Hamas Attacks, Israel Responds II

I may need it, thanks. Let's see how this Niners game goes on Monday.

 

IDF kills 26yo American woman (who was demonstrating against settlements) in the West Bank by shooting her through the head. She may have been throwing rocks according to Israel. Her name was Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, she was a recent graduate of the University of Washington.

https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...oman-fatally-shot-west-bank-doctors-113454308

“…On Thursday, Israeli troops shot and killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Bana Laboom, in her village outside the West Bank town of Nabul, Palestinian health officials said. There was no immediate military comment on the report…”

 

In other threads he has openly talked about his serious mental health struggles. Please respond with that in mind.

 

Or, ideally, not at all.

 

Well, yeah

 

Maybe I’m just a cynical bastard, but I take those claims about as seriously as the rest of what he’s said.

 

Aysenur Eygi held dual U.S. and Turkish citizenship so both governments have responded to news of her death...

My statement on the death of Aysenur Eygi, a recent University of Washington graduate, who was killed while protesting occupation in the West Bank: pic.twitter.com/OUbN45jDIY

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) September 6, 2024

Regarding the Killing of a Turkish Citizen in the West Bank by the Israeli Occupation Forces https://t.co/DxNnJiDIR9 pic.twitter.com/B7JeD2WnqK

— Turkish MFA (@MFATurkiye) September 6, 2024

 

By taking up a collection and sending him somewhere with no internet?

Sounds good to me

 

“What matters is not what the Gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do.”
Ben Gurion

 

"Improving your standing in the world" does not necessarily translate to "making yourself safer", as the Baltics, the Finns, the Bosnians, etc. can tell you. And destroying their standing hasn't cost, say, Assad or Iran very much either.

Gerard Araud, whose Twitter feed is a must-read for international relations nerds (and fine art, architecture, music, etc.) is a former French ambassador to Israel, the UN and the USA. Since his first overseas posting was Israel - in 1982 - like most diplomats, he follows developments there very closely and his 2003 appointment as ambassador was seen as embodying the Elysee's conclusion that France had to mend fences with Israel at that point in time.

A few months back (in June IIRC) some prominent figure tweeted your point nearly verbatim. Araud's response was (to paraphrase) "For the first 40 years of its existence, Israel was an outcast in the diplomatic world. It blossomed nonetheless."

 

It needs the addition of the why! Simply pluncking an observation without context is pretty useless.
Context 1: Oil
Context 2: Soviet Union
Context 3: China irrelevant during those 40 years

1. All the ME shit we today see are the result of the oil hunger by the West, starting with the Brits.
"Regime change" in Iran by the USA and the UK and for a part Mossad has resulted in the Iran of today. etc.
2. The Soviet Union was a global threat and very close to those beloved oil fields
3. The collaps of the Soviet Union and the rise of China and the shift away from oil makes the ME as a focal point for military spending losing ground in the next 40 years.

Israel thrived because of western protection. Suggesting like this dude does it was despite being outcast is an outright lie. Israel never was an outcast to those countries that mattered in those 40 years. So the suggestion it survived despite of that is a dangerous stance as it could make Israeli politicians ignore the real factors in play.
And the Jews in Israel know by their own history empires come and go. They've witnessed the rise of civilization between the two rivers and the empires conceived by it. Hellenistic/Roman/Mongol/Ottoman/Brits etc. came to rule and are gone.
The only empire in the world that has been around the last 3000 years is, with up and downs China. All others, including the pre Pax Americana European empires, are gone.
So ignoring or in fact denying, what this French dude is doing, the ultimate factor in the survival of Israel, is plain stupid.
Remember the Jom Kipoer war, started at Oct 6th 1973!, could have been the end of Israel or the start of WW3, because Israel didnot have the arms etc. to survive the war. The oil boycott by the Arabs caused countries in Europe to close their airfields for American war transports to Israel. The oil boycott was specifically targeting the Dutch and Americans. Israel survived and a WW3 was avoided because Dutch minister of Defense Henk Vredeling ordered our airfields to be opened to the American arms transports, giving Israel their lifeline. This guy deserved a statue in a prominent place before the Knesset. He actually broke the law, by not asking the cabinet permission.

 

https://isgeschiedenis.nl/longreads/politieke-inconsistentie-en-speciale-banden
On the night of 12 October 1973, weapons and ammunition were loaded into grey-painted aircraft at Schiphol. On October 14, the last plane, loaded with weapons, left Dutch soil on its way to a country at war: Israel. The result for the Netherlands was an Arab oil boycott and an isolated position within the European Political Cooperation (EPC).

 

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1987/05/28/israel-the-tragedy-of-victory/

The Ben-Gurion who walked into the meeting had about him the air of a prophet who had walked out of his tent to die, but had paused on this last journey to tell us truths which the less farsighted could not see and which only a man possessed by the spirit would dare tell. He warned his listeners against the euphoria that had swept the Jewish world in the aftermath of the Six Day War. Ben-Gurion insisted that all of the territories that had been captured had to be given back, very quickly, for holding on to them would distort, and might ultimately destroy, the Jewish state. He made only one exception of consequence: the Israelis should not relinquish control of the whole of Jerusalem. Ben-Gurion’s most striking assertion that night was that he did not expect immediate peace with the Arabs; for its own inner health, he said, Israel needed only to give back the territories very soon in return for a workable set of armistice arrangements.

