oil? Absolutely
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@paekakboyz said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@canefan it does have some upsides though - the people I hung out with at the wedding and stuff knew how to PARTY. I reckon a good dose of hedonism is just what is needed when living in an environment like that!
I just don't see there being any internal political will to reverse some of the incursions into the East or other areas they are technically occupying illegally. I'm not sure if Israeli control of all of Jerusalem would trigger a war or something, but if they keep pushing something has to give at some point. Terrifying stuff.
I spent a few weekends spead over 3 or 4 work trips partying in Tel Aviv back in 2005-7. Freaking awesome city to party in
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There is no greater evil in the world than man's interpretation of religion
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@frank said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
My question was more along the lines of whether it is true Trump being so pro-Israel deterred Palestine from trying anything?
I can't why. Most of not all US Presidents are pro-Israel
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As long as Palestinians are used as a vehicle for Arab nations to kick Israel, as long as Israel's existence is threatened, and as long as Palestinians vote for Hamas etc., then this is the end result.
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@paekakboyz said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@Frank if Israel has effectively destroyed Palestine, or any hope of it being a functional country/entity, then some of those anti-Israel countries might consider it moot as there isn't anything to lose. Not sure if that means open season on Israel, or if they'd give up as there was no internal element to support. So does Palestine existing in some form actually keep Israel safer in a perverse way? the country I mean, I suspect however things pan out life will always be riskier in that part of the world
The list of anti-Israel countries is shrinking all the time and the silence from some recently-friendly Arab states is deafening, especially silence about attacks on worshippers in the 3rd holiest site in Islam during the holiest month in the Islamic calendar
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@antipodean said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
As long as Palestinians are used as a vehicle for Arab nations to kick Israel, as long as Israel's existence is threatened, and as long as Palestinians vote for Hamas etc., then this is the end result.
This current situation has little to do with Arab nations trying to kick Israel - there are only a small handful of Arab nations who aren't now on good terms with Israel.
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Given TSF is the font of all knowledge can anyone give a one paragraph explanation of the origins of current trouble?
I appreciate the complications around the formation of the Jewish state post WWII, and religious conflict dating back 2,000 years complicate matters somewhat, but any comments I've seen tend to sit heavily on one side or the other, each accusing the other.
I have a suspicion, like most things, fault may lie on both sides.
Depending on which commentator I've read the removal of protestors from the mosque was either a heinous attack by an oppressive state, or the justified and inevitable result of deliberate provocation.
What were they protesting?
Did they have a right to?
Is their cause justified?
Was it a deliberate attempt to provoke conflict?Appreciate the thoughts of those more informed than me.
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@frank said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@kirwan said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@booboo religion.
Youâre welcome.
Religion itself or deliberate distortion of religion to justify actions?
Religion itself seems to generally lend itself to extremes.
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@frank said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@kirwan said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@booboo religion.
Youâre welcome.
Religion itself or deliberate distortion of religion to justify actions?
Religion is a useful recruiting tool as well
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The Hill kind of touched on it today in their video, explaining that the Israeli right wing aligned itself with the GOP and therefore now Israeli politics is aligned with US politics, meaning that the 100% support for Israel is not starting to get diluted across party lines, and which means that as the US gets more liberal over time the support for Israeli policies will likely change to a more negative stance:
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Quite a reasonable explanation of what's happening in Gaza and the politics behind it.
In 2018 Yehiya Sinwar, the Hamas veteran who effectively rules Gaza, made an unusual announcement. Speaking two days after Israeli soldiers killed 60 Palestinian protesters and militants at the Gaza border fence, he said that his group would pursue âpeaceful, popular resistanceâ. It was a remarkable thing for a leader of the proscribed terrorist group to say in the face of hardliners calling for vengeance. Sinwar is widely considered a ruthless and brilliant political mind whose two decades in Israeli prisons gave him fluent Hebrew and an intimate understanding of his enemyâs politics and society. And his strategy of ânegotiation by rocketâ had previously brought tangible successes. But his reluctance in 2018 to seek blood for blood signalled a softening. The next three years saw an easing of the blockade around Gaza, and economic and humanitarian relief. It appeared as though Hamas were seeking legitimisation. âBasically Hamas in recent years was pursuing a more pragmatic strategy with regard to Israel,â said Neri Zilber, an Israeli-American journalist who closely follows events in Gaza. This week, the group seemed to throw that entire strategy of calibration to the winds. And no one is quite sure why. Instead of firing a few dozen rockets in response to Israeli police heavy-handedness in Jerusalem, it launched over a thousand in a ferocious and unprecedented barrage over a single night this week. Instead of confining the bombardment to southern Israel, it fired at targets deeper inside Israel than ever before including, for the first time since 2014, Jerusalem itself. And instead of rapidly de-escalating, it seems encouraged by the unrest in mixed Arab-Jewish towns inside Israel to keep up the pressure. All of this came at the price of a massive Israeli response that has devastated Gaza, killed dozens of Palestinian civilians, and likely dealt grave blows to Hamasâ own manpower and infrastructure. âI cannot believe that they did not think this through,â said Michael Stephens, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. âI just canât work it out.â A clue may lie in recent political developments inside Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel may have upset that delicate balance. In March, Sinwarâs authority was badly shaken during the terror groupâs rather opaque internal elections. In the end, he scraped a victory - but the strength of the challenge from more traditional and militant rivals revealed growing dissatisfaction with his rule and an apparent resurgence of the wing of the group with more traditional ideas about destruction of the Jewish state. Then, on April 29 Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, postponed the first elections in 15 years on the grounds that Israel was refusing to guarantee that Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem would be allowed to take part. Most observers believe the real reason is because his fractured Fatah party, widely perceived by ordinary Palestinians as corrupt, authoritarian, and ineffective, was expected to take a mauling at the hands of Hamas. With the electoral avenue to defeating Fatah and claiming leadership shut, the hardliners inside Hamas may have argued that there was less to lose from military escalation. The third electoral vector was in Israel itself. Until the beginning of last week, Benjamin Netanyahuâs 12 years as Israeliâs prime minister appeared to be over. An unlikely coalition of right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab Islamist parties was poised to take power with a âgovernment for changeâ focused on reconciliation and civilian affairs. It would have been the first time one of Israelâs minority Arab parties was in government, and represented a tantalising opportunity to up-end a status quo from which Hamas has benefitted, and resurrect long-neglected ideals of co-existence and integration it opposes. It is not clear that Hamasâ objective was to sabotage that coalition and save Benjamin Netanyahuâs government - but that it was certainly one of the consequences of the past weekâs escalation. With the political scene completely destabilised, and tensions building during Ramadan over Israeli police heavy-handedness around the Al-Aqsa mosque and the looming legal battle over the eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, someone inside the Hamas apparently decided the time was right to attempt to reignite to general conflict. âIt was a golden opportunity to make the connection between defending Jerusalem and Gaza,â said Yossi Mekelberg, an expert at Chatham House. âThey also distinguished themselves from Abbas, who appears to be doing nothing or helping Israel." Hamas is not directing the rioting in mixed Jewish Arab cities inside Israel, but its leaders may well think that they inspired it, and see it as vindication of their strategy. Have they miscalculated? It is difficult in the fog of war to work out whether the bloody costs Hamas and ordinary Gazans have paid will justify the fruits of this gamble, even on the terror groupâs own terms. But if their goal was to sow chaos, and throw Israel and Palestine into the jaws of conflict, they can certainly congratulate themselves.