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Even if we put aside the debate on who’s native or not, that’s exactly the point - if both sides are equally native then both have equal claim to rights and dignity within that territory. If they don’t want to live together and want to slice up their own states that’s fine too - just don’t try to justify denying the other natives what’s theirs and morally grandstand about it which is what really rubs people the wrong way and what the West excel at.

That’s exactly the point - these demographic and security issues are where the geopolitical/logistical complexity come from. But that doesn’t negate the underlying moral injustice at the core - which is to deny a people inclusion into your state or exclude them from having their own if you don’t want them to be a majority demographically in your own. Israel’s constant refrain about security threats from neighboring countries while valid to an extent, doesn’t make it special. Every country lives with the reality of potential conflict. India and Pakistan, China and India, even Germany and France - all of them have histories of violence, yet they coexist as sovereign nations. What makes Israel different? It’s not security, it’s entitlement. The idea that Israel alone gets to deny an entire people their right to self-determination because they might be dangerous in the future is pure hypocrisy. We face risks every time we walk out the door, but we don’t lock up or strip away the rights of everyone just because danger might exist. So why should Israel be any different? The moral clarity here is simple: denying people their freedom and using fear as an excuse to do it is unjust, no matter how complex the geopolitical web gets.

It’s complex in that it’s hard to resolve due to geopolitics, logistics and power interests. But it’s simple in terms of moral clarity. You can have moral clarity on a issue while acknowledging its broader geopolitical and logistical complexity. Take the following: “Imagine if in America, Native Americans were not integrated into the country’s democracy but were sidelined instead. Then, when they demanded a state of their own due to being unwanted, they were denied even that possibility. When they resisted, they were labeled and gaslit as terrorists.” Is there any moral complexity in this? In denying people entry into your state but also keeping them from having their own with the use of violence? Most societies agree that theft is wrong (moral clarity) whether it’s small scale (personal goods) or large scale (land and property). But we can also recognise the complexity in solving those issues like addressing inequality and increasing opportunities. I’m not anti-West, I’m an anti-naughtiness.

People often see the issue as complex and full of weeds not to be got into but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Straightening it out is hard, but it is simple to see who is the wronged party as acknowledged by the founding father of the nation - and that that party is still being wronged today is the whole problem. The only reason people may find this situation complex is due to the decades of history in which a lot has happened and they lack the knowledge of facts on - including a ton of propaganda to obscure the situation. But if looked at bluntly, there is no moral high ground for the Israelis in this, just a moral quicksand that they and the West collectively are sinking in. Can this really be what the West are backing and taking the world to the brink of global war for? Common lol.

The point of sharing Ben Gurion’s words a few pages back was to highlight at least a inkling of acknowledgment on his part of who is the aggressor and instigator of injustice in the Palestine issue - though he justified it through Zionist logic. Most countries, if not all, are founded on violence. The difference as I’ve emboldened in the post above is that Israel hasn’t finished finding itself in the context of what it claims to be their homeland. Across the world nations have resolved their territorial disputes by integrating indigenous or external groups as citizens, rather than excluding them in an apartheid-like system or leaving them in a state of limbo for decades into the modern age. Ironically, it’s the natives who are oppressed into a purgatory realm of statelessness who are called ‘backward’. Imagine if in America, Native Americans were not integrated into the country’s democracy but were sidelined instead. Then, when they demanded a state of their own due to being unwanted, they were denied even that possibility. When they resisted, they were labeled and gaslit as terrorists. If one can’t see the absurdity in this, they must be absurd themselves.

They even know the shitting patterns of their allies. “Boris Johnson claimed he found a listening device in his personal bathroom at the British Foreign Office after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used it.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/03/boris-johnson-bug-found-bathroom-netanyahu-visit/ “The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.” https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house-spying-devices-1491351

Ben Gurion’s words: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121. “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.” — David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech. https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/ From the primary founder of Israel itself, Israel’s version of George Washington.

Live by the sword die by the sword? More like live under occupation die under it. Maybe Israel shouldn’t dehumanise, destroy and deny Palestinians their inalienable rights that the West so proudly claim to have architected. But of course they don’t embody what they preach - Western civilisation is the land of the free and the home of the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.

New Gaza documentary by Al Jazeera: From CNN's Amanpour: ''Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib tells CNN that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just before he was assassinated by Israel. The temporary ceasefire was called for by President Biden, President Macron and other allies during last week’s UNGA.'' - Similar to when Hamas head Ismail Hanieyh was assassinated during negotiations.