 

The occupation of the West Bank. Seriously.

Many years back my driving instructor was a retired Regimental Sergeant Major in the Parachute Regiment which has a rather "particular" history in Ireland. Naturally, we got to talking about his experiences there. TLDR his argument was that soldiers aren't policemen, can never be policemen for long and using them as a police force creates bad soldiers doing a policeman's job badly.

Maintaining discipline is really hard when a tour of duty is spent patrolling a hostile population, even if it's a minority. and Arabs aren't a minority in the West Bank. The patrolled population hates you and finds innumerable ways of expressing it which you aren't supposed to do anything about so you hate them in turn. One day something happens and you can - finally - express your pent-up hated, which is how you get Bloody Sunday.

The Parachute regiment is an elite force in a professional army. The IDF is a reserve army so the discipline breaks down more easily because it isn't your way of life, only an interlude in it.

This isn't the first incident of this kind, it's guaranteed not to be the last and there will be worse in the future. Is keeping control of the West Bank worth that? Is settling the West Bank necessary to keeping that control or making it more difficult? Bin Gvir, Smotrich, Amihai Eliyahu and the rest live there. Do you think that, to adapt a phrase, "what happens in the West Bank stays in the West Bank?" What will life in Israel be like when they form a government?

In other words, maybe the question isn't whether Israel can afford to leave the West Bank but whether it can afford to stay there.

 

Your point being?

And FWIW Britain refused refueling permission to USAF planes carrying tank parts. France refused spare parts for the Mirages, etc.

The Italians refused overflight permission for a plane carrying gas masks and only gas masks. When told that, the answer remained no. Egypt had stocks of poison gas and was known to do so, not least because it had already used them less than a decade earlier. Against other Arabs (Yemen). Reminded of both facts, the answer was still no.

 

That 40 years remark being shit untrueful. Israel in the Yom Kippur War hang on the cliff with Americans asap delivering ammo etc. and the Dutch providing a hop and arms too.
Edit: It shows how close to the end Isreal was without the support of those who mattered reduced to only two.
They werenot close to the end because of being paria to the countries that didnot matter.

 

Sadiq Khan's promise realized. A disgrace it's necesary:
Bus service to help Jewish Londoners feel safe
BBC|4 days ago
The mayor of London has launched a trial bus route in north London to help Jewish Londoners feel "safe when they travel". The 310 bus runs every 20 minutes between Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet.

 

Given his experience and track record, I'm inclined to back his understanding of the context over some rando on a message board like mine. YMMV

In any case, he was speaking primarily about its social, economic and cultural development. All of which occurred despite - maybe even because - it was spending 15-20% of GDP, sometimes more, on the military

Even if true, this is remarkably simplistic (number 1), hyperbolic abut something far messier and much more indirect than that (number 2) as well as speculative and deterministic (number 3)

FYP
While it's true that Israelis - especially their politicians - may become or have become cocky (the definition of "ignore the real factors in play") the fact is that the identity of Israel's support(s) has never been constant and certainly not only Western.

Won 1948-49 Soviet support (via the Czechs) not Western. Britain was deeply hostile occasionally spilling over to hostilities - the RAF lost 5 Spitfires in one incident - France was hesitant and American imposed a Middle East arms embargo.
Won 1956 because of very recently delivered French weapons (some British) and arguably without the Anglo-French invasion.
Won 1967 no support (the French had bailed after leaving Algeria), but with earlier arms deliveries
Won 1973 due to American support
Since 1973 one victory (Lebanon 2006 - debatable) and many stalemates with immense American support

And if "empires come and go" except for China, why not make China the great power patron? Plenty of money, hungry for high-tech of all kinds, hungry for high-tech weaponry, doesn't give a damn about human rights, etc. Or maybe India? The same as China, plus it doesn't like non-Arab Muslim countries.

In other words "the ground is muddy, that's why it rained"? Riiight.

Israel got American support after 1967 because it had already proved that it was the strongest power in the Middle East bar none, not vice versa. Otherwise, why would anyone have bothered?

Israel fought the Arab states with foreign weapons and without foreign soldiers or even advisers. The Arabs fought with British weapons and advisers in 1948-49, Soviet weapons and advisers thereafter and sometimes with Soviet rear-echelon soldiers and pilots (War of Attrition and Yom Kippur).

As for "plain stupid", despite being gay, he became French ambassador to the UN and the USA. He's anything but stupid.

Hamas chose October 7th for symbolic reasons which are also entirely coincidental. They'd have gone a month earlier or later if more convenient.

It's Yom Kippur BTW

The oil boycott specifically targeted the Dutch because they were the only Europeans who did. Every other European country bar one refused refueling or even overflight permission. The exception was Portugal, which used the fact that the Azores airbase was a treaty base with the USA as a pretext to get the Arabs to lay off them.

Since America was self-sufficient in oil, if not an oil exporter in 1973, the oil embargo was symbolic for the USA, though the disruption to global markets still hit it hard.

 

Excellent point. One that I have been making previously, and referenced Jewish scholars like Yeshayahu Leibowitz, that had some, at the time perceived to be radical, ideas of what would happen to Israeli fabric/society if the occupation persisted.

Sadly, I think the point of no return, has passed a long time ago. Not necessarily a logistical issue, but a political (and ideological) one.