Middle East Conflict

[Jesus H Gabz]

There would be no need for Iran to fund them if the past 75 years of illegal occupation hadn’t happened in the first place?

Are you a politician by any chance ?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

The late Gerald Kaufman.
Former British Labour party MP.

Kaufman was as close to a Jewish anti-semite as you can get. I've got no issue with his sympathetic views on the Palestinians or his extremely unsympathetic views of the Israeli government. He's not alone in those, even in the Jewish community.

But it it wasn't those views that rendered him antisemitic. He made some specifically anti-Jewish comments, including against his fellow Labour MP Louise Ellman, for which he had to apologise, plus he denounced 'Jewish money' flowing into the Conservative party. Even Corbyn was shocked and said that was completely unacceptable (and you can only imagine the reaction if those words had come out of Corbyn's mouth).

Kaufman deep concern for Palestinians didn't extend to Iraqis though, as he supported the Iraq invasion in the Commons.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

I know Europe is rapidly becoming more and more Muslim...

Having recently become intrigued by Braverman's comments (echoed in the past by Merkel and others) about the apparent failure of multiculturalism, I recently read Nilüfer Göle's book The Daily Lives of Muslims. It is based around a series of interviews and discussion groups held with Muslims who are living in 21 cities in European countries.

What she found was that many of her interviewees overwhelmingly favour the secular laws of the country of which they are citizens and strongly identify with that country, and were unable to identify in any way with the harsher aspects of Sharia, such as the well-known hudud punishments, or Muslim extremists.

It is additionally worth emphasising a point noted by John Bowen in his book Blaming Islam, namely, that 'in France, half of all Muslims supported the law most often cited there as anti-Islamic: the 2004 ban of Islamic headscarves from public schools.' Bowen concludes that., 'Muslims are adapting like everyone else and are divided like everyone else.'

Additionally, with integration in mind, it might just be worth once again stating the obvious, namely, that there are British Muslims who are now leading politicians, cricketers and actors. Some, like Kamila Shamsie, even write novels.

Of course, the picture is not entirely rosy to say the least, as the events of the last few days have definitely shown. Unfortunately, as British and US Muslim intellectuals like Ziauddin Sardar and Khaled Abou El-Fadl have been keen to point out, the Saudis have deployed their oil wealth to spread their toxic message of intolerance far and wide, even to the extent of doctoring English translations of the Qur'an to reflect it. Anti-Semitism is, unsurprisingly, part and parcel of that message. And that's before we begin to also consider the influence of, say, Deobandism or Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

For anyone who wishes to take the temperature of Islam in the UK in particular, I would therefore recommend the following publications:

 

[blueparrot]

Only spent two days in Europe (Brussels) this week and tried to watch as much coverage as possible. Amazing to see how quickly the news has turned to Israeli aggression being too tough on civilian areas….where the rockets are coming from!

I know Europe is rapidly becoming more and more Muslim, but even BBC Newswatch had an entire segment on why they were not saying the word “terrorist” and calling it the “Israel-Gaza Conflict.”

The level of genuflection towards being as politically “correct” as possible was eye-opening.

It isn't new , the BBC has never described people as terrorists directly as explained very well here. Nothing to do with how many people in Europe happen to be muslim or any other religion for that matter.


"
It was hard to keep that principle going when the IRA was bombing Britain and killing innocent civilians, but we did. There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.
But we held the line. And we still do, to this day.

We don't take sides. We don't use loaded words like "evil" or "cowardly". We don't talk about "terrorists". And we're not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world's most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy.

Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson

It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn, writes the BBC's World Affairs editor.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

It isn't new , the BBC has never described people as terrorists directly as explained very well here. Nothing to do with how many people in Europe happen to be muslim or any other religion for that matter.


"
It was hard to keep that principle going when the IRA was bombing Britain and killing innocent civilians, but we did. There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.
But we held the line. And we still do, to this day.

We don't take sides. We don't use loaded words like "evil" or "cowardly". We don't talk about "terrorists". And we're not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world's most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy.

Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson

It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn, writes the BBC's World Affairs editor.

www.bbc.co.uk

Meanwhile, at the strictly impartial BBC, which doesn't use "loaded words"...

BBC reporters in the Middle East appear to justify killing of civilians by Hamas

Corporation is 'urgently investigating' anti-Israel bias displayed by several of its taxpayer-funded journalists in the Middle East

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[The blue phantom]

 

[BlueAnorak]

Gaza hasn’t had an election for 17 years. The average age there is 18. The general populous have nothing to do with Hamas being in power. In effect, they’re basically a rogue group holding the place hostage.

Israel are basically using the horrific attack of Hamas to carry out an even more horrific attack of their own. We should be surprised that a so called developed country feels the need to murder thousands of incident people, including children, in a revenge attack against people who were nothing to do with the attack against themselves.

It’s sickening what Hamas and the Israel government/army are doing. Genuinely disgusting.

So what's your solution. Should Isreal just accept cross border murder on the back of a continual missile barage? Coz it won't stop unless Isreal stops it.

 

[Postman Pep]

 

[blueparrot]

Meanwhile, at the strictly impartial BBC, which doesn't use "loaded words"...

BBC reporters in the Middle East appear to justify killing of civilians by Hamas

Corporation is 'urgently investigating' anti-Israel bias displayed by several of its taxpayer-funded journalists in the Middle East

www.telegraph.co.uk

Not the point, I was simply saying it's not new to not use the terrorist label and it isn't driven by some kind of muslim agenda. No idea whats in that article,can't see it,whether you or anyone agrees with the policy isn't the point. I presume BBC reports you think are loaded, they may be and they maybe shouldn't have been used but doubt they break the policy of not using the terrorist label.
I'm not sure somebody living in America can critisise Europe for the influence of a religious lobby either,which was the impression I got he was trying to make, the influence of the religious lobbies in the USA are far more prevalent.
Truth is the only solution to the problems of Israel / Palestinians is similar to the Solutions of N . Ireland and would / will include Hammas same as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness ended up in Government.

 

[The blue phantom]

This guy was on Sky last week when his words were twisted to make him look a ****. He's fuckin spot in again. Stood up sleeping fuckinhel.