Even if people are right about a certain country needing to be changed for the better, that right belongs to those within that country. If outside forces attempt to make changes the people within that country who also want those changes will see it as an affront to their own rights and perceive it as imperialistic even if intentions are good. Cultural practices evolve, but they do so on their own timeline, from the pressures and values of the people living within those cultures. The West’s selective outrage has nothing to do with principles and everything to do with control. Iran, like any other nation, will change in its own time, but that change belongs to the people of Iran, not to outsiders with their eyes on the region’s resources and strategic positioning. It’s about geopolitics and power. Countries that don’t align with Western interests are vilified for their cultural practices, while allies get a free pass for similar or even worse practices. Saudi Arabia didn’t even allow women to drive until recently, yet they’re an ally and aren’t on the radar for regime change. Or take Thailand who have a longstanding open culture of lady boys and women prostituting themselves in tourist hotspots. Is the right wing of America gonna make a fuss about how they’re oppressing women and children’s eyes by exposing them to a culture that accepts and embraces trans culture? No, because Thailand isn’t of much importance strategically.

Some quotes from Brookings institute on policy options towards Iran: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf On striking Iran ''As noted above, in the section on the time frame for an invasion, whether the United States decides to invade Iran with or without a provocation is a critical consideration. With provocation, the international diplomatic and domestic political requirements of an invasion would be mitigated, and the more outrageous the Iranian provocation (and the less that the United States is seen to be goading Iran), the more these challenges would be diminished. In the absence of a sufficiently horrific provocation, meeting these requirements would be daunting.'' ''A critical challenge for this policy option is that, absent a clear Iranian act of aggression, American airstrikes against Iran would be unpopular in the region and throughout the world. This negative reaction could undermine any or all of America’s policy initiatives in the region regardless of how the Iranians respond.'' ''For that reason, it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)'' On Nuclear disarmament ''It is clear from discussions with Israeli military and intelligence officials, and from numerous press leaks and reports that Israel is well under way in planning for a military operation to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said in 2007 that “the things that we do behind the scenes, far from the public eye, are far more important than the slogan charade,” implying that Israeli covert capabilities are already hard at work trying to cope with the Iranian threat and preparing to attack it if they must. It is impossible to know what those plans entail in detail without access to the IDF’s secret planning, but Israelis say the mission is “not impossible.” The IDF’s September 6, 2007 attack on the Syrian nuclear facility at Dayr az-Zawr is widely believed in Israel to have been in part a message to Tehran that Iran may be next.'' As in the case of American airstrikes against Iran, the goal of this policy option would be to destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities in the hope that doing so would significantly delay Iran’s acquisition of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. However, in this case, an added element could be that the United States would encourage—and perhaps even assist—the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel. The logic behind this approach is that allowing Israel to mount the airstrikes, rather than the United States, provides a way out of the dilemma described in the previous chapter, whereby American airstrikes against Iran could become self-defeating because they would undermine every other American initiative in the Middle East, an outcome exactly the opposite of what a new Iran policy is meant to accomplish. An Israeli attack on Iran would directly affect key American strategic interests. If Israel were to overfly Iraq, both the Iranians and the vast majority of people around the world would see the strike as abetted, if not authorized, by the United States. Even if Israel were to use another route, many Iranians would still see the attack as American supported or even American orchestrated. After all, the aircraft in any strike would be American produced, supplied, and funded F-15s and F-16s, and much of the ordnance would be American made. In fact, $3 billion dollars in U.S. assistance annually sustains the IDF’s conventional superiority in the region.''

Yeah, thinking that Israel is no longer going to exist is just as dangerous, delusion and unethical from the present moment of today as is the version of Zionism that dehumanises, denies and destroys Palestinian life and statehood. It’s pretty disgusting seeing some of the comments from more pro-Palestinian social media of how Iran shouldn’t have stopped last night and go for another round etc. Revelling in revenge.

Good thing I noted it as apparent news and not confirmed. Saw that in a few places on twitter, MSN news and Military Watch Magazine - claimed by Iran and probably circulated. They hit Nevatim air base where they house F 35's, so that must be the reason behind the claims - but Israel could have moved them out of sight. Not much media coming out of Israel regarding last night, possibly a black out or restriction on sharing any images/videos..All eyes instead on the North at the Lebanon border from this morning where their are IDF casualties. Can't believe Sky News let him on and speak that long

