Trying to kill off the negotiators. What a brilliant negotiation tactic by Trump and the United States.

Qatar is a major funder of terrorism and promoter of worldwide Islamism. They have funneled billions of dollars into these goals. They are not America's "friend" or neutral Middle Eastern "negotiators." The US apparently has an interesting relationship with them, where we provide their air defenses, though, and carry on some military-strategic pact. Very interesting.

They are not America's "friend" or neutral Middle Eastern "negotiators." The US apparently has an interesting relationship with them, where we provide their air defenses, though, and carry on some military-strategic pact. Very interesting. — BitconnectCarlos

Qatar has a quite Byzantine diplomacy on the World stage, once they noticed that money talks and bullshit walks. Hence they can play the game just like larger countries do. They indeed are your friends, don't try to deny that, BC. Friends that give your wonderful swamp draining President a executive airliner. Friends like the Saudis (who btw. nearly started a war too with Qatar).

(PBS News) Trump seems to have registered the anger of Gulf leaders. He has distanced himself from the strike, saying it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals” and promising Qatar that it would not be repeated.

Above all, Qatar hosts the largest US military installation in the Middle East. That's the real interest that the US has with the country. Heck, if the negotiations would have been done in the UK or Switzerland, would Bibi have attacked London or Geneva?

I get it. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not convinced.

• Hamas goes on a murderous heinous rampage :down: :death:
• Netanyahu bombs away and causes a large humanitarian crisis :down: :death:

When you keep condemning one, and keep making excuses for or dodging the other, then your posts might as well be propaganda.

Those are two condemnable actions, not one.

But there are others that do the same vice versa, and so the chatter hardly overlaps.

I'm not convinced.

Hamas goes on a murderous heinous rampage :down: :death:
Netanyahu bombs away and causes a large humanitarian crisis :down: :death:

When you keep condemning one, and keep making excuses for or dodging the other, then your posts might as well be propaganda. — jorndoe

You hit on an important point. I see these acts as quite different, even if the number killed is the same.

Consider these two scenarios:

A) A military murder squad deliberately murders 100 ethnic undesirables.

B) A bomber targeting an enemy weapons factory kills 100 civilians. Of course proportionality is an issue here, but the target is legitimate.

A) is deeply wrong, B) is acceptable—same number of dead.

B) A bomber targeting an enemy weapons factory kills 100 civilians. Of course proportionality is an issue here, but the target is legitimate. — BitconnectCarlos

Do notice that nobody is supporting or justifying the attack done by Hamas, but they are questioning the legitimacy of the objectives of the Netanyahu administration here. And here I think we have the disagreement on just what those end objectives are. Is the objective just to take out Hamas, or is it some kind of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Gaza by making the strip totally unlivable. The ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh did happen and the World didn't do anything, so there's a real world example of this.

Or if you think the latter objective is OK, then we have a true moral and philosophical disagreement.

, your comment still doesn't confront the issue. :/

keep making excuses for or dodging — (earlier)

• October 7 attacks :death:
• Casualties of the Gaza war :death:
• Gaza humanitarian crisis (2023–present) :death:

There isn't just one condemnable action here.

It does confront the issue.

Hamas's modus operandi is to target Israeli civilians deliberately. Israel targets Hamas, but in doing so, inevitably kills civilians as a byproduct. One of these is murder, the other is not. One of these groups would readily admit (and brag) that they murder; the other does not. I can't think of a sharper moral difference.

It's not just about body count.

Is the objective just to take out Hamas, or is it some kind of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Gaza by making the strip totally unlivable. — ssu

It's more than the Netanyahu administration running this war. Israel has a unity government in place to run the war.

If the strip is made unlivable due to the war, then it becomes a humanitarian imperative to evacuate civilians. That would turn "genocide" into a humanitarian imperative. :chin:

It does confront the issue. — BitconnectCarlos

It doesn't.
(I guess I could repeat (whatever) reports/links, except, evidently, it doesn't sink in, oh well.)
There's more than one condemnable action here.

There's more than one condemnable action here. — jorndoe

The Russians raped and murdered their way to Berlin, yet they are the good guys. Israel fights Islamic fundamentalism — today's Nazism. While Israel is not flawless (no country in war is), it shows much more restraint than the Russians.

If all you want to point out is the wrongs of one party, we're not going anywhere.

If the strip is made unlivable due to the war, then it becomes a humanitarian imperative to evacuate civilians. That would turn "genocide" into a humanitarian imperative. :chin: — BitconnectCarlos

Lol.

Well, if the enemy makes the living conditions of the civilians totally unlivable that leads to famine, that's a war crime. That's not inescapable.

You can easily fight the worse suicidal motherfuckers around and NOT have a famine among the civilians and the children. Here I would refer to look at how the US Armed Forces fought Al Qaeda and ISIS. Or to historically to ANY fighting force that has successfully put down an insurgency.

