Support for Palestine at Glastonbury

Finallyloggedin, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where all citizens have equal rights and the only one whose Christian population isn't shrinking.

I'm not sure if you are deliberately lying or merely uninformed about the history of Arab Muslim imperialism in the Middle East when you claim that Jews and Muslims used to live as 'equals', but I think you need to ask yourself why Assyrians, Yazidis, Samaritans and Copts have been reduced to tiny besieged populations in their indigenous lands in which they were once the majority. If you understand that you'll understand why most Arabs cannot countenance the existence of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the Middle East.

Of course Palestinians are deserving of rights, freedom and a national home. The problem is that their political movement is not focused on gaining any of those things. It is and has always been solely about destroying what the Jews have built. This is the heart of the conflict and the reason it has proven so difficult to solve. Israel is not going to agree to dissolve itself, and the Palestinians refuse to accept any settlement that leaves Israel still in existence. If it was about land, or the desire of the Palestinian Arabs for a state, it would have been solved decades ago.

@Shutupaboutthesun

I suggest you continue your reading, and start with this.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/adam-shatz/israel-s-descent

There are a not-insignificant number of people who are using it literally, though, as justification and encouragement for the acts of the IDF and extremist 'settlers'.

To my mind, the problem with being 'Pro-Palestine' is that the core of the Palestinian Arab political project has always been about expelling or exterminating the Jews. It is not and never has been a project centred on human rights, or about building a functioning state for themselves.

The violent racism of the Palestinian Arabs goes way back, to before the founding of Israel, with pogroms like the 1929 massacre of Hebron's Jewish community (which bore eerily similar features to the pogrom of Oct 7, including the killing of infants and the elderly, and the sexual mutilation of women).

Anti-Jewish hatred among Arabs is not an outgrowth of the military occupation in the West Bank and predates the modern state of Israel by centuries. It is hard for people who don't know much about the history of the Middle East, and the subjugation of non-Arab minorities (Jews, Samaritans, Assyrians, Yazidis, Druze, Copts) after the Arab Conquest, to understand this. To them, the Palestinian Arabs look like the underdogs, while the well-armed Jews look like the bullies. Back when I knew little about the history of the conflict and just consumed left-leaning media, I used to think this too.

But after living in Israel for a year and reading more widely, I realised that it is the other way around: the Palestinians are the primary aggressors in this conflict. You can be the weaker party and still be the aggressor. Their military and economic weakness does not deter them from continuing to start wars, because they believe that ultimately 450 million Arabs will overcome 7 million Jews. That's why the Palestinians have turned down every offer of a state made to them. They don't want a state, they want the Jews gone and Arab Muslim supremacy restored over the one tiny part of the Middle East that has thus far evaded it.

Something like 80 per cent of Palestinians support Hamas. At a conference in 2021, Hamas laid out its vision for a 'free Palestine' and outlined what would happen to Jews in it:

1. Jews who had served in the IDF (which is most Israeli Jews) were to be killed.
2. Jews who had not served in the IDF (basically the Ultra-Orthodox) could be merely ethnically cleansed.
3. Jews who converted to Islam could be 'integrated into the state'.
4. 'Educated Jews' (the scientists, doctors and engineers) were to be enslaved, not allowed to leave the new state of Palestine, but forced to work, for free, for the Arabs.

This is the vision that a supermajority of Palestinians have for a 'free Palestine': one in which Jews are either killed, ethnically cleansed, forcibly converted or enslaved. This, therefore, is what it means to be 'Pro-Palestine'. I don't understand how anybody sane could align themselves with this, but Damon Albarn and most of the British Left disagree, it seems.

I’ll answer your questions

No
No

some people even justify it or minimise it or deny it.

@AhNowTed well said.

Do folks expressing horror at 7/10 consistently mention equal horror at the slaughter of 40000 people.

Did anyone mention the continued slaughter of Palestinians prior to 7/10, when Palestinians suffered the worst death-rate (then) on record.

Damon mentioned the elections next week and octogenarians who are in charge of the whole world. So you Brits, don't vote for Biden or Trump, kay?

OFGS the other atrocities are not directly relevant are they in the specific way that 7/10 was??? Stop trolling.

You really don't know it started long before that?

". So yes, I am saying there is, consistently, a lack of sympathy as evidenced by the equivocation, undermining, denialism and general shrugging & pretending its no big deal."