Last time Iran responded in April (to the consulate attack in Syria killing members of the IRGC) they gave advance notice and sent their less capable missiles and drones so that the West had enough time to intercept them. They just needed to put on a show to save face and not escalate the situation by not killing anyone - they still targeted a installation to show their capability of precision and ability to penetrate the iron dome. This was to demonstrate, not to annihilate. Likewise, no casualties have been reported so far in this retaliation. For this response they gave no such warning and used much more capable munitions to send a message. They penetrated the Iron Dome and struck various bases including Nevatim air base which is where Israel receives US bombs that are taking countless lives - and where apparently 20 F-35 jets have been destroyed. This is a response to escalatory actions from Israel. Israel rains down bombs, launches assassinations, threatens incursions into Lebanon, spills actual blood on foreign soil - and when Iran dares to flex its capabilities without shedding blood or wounding anyone, suddenly their the ones who are the aggressors - primitive, savage bloodthirsty people from backward cultures. This restraint is twisted by the media machine as defeat and weakness and lauded as a show of Western supremacy and strength. Besides a decades long occupation and what we have seen in one year in Gaza, in just the two previous weeks of a new front in Lebanon the following occurred: ''More than 1,000 people have been killed and about 6,000 wounded as a result of Israeli strikes, Lebanon’s Health Ministry has said. And about 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced'' - Al Jazeera. The Wests collective supremacist ego that demands global dominance won't let them just cool their jets and come to the negotiating table, instead their now salivating over this as a golden opportunity to 'change the face of the Middle East forever' and rid it of 'terrorists'. Talks of attacking Iran nuclear sites, punishing Iran and even attacking oil facilities - as if none of these will throw the region, if not the world into a tail spin of hyper inflation, chaos and bloodshed. Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennet's tweet: ''Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East. The leadership of Iran, which used to be good at chess, made a terrible mistake this evening. We must act *now* to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime.''

The world should step in to pressure the US to stop facilitating Israel to the extent it is. When the child is being unruly, it’s the parent that other parents in the room go to. In this case America has given Israel a free pass to do as they please for far too long. When they call on Israel to de-escalate, ceasefire and clean up their conduct and then go on to send billions despite Israel never listening - that becomes an unhealthy habit of behaviour that becomes a moral hazard for Israel itself. Some amongst the US elite even wish to use Israel as a Middle Eastern political battering ram, to see Israel escalate against Iran but who will bear none of the costs or pay the blood price for their neocon fantasies. If America didn’t unconditionally back Israel, Israel wouldn’t do what it’s doing and we wouldn’t be where we are. https://x.com/ivan_8848/status/1841135520715342013?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

@Nivsch Hope you and your loved ones are safe. Hopefully this wakes up the international community to step in and de-escalate the situation. If Israel responds (which is likely) this will get worse.

Westerners celebrate the idea that their relatively peaceful and stable societies are the result of democracy and human rights. Western countries aren't only more peaceful and prosperous due to democracy (or the perception of it) but due to anti-democratic practices abroad. The prosperity and peace they enjoy within their borders is underpinned by maintaining a inherently anti-democratic, hegemonic order beyond their borders. The West speaks of principles but acts with power, to them power is the principle though they speak in opposing terms. The attitude is that peace and prosperity is attained through the existence of or imposition of power - even if it delays justice and prolongs current injustice. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If You Want Peace, Prepare For War. The existence of power acts as a deterrence, which brings about peace so long as that power isn't abused or challenged. Justice before peace is how we hope the world could work, grounded in law and principles (Sachs). The imposition of peace by positions of power is grounded in power dynamics and pragmatism and often how the world does work (Mearsheimer). The world works on a spectrum between the two - between power and principle. We dance between the aspirational values our society claims to cherish but that our political class and state fails to embody - and who often default to what is already embodied in our base human nature which is raw power and survival. This causes a collective cognitive dissonance and a visible hypocrisy. It's this hypocrisy of calling oneself civilised whilst the other barbaric and primitive that rubs a lot of the Global South the wrong way. The hypocrite stands on a pedestal of their own making, pontificating about virtues they fail to embody and casting others as evil, for sins they themselves commit and attempt to conceal through propaganda and linguistic gymnastics. This lack of integrity, and gap between actions and words or between rhetoric and reality is what erodes the trust needed in a multipolar world. This is why the world is bifurcating between the East and West, and parallel systems (BRICS) are being built which the West now bemoans. The next decades will be heavily predicated along these lines.

The whole paradigm of containment is problematic. The US only seeks to develop the world up to the point they can benefit from, but not to the point it challenges their hegemony. China, Russia and co go to war out of necessity, the West goes to war looking for the next one... and even its utmost prominent analyst Mearsheimer who claims to be a scholar of realpolitik, can't come to terms with the reality that China's growth poses no existential threat that needs containing, but rather engaging with.

