Yet another war, this time with Iran

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren we are the aggressors in this military action because we can’t call it a war because Congress has to authorize wars.

We are not the good guys here. We are not the good guys bombing boats in the Caribbean. We are not the good guys abducting an elected leader and his wife in another country and stealing half a billion dollars and allowing the Moron in Chief to just squirrel away that money in his own private offshore account. We are not the good guys with our own duly elected Moron in Chief threatening to just take Greenland which he often confuses with Iceland.

We are not the good guys in this conflict. With Iran, FFS. We are the bad guys against Iran. Let that sink in.

What are you smoking?!

By what means war was declared is purely an internal matter and says nothing about right or wrong.

Iran shot first. Period.

Do you realize you're choosing the path of genocide?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So you don't care about genocide?

What Israel has done in Gaza is genocide.

1) It is not. Repeatedly claiming it doesn't make it so. Basing it on clearly cooked numbers makes it clear they know it's not.

2) I'm talking about the millions of dead across parts of the Middle East and Africa. Mostly not combat deaths, just people rounded up and killed.

Look at what happened between India and Pakistan. Exactly the same thing as 1948 except far, far bloodier.

India/Pakistan conflict is not between people. We have forgotten 1947. We love each other. We (in North India) are the same people as Pakistanis.
The conflict is a creation of Pakistan Army and their Clerics.

Doesn't change my point. Your equivalent to 1948 was far more bloody.

And it still has the same problem: the fundamentalist Islamist leaders funding the violence.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are completely discounting the willingness to compromise shown by the villagers of Tantura, Deir Yassin, and others who had pacts and agreements with the local Jewish communities. You are ignoring the Arab Proposal, which was all about willingness to compromise.

If you could point out all the places within the Arab league plan that would be helpful.
Tantura, Deir Yassin etc. were events that should never had happened. They are a stain on the Jews of the ME.

I do not recall Tantura off the top of my head. But let's consider Deir Yassin--the Palestinian version bears little resemblance to the facts. Most of the "massacre" was of combatants in civilian attire. It appears somebody cracked and actually did some wildly improper things but when forces attack from civilian attire such things happen. But the numbers keep growing in the retelling.

 

[Toni]

Loren we are the aggressors in this military action because we can’t call it a war because Congress has to authorize wars.

We are not the good guys here. We are not the good guys bombing boats in the Caribbean. We are not the good guys abducting an elected leader and his wife in another country and stealing half a billion dollars and allowing the Moron in Chief to just squirrel away that money in his own private offshore account. We are not the good guys with our own duly elected Moron in Chief threatening to just take Greenland which he often confuses with Iceland.

We are not the good guys in this conflict. With Iran, FFS. We are the bad guys against Iran. Let that sink in.

What are you smoking?!

By what means war was declared is purely an internal matter and says nothing about right or wrong.

Iran shot first. Period.

Do you realize you're choosing the path of genocide?

You really really really need to get a clue.

WE shot first.

This aggression against Iran cannot be called a war because in the US, war can only be declared with the approval of Congress.

They have given no such approval.

I have no idea what ‘genocide’ you think is going on but obviously me thinking that the US is the aggressor is nothing remotely akin to genocide.

 

[laughing dog]

Loren we are the aggressors in this military action because we can’t call it a war because Congress has to authorize wars.

We are not the good guys here. We are not the good guys bombing boats in the Caribbean. We are not the good guys abducting an elected leader and his wife in another country and stealing half a billion dollars and allowing the Moron in Chief to just squirrel away that money in his own private offshore account. We are not the good guys with our own duly elected Moron in Chief threatening to just take Greenland which he often confuses with Iceland.

We are not the good guys in this conflict. With Iran, FFS. We are the bad guys against Iran. Let that sink in.

What are you smoking?!

By what means war was declared is purely an internal matter and says nothing about right or wrong.

Iran shot first. Period.

What are you smoking? Iran did not attack the US first.

 

[Toni]

Loren, I’m not a great student of history but Jim Crow was not ‘peaceful’ fior any person of color living under it. It wasn’t peaceful in states that were merely adjacent to it! There were lynchings, raped, murders, all manner of violence under Jim Crow.

And you think I don't know that?

I'm saying it outwardly looks like peace.

Only to ( some) white people.

 

[Toni]

Of course it is telling that no other nation has welcomed Palestinians with open arms as brothers. How much of that is due to the Palestinians and how much it is due to having a convenient mutual enemy in Israel.

More telling is that those nations which treated them reasonably suffered for doing so.

So long as there are those pouring money into radicalizing them nobody will want them around.

