To be irritated that John Swinney is going to spend next week banging on about Gaza?

[Fragmentedbrain]

Why fix your own shit schools, prisons, councils and health service when you can fly the Palestinian flag at Holyrood for free I guess.

Attention-seeking wee wanker.

It's so embarrassing.

I don’t know @Fragmentedbrain that’s why I asked you. It’s not my country; I’m just interested.

Isn’t politics these days mostly about slinging insults and name-calling, never reasoned debate about ideas? 🤷‍♀️

Where did they plant Ireland ?

Calling people “thick” because they don’t agree with you, sums up this country “agree with me, or I’ll throw insults around”

Personally, I'd rather have leaders who can dedicate attention to multiple issues concurrently than only consider things one at a time. But I appreciate we're all different. Speaking about genocide in Gaza doesn't mean you aren't also working on other important issues.

I find that commonly on the left. Maybe the right have just joined them? Doesn’t make it right - but that’s the state of politics now.

The two things can exist. I take it you don’t care that innocent people are being starved and killed?

People opposing the genocide in Gaza are asking the govt to STOP spending money to help a foreign regime - on military flights supporting Israel, on ineffective and dangerous air drops of food aid - and impose sanctions. They can use the money they're not spending on Israel to help UK schools and OAPs.

Also, Israel has killed and endangered far more dual-national civilians, including Scots, than Hamas has.

Terrorism in Palestine was started by the Jewish militias who later became the Israeli army. They kidnapped British soldiers, hanged them and booby trapped their bodies so the rescuing soldiers were wounded. https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/british-army-palestine

People only have so much bandwidth, and might have more pressing concerns closer to home. You have the luxury of worrying about this, but a lot can’t. People can’t care about everything you might want them to. Do you care equally about everything happening in every country simultaneously? Are you equally outraged about everyone not in Gaza who is suffering? Should our elected officials be devoting equal time to every problem the world over? Of course not.

Well said!

Well you’re mistaken. I’m equally horrified at the atrocities going on around the world. I’m also educated to know that just because it isn’t on my doorstep doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care or take action. I imagine if something like that happened here we’d all be horrified at the people closing their eyes. Ignorance is not an excuse.

Why do you care about this above all else? I don't think you're in a position to lecture anyone else about ignorance.

Perhaps you prefer your politicians accepting money from Israel, a foreign terrorist state (according to Churchill and the late Queen) which is also an Apartheid state (says the ICJ, UN, Amnesty, B'Tselem, HRW)

www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/how-israel-funds-uk-parliamentary-staff/

We do care ut no genocide is happening in the UK what sort of a monster can turn a blind eye?

It's good that he does. That he's got some decency. End of.

Hmmm… “attention seeking wee wanker”

yep that’s exactly what I’m thinking about you OP!

I care about a lot of things.You clearly don’t. What position do I need to be in to call someone out on ignorance, please enlighten me? A decent human being is the only answer.

But....but... he's such an important World Leader, his voice matters!

Op, you're really not coming across well. Let this go now.

What's happening in Gaza is terrible but nobody would give a fig if Israel weren't the aggressors. Nobody is talking about Yemen or Sudan, as a pp said.

And where are all the protests about what's happening in Afghanistan? The UN even appeased the Taliban and excluded women from talks.

It's all so hypocritical.

Silly, goady post.

I grew up in the UAE — my Dad worked for a Palestinian construction firm, and I went to a Lebanese school — I was the only English kid in my year - my classmates being from all over the Arab world.

I love my Palestinian brothers and sisters dearly and can see that they have been badly let down by their leaders over the decades. To this day, it annoys me that all the Palestinian sympathisers I know in the UK sneered when the founder of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed, died in 2004 - "Just a rich Arab - who cares?" - that was one comment from an acquaintance. Within two weeks Yasser Arafat was dead and he was inconsolable. I suggest that Sheikh Zayed and other Gulf Arab leaders of his era did far more to further the cause of ordinary Palestinians than the putrid Arafat - simply by giving them work and a place to live. The Kuwaitis learned first hand how ungrateful Palestinians can be when they were invaded by Iraq in 1990.

I find my feelings about the Palestinian flag complicated. It uses the standard Arab colours, almost identical to the flag of Jordan and very similar to flags of countries like Kuwait and the UAE. I shouldn’t resent it, but after seeing policies and actions that have affected ordinary residents in my home city of Manchester, I feel uneasy about it and what it can represent- e.g. intimidation of Jewish locals and others trying to go about their business and it shouldn't generally be flown in this country in my opinion.