But then of course there's the Mongol Horde. Kill absolutely everybody, every living being, then fake withdrawal and wait for a while and then come check up again if any survivors had somehow escaped the first massacre and then kill these ones. Yeah, that works too. Where they make
a desert, they call it peace, as the saying goes.

The Russians raped and murdered their way to Berlin, yet they are the good guys. — BitconnectCarlos

A bad guy taking out another bad guy don't make him an angel. It was still a totalitarian and imperialist regime, just with a Marxist ideology. Now we just don't have the fig-leaf of Marxism-Leninism anymore, but the monster of a regime is still there.

While Israel is not flawless (no country in war is), it shows much more restraint than the Russians. — BitconnectCarlos

Perhaps. And perhaps we simply shouldn't judge Israel on the level we judge European or North American state, but as a Middle Eastern state.

, surely you can come up with a better excuse. Or, is that a reluctant admission of condemnable action?

I'm not playing this stupid game about condemnable actions when we're talking about the broad categories of collective good and evil. E.g., The US committed constant and countless "condemnable actions" in the Pacific, yet remained "the good side." If I were to point out more "condemnable actions" by the US, does that make Japan good and the US bad? What real purpose would it serve besides historical interest?

, technically, the stupid part is this, this, this, see here, here.

There are no saints in war. All parties are condemnable.

, actions. Back to admission of condemnation, then.

The US committed constant and countless "condemnable actions" in the Pacific, yet remained "the good side." — BitconnectCarlos

It depends. Many Westerners consider the US the Great Satan and Israel its sidekick in the Middle East. Besides, the reason why there are those in the West who consider the US "the good side" despite the evil committed is that the West has actually benefited for decades of the US protection and the support for Western-led international order. It's not clear to what extent the current war is benefiting Western countries and the Western-led international order (for example, Israel has not engaged in a direct, large-scale military campaign against ISIS, nor was it part of the official US-led anti-ISIS coalition, Israel has mostly refrained from strong, visible support for Ukraine, particularly in terms of military aid, compared with other Western countries, while the current war has lots of troubles: genocidal accusations, ambitions for territorial annexations, destabilized commercial routes to the West). Even more so after Trump's re-election. And Netanyahu's confrontational attitude showing a sort of full commitment to war in all directions, as long as possible doesn't bode well.

Perhaps. And perhaps we simply shouldn't judge Israel on the level we judge European or North American state, but as a Middle Eastern state. — ssu

Agree. Judge it as it is.

A bad guy taking out another bad guy don't make him an angel. It was still a totalitarian and imperialist regime, just with a Marxist ideology. Now we just don't have the fig-leaf of Marxism-Leninism anymore, but the monster of a regime is still there. — ssu

I hate the USSR, but in the context of WWII, they are good imho. It's a peculiar phenomenon that I occasionally ponder — how, theoretically, all the individuals within, say, a unit may be morally flawed and criminally guilty, yet the collective remains good.

Of course, it's easy to judge the USSR in WWII as bad; we could do the same with the US, which was a very racist country at the time, with brutal conduct in the war. Yet there's something distasteful about judging our ancestors as such, especially in times of war when they were fighting evil. In total, I'd consider the USSR (and the US) as "good" in WWII despite their many faults.

Well, if the enemy makes the living conditions of the civilians totally unlivable that leads to famine, that's a war crime. That's not inescapable. — ssu

There are a few factors here that complicate things: Israel and the GHF are distributing massive amounts of food, and naturally, in the course of war, infrastructure will be destroyed, making some parts of the land uninhabitable.

You can easily fight the worse suicidal motherfuckers around and NOT have a famine among the civilians and the children. Here I would refer to look at how the US Armed Forces fought Al Qaeda and ISIS. Or to historically to ANY fighting force that has successfully put down an insurgency. — ssu

Sure, it's variable. In this situation, the Gaza government hordes food, prohibits its civilians from building wells, and has invested all its funds into concrete underground tunnels instead of infrastructure.

Stalin helped defeat the Nazis, and he was also a genocidal dictator.
Franco presided over both the "White Terror" and the "Spanish Miracle".
Saddam Hussein was a murderous despot, and Iraq was invaded on incorrect justification.
...
Most are expected to be capable of understanding multiple truths at the same time.

There are a few factors here that complicate things: Israel and the GHF are distributing massive amounts of food, and naturally, in the course of war, infrastructure will be destroyed, making some parts of the land uninhabitable. - Sure, it's variable. In this situation, the Gaza government hordes food, prohibits its civilians from building wells, and has invested all its funds into concrete underground tunnels instead of infrastructure. — BitconnectCarlos

Do notice that when the US and it's allies fought Al Qaeda and ISIS in large urban areas, there was reports of famine and malnutrition among the civilians. That should tell the obvious. Famines and malnutrition don't usually happen just by accident.