Sure, people have free will--but those who are funding the violence make sure that there is not a meaningful path other than the one of war. I do not blame them, I see them as victims--but they are being victimized by those who fund the terror--which these days means Iran.

Which nations were those and define reasonably??

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why are the noises tolerated? Don't you think it indicates how people feel?

Same reason politicians won't be "soft on crime".

Trump made similar noises about invading Greenland and Europe reacted strongly. Trump was condemned. Humurous hats condemning USA were bought.

Why do we get angry about Trump making noises while just letting anti-Israeli noises just slide.

Because The Felon's rants had far more potential to become real than the "threat" from most Arab nations.

I understand that Islam is an imperialistic ideology and are duty bound to, at least, give it lip service. It still doesn't make it ok. If Islamic countries want to be welcome into the civilised world, we should demand, they drop the Islamic imperialism from Islam. Until then, perhaps not treat them as civilised?

But that's not a reason to be shooting.

Iranian terror is.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

True, there were no Israelis before Zionists claimed they had founded the State of Israel. That's something I have often pointed out.

But that does not explain why you keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring Israel existed and all the bloodshed and upheaval that went into Israel's founding, and how that bloodshed and upheaval affected neighboring countries.

It's like you're trying to claim Israel had some kind of virgin birth with no blood, no trauma, and nobody getting fucked.

What came before did not affect other countries and was small potatoes compared to the 1948 war. And it was roughly equal between the two sides.

Links, please.

It's the very absence of evidence that's telling.

You seem to be saying Plan Dalet was roughly equal to something someone else was doing at the same time. What Plan was that, and who was carrying it out?

It was a wish list. People often wish for more than they actually get.

The same peaceful coexistence of Jim Crow.

The closest comparison to what happened in 1948 is a battered wife finally leaving her abuser.

You can't be talking about the Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire fell 20+ years before 1948 and the British took over governing the area.

If you're talking about Jews finally leaving their abusers in Europe, the analogy works but what does that have to do with the Palestinians? I know you've seen the Ben Gurion quote where he says the Palestinians had nothing to do with the abuse Jews suffered in Europe.

1948 was the Jews providing a heavily fortified battered women's shelter.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

If there is to be a right of return it should be mutual. But this is a complete non-starter. It's just another way to victimize the Jews.

There is an internationally recognized Right of Return and it is universal. All refugees have the Right to Return to their former homes, former communities, and places of origin. It's not an exclusive Right for any particular group, it's one that everyone has.

Jews are not victimized when human rights are respected.

So you expect several million people to meekly accept a death sentence?

Just because in your fantasy it works doesn't mean it would in reality.

Reality is Sampson. If they're going down they'll take their killers with them.

Racists and bigots almost certainly will be angered if they have to share the countryside with people who aren't members of their own religion or ethnicity. But Jews aren't all racists, bigots, or the kind of Zionist who's fine with violations of human rights. There is no reason to suppose Jews in general oppose human rights, especially when so many have become famous advocating for them.

That's not reality. Reality is the area will be like the rest of their territory--ethnically cleansed. By death if possible.

But why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine? Members of the European branch of the Jewish diaspora show a significant degree of European ancestry, and it's impossible to determine which persons are descended from those who were forced out. Whereas the refugees who fled when Plan Dalet was implemented, and their descendants, have solid evidence to back up their claims to a Right to Return to villages that were conquered by Zionist forces in the 1940s.

IMO, the people with the best evidence to support their claim to Palestine as their ancestral homeland are the ones known to be from there, i.e. recent refugees, not the ones who might have some ancestors who were enslaved by Romans but might also be the descendants of shepherds who moved to Ukraine because they wanted to be farmers and seafarers who got stuck living in Greece when their boat sank.

Also, I have addressed the point of Jews being forced out of countries like Morocco many, many times.

Perhaps you were not party to those discussions. Usually it's Loren trying to slip in bullshit about Algerian Jews that prompts a dive into that history. If you want to discuss it, I'd be happy to do that. But if you're going to try claiming that what happened to Jews in the 1970s justifies what happened to Palestinians in the 1940s, or that Palestinians have to pay the price for what Italians did, or that 2 wrongs make a right when it's the Right of Return for Jews alone, then you'd better bring your A game. I have links and I'm not afraid to use them.

What you are missing is that it's not isolated things that happened to Jews. We just have a few surviving examples of what was normal.

You're looking at the paucity of news reports of twister hits tornado alley and concluding tornadoes are very rare.

Source your claims, Loren.

