@gun ainm I was nodding along there until the end which rather subverts the rest. You expect the Israelis, descended from grandparents that were subject to the Nazi genocide, to respond to villages butchered, babies beheaded, young women raped and murdered, old grannies murdered with it live streamed to their families
to mind their language?
As well as being redolent of recent western confusion where ‘language (or offence to some poppets feelings) is violence’, which obscures what violence really is, this holds Israel to an impossible standard - a tactic used by people who are more anti ‘Israeli’ than in sympathy with the Palestinians. That’s not you and IMHO you should leave it to them.
It’s also not simple for Israel in terms of how to respond - I agree with you that they should stay their hand. Then again that would be seen by their foes as weakness and presents dangers just as a reaction does. They really can’t win.
They are in a situation where they are deeply implicated in a land based conflict where everyone’s position has a grounding, and both parties are responsible for the shite that has arisen around it. However they are also now in a position faced by innumerable populations across the world who have territorial crossovers with the Islamic world, from Buddhists to Christians, to Yazidis to secularists - ie they are facing a merciless jihadi group who play by completely different rules.
Meanwhile they are increasingly hated by many European progressives not 100 years since one strain of European progressivism tried to wipe them from the face of the earth. German Marxist socialists started going after them before German national socialism was even cold in the grave - and I don’t mean east Germany - and these days, and as above, even in Edinburgh the fuzz warn them to keep their heads down when ‘anti fascists’ are in town. The British Labour Party were, and any number of right and left wing parties in Europe still are, dangerously flirting with anti semites.
Finally, Europe’s demographic is changing in other ways that will also make it difficult for this continent to offer support or an escape route before long. Oh, and America, that reliable back stop, is now brimming with left wing anti semites and right wing anti semites.
They are in a corner like no other, and their position is as desperate in its own way as the Palestinians, even if less immediately; before this century is out they are in deep deep trouble I fear. Some of the proposals on this thread for a harmonious single state, are simply not from the real world.
In closing, to re-emphasise, that responding to these things is not simple, remains no excuse for some of their barbaric actions.
)
