We have been waiting to see what the EU would do for Ukraine aid. The war is on their doorstep. Hungary should be kicked out of the EU and Orban arrested and handed over for trial in Russia. Based on no charges at all. Just to see him down.
Thursday, December 14, 2023 10:01 PM ET
The E.U. failed to agree on a $52 billion aid plan for Kyiv after a marathon meeting, although it did approve talks that could lead to Ukrainian membership.
Anyone suspect that the spooks had a hand in the Greek coup, out of fear that a “Commie” might be elected? Maybe they would have a go at Orban, if he wanders too far?
Notice the war in Ukraine is on a much larger scale and scope than the war in Gaza. Daily, far more munitions are used. Biden wanted $14 B for Gaza and $69 B I think it was for Ukraine while the EU came up with possibly $52 B for Ukraine.
Yet no other country is outraged? The dead in Ukraine is with the Russian losses now around 400k people. I get it is 2 years later. Gaza won’t be on that scale of loss 2 years from now. There were only some 30k Hamas militants.
Why care at all about Gaza? But then shrug off Ukraine? Ukraine is a much bigger outrage. Ukraine is more destabilizing. Russia wants to go far beyond Ukraine.
Was there some sort of other moral code?
I get dippy will say Russia equals Israel. No, it does not. Israel wants a divorce. Russia wants a death grip. Israel is ending a death grip. Putin has never really been elected. Netanyahu has faced and won many elections in a system with 40 or 50 political parties or whatever.
You have probably noticed over the years, most people with POTUS ambitions, of both parties, make their pilgrimage to AIPAC to pledge fealty to Israel. Ukraine does not enjoy that decades long rooting in USian politics.
Meanwhile, the President of Israel said, yesterday, that the “two state solution” is not a solution. President Herzog said Israel has to get over it’s grief about October 7th, and be comfortable in it’s security, before that issue can be revisited. Those excuses can be extended for years, decades. If that position holds sway in Israel, the Pals can give up on having a state in their lifetimes.
I think that’s generally correct, though perhaps overstating the matter a bit. But certainly 10/7 has set back any movement that Israel might make towards accommodating Palestinian interests by at least a decade, and probably more.
Israel can’t afford for Hamas to be seen as the ones who (through their violent atrocities) successfully brought about the creation of the Palestinian state. If this is what brings a Palestinian state into existence, then Hamas will be its Founding Fathers. Already, Hamas has basically won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Palestinians in the West Bank:
Israel hasn’t ever come close to being confident that a Palestinian state with a military and total territorial autonomy would not use those resources to try to destroy Israel. A Palestinian state governed by Hamas with those resources is beyond the Pale for them.
Haganah? Palmach? Irgun? Lehi? Former PM Menachem Begin, a member of the Irgun, ordered the attack on the King David Hotel, where 91 people were killed.
Then there was the attack on Deir Yassin, a joint op by Irgun and Lehi, that killed over 100 Pals.
Sure - lots of violence leading up to 1948. I mean, Britain was basically at war with the Arabs and the Jews - and the Arabs and Jews with each other - during those days. The partition of the Palestinian Mandate was at least as bloody (on relative terms) as the Partition of India. And had Egypt and Jordan not swept in to seize nearly all of the lands that had been set aside for Arabs, it might have resulted in the same outcome - a wary and uncomfortable coexistence, still bearing the scars of Partition seventy years later.
But that didn’t happen. Jordan and Egypt did take over most of the Arab lands. And now - today - after facing continuous repeated armed efforts to destroy Israel entirely for its first thirty years - Israel isn’t going to choose to accept the security risk of a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state with access to a military. Which is why I agreed with your assessment up top - the 10/7 attacks have made it a certainty that there will be no accommodation to Palestinian interests in statehood for at least a decade.
Besides what was done to prisoners in Abu Ghraib? Want rape and murder of Iraqi civilians? This is one notorious example. And, when the US government moved to prosecute the soldiers, I remember Fox Noise howling about how wrong it was to prosecute the soldiers for killing Iraqi civilians in their homes.
We old phartz remember plenty of Pal terrorist ops. Remember the attack on the Munich Olympics in 72? What happened? The Israelis and the PLO sat down to talk. As some have said, one man’s “terrorist”, is another man’s “freedom fighter”.
