Politics

[CJW]

@Red Leg

Killing the bad guys in Gaza? Which ones? When you start blowing up peoples homes, mosques, hospitals, schools (where they hide the weapons and the terrorists) you generally make more...terrorists.

It's a sick little game those f*****s play.

 

[Red Leg]

Assuming that this was an unknown, unforeseen attack on Israel, the inference is that their intelligence apparatus in Gaza was beyond terrible.

With that inference assumed, the ability to kill off terrorists associated with Hamas within Gaza seems very difficult to do now or in the future. I'm hearing reports that most of the officer apparatus of Hamas lives an opulent life in Doha and elsewhere while street thugs are recruited on the ground.

@Red Leg I'm not sure how you cut the head off the snake, much less kill the snake in the above scenario?

Killing those with guns is one obvious option, but what happens when they drop their rifles and blend into the populace? How does Israel do any of this without an occupancy force for years, interviewing neighbors, etc? They'd have to occupy Gaza and overthrow the government to clean house?

The survivors will do exactly that. One Israeli option will indeed be a long term occupying force. They ended their last presence in 2005. Twenty years later a new group of terrorists had grown to maturity.

There is simply no one to take and nowhere to put 2 million Palestinians. And the developed world will not allow Israel to exterminate them like - well like Jews in Poland.

Israel also has a population dynamic challenge. During the 67 war when Israel seized Gaza from the Egyptians, there were roughly 400,00 Palestinians in the enclave. As noted above there are now 2.2 million.

 

[Wheels]

I don't pretend to have a true solution, but treating Gaza like Carthage and creating 2 million refugees will flip the script on everything Israel has tried to accomplish over the last decade and substantially change the narrative about this conflict. What I think Israel can do, is buy another generation of relative calm in Gaza by killing every Hamas associated person they can target and through the resulting collateral damage which impacts the willingness to host Hamas and their ilk. It will take another 10-20 years to recreate a terrorist army that is a real threat at which point Israel will have to do it again.

This is one reason I find the comparisons of Israel to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem not that far off the mark. Israel, as the Jewish state will never be assimilated into the Levantine Arab world. It is essentially a European culture, despite its cultural history, grafted onto the coast of a fundamentally different Islamic culture. The Latin Kingdom Of Jerusalem survived for not quite 200 years.

Good analogy I have never really considered since one is a Christian Kingdom verses todays Jewish Nation.

Neither was, or will be accepted long term in the Lavant.

It is amazing how long the Armenian enclaves like Nagorno-Karabakh have survived or even Armenia, considering the neighborhood it is situated in.

 

[Doubleplay]

The land that is Israel today was Israeli land before it was Arab land. Palestinian's are Arabs that started calling themselves Palestinians in the 1960's.

Before the land was settled by Israel apx. 3500 years ago, it was occupied by Canaanites, with Philistines occupying five city states around the current area of Gaza. There are no known Canaanites living today. There are probably some remnants of Philistines living in Haifa, Tyre and Beirut. The last significant Philistine nation was Carthage which was destroyed by Scipio Africanus in the third Punic War.

Over the centuries, Israelis spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Primarily due to persecution by Arabs and Ottomans.

Technically the Jews are the oldest race to occupy the land. The post WWII return of the European diaspora being the first time Israelites have had autonomous rule since Pompey destroyed the Hasmonean Kingdom.

Ottomans occupied the Middle East and Jerusalem for more than 300 years and never persecuted Jews or Christians.
There were more jews living under Ottoman rule then anywhere else in the 1600's.
Three religions lived in peace during those times till the First World War began when English and French occupied the region.
Ottomans gave them shelter and welcomed them during the Spanish and Portuguese inquisition when Catholics torturing and persecuting Jews in the 1600's in the name of God.
This is very well documented history and a quick google search can give you more details.
To this day some of the oldest synagogues in the World are in former Ottoman land.
They also held very high position in the Ottoman Government and some of them were bankers and very rich.

 

[Wheels]

Ottomans occupied the Middle East and Jerusalem for more than 300 years and never persecuted Jews or Christians.
There were more jews living under Ottoman rule then anywhere else in the 1600's.
Three religions lived in peace during those times till the First World War began when English and French occupied the region.
Ottomans gave them shelter and welcomed them during the Spanish and Portuguese inquisition when Catholics torturing and persecuting Jews in the 1600's in the name of God.
This is very well documented history and a quick google search can give you more details.
To this day some of the oldest synagogues in the World are in former Ottoman land.
They also held very high position in the Ottoman Government and some of them were bankers and very rich.

Agree with much of what you say.

However, the hundreds of thousands of Christians and Jews the Ottomans killed in modern day Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, up to the "Gates of Vienna" where John Sobieski and the Poles stopped them might disagree with the thought that the Ottomans were generous, welcoming, and pleasant to live under.

