What would Keir Starmer do if a group of Norwegians supported by the Norwegian government invaded tomorrow killing thousands?

Oops tgat was for @Dubaiinception

Did you mean to write "....I condone Israel's actions...."

I'm a bit confused.

Although it is worth noting that 'only' ~500k of the ~2M Japanese killed by the 'US' in WW2 were civilians, and the 2M figure includes around 500k of Japanese military casualties in the Sino-Japanese war (not sure how many civilians) which I don't think anyone can say started because of Pearl Harbor. WW2 numbers get horrific very fast. (As do the Sino-Japanese war numbers but let's leave that war crimes discussion for another day!).

For all the numbers above, reports vary. I'm relying on Wikipedia.

apan forged an alliance with Germany and Italy, totally different situation and you know it or i thought you would.
By v late 1941, Europe was under the Nazi's, Russia had been attacked and the much of the far East and Pacific was under the control of the Japanese.[';p`
Hamas isn't threatening the existence of Europe or the Far East.

I don't think we should make excuses for the atrocities the West has committed. Japan was not threatening the existence of much (and certainly not the US) when the US dropped bombs and killed around 200k Japanese, mainly civilians. They just didn't want a prolonged and expensive land war. History is written by the victors, if the US had not won that war for some reason no one would be defending what they did.

There's also a pretty strong argument that Hamas is threatening the existence of Israel. Action is still disproportionate.

I condone Israel's actions, and I strongly believe they are committing multiple war crimes. It needs to stop, and the US is probably the only country that can stop it (and before Iran really moves). Netanyahu is exploiting the current power vacuum in the US and I am disgusted (but sadly not surprised) that no one at the top of US politics is willing to risk sacrificing their political ambition to put an end to this. Not saying the UK is much better, but realistically it's on the US that can potentially do something.

Japan forged an alliance with Germany and Italy, totally different situation and you know it or i thought you would.
By v late 1941, Europe was under the Nazi's, Russia had been attacked and the much of the far East and Pacific was under the control of the Japanese.[';p`

Hamas isn't threatening the existence of Europe or the Far East.

The majority of the people dying in Gaza didn't vote in Hamas, they had no say in 7/10 and the Lebanese certainly didn't vote in Hezbollah.

The rest of your post makes little sense.

How anyone can justify the killing of 42,000 almost all innocent people, to keep Netanyahu in power is beyond me.... because that s what it has become all about now.
He is uncontrollable by his American/UK allies, who are too scared to criticise him and who also seeks to help get Trump into power.....

That'll help us all, won't it.

People are attempting to provide analogies because the premise of this thread is an analogy.

If you don't agree with the IRA one, feel free to provide one that works better.

Interestingly people make stupid comparisons on mn whilst having no idea of reality for Israeli and Gaza

Exactly, either the posters are ignorant of that fact or being purposely unfactual in replies in an error to make an incorrect point.

Completely different to Oct 7th. As usual some people don't engage with facts.

@1dayatatime Were you genuinely not aware that there is heavy criticism of what the US did when it dropped the atomic bombs on Japan? Even when I was doing history at school 30+ years ago a syllabus topic was whether the US actions were justified to bring a faster end to the war.

In the spirit of your response, are you able to explain why you believe that Israel's actions are proportionate and not war crimes?

For example, do you believe that because Hamas is in power in Gaza, the residents of Gaza are all enemy combatants and are all responsible for Hamas's actions (and if so, how does this translate to Lebanon and Hezbollah)? Is your argument based on the fact that Israel doesn't recognize Gaza as a sovereign state and therefore much of the international law should not apply (and if so then what about Lebanon)? Or do you dispute the position that is being put forwards and believe that, whilst there are civilians, civilians have had ample opportunity to evacuate and that entry of food and medical supplies are not being restricted aka this is all propaganda?

I'll fix the analogy a bit for you.

Imagine Japan said to some Norwegeins - the UK is your Holy land. Please go there, it's your new home. Japan didn't ask UK if this was ok, just presumed UK would be happy to share with the Norwegeins. So the Norwegeins came over and gradually took over all the land, stole the houses of UK residents. Took over town by town, village by village. The Norwegeins shot and killed many thousands of UK citizens and traumatised them. They pushed the UK residents into Devon and then built a wall around Devon. Devon is now the most densely populated country in the world because the population of UK has been squeezed into it. A few UK citizens also were pushed into Birmingham and a wall and checkpoints were built around it.

Now the residents of Birmingham and Devon are not allowed to leave. They can't drive to London anymore, only Norwegeins are allowed in London. Only Norwegeins are allowed on the motorways. Only Norwegians can vote on what happens in Wales, London, Cardiff,.Scotland. only Norwegians are allowed in the UK. UK citizens must remain in either Birmingham or Devon and they can't travel between the two or leave or ever visit their capital city or any important religious places in the UK they used to go.

Norwegians now control the water and electric supplies to Devon. They build new houses around and inside Birmingham.

When Birmingham and Devon people protest, they are shot. Most people in Devon and Birmingham have seen at least one family member murdered by the Norwegians. They all hate the Norwegians for stealing their country and killing their friends and family.

The Norwegeins decide to fund an organisation called Hummus. They don't like them but they want Birmingham and Devon to be separated and not feel as one united UK anymore. They want infighting within Devon and Birmingham too. So they give loads of money to Hummus.

Members of hummus happily take money from the Norwegians who have taken over their land. They want revenge against the Norwegians for stealing their country and killing their friends and family.

Some members of hummus, as a result of sustained trauma inflicted by the Norwegians, have turned evil. They break out of Devon and launch an attack in Bristol. They savagely and horrifically kill innocent Norwegians that were partying in their homes in Devon (the homes that used to belong to UK citizens).