You are trying to read the lack of news as lack of events--but when you read the articles from the time it's clear they do not consider it extraordinary. A report that considers something ordinary implies that it is ordinary even though we have few data points to measure.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unfortunately people living in Palestine wanted to keep living as they had. And why should they not? And unfortunately, all people are flawed and too often want to impose their beliefs on others or to blame others and are often driven by greed and lust for power and fear.

Except nobody would have been expelled from anywhere had the Palestinians not chosen the path of violence. The partition should have been peaceful--but Islam can't accept loss. We see a far bloodier version of the same thing with India/Pakistan, no Jews to blame for it so it gets ignored.

Source your claim that the Palestinians chose the path of violence.

Show, not tell.

Because what you tell is usually bullshit.

Once again, the absence is the evidence. Where's the evidence of anything bad happening to the Muslims who didn't leave? It's all about the supposed evictions which mostly did not happen.

Fundamentally, you are asking me to prove a negative.

 

[Toni]

Unfortunately people living in Palestine wanted to keep living as they had. And why should they not? And unfortunately, all people are flawed and too often want to impose their beliefs on others or to blame others and are often driven by greed and lust for power and fear.

Except nobody would have been expelled from anywhere had the Palestinians not chosen the path of violence. The partition should have been peaceful--but Islam can't accept loss. We see a far bloodier version of the same thing with India/Pakistan, no Jews to blame for it so it gets ignored.

Source your claim that the Palestinians chose the path of violence.

Show, not tell.

Because what you tell is usually bullshit.

Once again, the absence is the evidence. Where's the evidence of anything bad happening to the Muslims who didn't leave? It's all about the supposed evictions which mostly did not happen.

Fundamentally, you are asking me to prove a negative.

No fundamentally you are being asked to actually read current news events. I absolutely believe in the right of Israel to exist. But what Israel has been doing re: Gaza can only be called genocide.

Bibi convinced Trump to attack Iran. WE are the aggressors towards Iran! It is the US who is entirely in the wrong in the current conflict.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Jordan was the only country to welcome the Palestinians after 1948. And we saw the result in September 1970. Other country's were more aware than Jordan and did not provide an open welcome.

You really have no idea how utterly racist ^this^ is, do you?

Exhibit A for playing the race card.

You are not addressing the facts at all, just brushing them off by calling them racist.

Doesn't mean Black September didn't happen.

And it has nothing to do with race, the problem is decades of indoctrination into the path of violence combined with a continual flow of money to reinforce this.

Why shouldn't the Palestinian refugees have been allowed to return to their former places of residence in Palestine?

Can you think of any reason other than racism or religious bigotry?

Because the result would be genocide.

And note that almost none of the "refugees" are. Few were alive in 1948. Most are only a fraction Palestinian.

How about we cut off the flow of money? So far that has had a 100% success rate in defusing such situations.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Why are the noises tolerated? Don't you think it indicates how people feel?

Trump made similar noises about invading Greenland

You answered your own question here. Trump making noises about invading Greenland was indeed NOT an indication how *people* feel because there were no other American people besides Trump who felt the need to invade Greenland.

So, generally no, I wouldn’t consider the belligerent ravings of a minority of politicians to necessarily be representative of the feelings of the people those politicians represent. Especially so when those politicians are not democratically elected.

I doubt its the ravings of a minority. Why do I say that? Because threatening neighbours is politically risky. A politician doesn't take risks unless there's a good pay-off.

That assumes a rational actor. This is not always the case.

Politicians most often act as a break on extreme excesses by the people. People are often not nice.

Here's a factoid. When Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech polls showed that 3/4 Brits at the time agreed with him. Its like this all over. Regular people often feel scared and insecure. Especially about Other people

I said it does not *necessarily* reflect the feelings of the people and I gave an example ‘factoid’ of my own.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Many leftist atheists, including on this forum, have a soft-spot for Islam.

. Really? Who and how soft?

On this forum there have definitely been posters saying nonsense like how Christianity is a bigger threat than Islam.

How is that having a "soft-spot"? At this time, in the US, Christianity is a bigger threat than Islam.

I agree. It mostly has to do with proximity. If we lived in Saudi Arabia, the reverse would likely be true.

The math: Threat is risk. Risk = a convolution of probability x severity. Probability is correlated to proximity.

Example: even if sharia could be worse for women in the US, the probability that Christo-fascists remove some women's rights is far far greater in the US, than Muslims implementing sharia in the US.

Honestly, I would consider the risk of sharia being implemented in the US to be effectively zero.

ok.

The real risk is how much damage is done in the attempt to force it.

That's a different event. Compare christo-fascist takeover attempt to islamo-fascist takeover attempt. Severity x probability. The christo-fascists already are trying and damaging. Probability = 100%?