Ending occupation and granting Palestinians sovereignty can be viewed as much more necessary than another war that could go regional. Not saying simply giving them sovereignty is easy (logistically) but its simply the cause of a lot of the problem.

Often I write, as I think others do too, from the lens of international politics and justice (idealist - Sachs) because thats the cultural marinade of liberalism we're all swimming in. It's the liberal order we're trying to (and told to) build. It defers to justice before peace, rather than the game of power politics human nature finds it far too easy to default to (realist - Mearshimer). We created psycho-political frameworks of laws and institutions so that we don't have to use the might makes right way of doing things which is often bloody and brutal. We went from managing our societies through raw physicality to refined psychology - doesn't the notion of us being civilised rest upon this shift? From raw to refined, from physical brawn to the psychological use of our brains to affect change and peacefully transfer positions of power.

You've acknowledged injustice taking place in that statement. Its morally inconsistent to decry human right abuses in one part of the world while ignoring the ones your own country is enabling and that you actually have a part in stopping. The West/US just backs, facilitates and funds Israel which as you've highlighted is oppressing Palestinians. Its outrageous to back a country that lacks the respect it does for its backers and perpetuates injustice. How many times has the West/US called for de-escalation or a change in conduct only to not be listened to and have the opposite be done in the name of your own values (Western). This is why the West has lost respect in a lot of the worlds eyes, as if it already hadn't done so before. Because while they publicly oppose violence and Israel's conduct, they facilitate it, and in the case of the US most likely green light it in private. It's highly unlikely Israel is tactically assassinating enemies in other sovereign countries, and dropping 80 2000 pound US made bunker buster bombs (in Beirut) without US approval. Not only does Israel deny sovereignty to Palestinians, it infringed upon other sovereign nations with impunity. Either way, the West are complicit and Israel's actions are also viewed by many as Western actions, particularly American. This is why a lot of world view the West as not having changed in some fundamental aspects, namely the supremacist entitled attitude it has for groups or regions other than itself. We haven't evolved beyond violence, only in our methods and means of committing it. Having netflix and pride parades doesn't make one 'civilized'. Don't mistake cosmetic change for character change or a shift in consciousness. Don't mistake vertical development in the material world for horizontal development in the spiritual.

That’s why I said perceived threat, whether they are or not - Israel can be perceived that way due to their history of having occupied that part of Lebanon for 18 years. The 2006 war is still fairly recent enough to be used to fuel this perception. Also, there are daily airspace violations by Israel breaching Lebanons airspace and sovereignty. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese government have repeatedly reported these violations but nothing is enforced or changes. And these incursions go into the hundreds annually which contribute to the perception of a potential threat. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/09/huge-scale-and-impact-of-israeli-incursions-over-lebanon-skies-revealed-research-overflights

My bad, I can’t read Hebrew and trusted the post. What does it state? Whatever it may be, the point is that though a tactical win can be celebrated to boost morale it shouldn’t be viewed as a decisive blow and the beginning of a peaceful Middle East that Israel heroically ushered in. That’s just some of the sentiment I’ve seen online ie Jared Kushner's tweet. It is definetely symbolic and a huge hit on Hezbollah, including the aura they’ve built around being ahead in counter-intelligence. Thing is, Hezbollah isn’t just a militia anymore but an institution embedded within Lebanons politics and society. It’s evolved beyond its origins as they’ve pledged to be defenders of the Shia community in Lebanon which makes up almost a third of its population and who predominate in the South. As long as Shias in Lebanon exist, they’ll exist, and have a mechanism to continuously renew their ranks in the face of a perceived threat from Israel. If Israel thinks the moment is ripe off the back of this to invade Lebanon or start attacking it the way they have Gaza - I’m not sure how that will turn out. Hezbollah have thousands of miles of tunnels and it will be a game of guerrilla warfare in their favour. In almost a year Hamas are still operating in Gaza with limited communication, supply chains etc. On top of that, Israel will have to deal with the global backlash and made to look like the aggressors yet again just as with Gaza. Maybe this was the strategy of Hezbollah, to tarnish Israel’s image and lure them into the den.

This is Israel’s response to the West literally calling for a 21 day ceasefire proposal to de-escalate and off the back of receiving another 8 billion USD from the US. Almost a year on from October 7th and the West has completely facilitated Israel to where it is now - which doesn’t seem any safer. They mistake their “enemy” to be a snake they can strike in one blow, when it’s a hydra. As if decapitating hydras has ever been effective strategy - it only represents a tactical win that gives a false sense of hope.