Do You See the Conflict in the Middle East as a Religious War or a Land Grab?

They don't want another organisation to take over. They want to leave the Palestinians with nothing.

I'm pretty sure that Israel have accused the World health organisation of being antisemitic. The WHO upset them because they passed a motion condemning Israel and they felt it was antisemetic that they were singled out. So I doubt they would let the WHO take over either. The UN have been accused of antisemitism too so none of their agencies would be allowed.

Well yes, then why did you start this thread? It hasn't done anything to lower the flames.

It's a land grab (by politicians). 'Justified' by religious extremists.

Sorry wasn’t this thread about whether this is a religious war or a land grab by Israel. I mean Israel didn’t force Hamas to attack it. Anything they do now is a direct consequence of Hamas’s actions.

I think everyone with half a brain cell would have known that Israel would react very badly. Including Hamas, they were just expecting to spark a regional war where the axis of resistance would come in and annihilate the Jews. So yeah possibly a land grab on the part of Hamas.

Er yeah I did, did you? Theres a nice bit on page 9 detailing how some books go all the way back to the dawn of Islam and attributing the current conflict to characteristics and actions of Jews.

Clearly there is anti-semitic content. I would hope the UK wouldn’t say “ah but it’s only a tiny bit of racism!” If we were talking about British school books.

I’ve said before, elsewhere that UNWRA is a lifeline to Palestinians but it’s also a shitshow. UNRWA employees have been hamas members in which case if Israel is at war with Hamas it makes zero sense for Israel to allow it to operate from Israel. If it is banned I would hope that alternatives are used such as the WHO.

To me it’s just another way Hamas fucked Gaza tbh.

If it is then wouldn’t the 43,000 dead Palestinians be evidence of even worse intent?

Might have something to do with the fact that any objection to or demonstration against what Israel is getting up to, is shut down as anti-Semitic? And what other country is going to risk the wrath of the USA, which seems to be completely in thrall to Israel, despite the odd whimper now and again.

Your comment about "bleating" stuck with me after reading it. Just today an Israeli civilian (who happened to be a young Muslim man) was killed by a rocket after he helped his younger siblings into the shelter but didn't make it in himself. I expect that you've never had just seconds to run with your half asleep kid into a shelter when both of you were woken up by a siren at 6:45am (and then heard the explosion pretty much directly overhead). So please just accept that rocket barrages over civilian areas are frightening on their own terms, and the reason not many Israelis are killed is because of sirens, Iron Dome and shelters, not because Hamas and Hezbollah don't have rockets capable of killing people. The sense of vulnerability caused by multiple rocket barrages does not calm down this war, it is the factor that spurred the current war with Hezbollah.

It's not belittling to the lives of Palestinians to accept that Israeli civilians also deserve better. The scale of death and destruction in Gaza is appalling. Believe me, the Israeli left is appalled and has been calling for a ceasefire-hostage deal for months, including being out on the streets almost every day. But I guess this is a long winded way of saying: empathy is not a zero-sum game. A better future will come from lowering the flames, not fanning them.

@User37482
About 5% of textbooks. The Parliamentary debate focussed on the Impact-de report that was discredited and the members did not conclude that UNWA was using the education system to radicalise or promote anti semitism to any significant extent.
Given the power of the Israeli propaganda machine UNWRA , there can be nothing left for them to find. The authors were reduced to linking UNWRA to former employees who hadn’t worked for the agency in 10 years.
Israel is against UNWRA because Israel wants the displaced Palestinians to be relocated either voluntarily or forcibly in order to relieve Israel of its security problems and allow it to continue to grow its population

All this talk on school textbooks is pretty immaterial anyway considering there are no functional schools in Gaza at the moment and children have been denied their right to an education for the past year! So let's focus on that and the loss and impact that will have on children's development and long-term future.

Have you read it? There are some concerns made about a Palestinian bias in some textbooks (show me a country that doesn't have a bias in favour of their own) nothing like what UNWRA is being accused of. It also shows that areas of East Jerusalem where Israel are in control of the textbooks there are concerns such as:

References to Palestinian identity or national symbols are removed, as are
passages detailing cultural commemorations and remembrance. The removal of entire chapters on regional and Palestinian history fundamentally changes the national narrative.