The Norwegians are angry and scared by this horrific act, so they make sure the walls around Devon are completely secure, then they bomb the shit out of the place. They kill thousands of children, destroy all the hospitals, schools and traumatise the people trapped in Devon every day for a year. They induce famine, they cut off electricity when they like launching Devon into darkenss. They tell the children to move to the north, then bomb it. They tell the inform to move south, then bomb them. They drive tanks over dead and alive UK citizens in devon. The blow small children into thousands of pieces. The Norwegians are angry so they start attacking the people in Bingham too, even though noone in Birmingham was involved in the hummus attack.

Then the Norwegian leader of what was once the UK (now called norway-land) decides he will also invade Ireland. He wants to get rid of UK citizens from Devon completely and from Birmingham. He wants the whole UK to be called 'norway-land' and he wants Ireland too. He'd already stared building Norwegian homes in Ireland, but now he's decided to just start killing people there...

@Dulra

Thank you for very clearly and concisely answering the questions. I think it's only once we have distilled the key issues that any real understanding of the differences of opinion can be established and then hopefully a compromise or solution found.

Quite timely considering recent posts on nuclear weapons

Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of the organization’s efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.
The awards committee said that the grassroots movement had “worked tirelessly” to raise awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/11/nobel-peace-prize-2024-awarded-to-japanese-organization-nihon-hidankyo.html

Japan killed 2.300 Americans at Pearl Harbour but the US then went on to kill between 2.2 and 3 million Japanese. Do you see this as proportional? No

Do you see the US as in the right or the wrong? Wrong

Do you see Japan as the victim? Japanese civilians absolutely yes, were the victims

Japan killed 2.300 Americans at Pearl Harbour - they killed mainly American military not American civilians. American killed millions of Japanese civilians in response

Again, the fact that one war crime was committed, isn't a defense to other war crimes being committed. Whether or not the response was proportional absolutely matters because Israel (in this scenario) can have civilian casualties if they are (effectively) collateral damage and it is proportionate. This is not a proportionate response and I really struggle to understand how anyone could think it is.

"You don't get a right to pull the victim card". Who is 'you' in this scenario? You seem to think the victim is Hamas here. Hamas (and Hezbollah) are getting exactly what they want. The victims are the civilians.

A lot of people would say that the bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes btw (although the modern legislation for war crimes came in after WWII). I absolutely would (and Dresden).

That's just an estimate of rockets, from Wikipedia. The actual estimate of missiles and rockets is around 150,000.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/24/middleeast/hezbollah-weapons-visuals-intl-dg

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2023/11/15/hezbollahs-rocket-missile-and-drone-arsenal-is-huge-and-varied/

@Alexandra2001

"Its about proportionality"

If you start a war by killing 1200 Israelis you don't then get the right to pull out the victim card when the conflict starts going against you.

Japan killed 2.300 Americans at Pearl Harbour but the US then went on to kill between 2.2 and 3 million Japanese. Do you see this as proportional? Do you see the US as in the right or the wrong? Do you see Japan as the victim?

If I punch a trained boxer in the face hurting her and she retaliates by knocking me clean out then is this proportional ? Am I in the right or wrong? Am I the victim?

In the above cases the parties at fault were the Hamas Government and the Japanese Government - if they had not launched their attacks then their citizens would not have died.

I've been in the Middle East nearly 20 years and I don't come close to getting it.

Sorry for misunderstanding on your message, although I still don't really follow the point you were trying to make!

@MonkeyToHeaven

Estimates of Hezbollah's total rocket count range from 40,000 to 120,000, of which 26,000 have been fired against Israel since October last year .

To help you on the fractions this is between 13/20 or 11/50.

What an idiotic premise. The Norwegians are our friends. What comparison can you make with the Middle East?

Nah we don't need to call up a few people, we can just sent out a general alert to everyone at 1am that they need to be out of an area in the next 15 minutes. That's good enough. All families should have grab bags at the door, access to a helicopter on demand, and sleep in shifts to ensure that one family member is monitoring the phone 24/7.

The stuff about the IRA is somewhat misleading. The IRA killed just 125 people in mainland Britain, so a small proportion in population terms of what Hamas did to Israel.

The IRA also simply wanted Britain out of Northern Ireland, they weren't committed to the elimination of the United Kingdom and the murder of all British people.

The IRA killed more than 1,700 people.

Hezbollah lobbed a fraction of their estimated 150,000 missiles & rockets at Israel.

Iran fired 180 at Israel after they bombed their embassy in Syria.

Maybe we should have carpet bomber the US and their health system as it is crap anyway.
We should target their infrastructure and make sure they could never return to New York.

We could call up a few people and tell them to leave then bomb the whole area to show we are British and a decent sort. Then we can bomb wherever they went to like Wisconsin or Missouri. If other countries were concerned like Mexico they could take American refugees and keep them there. Then we would be free to take back New York. I personally would have a penthouse overlooking Central Park.

The Americans are animals anyway and don’t know how to till the soil, we are renowned gardeners and we would make New York flourish with flowers and orchards.if they attack us back we should kill their leaders as well as 10 people for one of us just to make sure. The US was given to by God and Walter Raleigh and historically we own the place. Then we need to target Canada because they sound like American (apart from the French speaking ones) which is another reason to bomb them.

we will raise a mighty empire again.

In short, we absolutely would not be following the path of Israel in decimating the whole of Norway.

Yes they did, they bombed Horse Guards, blew up the UK Government, blew up people in pubs & shops, killed people on remembrance day & tortured and killed anyone who got in their way.

1 3,720 people were killed as a result of the conflict.
2 Approximately 47,541 people were injured.
3 There were 36,923 shootings.
4 16,209 bombings were conducted.

& a large proportion of their funding came from the USA and weapons explosives from Libya, plenty of countries supported the IRA.