Triggernometry - interview with Netanyahu

[Digitalhen]

Thoughts on this interview?

Massive scoop for the Trigger podcast.

So when are we going to learn from the past and instead of using history to justify awful behaviour, we finally stop repeating it and start electing people who don't use it for their personal gain.

Social media makes things different these days.

Then surely they should be flattening and starving Germany. Again.

Ok, so Netanyahu is justified because Britain did this to Germany. America, UK and Allied killed and mains millions in Iraq based on false claims of WoMD. Shouldn't Iraq form an alliance to kill and starve Brits a d Americans? Surely then that's justified since the Allies showed they are enough of a danger to Iraq? Pity Iraq is not as well resourced then. How then should we view suicide bombers and the like?
No indiscriminate killing and starving civilians is unjustifiable. Even if Britain did it before

Exactly. How anyone can justify what’s happening to those poor people in Gaza is beyond me.

No one here is justifying the slaughter of innocent people whether it be in Gaza, Dresden or Israel. This thread is about the Triggernometry interview and which I’m sure some people in this thread have not listened to it.

I have just started listening. The first thing that strikes me is the descriptors he uses : savage; bestial; “you don’t even encounter it in beasts”.
It is very dehumanizing/animalizing language and demonstrates his mindset towards Palestinians.

Not trying to justify it, I think Netanyahu’s response became disproportionate a while back. Just reflecting on historical wars and how they were conducted. It’s a point worth considering if you want to be open minded about this current war in Gaza - is Israel being held to higher standards than are expected of other countries in wartime?

Some people don’t wish to even consider the question in case it challenges their narrative that the Israeli government & army is uniquely barbaric but actually- it isn’t.

I noticed the language too. I think he is using propaganda techniques long used by Hamas & their supporters.

I think he uses those words to describe the filmed atrocities committed on Oct 7th. Filmed by the perpetrators themselves. I watched some of those films. They were beyond what I ever imagined any human doing to another. He described them as bestial - savage - inhumane- there’s a lot of similar adjectives one could use to describe the same acts. Is he wrong? Would we re-name them if a different group of people were carrying them out? Tying children together and setting them alight in front of parents? Torturing parents in front of children, wives in front of husbands? We call all of it ‘October 7th’ like it’s just a jumble of quick killings but the films do not show that.

From the interview N said something like ‘when they tell you they want to kill you, you should believe it’ really made me feel anxious and uneasy. Jews have had this for so long in the Middle East. They’ve been ousted from every land there. They’ve had to build their Iron dome because of long term missiles and death threats actualised. I can’t imagine how it feels to be so disliked and hated.

I wish pro Palestine supporters would address Hamas properly as the villains they are too. They’re skirted around constantly, never truly criticised. Why is that?

I think a lot of people who comment on these threads have never actually seen the footage from 7/10.

Including myself, admittedly. Though I support Israel, I’ve just been too afraid to actually watch what happened that day - the murders & rapes - because I think I would find it too upsetting. It’s a bit lame maybe but it’s the truth.

So some people probably do manage to convince themselves Hamas aren’t “that bad” or were justified in their attack whereas if they watched the footage they would be more aware of exactly what it is they are defending or minimising.

Thank you @DigitalhenYou're correct N used that terminology to described what happened to his people on October 7th, not Palestinians. My other take away was how small Israel is and how vulnerable they must feel surrounded by people that want them exterminated. What would Wales do, a country of similar geographical size to Israel as pointed out in the interview, if terrorists from England slaughtered and kidnapped hundred of their citizens on one day? How would a country, that does not have the history Jewish people have, respond and how would their people feel?
I’ve no idea but I know if I was Welsh (if one continues this analogy), I’d want to feel safe and my family protected from the people who committed the most heinous crimes on my country.

I think the idea that anyone is trying to ‘justify’ what’s happening at the moment, is a straw man argument. I don’t often comment on this particular board but I see it quite often - people have such deeply entrenched views (on both sides) about a very small country that most have never visited.

