Who are you quoting? Sinwar is popular because he successfully organises resistance towards the occupation and apparently doesn't do it to enrich himself.
Russia had reasons, but I don't think they were particularly good reasons or enough to warrant the invasion.
What means do you think would be justified for Ukranian resistance? Would launching rockets at civilian quarters in Russia be OK? Or stabbing ordinary Russians in public transport? Is shooting at cars indiscriminately OK? At what point you think the western countries would consider withdrawing their support?
You have an interesting opinion of "successful resistance". What happens in the West Bank and Gaza is really difficult to call "success" for Palestinians. Can you elaborate what you meant with "successful"?
Happy to hear you don’t think rape and hostage taking are legitimate resistance. To follow up on this point – you believe Hamas didn’t do that? Or how do you simultaneously call them "charity resistance org" and disapprove of the extreme violence?
Not sure what you're getting at. Contemporary stabbings in Jerusalem and the West Bank are mainly aimed at soldiers, same goes for shootings. There are exceptions, but doesn't seem very common.
I'm not following the conflict in Ukraine as closely but aren't there militia factions there attacking into Russia?
Hamas has been relatively successful, more successful than their competitors. What success in some universal sense would look like, I don't know. Currently Israel has pretty big problems though so it seems kinda successful in some general sense?
What do you mean by "extreme violence"? Reading this I get flashbacks to photos of people run over by israeli tanks and the kid who in november last year filmed himself when experiencing a lack of drones for the first time, so I think that's the kind of violence that has made the strongest impression on me from the last six months or so. Impulsively throwing handgrenades at people in a shelter is gruesome, but it lacks the calculation and sadism of running someone over with a tank and turning them into mush, or forcing kids to grow up under the constant hum of weaponised drones.
As far as hostage taking and 'legitimacy', it's hard to come up with alternatives. Israel routinely takes palestinian kids off the street in occupied territories and put them in military detention centers, commonly abuses or tortures them, and keeps prisoners indefinitely on weak or non-existent grounds. To force Israel to release prisoners through other means than hostage exchange would likely require quite a bit more violence, and I'm not so sure that is preferable.
I didn't call Hamas a charity organisation, I mentioned that they also do social and charity work. Which they do, and that's how they started.
Controlling the borders, airspace, communications, finances and so on amounts to occupation.
Israel does not have "equal civil rights for every citizen". It's not just about palestinians being discriminated against, but also LGBTQ-persons and women. You know that Israel does not allow same-sex marriages, right? If you're gay and want to get married you have to travel abroad. A lot of things are done in religious courts, and some of them have weird powers, like being able to decide that a dead soldier's sperm can be harvested.
It's not "a few". I didn't mention carpet bombing. Israel kills about 75-200 palestinians in the Gaza strip per day over the last month or two, most in bombings of people who are sleeping in their homes with their families. Many while they are out looking for food, or helping with food distribution. Israel is habitually deceptive or straight out lies about its behaviour in the Gaza strip.
If sensible is an ideal to you, how do you explain Israel's incessant attempts to escalate against much stronger foes than the palestinian militias? The IDF is already in trouble against people in flipflops carrying RPG:s, why are they seeking conflict with forces that are equipped with targeted munitions, air force and the like? Why are they killing UNIFIL personnel? Is it sensible to kill US citizens in the Gaza strip?
And if "media and others" bother you, shut them out? I see some embarrassing haiku headlines in passive voice from NYT sometimes, but it isn't more than I can handle because I keep my exposure to bourgeois and imperial mass media to a minimum. I think Eylon Levy got fired and started his own media bureau, maybe you could watch only that for a while and then pick some of his favourite tropes and try to fact check them for a bit of 'reality check'?
> Georgia, the Baltic states, and Ukraine have all been drafted into an American campaign to surround Russia
None of this is true. The US government has for decades preferred to accomodate Russia at the expense of the security of their neighbors and chose to ignore imperialistic ambitions of Russia until the position became untenable. Even now, when Russia has launched the largest war in Europe since Hitler invaded Poland, the US is withholding military aid out of misguided hope that Putin will take the exit ramp that the Americans are offering. But Russia does not have a Khrushchev, instead they have a Hitler-like debiloid who keeps doubling down on a mistake of historic proportions.
