Middle East Conflict

[Postman Pep]

Objectivity is bad apparently.

 

[bluethrunthru]

 

[mexico1970]

Yet weirdly the UN never really do fuck all about anything.

Mind you they always come out with shit like this to justify their existence.

Rights experts condemn UK racism report attempting to ‘normalize white supremacy’

UN independent human rights experts on Monday denounced a government-backed report into racism in the United Kingdom, saying that it further distorted and falsified historical facts, and could even fuel racism and racial discrimination.

news.un.org

 

[domalino]

Yet weirdly the UN never really do fuck all about anything.

Mind you they always come out with shit like this to justify their existence.

Rights experts condemn UK racism report attempting to ‘normalize white supremacy’

UN independent human rights experts on Monday denounced a government-backed report into racism in the United Kingdom, saying that it further distorted and falsified historical facts, and could even fuel racism and racial discrimination.

news.un.org

The UN are currently sheltering 600,000 Palestinian civilians, and 35 UN workers have been killed by Israeli bombings.

 

[mexico1970]

The UN are currently sheltering 600,000 Palestinian civilians, and 35 UN workers have been killed by Israeli bombings.

They will be back to writing shit reports about shit things any day soon. Whatever you think they are doing now, the things they don't do stand out a mile.

The UN has a building in Gaza and is embedded within Gaza even running schools which people are sheltering in, judging by the death rate they are offering little to no protection.

Heavy airstrikes since 7 October had displaced nearly 190,000 people in Gaza, so the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, is sheltering 137,500 men, women, and children in 83 of its 288 schools, according to the agency’s latest situation report. As of Tuesday, 18 UNRWA facilities sustained collateral and direct damage from airstrikes, with injuries and deaths reported.

Not *600,000 where are you getting your figures ? and apart from allowing the refugees access to schools how are the UN protecting them?

BBC World Service - Newshour, Swiss prosecutor quits "useless" UN Syria Commission

Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte resigns from UN Syria Commission after 5 years

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[bluethrunthru]

As I said Israel is always able to leave if they wish - live us and the ECHR - thing is level heads realise that outside such institutions no matter how ineffective you think they may be its a cold hard world when you are attacked yourself and look around for help and all your former allies look away , whistle and toe the dust pretending they can't hear you

 

[domalino]

They will be back to writing shit reports about shit things any day soon. Whatever you think they are doing now, the things they don't do stand out a mile.

The UN has a building in Gaza and is embedded within Gaza even running schools which people are sheltering in, judging by the death rate they are offering little to no protection.



Not *600,000 where are you getting your figures ? and apart from allowing the refugees access to schools how are the UN protecting them?

BBC World Service - Newshour, Swiss prosecutor quits "useless" UN Syria Commission

Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte resigns from UN Syria Commission after 5 years

www.bbc.co.uk

It’s literally in the UN secretary generals speech you replied to.

We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians.

 

[SWP's back]

8

On a reread of this comment, in fairness to PB I think, an edit is probably due.

That comment may have been interpreted as a little incendiary and I don’t mean it to be.
It’s just that there are a lot of comparisons and analysis, analogies of the history of the area and the wisdom of Israel’s handling of the region as well as world involvement.
I’ve no doubt, those with more skin in the game have a much deeper knowledge of history, their own history, than I do and perhaps of those on the opposite side of the fence also. However this is where the debate is and always is and currently is only going around in circles.

The post PB responded to and my subsequent comment to PB, without being critical of its content or message, is probably a prime example of the irony I have referred to on a couple of occasions now. So it is probably prime time for me to explain what I mean or where I am coming from.
You see where I see irony most is not with those who disagree with me, but mainly the opposite. I get a few likes here and there, but it’s not about likes, not for me anyway, it’s about me stating my own honest opinion and hoping people not only relate to it, but understand totally where I’m coming from and what it is they think they are liking.

People’s interpretations of the injustice of what they are describing as a government backed land grab in Israel and making analogies such as the Birmingham invading Manchester one, on the whole I can see how one side would see it that way. Throw in treating the subjugated as second hand citizens, dehumanised etc etc and how this can lead to freedom fighters standing up for themselves. Did I say freedom fighters? Sorry I mean terrorists.
The analogy shows how if it happened to us we would do the same and by and large it sounds like something I have professed in here myself,. But…….