Where is your evidence for this assertion?

Who on this thread or in the wider populace has said that what happened at Nova is 'no big deal'? Name a politician that has said it's no big deal. Name someone that when asked about it, has said it's no big deal. Back up what you're saying with evidence instead of making unsubstantiated claims.

There is a massacre currently happening in Palestine. Tens of thousands have been killed including thousands of children, Damon Alburn mentioned it at a gig. That doesn't mean he doesn't give a toss about other victims. That doesn't mean no one cares and you can't just make up claims that it does.

He also didn't mention any number of atrocities currently happening in the world, aside from the 7/10 attacks. What of it? Isn't he allowed to express sympathy for people currently being starved to death in between being bombarded?

I can't open the link. Someone here said it was a Tweet.
This is your responsibility. The clip is widely available. Even if you couldnt open it you could source it. It does rather change the whole conversation if it was a tweet rather than his statements to a huge crowd. Sorry, I would expect you to work this out if you had read all the posts

His omission doesn't mean no one cares.
I don't think I said it did. He made a decision to make statement to a large crowd, knowing he would also have a large global tv and digital audience. It was not a side comment in a larger conversation in the pub. Any thoughtful, sensible person would chose their words carefully. It does therefore suggest that a. He doesn't care very much because his ommission was deliberate b. That he knew he would get away with it, ie broadly his audience would agree.

Again, he's a pop star and referring to the plight of the Palestinians. You're now saying that no one cares because he didn't mention it.

Again, I didn't say noone cares. I do think this thread & others like do suggest that a lot of people who are 'Pro-Palestinian' don't really care. I mean is it so hard to say: we are at a music festival. Our thoughts are with those who didn't come home from the Nova festival, alongside all those others caught up in the tragedy of this war. & go on to say whatever specific to the Palestinians.

What are you basing your supposition on exactly? As already explained by me & others above, several times now. You will have to do this bit for yourself.

No doubt you will go through this with a fine tooth comb looking for gotchas. Go for it!

id rather prefer to be like Dua than many of the people that I share the planet with tbh

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/recording-artist-dua-lipa-visits-lebanon-unicef-meet-refugee-children-and-young

You have a habit of flouncing when you can't back up what you're saying. Now you're just being rude. Making wild and dramatic assertions doesn't say much for your cognitive functioning either.

Nothing of what happened on 7-10 can be changed. What is happening in Gaza can be changed I.e selecting governments that

1. dont prevent arrest warrants against those that are committing war crimes
2. providing arms to those that are committing war crimes

according to you he should have mentioned as well those from 7-10 because it happened in a festival like Glastonbury. What about those victims that were not in the festival ? Shouldn’t those be mentioned as well?

also, in my opinion you can have empathy for those victims but don’t have to mention them all the time. Specially not every time you talk about Palestine.

Completely agree. I think DA is generally considered a bit mature & thoughtful though, so its disappointing. I think its the generally positive way his comments were received (big cheers -lots of appreciative circulation of the clip) and then the extraordinary, but entirely predictable, minimising, denialism, goalpost moving etc on this thread that gives it wider significance. Maybe the posters here are in a minority. Lets hope so.

I give up, sorry, can't work your cognitive skills for you.

What genocide? Israel could have flattened Gaza by now and killed every person there...and yet they haven't.

Israel is the only country on earth who isnt allowed to defend itself.

Damon Albarn, like Dua Lipa, makes good music.
It doesn't stop them being air-headed, virtue -signalling morons.
The mystery to me is why so many people think they're opinions are relevant.
But it was ever the way. Make a. Half-decent piece of music and suddenly you're Gandhi.

I can't open the link. Someone here said it was a Tweet. His omission doesn't mean no one cares. Again, he's a pop star and referring to the plight of the Palestinians. You're now saying that no one cares because he didn't mention it. What are you basing your supposition on exactly?

No. It was not a tweet. It was his statement at his set at Glastonbury which demonstrated a lack of sympathy for the victims. The clip is literally in the OP. Coud you just try to engage in a sensible conversation?

'every nuance' Are you for real? Nova was a music festival Glastonbury is a music festival (supposedly) the deaths and carnage that took place at Nova should have been mentioned. It isn't a nuance at all.