Bringing on a famine is one strategy in war to fight an enemy. And something that has been used in our time too. The Ethiopian army has used it extensively:

(Le Monde, 3/11/2024)That human beings should die massively of hunger in 2024 is scandalous. But that famine should be tolerated, or even used as a political weapon by a government, leaves one speechless. Ethiopia's recent history includes at least two such episodes: in 1973-1974 (between 50,000 and 200,000 deaths), when the tragedy precipitated the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, and in 1983-1984 (between 300,000 and 1 million deaths according to estimates), when famine was used by dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to justify forced displacement and crush rebellions. The terrible situation prevailing today in the northern Tigray region, where local authorities have declared a state of famine − a situation not recognized by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed − can only evoke these sinister precedents.

The articles published by Le Monde bear witness to this. The atrociously murderous − 600,000 dead, according to the African Union − and destructive war that pitted the Ethiopian federal army against the insurgents of the Tigray People's Liberation Front between 2020 and 2022 may have ended militarily in favor of the Ethiopian troops. But it has been prolonged by a terrible food crisis, with abandoned farms, dead cattle and crops at a standstill. Drought and then the destructive rains that followed the armed conflict condemned over 90% of Tigray's 6 million inhabitants to malnutrition.

I just think the strategy is reprehensible and not to be used by an actor that wishes to be in the moral highground.

I just think the strategy is reprehensible and not to be used by an actor that wishes to be in the moral highground. — ssu

Recently, pro-Palestinian sources, including Francesca Albanese, have reported 700k dead Palestinians, including nearly 400k Palestinian babies under 5. According to AI, there aren't even that many babies under 5 in Gaza. The figure jumped quickly from ~100k dead to ~700k. What I'm saying is, we're simply not getting a complete, accurate, or objective picture of this conflict. What I do know is that Israel has supplied unprecedented amounts of aid to Gaza. Access to Gaza itself is dangerous and limited, and all reporting from it requires the approval of Hamas; thus, an independent, objective investigation is not possible at this time.

I also recall that the Allies used a blockade against Germany in WWI. The blockade was considered decisive.

UK, Australia and Canada recognise Palestinian state, Israel condemns decision

An important development.

The Anglosphere is the part of the world the US cares most deeply about, and three out of five countries comprising the Anglosphere have now recognized Palestine, with the fourth (New Zealand) presumably soon to follow.

It's important to stress that US relations with the Anglosphere are fundamentally different from every other part of the world. The US considers these countries as actual allies (rather than mere interests), since they are in practical terms all English-speaking islands and therefore share very similar geopolitical challenges.

It depends. Many Westerners consider the US the Great Satan and Israel its sidekick in the Middle East. Besides, the reason why there are those in the West who consider the US "the good side" despite the evil committed is that the West has actually benefited for decades of the US protection and the support for Western-led international order. It's not clear to what extent the current war is benefiting Western countries and the Western-led international order (for example, Israel has not engaged in a direct, large-scale military campaign against ISIS, nor was it part of the official US-led anti-ISIS coalition, Israel has mostly refrained from strong, visible support for Ukraine, particularly in terms of military aid, compared with other Western countries, while the current war has lots of troubles: genocidal accusations, ambitions for territorial annexations, destabilized commercial routes to the West). Even more so after Trump's re-election. And Netanyahu's confrontational attitude showing a sort of full commitment to war in all directions, as long as possible doesn't bode well. — neomac

My earlier post was referencing WWII.

Islamic fundamentalism is more than ISIS. Israel currently fights Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. It also provides valuable intel, but apparently, it's stopped giving intel to the UK. I fear the "Western order" is crumbling from within, but hopefully it's not too late. The West needs to be able to stand up for its values, but this would require a rejection of multiculturalism. I genuinely fear for the future of the West, particularly Europe. Fighting ISIS in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East should be the least of their problems.

My earlier post was referencing WWII. — BitconnectCarlos

Still, when WW2 was over the US became heavily engaged in the reconstruction and security of European countries (like Germany and Italy) and Japan as nation states. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Palestine where the Israelis aspire to establish their own nation states in exactly the same land as the Palestinians.

Islamic fundamentalism is more than ISIS. Israel currently fights Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — BitconnectCarlos

Western countries, particularly in Europe, have experienced numerous Islamist terrorist attacks in recent decades, many linked to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, which are generally not affiliated with Iran such as the ones you mention. ISIS and Iranian-affiliated groups have often been rivals in Syria and Iraq, which has sometimes aligned with Israeli security interests.
Besides the middle east stability is critical for the West for energy supply, commercial routes and immigration crisis.

The US considers these countries as actual allies (rather than mere interests), since they are in practical terms all English-speaking islands and therefore share very similar geopolitical challenges. — Tzeentch

You mean the ones you routinely present as US lapdogs when it's matter of Ukraine?