Yeah - twenty years later, and with members of the PLO that were not members of the Black September dissident faction of Fatah that conducted the Munich Olympics Massacre. You weren’t going to see Rabin shaking the hand of Abu Ali Iyad or any other members of the BSO. Of course, that’s because Israel fought the BSO until they were destroyed.
Israel might still be able to sit down and talk with the PLO or Fatah or the PA or any other Palestinian institution not affiliated with Hamas or 10/7. But not for a long time.
That is what President Hezog just said, in the link above. Grief can be leveraged to justify intransigence for a long time.
Thing is, being passive only worked for Gandhi. Most liberation movements are soaked in blood, because that is the only way the people wanting freedom can be taken seriously.
This is the white, Mormon, Republican, Governor of Michigan, marching with people demonstrating for equal housing opportunity in 1963. That, and other rights, were not opened for African-Americans, in much of the country, until after the cities burned.
The same Governor, with President Nixon, Ted Kennedy, Gene McCarthy and Congressman Carl Albert, at Dr King’s funeral. The pursuit of equal rights still continues, 55 years later.
There are counter-examples, particularly in the mass global decolonization spree that took place after WWII (Ghana, for example). But you’re right that people frequently use violence to achieve their aims, whether they seek freedom or something else. Hamas’ goals are the destruction of Israel and the killing or expulsion of all the Jews within it - not just “freedom.”
But while many nations are born in bloody conflict, the governments that arise from those conflicts never normalize or accept bloody conflict against their own selves. The U.S. was born from violent rebellion against the then-lawful government…but few of us today would countenance the use of violent rebellion against the current federal government, or suggest that it is incumbent on the U.S. government to tolerate any such violent movements against it merely because it was born in violence. So while we can point to the Civil War in Palestine in the 1930’s and 1940’s and find plenty of bloodshed, there’s zero likelihood that Israel would accept that as a valid argument that the current Israeli state could or should accept violence against it.
That is certainly true. The US’ own experience in the early 1860s, is an example, however, the USian government has had no problem using violence against Mexico, or Spain, or most of the states of Central America. When Native Americans pushed back against the encroachment of whites on their lands, the US government waged war approaching genocide, dressed up as “manifest destiny”.
That’s exactly the point. Only a very tiny fraction of the U.S. believe that a violent rebellion against the federal government is permissible (as opposed to denying that such actually happened). We generally regard it as legitimate when a governmental body or state takes measures to protect its existence against violence usurpation. The fact that such governmental body came into existence due to violent usurpation (in whole or in part) is usually not offered as a reason why it might be inappropriate for the current government, decades or centuries later, to resist violent usurpation.
Which is why, again, the violence of the 1930’s/1940’s Civil War in Palestine isn’t really much of a reason to expect the current Israeli government would choose steps that might lead to a Hamas-run independent state. Just because there was violence at Israel’s birth will not lead them to choose to expose their own government to ongoing violence - something that’s true of any nation that was born of violence or revolution. Just because some would name our Founding Fathers as terrorists against Britain will not lead us to name terrorists against the U.S. as Founding Fathers.
Every nation existing in 2023 was born out of violence. The events leading to these births always involved destructive actions against innocent civilians. Support or rejection of the ethical quality of how each state traveled into 2023 is a valuable activity for a study of history, but the intensity of this focus only serves to destroy the pathway to a better tomorrow. Ethical mistakes were made in the formation of the US. ethical mistakes were made in the creation of Israel. Ethical mistakes were made from 1948 to 1968 in the failure to create a Palestinian state, when Arab’s totally controlled the West Bank and Gaza. During these years, Israeli leadership shaped an economically thriving nation from nothing. Duing these same years, Arab/Palestinian leadership squandered perhaps the only opportunity to build an economically viable Palestinian nation in the West Bank and Gaza. I do not support or condemn the original creation of Israel, but it has occurred. I do however applaud the Israeli’s for what was accomplished, and I am disappointed in the inaction of the Arab/Palestinian movement for the lost opportunities available during these same twenty years. Now were are in 2023. The existence of Isarel is real. The lack of a Palestinian state is real. There is no settlement with war. Endless conversations about the ethical mistakes yesterday does not lead to resolution. There is no peaceful tomorrow without a compromise.