The irony I see is why hypothesise about Manchester and Birmingham?
You have that actual history right on your doorstep. You have recent centuries of not quite ethnic cleansing, although that certainly was part of it and at one time was government policy, where Scottish Presbyterians were given Catholic land in Ulster in return for loyalism to the crown. The plantations as they were known in the Irish version of school taught history.
This was in conjunction with a couple of hundred years of the Penal Laws whereby Irish catholics couldn’t hold office, couldn’t serve in parliament and couldn’t own land and couldn’t VOTE!!!!
The irony I refer to is, can people seeing the Palestinian struggle in Britain, come up with the same justification for what started with the civil rights marches at the end of the 1960s, let’s face it you still had internment without trial through the 70’s, and led to the reemergence of a new IRA that initially were heralded in their own areas for keeping their communities safe but ended up committing equally heinous crimes on the civilian populations of those that didn’t see things their way. Terrorists! No doubt about it.

That is no defence of the IRA, by the way. I just hope you see the point I’m making.

Then there’s those here who back Israel, as is their right and see things black and white. I see no irony in their position whatsoever. Israel was attacked. Israel will defend itself and Israel will be right.

My point to them would be, that I’ve heard it all before. It’s not much different than ‘Ulster Says No’ and the Paisley ‘shots across the border’ speech.

I have repeatedly said in here that it is a complex situation and until both sides are willing to look at the other point of view, then this cycle of atrocities met with more and more force is going to continue.

It seems totally hopeless at the moment given the main protagonists but don’t let similar history go by without learning from it. Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Shankill Bombings in Northern Ireland. It was a grim time and you felt things had reached a low that we would never come out of.
There was shootings in the graveyard at the funeral of an IRA man that was involved in the bombing. Gerry Adams was criticised for being a pall bearer at the funeral. You really thought there was no hope.
However, Within a year in 1994, ceasefire negotiations were successful and Adams himself was instrumental in them. The IRA declared a cessation to violence.
Similarly the UVF declared a ceasefire. The peace was imperfect but the process had been started and wouldn’t be stopped thanks to the work from honest brokers between the two sides. In 1998 the GFA was signed and delivered. Honest brokers like Senator George Mitchell, John Hume and your own Mo Mowlam, worked tirelessly..

I look at contributions from both sides in this thread and I either relate them to our own past history and say why can’t lessons be learned or I look at them and wonder why didn’t you see things that way then? That is the irony.

I long for the day we see peace for all involved in that region. It will require justice for all however or the vision of justice going forward.
Don’t forget the past but learn to forgive or the present will go on forever

I think I’ll take a break from here now.

You make some good points but may I also point out that whilst Britain was shitty towards Irish Catholics, for a much longer period of time before that, British/English Catholics didn’t fare any better at home for a couple of centuries (excluding a period of a few years) from 1534.

Tens of thousands killed, not because people worshipped a different god, but simply because they worshipped the same god in a very slightly different way.

Madness.

 

[mexico1970]

It’s literally in the UN secretary generals speech you replied to.

We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians.

I dragged the stats off their website, they are supposed to be stopping this all they have done is nothing. You'd have though going by what you posted that they shipped loads of people in.

Opening the doors to buildings the Israelis are bombing isn't protecting them, and a lot of the UN there are actually Palestinian where were they going to go anyway?

The USA with their veto makes the UN useless specially in this case.

 

[Eebo]

Ukraine didn't use it's own citizens as human shields, Ukraine didn't kill a couple of thousand civilians by entering Russia and committing acts of horror.

Apart from that it's the same yes.

Even saying that the Israelis should stop the bombing IMHO.

I appreciate the reply, and I accept that Ukraine didn't commit an act of terror on Russia, but I am not sure how that is really relevant to my point. If Hamas killing 2,000 innocent Israeli civilians is an act of terror then so must be the IDF killing 5,000+ Palestinian civilians. The longer it goes on the more it looks like an act of vengeance exacted on every man woman and child in Gaza, and the less it resembles a military operation to take out the guilty party

If it is justified in your view, then where are the limits to how far they can go? Why should they not bomb every building in Gaza and kill every single person in there just in case they are a member of Hamas?

The 'human shield 'argument may seem plausible at first glance, but it is not when you think about it.

The civilians in Gaza live there because Israel restricts them to that area. Hamas have not moved them there or forced them to be there, that is where they live. Israel told civilians to move to the South of Gaza, and are now bombing there as well, so I don't understand how they can possibly be being used as human shields by Hamas

Hamas may live among them as a part of the same community but that is a completely different thing. The IRA lived among the Catholic communities in Northern Ireland in exactly the same way. Based on your logic the British Government would have been justified in asking the RAF to carpet bomb the Republican leaning parts of Derry and Belfast for weeks and weeks in order to avenge an IRA attack!