Part 3: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[AndHarry]

New thread as part 2 is nearly full.

Part 1 is here.

Part 1 was started when 3 Israeli boys were found murdered.

Part 2 is here.

In part 2 we mainly discussed the legality and human consequences of Operation Protective Edge.

i think when your 'in' media is shared with the rest of the world (who haven't spent their lives conditioned to it) the depths of your propaganda machine are revealed.

no, this man hasn't had a frontal lobotomy he's just speaking what it is acceptable to say, and expected to be said, within that system of propaganda.

the sad thing is that in all likelihood few whom that statement was intended for would bat an eyelid. the fact he said it confidently tells you what is acceptable to say in that system.

much as gangs of youth chanting 'death to all arabs' isn't seen as criminal or something that needs stopping by the police but a demonstration of any kind which involves even just israeli people speaking up for palestinians needs a brutal police intervention.

i'm not sure 'propaganda' excuses anyone though. there have always been those who didnt buy it througout history - they were superhuman they just had a solid sense of justice for your everyday human being and refused to overlook humans in the face of nation, colour, religion, class etc. i don't think it's that much of a struggle to face head on and stand up for human life if you want to be informed. i do think a lot of people are determined to ensure they stay uninformed and keep their faces firmly turned away from human realities though.

sorry mass cross post there as i went to finish dinner etc without hitting post first so big delay.

the gas business was discussed on an earlier thread and linked to gaza giving over political control of gaza and a more unified palestinian 'state' in which negotiations for their resources with big business who are already in there trying to invest and get their cut could resume. it appears not to be 'conspiracy nut' stuff but a very, very suggestive 'timing' and agenda of events.

i think the whole world is late to the table if that helps.

(sorry that should have 'hamas' giving over political control of gaza)

Here's a good article about the political control
mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gaza-and-israel-the-road-to-war-paved-by-the-west.html?_r=1&referrer=

It definitely feels like we are existing in a surreal world. Where the oppressor claims he is the victim, the army with nuclear weapons cries when a stone is thrown at a tank, where the terrorist becomes the terrorised. Israel are even using language which perfectly describes the situation in palestine. Israel are the ones using palestinians as human shields. They are the brutal terrorist regime they speak of.

Israel claim Hamas want to bomb and kill Israelis. That their beaches are empty. Well at least they're not filled the corpses of dead children. Israel claim their people are terrified. At least they're not dead. Israel claim they want peace. But they start a war. Israel claim they are defending themselves. Again who, babies? Old women.

It's like a parallel universe where the rules of humanity are reversed completely. If Iran are goaded to get involved then I have no doubt that it will be ww3. As if the world wasn't scary enough at the moment.

dingalong yes we have seen that article and it's more than a bit dodgy. For a start, it's written by the same guy who wrote a big conspiracy theory book about 9/11. Looking at the article itself (a reprint of a story run by The Ecologist), it starts off by quoting the same Israeli government chap twice. The quotes are 7 years apart but unless you're reading closely it looks like two parts of the same narrative. What the man says is not all that shocking - gas revenues being used to fund rocket attacks on Israel is a legitimate concern - but the conflation of the two different quotes taken out of context skews it towards the sinister. Finally, that conflation is 'backed up' by the opinion a wildly anti-Israeli activist. It's not good journalism or a credible piece.

'We might well be heading for WW3 but I seriously doubt that anyone planned it.'

AndHarry, have you forgotten what General Wesley Clark said?

apparently it's not scary enough. we've not drunk the 'big bad arabs/muslims/terrorists' campaign kool aid deeply enough so we've got to engineer what new level of hell to make us cowed enough? or lets try two: those arabs (the return, the terrorists part 10, etc) AND those commies are coming back.

if we keep on realising we're just the little people all the world over and sticking up for each other against the nuke owners then??? sad to say things will get worse before better.

in palestine you can be bombed out of existence, in england you can be water cannoned if you peacefully register disagreement. the former is clearly way ahead on the spectrum but it is the same spectrum that is taking hold. that's why i say we're all palestinians or 'your children will be next' because it is a spectrum and israel in that sense is like a testing ground (both for blumming weapons to then sell to the world and for ideology and media testing) and what works there spreads outwards.

no doubt i'm rabid but vote yes for babies and women over there being slaughtered and you vote for it to happen closer to home too, albeit with a bit of a time lag.

claig I hadn't forgotten because I didn't know about it in the first place. Watching that video immediately reminds me of Condoleeza Rice's account in her autobiography of the cabinet meeting that decided to take the US to war in Afghanistan. She relates how in that meeting Dobald Rumsfeld pushed very hard for a campaign against Iraq, completely blindsiding everyone else who thought he was off his rocker. It was very, very clear that this was a Rumsfeld-only idea that crucially did not have the support of, or was even remotely considered by, the rest of the cabinet. One nutter heading up the Pentagon does not equal wide-reaching conspiracy.

Just watched another Wesley Clark video from 2007 about how the destabilisation of the Middle East was planned back in 1991.

At about 3.40 in, he mentions how he went to see the neocon Wolfowitz in 1991 and Wolfowitz told him "we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes - Syria, Iran, Iraq - before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us". He then goes on to discuss the neocon PNAC (Project For a New American Century) plan.

I think Israel's actions now are part of something bigger than finding tunnels and stopping rockets - because tunnels have existed for a long time and rockets have been fired on and off for a long time. And that is why the Western leaders are not condemning them or stopping them.

Things are moving faster because the US planners are behind schedule. They only have 10 or 20 years left before Russia, China and the BRICs countries are a real threat. The destabilisation of the Middle East has quickened up with Libya and Syria and probably soon Iran, and a newly created and funded destabilising group called Isis (or Islamic State) have now been created who are even more brutal than the previous destabilising movement - Al Qaeda.

