Israel Halts Electricity Supply To Gaza

[GoblinCampFollower]

Maybe There's No Plan

Does Anybody Know What They Are Doing?

johnganz.substack.com

Evernote link

good article. This general thought is kind of my go to response to conspiracy theories. I don't think anybody knows exactly what they are doing in this conflict.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Eyes on Everywhere Else

Sudan, Pakistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Eastern Congo

jill.substack.com

The War We Never Wanted (with Elisa Albert)

Kristallnacht, "Free Palestine," and the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.

open.substack.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Greta Thunberg's train wreck has reached the next level: there was a FFF demonstration with 85.000 people in Amsterdam, Netherlands. So far this is the biggest demo like this in NL ever. Thunberg was on the stage with a Palestinian scarf. In case you don't know what this is, this piece of scarf. Only Palis wear this in black, other Arabs normally in red.

Spoiler

Thunberg was chanting political statements about Palestine. One disgruntled man went unasked on stage, while many people in the audience were annoyed as well, took the mic from Thunberg and criticised that he is here to protest for a better climate, not a political view. Security dragged him off the bridge on Thunberg's order, and she shouted then "No climate justice on occupied land."


And this is what she chanted after the stage while walking around.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The Israeli Defense Forces have released video footage, which shows Hamas members firing two RPGs from the entrance of Al-Quds hospital in Gaza at IDF forces.

i24NEWS

www.i24news.tv

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

German magazine "Der Spiegel" has an interview with the man who went on stage in Amsterdam and took the mic from Greta Thunberg. His name is Erjan Dam, 65 year old physio therapist in retirement.

They asked why he went on stage and vent off some steam the way he did. His answer: "I do feel abused, and many other participants as well. We traveled extra for this event to Amsterdam, in total 15 friends and aquaintances from our region. But instead of protesting about climage change and the environment, the talks on stage were mostly about the Palestine conflict. One speaker after the other talked about Palestine, and some even agitated against Israel. All this happened while we came there to protest about climate change."

Next question: how did the audience react to the unusual topic? "Many viewers were disappointed and left; so we went nearer and nearer to the stage. And when the Palestine speeches didn't end, I went up the stage to tell all, that this protest here is about climage change and not the middle east." There was virtually also no security, which is why going up was done quite easily. After that he went to the train station.

Then Dam was asked about his opinion of Thunberg: "I always admired her. She's a brave woman. But her now always speaking about Palestine instead of climate change damages the climate movement."

How comes: "Well you know: climate change does affect all of us - regardless of origin, religion, age or political view. We can reach something if we stand united. But when Greta Thunberg or other leading figurs of the movement mostly now talk about Palestine this spreads discord. People with different opionion are appalled by such speeched. This then hurts the movement in return. The movement should concentrate on its core topic: the protection of the climate."

(S+) Protest gegen Greta Thunberg in Amsterdam: Was hat Sie so in Rage gebracht, Herr Dam?

Das Video geht um die Welt: Als Greta Thunberg erneut über Palästina statt Umweltschutz redet, stürmt Erjan Dam die Bühne. Hier sagt der Niederländer, was ihn bewogen hat – und warum er sich um die Klimabewegung sorgt.

www.spiegel.de

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Piers Morgan tries to get Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party, to say whether Hamas is a terror group or not:

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Very good article -- one I agree with, anyway -- that draws a very good parallel with the NI peace process. Money quote:

Accepting Israel’s culpability on a whole range of issues, the plain fact remains that you cannot unwind and redo history. If your answer to Israel’s existence is that it should never have been created in the first place then, at some fundamental level, you are not truly serious about peace. It is a means of hiding behind history, the better to avoid the complications of the present. Any approach to the future based on whataboutery about the past is one doomed to go precisely nowhere.

Hiding Behind History

An interview with a leading Palestinian historian demonstrates the impossibility of progress

alexmassie.substack.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The problem with many Palestinians is that they do think that they can and will win. All other major Arabic players in the region have by now learned that lesson the hard way that they can't, and have arranged themselves with Israel's existence, one way or the other. Only the Palestines refuse to accept reality.

And if you do add the Islam into that picture with making liberation and putting all of Israel off the map their "holy duty", then you've got a very nasty recipe for a generation spanning long lasting grudge that never will go away.

This is why now so many Israeli people are so tired about what's happening in Gaza, and really don't care much at the moment what might happen to the Palestines. A big part of the Israeli population is pro "making a car park out of it" this time. From their perspective they gave them time upfront to leave (as impossible this might be in reality), so if they are still there when the IDF arrives - your choice, you asked for it.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Satire from Israel about the typical Western news coverage.

Same show, another sketch: Pro Hamas college students at Columbia University.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

PM Justin Trudeau of Canada told Israel to stop the "killing of women, of children, of babies."

