How does Israel Get way with this

Just highlights the utter hypocrisy of American foreign policy. What moral right have they to criticize any country on the planet while they are funding this Apartheid regime to commit war crime after war crime.

You just have to see how quiet this thread is compared to the Russia one to see how conditioned people are to gloss over crimes that so called "democracies" commit.

Because it's a pointless battle that everyone is tired to death of trying to bring awareness to. The States is locked in, and most of the time dissent from that position is defacto smeared as antisemitism, I've had otherwise very reasonable friends and colleagues ostracize and block me under that banner for calling out apartheid tactics. Either way the UN security council veto keeps the situation deadlocked and there is zero political will to change this paradigm, we can only guess at the reasons why, but it is not a winning political issue in the United States and I fear, never will be.

Don’t expect Ursula to say much..

People need to start waking up to the hypocrisy of this. There's been 80 years of routine inhuman brutality and cruelty by the Israelis against the Palestinians to the extent that people seem to accept it's normal. It's okay. It's not okay.

10 years ago, I thought the Israelis had a point. I thought that the Palestinians - however justified they might be - had to negotiate for peace as the weaker party in the conflict. I was mistaken (sorry to posters I disagreed with then, you were right, I was wrong) - I viewed the conflict as a non-zero sum issue where the Israelis had total military dominance but were willing - even eager - to live in peace with their neighbours. I thought the Palestinians being weaker were crazy to fight. They ought to accept reality and make peace, even if not ideal. That's clearly incorrect - the Israeli's are not interested in any future where the Palestinians survive. The existing reality where the Israelis are unconditionally backed by a global superpower in their year by year building of a Greater Israel over the graves of the Palestinian people is preferable for them to any deal which might restrict that expansion.

Now I can only admire the stubborn resistance of the Palestinians. For 8 decades, in the darkest and most grim times, against an invading force which views them only as a sub-human infestation, they have resisted and held on, house by house, street by street. Maybe the Palestinians will lose - but they really are fighting to keep some hope alive for their sons and daughters, as their fathers and mothers did for them. How can you not admire that?

The question we as Irish people, and the EU more generally, has to ask is at what point are we going to impose the sort of total sanctions on Israel that we did against South Africa? How long are we going to pretend we don't know what's going on in Palestine?

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Jews and Israel are not inseparable entities. The majority of the jewish diaspora are against the occupation.

Even by the standard of the Einsatzgruppe Ireland membership that largely populate this thread you are blunt in your expression.

At least you are direct about it.

What nonsense, but an easy pill to swallow for those who are blinded by their hatred of Christianity. Why then exactly do Democrats often vote inline with Israel's interests? They hardly have a large Evangelical base. It wouldn't have anything do to with the amount of money the likes of AIPAC pumps into both parties?

Fisk also spent his last years as an apologist for the Assad regime.

If he was alive today I expect he'd blame the US and NATO for the war in Ukraine.

He did some great reporting but was also blinded by ideology at times. A complex figure

Jenin as it stands

"Until now, reports have come in of aerial strikes and a ground invasion by tanks, APCs, bulldozers and hundreds of soldiers. Ten people have reportedly been killed so far, and hundreds injured, some critically. Evacuating the wounded has been a challenge as the military destroyed roads inside the camp as well as access roads to it. Hospitals are overrun and having difficulty providing the injured who have been evacuated with the care they need. Water, power and internet services have reportedly been cut off, and medical centers have sustained damage. Homes and other private property have also sustained massive damage. Thousands of civilians - children, women, men and the elderly - have been forced to flee their homes, some without knowing where they might go."

https://www.btselem.org/firearms/20230704_jenin_refugee_camp_is_home_of_thousands_of_people_not_a_battlefield

The whole cycle is so infuriating and depressing.

1. Israel expands its illegal settlement network
2. Settlers provoke and harass Palestinians
3. The IDF subject Palestinians to daily rituals of humiliations
4. Gaza is treated like an open air prison sealed off from the outside world
5. The governments of the rest of the world look the other way
6. Palestinians eventually erupt in bitterness and anger and lash out
7. Israelis get to smash the Palestinians citing counter-terrorism

Rinse and repeat

The only difference is that the Israelis seem to be even more brazen now given how many Settler Parties are in the current government, while at the same time the Palestinians keep losing support from even previously friendly Arab governments.

Its not "financial power" as such. Its groups like AIPAC which are organised to funnel that financial power to back or attack candidates in both parties based solely on their total subservience to Israeli interests. If a US politician even dares to criticise Israel they are going to face an avalanche of heavily funded rival candidates and attack ads for their next election. If they're even seen to be not pro-Israeli enough, they face being dropped in favour of a candidate who is. And the most bemusing thing is they get mocked for their subservience - Sacha Baron Cohen did a skit a few years back where he utterly humiliated US lawmakers by posing as an IDF anti-terrorist expert, trading on their deference to Israel.

Secondly, there is in no way shape or form that US national interests are aligned with the existence of Israel. The relentless US support of Israel is completely against the interests of the US as a state, and Americans as a people. The Middle East has energy. The US wants energy. The US has money. The Middle East wants money. The US buys the energy. Everyone wins. That is the beginning and end of a sane, coherent, peaceful, low cost US policy in the Middle East. Instead the US has embroiled itself in hugely draining (in terms of wealth, human life and prestige) self defeating conflicts against at least three regional powers - Iran, Iraq and Syria - which pose no threat to the US. These conflicts make no sense in terms of US national interests. They only make sense if you recognise that while none of those countries ever posed a threat to the US, they do - or at least did - pose a threat to Israel and Israeli expansion. So from the Israeli perspective they have to be destroyed. Then the US actions begin to make sense when you consider the power of the Israeli lobby in filtering out any US politician whose not completely beholden to Israeli interests.

Finally there is no mutual benefit. Israel gives nothing to the US. Israel is a unbearable burden to the US, and it makes the lives of ordinary Americans worse. It's never deployed troops to fight with the US (even when the US is fighting for Israeli interests) whereas the UK actually has (and that's a whole other mess in its own right) and instead Israel has actually attacked and killed dozens of US servicemen. It drains US wealth by constantly taking out loans which are always forgiven. It constantly spies on the US. It is a constant embarrassment to US diplomats who have to constantly cover for its latest outrage, which then alienates and undermines other countries from the US by association.