Nancery asked about Iran. I doubt they will start direct military action against Israel. Ayatollah Khameini can make all the speeches he likes but I don't believe that Iran has either the popularity within the region or the backing of its own people for a suicidal campaign against Israel. Iran's population is young, educated, increasingly metropolitan and increasingly discontent with Iran's status as a pariah. If Bush hadn't utterly undermined the progressive government of Iran at the time in one stroke by lobbing them into his 'axis of evil' speech I think we would have a very different relationship with Iran today. In all of Bush's foreign policy blunders, including Iraq, I think that one might have been the worst for the long-term security of the region.

Oops, sorry for typos

'did not have the support of, or was even remotely considered by, the rest of the cabinet. One nutter heading up the Pentagon does not equal wide-reaching conspiracy.'

Decisions like this are made by a tiny handful of people, not the "cabinet". Remember Spitting Image with Thatcher and her cabinet dining and where the waitress serves her and aks her if she wants vegetables by saying "what about the vegetables?" and she says "oh they'll have the same as me".

Most of the "cabinet" don't make decisions like that, and nor do most EU leaders because most of them are just puppets.

claig I completely disagree with you. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and the rest of the neo-con hawks are one small slice of world opinion. Their foreign policy was a disaster and their personalities and ideology are distinctly lacking in fans who matter outside of the right-wing activists in the USA.

X-post. In a democracy, decisions on warfare are made by a cabinet. One person or a small collection of people within the cabinet might have more influence than others but Rice was very clear that the Iraq proposal did not have the backing (at that time) of the cabinet and was reacted to with hostility by the president.

Michael oren - Hamas are a genocidal racist regime.

See what I mean about inverted reality?

Oh, and it appears that only supporters of the regime are allowed to use the words genocide and racist. Others aren't. Inverted reality.

Claig that's really interesting. I remember coming across an article in Time magazine in the very early 90's which claimed that the next war after the Cold War would be a 'war on Islam'. I dismissed the article thinking how ridiculous, how can you have a war against a religion?

'I dismissed the article thinking how ridiculous, how can you have a war against a religion?'

Yes, Samuel Huntingdon wrote a book called "The Clash of Civilizations" years ago and it is a term that you will hear all the puppets use. Blair used to say it when he had some power.

These wars and clashes against Islam or communism or whtever else are planned years before they actally happen by the thinkers in think tanks.

"Samuel Huntington was one of America’s greatest political scientists. In 1993, he published a sensational essay in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilizations?” The essay, which became a book, argued that the post-cold war would be marked by civilizational conflict.

Human beings, Huntington wrote, are divided along cultural lines — Western, Islamic, Hindu and so on. There is no universal civilization. Instead, there are these cultural blocks, each within its own distinct set of values.

The Islamic civilization, he wrote, is the most troublesome. People in the Arab world do not share the general suppositions of the Western world. Their primary attachment is to their religion, not to their nation-state. Their culture is inhospitable to certain liberal ideals, like pluralism, individualism and democracy."

www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=0

andharry I am impressed with your knowledge , thank you!
How did Bush undermine them with the 'axis of evil' speech, how did that affect Iran? (Sorry for all the questions!)

And who is involved in trying to create bigger wars, and how can they actually do this? Has this happened before?

Saw this on twitter. Obama being harsh with nutty yahoo (not a typo): pamelageller.com/2014/07/leaked-transcript-phonecall-obama-netanyahu.html/

Don't know if it's true but surely if Obama puts on the pressure then the nightmare may end. Interestingly, Obama makes the same point Jon snow made today and that is that israels actions are alienating the world.

I normally have a lot of respect for Obama. Let's hope he manages to ram some sense home this time

m.independent.ie/opinion/comment/the-world-cannot-stand-idly-by-as-this-slow-terrible-death-in-gaza-continues-30448624.html
Sorry if this has been shared before a very good article that answers a lot if the questions raised by the Israeli propaganda machine

Nancery the situation in Iran was complicated and I'm not an expert but I'll explain to the best of my knowledge. Iran's political structure is a mixture of secular and clerical, with a democratically elected President at the top of the secular structure and the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khomenei) at the top of the clerical structure that holds most of the real power. As the name suggests, the Supreme Leader is the country's ultimate authority.

At the time of the 'Axis of Evil' speech, the president of Iran was Mohammad Khatami, a reformer who advocated the expansion of civil liberties, a free market and a more open foreign policy focused on foreign investment in Iran and constructive relationships with the West and the Asian powers. He was elected by a clear majority of Iranians in a vote with a massive turnout. Now that all sounds like a dream come true in terms of neutralizing a nuclear threat, combating Islamic extremism and securing a powerful Western ally in the Middle East, right?

His government made mistakes of course but his program was making progress. Iran was even helping the US in its hunt for Al Qaeda leaders and affiliates. At home, Khatami faced fierce opposition by the hardline Islamists within the government (dual-structure with clerically-appointed people in key positions of power) and progress was painfully slow. What he really needed was to show that his approach was working: sanctions being lifted, foreign investment coming in, acceptance and partnerships with the Western powers. Right in the middle of this, in 2002, President Bush delivered his State of the Union 'Axis of Evil' speech, where he defined Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as an enemy of the American people and a focus for the war on terror. That was it. Khatami's program of reform and international dialogue was instantly undermined. Khatami was humiliated, the hardliners were proved right: it was no use trying to be friends with the Great Satan. His legislative program was vetoed, the extremists cracked down on the electorate and he was eventually succeeded as President by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is an extremist hostile to everything Khatami stood for.

America had the best chance since the Revolution of securing a friendly Iran and Bush comprehensively blew it.