Canadian PM tells Israel to end ‘killing of babies’

Israel’s Netanyahu lashes out after Justin Trudeau urged ‘restraint’ in Gaza.

www.aljazeera.com

Netanyahu pushed buck full of anger.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

It is a no win situation. Hamas has intentionally put civilians in between them and the Israeli troops. They can't ignore what happened, and there is no way that they can leave Hamas intact. There is little Israel can do at his point, and none of the options are good. But we also need to look at the longer view as to how we got here and what happens next. If they do not follow up with a plan for better conditions in Gaza, this cycle will keep repeating. This is what people do when they have no hope.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

If they do not follow up with a plan for better conditions in Gaza, this cycle will keep repeating.

This is the wrong conclusion, because the condition for this is that most Palestines would accept a two state solution. Spoiler: most don't, because they want Israel to be gone completely. When looking back at Israel's history, most Israeli will tell from the beginning we already reached our hands out to live together peacefully. Heck, we even were willing to give way more land to the Arabs just to gain this, as sign of good will to appease them. It didn't help, very soon we had to fight our first war against the Arabs over our sheer existence.

And everytime we were offering them again our hands in friendship, in order to relax the relationships, we were bitten in our hand. Regarding Gaza: we left Gaza totally, so that the Palestines could do whatever they have wanted to do with it. They could have turned it into an Arabian Singapore, wealthy community, whatever - but instead they opted to make this a rocket launch base directed solely at Israel.

So chances are Israel will do this not again, because history showed now that the Palestines are so inclined to turn their living area into a fundamentalist, radical terrorist shithole country. And most likely will do exact the same thing again, if again having this freedom of government.

The Palestines do act and Israel then reacts - most of the time it is this pattern. And many people in Israel are now of the opinion "why should we supply our mortal enemies with power, water and food?"

 

[Veritable Quandry]

So then what? The alternative you are suggesting is genocide.

Israel did not "leave Gaza totally." They created an open-air prison where they had complete control of the borders and took every punitive action they could.

There must be a solution. Both sides abandoned the two-state solution long ago. So we have either a unitary state, continued Apartheid, or ethnic cleansing. For most of those involved, the only question is who does the ethnic cleansing.

If nothing changes, then nothing will change.

Hamas is evil, no question. But a dance takes two. The last two decades of Israeli policy only fed that evil. People without hope have nothing to lose. People with only anger will do as Hamas does.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

If there would be an easy solution, we would have had peace in the Middle East decades ago and the people having reached that having earned the Nobel price for Peace. Israel will do mostly what they feel is necessary for their survival right now, and give a shit about everything else. An unitary state with them is unlikely, they would want to turn this from a Jewish state into an Islamic state, so not happening.

What would be necessary is a de-radicalisation of the Palestinian population. The conflict there is already spanning over many generations, so it would take at least one generation to reach that. But since the Arabs do know how to keep a grudge alive, this is quite utopic. This process would need to start either internally, or you could try Chinese reeducation camp styles like they do with the Uigurs, to force this upon them. This is also why Hamas is so against of Israel having diplomatic relationships with countries like Saudi Arabia, because this really normalises many things.

So what we will most likely see in the future is Gaza being a shithole, but Israel keeping even a stricter control about it if seen necessary. Aside that they will happily hand over for the more relaxed times over ruling Gaza to whoever wants to have it. For reasons I can do understand pretty clear most Arab countries there, like Qatar, Egypt or Saudi Arabia don't want to have to rule over the Palestinians.

The thing is that many Palestians are no sensible actors, they are fanatics. So you cannot deal with them in a sensible way.

I mean its not without reason why many American right wing nut cases do favor as solution to drop a bomb and make a car park out of it. Would it work? Yes, most likely. Is it an easy solution? Yes. Would it be a good solution? Nope.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

I never said it would be easy. We have decades of bad actors on both sides, with Hamas being the worst. But any Israeli occupation will perpetuate the cycle. A predominantly Muslim peacekeeping force can rebuild both infrastructure and governance while providing a buffer. It will take decades and active efforts at de-escalation to achieve stability.

But keep Gaza a shithole, deprive the Palestinians hope, and you will keep getting Hamas under another name.

 

[Lexxi]

I thought John Oliver's episode on the topic was interesting.

 

[Soen Eber]

I fear the only effective answer may be William Tecumseh Sherman's "make Georgia howl" strategy, however miserable the short & intermediate consequences. The Israeli's are not a foreign invading army that can be chased back home, and not until this fantasy of the Palestinians is finally and fully discredited will they be able to move on.

History does have many positive examples, especially in the western world, of oppressed peoples being able to make progress (not enough!) after surviving totally inhumane conditions, but it only occurs gradually, after many generations and sometimes hundreds of years, and even then only partially. I am not endorsing it, but it is hard to find historical examples otherwise.

The study of history is a miserable preoccupation

 

[Cindy Claveau]

The study of history is a miserable preoccupation

I often use my degree in history to argue on the interwebs.

Pricey!

 

[Isabeau]

I thought John Oliver's episode on the topic was interesting.

Video isn’t available here. Article about what he said…

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/13/john-oliver-on-israel-hamas-war-netanyahu

 

[Veritable Quandry]

I often use my degree in history to argue on the interwebs.

Pricey!

I doubled my salary by using my PhD to teach Engineers writing.

They say study what you love and you will never work a day in your life. Because that field isn't hiring.