So in a nutshell issues on both sides and nothing to begin to explain why UNWRA should be banned.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2021-0105/CDP-2021-0105.pdf

This suggests that there is some questionable content.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/ideological-underpinnings-houthis-red-sea-attacks

This is quite interesting as well.

Agree.
I think many comments in the past 24 hours are cut and paste Israeli propaganda.

To be fair, UNRWA need banning. They are a toxic, malign force at work indoctrinating kids, controlling the populace into compliance
This cannot be left unchecked. It’s widely repeated that UNWRA indoctrinates children. The source is an organisation that tries to give an impression that it’s a widely respected international educational NGO based in Scandinavia when it’s an Israeli based think tank that focuses on Muslim countries almost exclusively to generate reports that are used for Israeli propaganda .
Impact-SE- look it up.
Then Google the above statement and you’ll see the propaganda machine amplifying the findings which were methodologically unsound and from a propaganda source.
A proper review showed any Israeli material in about 5% of textbooks and the reason was that UNWRA follows the host countries curriculum and uses same text book. UNWRA teachers are instructed to mitigate this and encourage children to think critically about this material.

To be fair, 1936+ didn't play out live on every screen, awash with untruths and propaganda like this war has. Many Germans had no idea themselves of the extent of the Nazis treatment of Jews.

However, we know what is happening in Israel and Gaza, but instead of a mass outpouring of support for the Gazans, there has been quite a bit of posturing but not a vast amount of action, has there? Indeed, the immediate neighbour has strengthened its border wall!

Also Iran trained hezbollah who trained hamas and the houthis. Infact the Houthis convinced a bunch of student protestors from Yemen (arab spring so generally democratic etc) to travel to Lebanon for “conferences” which were actually hosted by Hezb (no-one told the students thats who they were going to see) then basically recruited some to be part of an “islamic revolution”.

Houthis were basically invited into the arab spring protest by communists and students and then took over. Same playbook as in Iran, Egypt, etc etc.

I think the problem is many of us in the west are severely ignorant of the internal politics of middle eastern countries and how they came to be as they are now. Southern Yemen at one point was properly communist, you weren’t allowed to even own property. There are bunch of salafis in Yemen because Saudi chucked out hundreds of thousands of Yemenis (yemens president supported Iraq in the Gulf war) who had fled communism.

Theres pretty much always an Islamist, communist, student and pan arabist involved. The Islamists tend to win.

It’s very obvious what that poster meant and you’re being clearly disingenuous by trying to twist what she said into something else.

You clearly think Palestinians = bad and deserve everything they have suffered the past year and more, but at least make more of an effort if you want to persuade posters to come to your way of thinking rather than twist what posters say.

And they film it too..

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/world/middleeast/israel-idf-soldiers-war-social-media-video.html

The problem is men.

The IDF, 'settlers' and others...

Are documented to engage in the sexual abuse, including rape, of Palestinian women, men and children.

Have burned families alive and burned down the homes of many more.

Abduct and detain Palestinians, with a wide age range. They try Palestinian children in military courts (if they haven't shot them before that).

Occupy and annex land belonging to Palestinians.

And more. Much, much more.

Nationalist conflict.
But it's a bit of a myth that Muslims and Jews simply lived peacefully until Zionism. Things ebbed and flowed depending on the times and th attitude of the ruler in charge. It was never as bad as Europe, but there was never true peace and equality, either. Today the descendants of Jews from Arab countries are largely right wing voters.

Religious from what the Iranians, Hamas, Houthis etc say themselves.

The houthis are interesting, the guy who created them is dead but they come from a hashemite family who believe they have a right to rule Yemen as descendants of Mohammed. They despised the pan arab nationalist project and reject parliamentary democracy.

Iran is theistic, again, rule by religious authority. Hezb actually want to be part of a shia area ruled by ayatollahs, they actually went and asked permission from Khomeini’s to set up an armed wing. Pretty fucking religious in my book,

I think people in the west always think it’s political because they lack the kind of faith others sometimes have. This is political Islam, Shia style.

Personally I think Palestinians have been used as a football in the pursuit of these games, if you actually care about peoples lives then you push for a two state solution. What you don’t do is fund and support attacks that are likely to result in massive reprisals.