Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Tamas]

It is very disheartening that it seems like merely a week after a shocking and unprecedented slaughter, the fault lines were back to exactly where they were before.  If I were an Arab terrorist organization, I would wonder whether I need to limit myself in any way for the PR considerations, if even October 7 didn't move the needle in my support in the West.

Exactly. It is incredible.

[DGuller]

When I first saw the films of the triumphant Palestinians celebrating the corpses, hostages, future rape victims and tractors I did not want to believe that a majority of the Palestinians supported this.

I tried to find data and concluded that about half of all Palestinians supported Hamas before the war. Inexplicably it seems like the conflict has increased Hamas support, nut just in Palestina but globally.

Judging from the global protests it also seems like a significant percentage of global muslims support jew-killings.

I don't really know what to do with this, it's just so dark.

What happened with Hamas and October 7 in many way reminds me of Trump entering politics.  Initially all the naive observers thought "oh, no, he really went beyond the pale, he's so done now".  Eventually we figured out that Trump tapped into and legitimized a current of vileness that is widespread, and the atrocious behavior only makes him more popular among the vile masses.

[Valmy]

When I first saw the films of the triumphant Palestinians celebrating the corpses, hostages, future rape victims and tractors I did not want to believe that a majority of the Palestinians supported this.

I tried to find data and concluded that about half of all Palestinians supported Hamas before the war. Inexplicably it seems like the conflict has increased Hamas support, nut just in Palestina but globally.

Judging from the global protests it also seems like a significant percentage of global muslims support jew-killings.

I don't really know what to do with this, it's just so dark.

Yep. I mean there is a reason that all the other Arab countries emptied out of Jews in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Eventually it just became too scary to live there. If this was really some earnest decolonization effort and about seeking justice for the oppressed...why would that have happened? No. This is an ethnic and religious conflict. This is about destruction of the Jews and the bad actions of the Israeli government is just being used as a cover for this.

It is frustrating because you want to see the settlers removed from the West Bank. You want to see Palestine prosperous and the people over there living peacefully together. But it is hard to see any settlement that gave the Palestinians a deal that wouldn't be seen as a temporary truce in the ultimate objective of total victory. And that is just the seemingly impossible obstacle on the Palestinian side.

Sure - but they are in government, crucial to keeping Netanyahu in power and they are affecting policy in Israel proper and the West Bank. They will also be influencing the options Israel looks at in Gaza and I think the opposition need to be wary of that they are not used by the extremists to legitimate what they want to do. As I say I don't think Biden would be explicitly and publicly ruling out displacing Palestinians to Egypt or other countries if there wasn't a fear that was something Israel might do. There's a reason the West is making it very clear that they support Israel but it's not a blank cheque - and I don't think they'd be doing that if there weren't concerns over what a blank cheque might lead to.

Precisely. It wasn't like the Israeli Labour Party were a bunch of cuddly kittens but the guys who have seemingly mostly been in power since 2005 over there have been at least beholden to the worst kind of ghouls.

[crazy canuck]

I'm also curious where all the pro-Uighur demonstators are?  Where are the vigilantes harassing incoming flights from Beijing? The Uighur population in Xinjiang is more than twice the Palestinian population and the brutality of the oppression would embarrass the most hard right Israeli hardline.  Yet the only ones who seem to be really outraged about it are conservative China hawks.

Presumably Putin's comments about Jews has some impact within Russia.

As for protests against China's treatment of the Uigar, it's a common thing here and elsewhere.

Seems an odd what about argument to make

It's not an odd one. We do not have 100k enthusiastic people in London marching for the Uighurs. We definitely have not seen attempted lynching of Chinese people in Dagestan over the Uighurs.

This is not an excuse for Israel to commit war crimes but you have to admit, the "who is doing it" (hint: the Jews) carries FAR more weight with these "concerned" people than the "what is being done" and "to whom".

One would expect that in a liberal democracy lynchings would not be common, whereas in a state like Russia it would be more common.

You are becoming a bit unhinged in your rhetoric.

[The Brain]

[Tamas]

You are becoming a bit unhinged in your rhetoric.

Which one of my two claims was unhinged? That there has been no 100k London protest in support of the Uighurs, or that there has been no reported (attempted) lynching of Chinese people in Dagestan?

[DGuller]

I think what CC meant was that Dagestan westernizes when Chinese planes land there, and immediately reverts to its prior status when Israeli planes land there.

[Gups]

I'm also curious where all the pro-Uighur demonstators are?  Where are the vigilantes harassing incoming flights from Beijing? The Uighur population in Xinjiang is more than twice the Palestinian population and the brutality of the oppression would embarrass the most hard right Israeli hardline.  Yet the only ones who seem to be really outraged about it are conservative China hawks.

I mean, it's hardly on the same scale but there's a protest every month outside the Chinese embassy in London which is organised by left wing activists.

https://uyghursolidarityuk.org/

A cross-party Parlimaentary group are also very active to the extent thatthe leader of Xianjing cancelled a visit to London this year due to fears he could be arrested, Pinochet style.

[Threviel]

To the surprise of no-one it seems our resident useful idiots are running out of arguments.

It's just so sad. In a conflict where babies are killed in ovens whilst the mother is raped by one side it ought to be very very very trivial to support the side that does not do that.

Instead there's more and more convoluted reasons as to why that kind of behaviour should go unpunished.

Their thinking goes something like: Sure, I'm marching with isis here demonstrating against the war, and yeah, Russia and Iran also and they are all celebrating the murders. But I only want peace and love.

Someone said that if you sit at a table with a nazi there's two nazis at the table...

[Jacob]

The "democracies are held to a different standard" argument doesn't work for me anymore. We marched in the thousands when Russia invaded Ukraine - people didn't stay home because Russia is an authoritarian state.

[crazy canuck]

The "democracies are held to a different standard" argument doesn't work for me anymore. We marched in the thousands when Russia invaded Ukraine - people didn't stay home because Russia is an authoritarian state.

People marched because it would help force their governments to support Ukraine.  Democracies are and should be held to a higher standard.

The alternative is a saying its ok for a democratic government to use the same terrorist tactics as HAMAS.

[crazy canuck]

You are becoming a bit unhinged in your rhetoric.

Which one of my two claims was unhinged? That there has been no 100k London protest in support of the Uighurs, or that there has been no reported (attempted) lynching of Chinese people in Dagestan?

The claim underlying both your post and the post by JR and there is some mystery as to why this happened in a totalitarian state.

[Jacob]

I can definitely say that my thinking on a number of things are shifting as a result of both the initial attack and the reactions from various groups afterwards. I don't know where it'll settle for me, but I'm reexamining a bunch of things I thought settled.

In general it seems to me that so much of the discussion is anchored on divisions where some peope are "humans like me, and look at their suffering - this is appalling" and other people are more acceptable casualties because "what do you expect would happen to people like that, given what happened before" either with a "of course it's sad, but..." or more strident "people like that are not worthy of consideration because they're subhuman / evil / unimportant" added.

[Jacob]

People marched because it would help force their governments to support Ukraine.  Democracies are and should be held to a higher standard.

The alternative is a saying its ok for a democratic government to use the same terrorist tactics as HAMAS.

The other alternatice is that everyone should be held to the same standards as democracies.

[The Brain]

The most consistent and visually striking displays of support for Ukraine I have seen have been in front of Russian embassies, not in front of the country's own government buildings.