I’ve travelled to some remote places and have seen some of the atrocities of war - met kids born with horrific defects as a direct result of Agent Orange which was liberally sprayed over large areas of Vietnam, met former child soldiers in Uganda, some of them with limbs missing from having tried to escape, met a family living in a cave in Azerbaijan, displaced by war - it got so cold the winter before that their baby literally froze to death.

Absolutely none of this is ever ‘justified’ but the atrocities of war happen daily and are often directly or indirectly funded by our own Western systems and yet the attention that’s turned to Israel is unlike anything I’ve seen.

So when Netanyahu says they have ‘lost the propaganda war for 2500 years’, I think he’s right. Even by posting this, I feel like someone will be along quite quickly to call me names or suggest I’m blithely looking on while children are murdered. As I said, even daring to suggest there might be a complex history to this, can very quickly get you labelled.

Bottom line is, war is vicious and ugly and it’s often the most vulnerable who suffer the most. But why focus so heavily on just one war when our world is jammed packed with violent suffering everywhere?

I agree. I’ve never seen such war coverage at this scale about any war ever. We live in the world of social media so it may be reasoned by that but why the focus on this and not say, daily coverage on the starving children in the Yemen, or coverage of the continuing atrocities in Syria or the Congo etc. Why so much focus on Israel and Gaza above anything and all else when the truth is that there are horrible awful just as bad atrocities ‘elsewhere’ - at the same scale - receiving little to no coverage and subsequently no street marches and no protesting? This phenomenon by itself is worth looking into and analysing.

Anyone see this? Former Guardian journalist speaks about this issue:

www.instagram.com/reel/DNWbuSJRsE3/?igsh=aWllMXU3bzEwMG1t

What words would you use to describe 7/10?

Thank you for a refreshing post, which reflects my stance and many others. That's not just on this bubble of a board, but out there in the real world. The notion that Israel receives minimal support, is a myth.

I don’t think it’s dehumanizing language at all. I see the word “animal” used often to describe people who carry out the worst kinds of harm against others.

Wayne Couzens, for example.

Anyway, he’s not wrong. What was done on 7/10 was savage and bestial.

I’ve only seen some of the GoPro footage. The excitement these men had at what they planned to do, and what they actually did, to other human beings, including children, is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed.

I hope you don’t get called names. It’s the fear of being verbally attacked which keeps a lot of pro Israel ( or even neutral) people from speaking out about truths.

We see a lot of deletions on these boards- sometimes whole threads get deleted as a result of the sheer volume of abusive posts. And they are mostly ( not exclusively) directed at anyone who dares to speak up for Israel.

The fact that poster honed in on the language, without the context of the whole interview, shows denial of what Israel are dealing with. Great thread @Digitalhen

The deletions have just been made on another thread.

I'm still waiting to hear whether they believe from the river to the see means to eradicate Israel. They certainly have no problem believing eradicating Palestine means exactly that.

Bottom line is, war is vicious and ugly and it’s often the most vulnerable who suffer the most. But why focus so heavily on just one war when our world is jammed packed with violent suffering everywhere?

Completely agree.

This is the reality of war, and we in the West have been fortunate enough to forget what war actually looks like. Most people are essentially seeing war for the first time through this conflict on social media.

So many posters on this board keep repeating “war crimes” as if it means something significant, however, war crimes are symptomatic of every single war. They will inevitably happen. The legal framework exists to reduce the impact on civilians, not to eradicate it completely. Because that is an impossibility.

This is not justification, this is cold, hard reality.

No one really seems too concerned about the war crimes Hamas are carrying out in Gaza, against their own people, though. It’s never even mentioned.

Does anyone actually believe that if any Western European country had done to it what Israel experienced on 7/10, then their response would be any different? Because it wouldn’t. We would be seeing the same response and the same suffering, war crimes and all.

Because this is what war is and this is what war looks like.

The term Greater Israel means erasing Palestine and surrounding countries but I never hear you condemning Netanyahu for that.

I’m genuinely open to constructive debate on the issue too. There’s lots I don’t know or understand and if someone can constructively shine a light on it, I really want to hear it. I’ve only ever met one person who seemed able to do that without calling me names or suggesting I was morally bankrupt though.

Another one, who has avoided the question. Do you believe from the river to the sea means to wipe Israel off the map?