 

[Brent in Az]

Republicans nominate Steve Scalise for speaker of the house.

Swamp business as usual.

I've lost all hope for any positive and aggressive change within the Republican party.

 

[NE 7x57]

Republicans nominate Steve Scalise for speaker of the house.

Swamp business as usual.

I've lost all hope for any positive and aggressive change within the Republican party.

I'm curious. Who did you think they would nominate?

 

[Red Leg]

Republicans nominate Steve Scalise for speaker of the house.

Swamp business as usual.

I've lost all hope for any positive and aggressive change within the Republican party.

So, I wish he was the man nominated the first time around. He knows how the system works, and how to get things done within it. However much someone wants to wail about the "Swamp." whatever that actually is, unless we are angling for a dictatorship, the Congress and the House of Representatives are necessary to get anything accomplished. Scalise will be excellent in that role. However, he still has a ways to go before winning the job.

 

[Red Leg]

My hypothetical question isn't so hypothetical this morning:

"As fears mounted inside the enclave of an imminent assault, an Israeli defence official vowed that Gaza will become a 'tent city' with every building razed."

Hamas rocket slams into Israeli hospital's child development centre

The strike was just one of many launched by the armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who declared they were targeting multiple locations in southern and central Israel with rockets

www.dailymail.co.uk

We'll see. Generals are capable of blustering all sorts of ridiculous things.

 

[Brent in Az]

I'm curious. Who did you think they would nominate?

I was hoping Jim Jordan would get the nod.

 

[Brent in Az]

Steve Scalise is battling blood cancer. Need someone outside the swamp cartel for the job, with a longer shelf life.

 

[Hunt anything]

Steve Scalise is battling blood cancer. Need someone outside the swamp cartel for the job, with a longer shelf life.

If the republicans don’t get their crap together it won’t make much difference who the speaker is after 2024.

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

A second US Navy carrier battle group is heading to the eastern Mediterranean. The Dwight D Eisenhower and associated ships will add quiet a bit of gunship diplomacy to the area.

 

[jpr9954]

Republicans nominate Steve Scalise for speaker of the house.

Swamp business as usual.

I've lost all hope for any positive and aggressive change within the Republican party.

You expected aggressive change within the Republicans?

As to Scalise, he is more pro-2A than McCarthy ever was so I can live with him. Frankly, I could have lived with either Scalise or Jordan. I do worry about Scalise's health but then again he came back from being shot by a deranged Bernie-bot.

 

[Ray B]

We'll see. Generals are capable of blustering all sorts of ridiculous things.

AMEN!!!!

 

[NE 7x57]

Well the Republicans in the house had to come to some consensus. I think the 8 who voted with the democrats to oust the speaker probably wanted Jordan and I suspect the majority had no intention of giving into them. I'm kind of surprised that they got things sorted out as quickly as they did.

 

[Red Leg]

Well the Republicans in the house had to come to some consensus. I think the 8 who voted with the democrats to oust the speaker probably wanted Jordan and I suspect the majority had no intention of giving into them. I'm kind of surprised that they got things sorted out as quickly as they did.

They haven't. They still have to do a full House vote and it didn't happen today.

 

[steve white]

Ottomans occupied the Middle East and Jerusalem for more than 300 years and never persecuted Jews or Christians.
There were more jews living under Ottoman rule then anywhere else in the 1600's.
Three religions lived in peace during those times till the First World War began when English and French occupied the region.
Ottomans gave them shelter and welcomed them during the Spanish and Portuguese inquisition when Catholics torturing and persecuting Jews in the 1600's in the name of God.
This is very well documented history and a quick google search can give you more details.
To this day some of the oldest synagogues in the World are in former Ottoman land.
They also held very high position in the Ottoman Government and some of them were bankers and very rich.

Living under "Dhimmi" status WAS persecution! Imagine a tax of 20% of your income just to be allowed to survive, plus the other usual taxes. Not being allowed for your head to be higher than the head of a Muslim, not to own a horse with stirrups, not to be allowed to mourn loudly when your family or others were killed, on and on and on! Do the Palestinians pay a tax "just to be able to live." Then, if a church was burned out by vandals or destroyed by natural mean, it could not be rebuilt, etc.

 

[Brent in Az]

You expected aggressive change within the Republicans?

As to Scalise, he is more pro-2A than McCarthy ever was so I can live with him. Frankly, I could have lived with either Scalise or Jordan. I do worry about Scalise's health but then again he came back from being shot by a deranged Bernie-bot.

I've gotten to the point of expecting absolutely nothing from the Republican party.
I personally don't have anything against Scalise. I wish him well.
Simply put, I would like to see a speaker who doesn't roll with the establishment status quo, rather, someone who will tell the Democrats to go pound sand, and not give them what they want. AKA....McCarthy omnibus.

 

[David AK 53]

We'll see. Generals are capable of blustering all sorts of ridiculous things.

Surely you jest!