Israel/palestine conflict, worsens.

[UndercoverElephant]

Report from the main hospital in Gaza.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-mid ... t-67094214

This is before the Israelis do whatever it is they are going to do after 1.1 million people don't evacuate Gaza because there's no way out.

To me this looks like nothing less than the definitive end of the modern western world. We are going to have western governments implicitly supporting de-facto genocide on a scale comparable to the holocaust, being perpetrated by the survivors of that holocaust. And we are going to see suppression of dissent in the west, with people accused of anti-semitism if they condemn the genocide.

The problem is the precedent it sets. If the west supports Israeli genocide of the palestinians then it heralds a very grim new world order. This what "depopulation" looks like.

[clv101]

Are we about to see the genocide in real time of 1.1 million people?

It certainly looks like we're on the eve of something like genocide or ethnic cleansing.

United Nations describes ethnic cleansing as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

From: People Have A Serious Case Of 9/11 Brain Right Now, And It’s Scary

If I was an Israel supporter I’d be thinking very carefully about the things I’m posting online in the build-up to what could wind up being regarded as one of history’s worst genocidal massacres. The internet doesn’t forget. What you’re tweeting today could haunt you for life.

If Israeli actions in the coming weeks do lead to hundreds of thousands of violent deaths and ~2 million displaced you'd think it would become more difficult for the west to support Israel. However, it wouldn't be anything more than the US and UK did in Afghanistan and Iraq post 9/11. The Israeli regime may feel justified. WWIII? Israel with US resupply and a carrier group or two off the coast can probably weather anything regional adversaries can throw at them. The Patriot air defence system can probably defend against any ballistic, even hypersonic missiles that might come their way from Iran. If the US are willing to directly engage in air strikes against Hezbollah their capability could be rapidly reduced.

So, we're left with secondary effects - an oil embargo similar to Yom Kippur War for example, Europe would be the big losers.

[UndercoverElephant]

If 2 million Palestinians are massacred or displaced then the world will be awash with people whose only goal in life is to gain revenge against Israel and its western backers, and they will feel entirely morally justified in any action at all, including any form of biological, chemical or nuclear terrorism you can imagine.

Israel is a creation of the western world. None of this would be happening if the Germans had not committed genocide against the Jews and the Americans had not overseen the creation of the state of Israel against promises made to the Arabs by the British that such a thing would never be allowed to happen.

This isn't just a massacre right up there on the shortlist of worst atrocities in human history. It is also the unambiguous moral responsibility of the western world.

[UndercoverElephant]

However, it wouldn't be anything more than the US and UK did in Afghanistan and Iraq post 9/11.

I think this is not true. The US and UK did not systematically exterminate entire populations. What is different about this is the pre-meditated decision to commit genocide. The only thing that compares to it in modern western history is the holocaust, and because of that the Nazis have become pretty much the definition of everything western liberalism and humanism stands against. You could perhaps compare it to the treatment of the aboriginal populations of the Americas and Australasia, but that was justified by openly declaring the victims to be sub-human -- people really believed that those people were so primitive that they were better off dead. That thinking cannot apply here. This is just genocide of an entire population in retaliation for the actions of a tiny minority of armed men, who the general population didn't even choose as their leaders. Not only that but those actions were the result of decades of severe provocation.

IMO there's nothing like this in western history -- not on this scale anyway. Even institutionalised race-based slavery was motivated by greed rather than the desire to exterminate your ideological enemy, and the slaves were considered sub-human. You have to go back the time of the crusades to find anything as bad as what is about to happen in Gaza. To be clear -- I am talking about acts carried out by westerners and officially supported by westerners, against persons acknowledged to be fully human. There have been plenty of examples in non-western contexts, but they represent everything we stand against. If the west officially supports this -- which means failing to stop it, which looks inevitable -- then the western world will lose its most basic claim to moral superiority. Any pretence that the west still has a moral compass will be blown to smithereens.

[clv101]

Yeah, I agree with that. I was thinking from the Israeli point of view - they saw what the US and UK did to Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 might take the kind of regime change we prosecuted as a green light for their own regime change wrt Gaza.

[UndercoverElephant]

Yeah, I agree with that. I was thinking from the Israeli point of view - they saw what the US and UK did to Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 might take the kind of regime change we prosecuted as a green light for their own regime change wrt Gaza.

But Gaza isn't a country. It has no army, or proper government. The physical place is entirely civilian -- there are almost no "military targets", because Gaza does not have a military. We can't compare the two situations because Gaza was already a perpetual atrocity, as the direct result of previous severe oppression by Israel. The Israelis have stolen all their land.

What happens in the west now? What happens to all those people who the Labour Party had to silence for expressing "anti-semitic" views when condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians? Are we going to somehow incorporate into western culture that the genocide of 2 million people wasn't actually genocide? Are we going to adopt the idea that genocide is sometimes justified? Neither of these things will fly. The first option is just too Orwellian for even the brainwashed modern western population to accept. The second option opens the door to all parts of modern civilisation -- not just the west -- openly resorting to similar methods elsewhere.

And what happens in the West Bank?

I don't know where this is leading, but it looks really bad to me.

[Ralphw2]

There have already been arrests of uk protesters against the coming Israeli invasion. I haven’t felt this ashamed of my nationality since we invaded Iraq. At least the BBC has been explicit in its refusal to take sides or justify Israeli retaliation, so far.

[UndercoverElephant]

There have already been arrests of uk protesters against the coming Israeli invasion.

It is going to be hideous. Hamas are going to be a near-impossible enemy to dislodge from Gaza City. The Israelis will have to basically flatten the place. That's a million people's homes and jobs. Meanwhile what happens to the people themselves? No water, no food, no power, no medical supplies, no way out. That adds up to a de-facto death camp. Belsen in the desert.

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... palestine/

We are witnessing almost all western governments deliberately facilitating massacre, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We are witnessing almost all western governments turning on their own people to crush dissent at that complicity in genocide.

This feels not so much like the week that western democracy died, as the week it was impossible any longer to deny that western democracy died some time ago.

[clv101]

Getting a bad feeling about this coming week. No much is off the table, oil embargo seems possible.

[adam2]

Getting a bad feeling about this coming week. No much is off the table, oil embargo seems possible.

I agree.

[adam2]

To my surprise, oil opened more or less unchanged in early trading this morning.

[Forever_Winter]

To my surprise, oil opened more or less unchanged in early trading this morning.

Shell's share price at or near record highs too.

[UndercoverElephant]

...and the Guardian has sacked Steve Bell for antisemitism.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67122609
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ketch.html

That pretty much sums the situation up.

[Default0ptions]

I’m not sure if this is good news or bad. The only certainty seems to be that this is likely to spread around the region with more states becoming involved unless there’s some serious effort at self restraint by Israel.

“There's growing speculation that the IDF hasn't launched a ground invasion yet due to threats being made by Iran and its ally Lebanese Hezbollah. And it's not just enemies of Israel that are saying this, but The Jerusalem Post reports Monday that a prime reason for the offensive being stalled is the fear Hezbollah will get involved.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... s-escalate