If Russia became a normal functional European country instead of being an expansionist dictatorship, my country wouldn't even need a military because Russia is the sole reason why that exists at all. The fact that everyone bordering Russia are arming up is the result of Russian abusive behavior towards its neighbors in the past and in the present. If you go around looting homes, then don't get offended when people start setting up fences and security cameras - or as you'd call it, a vast anglo-american conspiracy to encircle honest thieves.
> Remember the Cuban missile crisis? How the US panicked over Russian presence in Cuba? There's an analogy here.
There is no analogy here. Europe had been rapidly and unilaterally demilitarizing until 2014, whereas Russia moved nuclear weapons nearer and nearer to Europe, recently installing them into the unstable dictatorship in Belarus. Russia just announced that they will be forming two new armies, larger than the ground forces of UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other European countries COMBINED. Instead of responding to a threat (as their propaganda tries to depict), Russia is exploiting the historic weakness of European countries that have tried to build mutually beneficial relations with Russia over the past few decades instead of maintaining Cold War confrontation.
A much better analogy are the naive attempts to seek peace with Hitler in 1938 and 1939, believing that surely Hitler will stop at Poland, and the incredible discussions at the time whether it's ethical to bomb military infrastructure in Germany in response to the invasion of Poland or if the risk of damage to private property is be too large. Kicking the can down the road meant that four years later, allied air forces were carpet bombing German cities day and night without any disregard for such trivialities. Is that what you want, B-52s over Moscow?
European countries that had such relations with Russia now have them with Azerbaijan instead, as a proxy. Could for example look at trade in automobiles, or fossil gas.
Are you suggesting that palestinian militants routinely use sexual abuse?
If so, how come the reports from released hostages are so vague about it? Why would any media give credence to stories from Zaka-affiliated individuals if there were decent primary sources that didn't have financial incentives to make stuff up?
And if you have a problem with sexualised abuse, I take it you react negatively to the IDF undressing people and forcing them to participate in propaganda videos or parading them in humiliating and degrading ways?
Well, the ukrainians would be an obvious example.
No, I don't.
Who are you quoting? Sinwar is popular because he successfully organises resistance towards the occupation and apparently doesn't do it to enrich himself.
Russia had reasons, but I don't think they were particularly good reasons or enough to warrant the invasion.
What means do you think would be justified for Ukranian resistance? Would launching rockets at civilian quarters in Russia be OK? Or stabbing ordinary Russians in public transport? Is shooting at cars indiscriminately OK? At what point you think the western countries would consider withdrawing their support?
You have an interesting opinion of "successful resistance". What happens in the West Bank and Gaza is really difficult to call "success" for Palestinians. Can you elaborate what you meant with "successful"?
Happy to hear you don’t think rape and hostage taking are legitimate resistance. To follow up on this point – you believe Hamas didn’t do that? Or how do you simultaneously call them "charity resistance org" and disapprove of the extreme violence?
Not sure what you're getting at. Contemporary stabbings in Jerusalem and the West Bank are mainly aimed at soldiers, same goes for shootings. There are exceptions, but doesn't seem very common.
I'm not following the conflict in Ukraine as closely but aren't there militia factions there attacking into Russia?
Hamas has been relatively successful, more successful than their competitors. What success in some universal sense would look like, I don't know. Currently Israel has pretty big problems though so it seems kinda successful in some general sense?
What do you mean by "extreme violence"? Reading this I get flashbacks to photos of people run over by israeli tanks and the kid who in november last year filmed himself when experiencing a lack of drones for the first time, so I think that's the kind of violence that has made the strongest impression on me from the last six months or so. Impulsively throwing handgrenades at people in a shelter is gruesome, but it lacks the calculation and sadism of running someone over with a tank and turning them into mush, or forcing kids to grow up under the constant hum of weaponised drones.
As far as hostage taking and 'legitimacy', it's hard to come up with alternatives. Israel routinely takes palestinian kids off the street in occupied territories and put them in military detention centers, commonly abuses or tortures them, and keeps prisoners indefinitely on weak or non-existent grounds. To force Israel to release prisoners through other means than hostage exchange would likely require quite a bit more violence, and I'm not so sure that is preferable.
