Rayvin

Staggered that ewerk has managed to remember that a 16 year old thread with about 10 posts existed at all

It's not but it does so far at least appear that they are being somewhat restrained. Whether due to hostages or KSA, I'm not sure - but starving Gaza permits time for conversations to develop. Of course it's also possible that they were so unprepared for this that they need to buy themselves time to mobilise.

Unforgiveable. I am actually sorry, I can see it now but apparently my radar is well off for humour this morning

I'm still not entirely following but I offer you an apology nonetheless for consistency

Idk how well I worded that but to be clear I'm not saying that's my present sentiment. It would become my sentiment if he actually did leave for Liverpool. And it wouldn't so much be annoyance as 'oh I guess he's not quite what I thought he was after all'.

It does feel like we're sort of creeping closer to a global conflict in some senses. I agree with everything in that view on Iran - a lovely people ruled by total lunatics.

If that context is true, then for all the horror of this specific moment I would say that the wider moment we are in is actually a potentially promising turning point for the future. If KSA does normalise with Israel it might encourage other similar actions from surrounding regional players, and push Iran into a position of greater isolation and, dare I say it, may force them to soften over the long term too. If they do this, if globalism wins, then this whole conflict may eventually just run out of steam - and once it does, it might mean that Israel is able to properly create a state in which Palestinians aren't treated as second class citizens as a security precaution. That in turn may eventually lead to the opportunity for everyone to forgive and heal. Maybe I'm being naive and delusional, I am after all a huge believer in interdependency being the great peacemaker of the modern age, but I feel like there may be a path there.

Yeah but they might consider that the unifying notion of opposing Israel across all Arab nations is diminishing either way as the world moves on, and so this is a bid to put some emotional information into the mix to try to influence that - it could speed it up sure, but equally it might be the only thing that puts the brakes on it. They've presumably been hanging their hat on the ongoing development and growing power of Middle Eastern nations to eventually counterbalance and then eliminate Israel, but if globalisation drives diplomacy and interdependency then that's far less likely to happen. In the end, religion isn't going to matter as much as profit and power.

Was thinking to myself earlier though, why Hamas have even taken hostages to start with - googled it and apparently the official reason is to force Israel to give warning ahead of attacks on residential areas in Gaza so that people can flee. If any part of that is true then Hamas clearly want to avoid as much collateral damage as they can on their side too. I guess it's tempting to think that they're indifferent to the suffering of their own people in this too but they may simply just believe, horrifyingly, that this is worth the deaths of their own people - as much as they might like to avoid them. I suspect beyond that though, Israel has demonstrated in the past how highly they value their own people (definitely in comparison to Palestinian lives) so taking and spreading out these hostages and securing them in areas where Hamas is directing attacks or operating forces Israel to choose between killing their own people in air strikes, or sending in troops to extract them at a probable far higher cost in Israeli lives in the end. Taking the hostages means Israel has to be at least somewhat more restrained than it would be if it was just dealing with Palestinian lives. But that point aside, what on earth is even the end game for Hamas in this? They can't possibly think that this is going to take them anywhere near to the dismantling of Israel. Just a reminder that they're there and that they're still mad? Or maybe it's to damage morale in Israel? In the end, the only thing that really makes sense to me as a cause is the Saudi line. That this had to happen to prevent Saudi from normalising with Israel. I just don't understand what else can possibly be achieved here by Hamas other than that one thing.

If he would go to Liverpool then his whole persona that he's set up since joining us is essentially a marketing gimmick, and in that case I'm far less invested in him by default. Moreover, them throwing £100m at us for Bruno does not save them from us in the long run.

So just looking at the current status of things this morning, Israel have announced this: Which in the context of the war away from moral concerns makes total sense strategically. Hamas of course won't relent either, so I'm wondering how many Palestinian lives are vulnerable here.

Why on earth would you join the Tories... I think Renton is spot on, she's a career politician trying to preserve her livelihood. Doesn't change the fact that the SNP have treated her disgracefully of course.

Again though, I think Russia's ability to compel people to invade and brutalise another country (very similar acts of aggression) - and indeed Ukraine's ability to compel people to defend their country rather than just flee - suggest that religion is not at all the only thing that could produce these outcomes. There are all sorts of narratives that we might accept to push us to do this. I'm tempted to say the issue is more about a widespread lack of critical thinking skills than it is about anything else. Or maybe it's just baked into our social DNA, that we build group bonds around abstract concepts that then come to define our identity, and treat attacks on those identities with serious hostility. I appreciate that this is adjacent to the main topic at hand here although I have tried to keep my posts on it somewhat relevant to the matter at hand, but this probably isn't the place for a philosophical conversation on religion in the end.

Religion certainly is a significant component part of culture, but I suspect culture is the unifying theme in all cases where religion is implicated and indeed where it is not. Russia has a culture built up around strong man politics, a view that Russia is on its own against a hostile world and needs to defend itself proactively. China has a persecution complex baked into its culture. The US has some bastardised version of white saviour complex and exceptionalism. These things have and will continue to push these countries to undertake violent acts. However at this point I think you'd be more inclined to suggest that those in power are just manipulating narratives that they're pushing - and I think my point in all of this is that religion is just another one of those narratives.

I understand the view but I just don't really agree, I think the people who want this stuff to happen would find ways to justify it either way. Definitely in this case tbh. The Israel/Palestine issue is a political one on the face of it, to me at least - I would imagine that after decades of perceived injustice and oppression at the hands of Israel, Hamas could have managed to have this happen with or without any religious implications. Human nature and our propensity for being "led" is more of an issue for me than religion.

This is absolutely where I am on this too. I think the best you could argue is that religion is perhaps the lowest of low hanging fruit in terms of whipping people up into a murderous frenzy, but then Russia has still managed that in the invasion of Ukraine and there are no religious underpinnings to that of any real note. I think it's actually culture in the end that is the thing we go to war over.

I think because there are people out there who seem to think if you take religion away humankind lives in total peace and harmony, and I'm just not seeing it. Religion is a convenient narrative or context for violence often enough, but I suspect that in this case we would be seeing this violence with or without it.

As an aside, I've seen a lot of people talk about this as a religious conflict but im not personally sure if it is one. Is it not nationalism that underpins this rather than religion? I know that religion is heavily intertwined of course but I'm not sure it on its own is the "why".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre I'm not really trying to make a big thing of this terrorism angle I'm really just responding to the point about how Britain would react. I think we'd go to war on either side of it tbh.

I miss HF tbh, he was a good guy.

I will add that I don't see any way for Hamas to ever get what it wants through any means - which makes this latest escalation cruel and spiteful at the cost of many lives. A people without hope, acting hopelessly.

True but how would the British public have responded if we had been Palestine in the 1940s, is the other side of that. It's been a while since i read up on this but I'm fairly sure Palestine was constantly targeted by Zionist terrorists prior to the formation of Israel (and who also massacred women and children) and then effectively they were given victory by the British. Would we have accepted that in our country, especially if it was imposed on us by a colonial power? I really don't see how anyone fixes this because the whole situation is flatly impossible at the outset. Its incredibly sad.

The West's inconsistency on all such matters is an embarrassment to all of us tbh. The cost of pragmatism over principle ultimately.

What in the everloving fuck did you search to get that?

I'm creating this thread due to the lock put on the previous thread. I'm not going to put forward any views or sentiments of my own in this opening post but just want to outline that since this is obviously a very sensitive topic which affects some people on the board quite personally, especially at the moment, we should have some care in terms of emotive wording and so on. That said, it is also important that people are allowed to freely discuss the factual realities of the situation, naturally.