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

[itsmabeline]

Raping them, brining children, taking hostages then held them for a year. Then promised they would do it again and again any time they had the power or chance.

Do you think we'd invade Norway?

Do you think we'd have domestic or international support?

This is ridiculous. Of course if it was my family I would do anything I possibly could to get them back. I would hope I wouldn't carpet bomb innocent children, but who knows - I wouldn't be thinking rationally. That said, if I did this in a personal capacity I'd be committing a crime and I would expect to be sent to prison.

Israel as a state is doing similar. Stopping States doing this is why we have international law on war crimes.

Why would they kidnap and torture - most Norwegians I have met are polite and friendly.

As are most Palestines.

Yes and no. Yes it's an ill fitting analogy, and yes it says much about the OP's and probably most of UK society's world view that the troubles in the ME are so difficult to grasp.

But no, it needs to be discussed, it needs to more widely understood. And, if you have an understanding that you can share maybe the onus is on you to be a little less denigrating and dismissive.

Yes, I remember the levelling of Northern Ireland in response to the IRA and us going after the USA for funding them.

My post was tongue in cheek,
I have lived in the ME so do get it.
It's a religious war - only solution imv is jaw, jaw not war, war.
Everyone wants the others to go away and that's not likely to happen.
N Ireland got sorted eventually so this will too I hope.

I would wonder why a hospitable and peaceful people who have been oppressed for years, kept in a prison, tortured and killed for trying to reclaim the place where they have lived, would have become feral and had a group of leaders that could so easily persuade its youth to become so savage. It was possibly not Facebook but a feeling of desperation, oppression and injustice coupled with a lack of opportunity and employment and the feeling that they were trapped in a cage and they were persuaded that the only way to break the deadlock was an act of savagery. Obviously that and the fact that the UK sending the Navy to attack and arrest their fisherman who were just trying to have a properly manage fisheries policy in what they envisaged was their territorial waters.

🙄 the IRA didn't send in their terrorists to mass rape, torture and kill people in villages or at festivals.

Other surrounding countries, Scotland France didn't join in and lob their missiles at us in support of them for a full year.

Seriously what a dopey post

Its about proportionality.

1200 most civilians, subjected to rape executions torture and kidnap.

VS

Killing 42,000 people in horrific bombings and injuring upwards of 200,000 when the vast majority weren't even alive when Hamas were voted in, nor had any say on the 7/10 attack.... is in my opinion, not proportionate.

Surgeons who have worked there say the most horrific injuries are shrapnel in peoples eyes and faces, as on hearing a loud noise, the normal reaction is to widen your eyes and look around!
Then there is limbs blown off, families part or fully wiped out, people left alive to die trapped under tons of rubble.

All whilst at the same time, leaving 200 hostages to their fate.

Netanyahu is now inflicting murder and injury on the Lebanese, a sovereign country, whose population have absolutely nothing to do with the terrorists amongst them.

He is an evil man.

I don't think we would ever put up with our armed forces exterminating Norways health care system and purposefully bombing little kids to smithereens.
Perhaps there would be a small percentage of the population who would support it but the majority absolutely would not. We saw this when millions marched against out involvement in Iraq.

Honestly. I think we’d impose sanctions, bomb a military target or two and leave it at that. I don’t think they’d be a ground war.

There certainly wouldn’t be a commitment to wipe out the entire Norwegian military! Nor would there be bombings of residential areas because senior military leaders and their families lived in them. Loads of small towns in Europe contain military bases, and I don’t think we’d flatten the Norwegian ones.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

@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.

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!

@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.

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/

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).

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

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