Israel/Palestine thread

“Necessary evil” is quite the choice of terminology

You mean the ones Hamas didn't murder and throw off rooftops?

you know what Israel calls 165 killed? a slow day.

William Manchester, in One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy (hokey title, but he did know the guy a little), quotes JFK telling Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963, ' "It is their war. We can help them, we can send them equipment, we can send men out there as advisers... but in the final analysis it is their people and their government who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help." A month later, on October 2, at the end of a National Security Council meeting, he told McNamara to announce to the waiting press that a thousand US advisers were to brought home from Vietnam by Christmas, and that he expected the last American to leave there before the end of 1965. While McNamara was still in earshot, Kennedy added: "And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too." The secretary rephrased this message, thereby altering its meaning. He merely said that in his opinion "the major part of the US military task" could be "completed by the end of 1965." But the President's verbatim instructions remain in the records of the National Security Council. And he followed them up. McNamara having weaseled presidential words, the President unweaseled them. On the last day of October he told the nation: [This must have been at his news conference that day, but it's not included in the YouTube extract] "Our object is to bring home every American technician, helicopter pilot, and military adviser by the end of 1965, permitting the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country." Nor did he stop there. On November 14, 1963 -- eight days before he died -- he announced that the first thousand men were already packing and would be on their way home by Christmas.'

Some direct quotes there. Kennedy seems to have regarded detachment from the tar-baby of Vietnam as a '64 election priority. He always refused to commit US conscripts, or jets, to the theatre, and his attitude was very different from VP LBJ's. But, because of 'a punk with a mail-order gun', we ended up with LBJ, and the rest is history, of a depressing kind.

The movie Go Tell The Spartans, with Burt Lancaster, set in Vietnam in 1964, is quite an interesting critique of the deluded US involvement, after JFK but before LBJ's ramp-up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Tell_th...

The title comes from the motto on the gate of a 1950s French military cemetery that the American 'advisers' discover, citing the historic epitaph of Leonidas's Spartans at Thermopylae. One of the Americans (a conscript, but one who volunteered for Vietnam) translates the French as, 'Stranger, when you find us here, go tell the Spartans that we died according to their laws.' Underrated movie.

^^^Kennedy would have faced the same dilemma as Johnson -- the NLF was going to win. LBJ believed that if he were blamed for losing Vietnam, his whole Great Society domestic program would lose political support, so he went to war. JFK would also have faced a politically emasculated future if South Vietnam were lost. JFK mouthed the right words about it being "their" war to win, but when push came to shove, he would be unlikely to throw away his presidency by allowing a communist conquest. You are familiar with the deadly Republican slogan, "who lost China?" that was used so well against Truman?

Hamas basically wants to reset to status quo ante in exchange for the hostages.

That for obvious reasons is unacceptable to Israel.

Hamas needs to surrender and be removed from Gaza or we will just be back at the same place in 10-20 years and the next war will be a lot nastier.

by Victor P

literal hunger games

I can't find any cite confirming this. Have one?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

Might be a representation and the real ones look different But they are def using quadcopter drones to snipe and machine gun starving concentration camps victims.

Not even a quadcopter

tell me more about they are saving the hostages

https://twitter.com/TalulaSha/status/174...

minutes later thankfully these terrorists were drone striked for meddling in international trade

Kind of sad to see a mother completely lose her mind.

If Israel has been using gas, we’d have seen Israel soldiers running around with gas masks on. Besides, Hamas would have gas masks in the tunnels by now.

LOL. No. There are 1 million camera phones in Gaza. Everything happening is recorded. For example, today (like every day) Hamas chased off all the Palestinian civilians with machine gun fire to capture an aid truck for themselves. I know, because there is multiple recordings of it.

This is like 90% of Victor's posts, complete bullshit, which is why he never has any evidence at all if you ask for it.

So 10% of his posts are accurate ? Damn sucks to be arguing against him

At least he semi understands history. He just doesn't care. He is pro Islamist and wants Western Civilization destroyed.

You actually have no understanding of the history of the Middle East at all, and think anyone you decide is brown (even though most of them are classified as white) is an innocent, oppressed victim of evil white oppressors.

Meanwhile, in planet reality the "oppressed" people you stan for have been undergoing a horrible, deadly settler, colonial genocide and have wiped out hundreds of other people. Just snuffed them out of existence. No mercy, no quarter given, no acknowledgement at all there is even anything wrong this. And this is still going on. And in your mind these are the good guys.

So basically the Hamas terrorists are against everything that is good and delicious. You were starting to swing me to their side, but now **** them. The Hamas child murderers can have my KFC when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

The irony is that these Western capitalist corporations are the ones that basically provide everything for the Palestinians. The subsist entirely on handouts from the West, much of which they waste on their completely futile Jihad to destroy Israel. Maybe the West should just completely freeze aid for a little bit, and then maybe the Palestinian people would have a greater appreciation for the handouts they receive from Coca-Cola, Starbucks and McDonalds money.

Israel is oppressing Palestine or Palestine is oppressing Israel?

Would you give a group of starving people ten bags of rice if you knew 9 went to terrorists?

Lets at least get the analogy right. So add that all the starving people, terrorists and all, said they hated you, wanted you destroyed, and said the entire world should boycott your rice.

Well, "Palestinian" is a very new category that was kind of just invented in the last couple decades. But generally, Arab Muslims have been the oppressors of everyone else in the region. And still are mostly. Israel is really the only place the dynamic has changed at all, and that is only very recently.

You were in Iraq, correct. What are your thoughts on the Sunni Arab oppression of the Kurds, who are much more native to that land than the Arabs are?

Anyways, I dont think your preferred white/brown oppressor/oppressed operating framework is very accurate or useful in describing this region.

The Palestinians have been fighting the same war for 80 years and are the ones refusing to concede anything or make any. move towards peace. Their goal is and always has been the complete destruction fo Jewish Israel. The fact they have been losing the war this entire time doesn't make them innocent or oppressed, and certainly doesn't give them any moral high ground.

Syria and Iraq are too weak to do anything but bury their dead and mourn. But Pakistan has capabilities to counterattack and seems to not be taking it too kindly that Iran decided to just start firing missiles into their country and things are starting to escalate.

Again, it is very telling that all the people that were so outraged that Israel assassinated a Hamas terrorist cell in Lebanon are so nonchalant about Iran haphhazardly firing missiles into 3 neighboring countries at once.

Seems like a bunch or signaling to me, hopefully it stays that way.

If anyone thinks that Egypt should accept Palestinians then these headlines are a pretty clear indication of why it's not a feasible/good idea.

not remotely nonchalant about any of it. Uncontrollable escalation was and remains a massive risk.