Look at Israel: the chance that Hamas can conquer Israel is effectively zero. But 10/7 was proportionately much worse than 9/11 was for us.

You got to spell this out more like a table.

 

[Arctish]

You are completely discounting the willingness to compromise shown by the villagers of Tantura, Deir Yassin, and others who had pacts and agreements with the local Jewish communities. You are ignoring the Arab Proposal, which was all about willingness to compromise.

If you could point out all the places within the Arab league plan that would be helpful.
Tantura, Deir Yassin etc. were events that should never had happened. They are a stain on the Jews of the ME.

I do not recall Tantura off the top of my head. But let's consider Deir Yassin--the Palestinian version bears little resemblance to the facts.

What Palestinian version?

The version you and I usually discuss the the one found in in Benny Morris's book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited and some of his other writings and lectures. Morris is an Israeli, a historian, and a Zionist. He was a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev when he wrote that book, and he has written and published several more.

We have also discussed Ilan Pappe's work. He's also an Israeli historian. He teaches at the University of Exeter. He used to teach at the University of Haifa but left Israel when he started getting death threats after his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, was published.

Are you saying two of the foremost Israeli historians, one of them a Zionist, gave us the Palestinian version of events, not an historically accurate one?

What version did you use, then? Link to a source so we can all see it.

Most of the "massacre" was of combatants in civilian attire.

Where did you get that information?

Benny Morris says most of the dead were women and children who were killed in their homes when grenades were thrown in or were shot when they tried to run away from the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah terrorists attacking their village.

It appears somebody cracked and actually did some wildly improper things but when forces attack from civilian attire such things happen. But the numbers keep growing in the retelling.

You should watch the video.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Jim Crow was peaceful.

And you fail to understand what "seizing land" means in this case.

It was a change in government, not a change in occupation of the land!

How do you come up with this crap?

Try paying attention to how the world actually works.

Where has a change of government caused a change in ownership of private land? The only examples I'm aware of are communists seizing everyone's property.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The whole story is bullshit. North/Lower Egypt was always part Caananite. We've found very old Caananite temples side by side with Pharaonic temples. Caananites cheerfully lived in Egypt and many had slaves of their own. Apart of being implausible The exodus story doesn't fit the context. Caananites could and did travel freely back and forth unhindered.

The best explanation I have heard is that the Moses story is purely a mythic etiology. It might be as easy as that the Jews didn't like that they decended from local basic bitch goat herders and just wanted to sex up their backstory

I would assume any old religious backstory was at best heavily edited. Too easy to keep tweaking it back in the days where literacy was uncommon and books were copied by scribes. How could it be passed down faithfully??

 

[Arctish]

True, there were no Israelis before Zionists claimed they had founded the State of Israel. That's something I have often pointed out.

But that does not explain why you keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring Israel existed and all the bloodshed and upheaval that went into Israel's founding, and how that bloodshed and upheaval affected neighboring countries.

It's like you're trying to claim Israel had some kind of virgin birth with no blood, no trauma, and nobody getting fucked.

What came before did not affect other countries and was small potatoes compared to the 1948 war. And it was roughly equal between the two sides.

Links, please.

It's the very absence of evidence that's telling.

Indeed.

It's telling me you're posting bullshit.

You seem to be saying Plan Dalet was roughly equal to something someone else was doing at the same time. What Plan was that, and who was carrying it out?

It was a wish list. People often wish for more than they actually get.

So there was nothing akin to Plan Dalet coming from the Palestinian side of the conflict. The targeting of specific villages for ethnic cleansing and seizing of valuable land and and infrastructure was a Zionist thing.

Okay. We agree. Please try to remember that the next time this comes up.

The same peaceful coexistence of Jim Crow.

The closest comparison to what happened in 1948 is a battered wife finally leaving her abuser.

You can't be talking about the Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire fell 20+ years before 1948 and the British took over governing the area.

If you're talking about Jews finally leaving their abusers in Europe, the analogy works but what does that have to do with the Palestinians? I know you've seen the Ben Gurion quote where he says the Palestinians had nothing to do with the abuse Jews suffered in Europe.

1948 was the Jews providing a heavily fortified battered women's shelter.

A shelter for battered European Jews.

One that was built on land that had been ethnically cleansed via battering by batterers you're claiming did it to create a shelter despite the first of the batterers to arrive in the area saying they were doing it because they wanted the land and bringing in rifles so they could batter the locals.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

If there is to be a right of return it should be mutual. But this is a complete non-starter. It's just another way to victimize the Jews.

There is an internationally recognized Right of Return and it is universal. All refugees have the Right to Return to their former homes, former communities, and places of origin. It's not an exclusive Right for any particular group, it's one that everyone has.