I didn't call Hamas a charity organisation, I mentioned that they also do social and charity work. Which they do, and that's how they started.
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Controlling the borders, airspace, communications, finances and so on amounts to occupation.
Israel does not have "equal civil rights for every citizen". It's not just about palestinians being discriminated against, but also LGBTQ-persons and women. You know that Israel does not allow same-sex marriages, right? If you're gay and want to get married you have to travel abroad. A lot of things are done in religious courts, and some of them have weird powers, like being able to decide that a dead soldier's sperm can be harvested.
It's not "a few". I didn't mention carpet bombing. Israel kills about 75-200 palestinians in the Gaza strip per day over the last month or two, most in bombings of people who are sleeping in their homes with their families. Many while they are out looking for food, or helping with food distribution. Israel is habitually deceptive or straight out lies about its behaviour in the Gaza strip.
If sensible is an ideal to you, how do you explain Israel's incessant attempts to escalate against much stronger foes than the palestinian militias? The IDF is already in trouble against people in flipflops carrying RPG:s, why are they seeking conflict with forces that are equipped with targeted munitions, air force and the like? Why are they killing UNIFIL personnel? Is it sensible to kill US citizens in the Gaza strip?
And if "media and others" bother you, shut them out? I see some embarrassing haiku headlines in passive voice from NYT sometimes, but it isn't more than I can handle because I keep my exposure to bourgeois and imperial mass media to a minimum. I think Eylon Levy got fired and started his own media bureau, maybe you could watch only that for a while and then pick some of his favourite tropes and try to fact check them for a bit of 'reality check'?
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> Georgia, the Baltic states, and Ukraine have all been drafted into an American campaign to surround Russia
None of this is true. The US government has for decades preferred to accomodate Russia at the expense of the security of their neighbors and chose to ignore imperialistic ambitions of Russia until the position became untenable. Even now, when Russia has launched the largest war in Europe since Hitler invaded Poland, the US is withholding military aid out of misguided hope that Putin will take the exit ramp that the Americans are offering. But Russia does not have a Khrushchev, instead they have a Hitler-like debiloid who keeps doubling down on a mistake of historic proportions.
If Russia became a normal functional European country instead of being an expansionist dictatorship, my country wouldn't even need a military because Russia is the sole reason why that exists at all. The fact that everyone bordering Russia are arming up is the result of Russian abusive behavior towards its neighbors in the past and in the present. If you go around looting homes, then don't get offended when people start setting up fences and security cameras - or as you'd call it, a vast anglo-american conspiracy to encircle honest thieves.
> Remember the Cuban missile crisis? How the US panicked over Russian presence in Cuba? There's an analogy here.
There is no analogy here. Europe had been rapidly and unilaterally demilitarizing until 2014, whereas Russia moved nuclear weapons nearer and nearer to Europe, recently installing them into the unstable dictatorship in Belarus. Russia just announced that they will be forming two new armies, larger than the ground forces of UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other European countries COMBINED. Instead of responding to a threat (as their propaganda tries to depict), Russia is exploiting the historic weakness of European countries that have tried to build mutually beneficial relations with Russia over the past few decades instead of maintaining Cold War confrontation.
A much better analogy are the naive attempts to seek peace with Hitler in 1938 and 1939, believing that surely Hitler will stop at Poland, and the incredible discussions at the time whether it's ethical to bomb military infrastructure in Germany in response to the invasion of Poland or if the risk of damage to private property is be too large. Kicking the can down the road meant that four years later, allied air forces were carpet bombing German cities day and night without any disregard for such trivialities. Is that what you want, B-52s over Moscow?
European countries that had such relations with Russia now have them with Azerbaijan instead, as a proxy. Could for example look at trade in automobiles, or fossil gas.
[flagged]
Are you suggesting that palestinian militants routinely use sexual abuse?
If so, how come the reports from released hostages are so vague about it? Why would any media give credence to stories from Zaka-affiliated individuals if there were decent primary sources that didn't have financial incentives to make stuff up?
And if you have a problem with sexualised abuse, I take it you react negatively to the IDF undressing people and forcing them to participate in propaganda videos or parading them in humiliating and degrading ways?
[flagged]
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