Jews are not victimized when human rights are respected.

So you expect several million people to meekly accept a death sentence?

Are you seriously arguing that Jews aren't human? That upholding human rights means killing them?

Just because in your fantasy it works doesn't mean it would in reality.

Reality is Sampson. If they're going down they'll take their killers with them.

Racists and bigots almost certainly will be angered if they have to share the countryside with people who aren't members of their own religion or ethnicity. But Jews aren't all racists, bigots, or the kind of Zionist who's fine with violations of human rights. There is no reason to suppose Jews in general oppose human rights, especially when so many have become famous advocating for them.

That's not reality. Reality is the area will be like the rest of their territory--ethnically cleansed. By death if possible.

But why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine? Members of the European branch of the Jewish diaspora show a significant degree of European ancestry, and it's impossible to determine which persons are descended from those who were forced out. Whereas the refugees who fled when Plan Dalet was implemented, and their descendants, have solid evidence to back up their claims to a Right to Return to villages that were conquered by Zionist forces in the 1940s.

IMO, the people with the best evidence to support their claim to Palestine as their ancestral homeland are the ones known to be from there, i.e. recent refugees, not the ones who might have some ancestors who were enslaved by Romans but might also be the descendants of shepherds who moved to Ukraine because they wanted to be farmers and seafarers who got stuck living in Greece when their boat sank.

Also, I have addressed the point of Jews being forced out of countries like Morocco many, many times.

Perhaps you were not party to those discussions. Usually it's Loren trying to slip in bullshit about Algerian Jews that prompts a dive into that history. If you want to discuss it, I'd be happy to do that. But if you're going to try claiming that what happened to Jews in the 1970s justifies what happened to Palestinians in the 1940s, or that Palestinians have to pay the price for what Italians did, or that 2 wrongs make a right when it's the Right of Return for Jews alone, then you'd better bring your A game. I have links and I'm not afraid to use them.

What you are missing is that it's not isolated things that happened to Jews. We just have a few surviving examples of what was normal.

You're looking at the paucity of news reports of twister hits tornado alley and concluding tornadoes are very rare.

Source your claims, Loren.

You are trying to read the lack of news as lack of events--but when you read the articles from the time it's clear they do not consider it extraordinary. A report that considers something ordinary implies that it is ordinary even though we have few data points to measure.

Source your claims, Loren.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Jim Crow was peaceful.

And you fail to understand what "seizing land" means in this case.

It was a change in government, not a change in occupation of the land!

How do you come up with this crap?

It’s perspective. Your views come from what you’ve experienced. For example Americans see Iran as the enemy because they’ve been in conflict with them. Russians don’t feel that same way, because Iran hasn’t been coming at them. Same country, different experience, different judgment. This helps explain those bad takes. If you trace them back to the related lived experiences, they start to make a lot less sense to you, but more sense to them.

A lot of us aren't careful in distinguishing the government from the people, especially in cases where the people don't really have an ability to express contrary opinions.

I certainly don't think Iran the people is a problem. I've been there, it was definitely a step above it's neighbors. Iran the government is a major problem in the world, responsible for more death than anyone else. But without someone with a camera to keep pushing the news button the horrors of Africa go ignored. The thread on Sudan quickly died out because everyone agrees it's bad--and you don't realize that it's Iran behind it. You don't recognize that you are effectively supporting team genocide.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Moreover, the Strait of Hormuz is Iranian and Omanian waters. While the UN International Convention on the Law of the Seas indicates ships of transit rights, Iran claims since it never ratified it, they can charge tolls. The USA has no such claim.

I don’t know if Iran is correct. Regardless, Politesse’s argument suggests there is a legal basis but does not suggest approval.

Iran has no power to charge tolls on ships in Omanian waters.

"Power" suggests ability. Do you mean international legal right? Iran's argument is that since it is not a signatory to that UN treaty, it is not bound by it. I don't know if that is accurate or not. Can you produce a link to a credible source that settles that question?

It doesn't matter if Iran is a signatory as the original route was through Omani waters, not through Iranian waters.

But Iran mined that path. A minefield in waters other than your own is an act of war.

I asked for a link to a credible source. Still waiting.

It's been discussed in this thread.

And it doesn't even matter. Iran has no legal authority to deny ships passing through somebody else's waters other than if they are at war with that country. Oman is free to permit passage, even if the old route was through Iranian water it wouldn't matter.

Why are you bending over backwards to pretend they're in the right??

I’m not. In fact I admitted I don’t know. Why do you continually misrepresent others?

You pretend neutrality while what you accept vs challenge shows you are far from neutral.