Mailwatch(ed) Forum

It's at the stage where my field of fucks is pretty much barren.

Israel has the right, as any other country does, to defend itself. And any other country has the right to defend itself from Israel. Pick the bones out of that one.

I keep asking myself; is Israel still defending itself?

Shooting down incoming rockets is defending yourself. Blowing the shit out of a Beirut suburb because a Hezbollah leader might live there is probably not. Besides, don't they have Mossad assassins who are supposed to be great at that shit? A single bullet's a direct message; the IDF's current strategy is more "to whom it may concern".

Israel reminds me of an old-school nightclub bouncer, permanently looking for someone to defend themselves against.

I think this piece by Jonathan Freedland captures the difference between how Israel sees itself and how the world sees it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nniversary

Or take the last two weeks. For many outside Israel, the bloodshed of the last fortnight is confirmation that Israel is the country that most threatens the Middle East, an aggressive power that, whatever comes next with Iran, had already widened its war to take in Lebanon, with strikes on Yemen too. Inside Israel, the last two weeks are understood as the country at last hitting back against the proxies of the regime that constitutes the true danger to the Middle East – namely, Iran and its theocratic rulers. For years, Iran has encircled Israel with a “ring of fire” that includes the three Hs: Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and, most well-armed of the three, Hezbollah, wielding an enormous arsenal and the power of a state within a state. These actors and Iran are not, incidentally, simply in the business of ending the injustice of Israel’s post-1967 occupation: their stated goal is to end Israel itself.

For many outside Israel, last week’s killing of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was a reckless act of Israeli escalation, bound to push the Middle East into all-out war and equally bound to cause great loss of life. To Israelis, it was an act of self-defence, finally taking out the commander of an army that had been firing on northern Israel for an entire year – a fusillade that began on 8 October in an act of self-proclaimed solidarity with Hamas and which never stopped – rendering the towns and villages of that area uninhabitable. Israelis ask which country in the world would tolerate such a bombardment and leave untouched the man giving the orders, especially when that man once hailed the convenience of Jews being gathered in one place, Israel, because it meant not “having to go to the ends of the world” to find them. While they’re at it, Israelis like to remind their critics of Nasrallah’s role at the right hand of Bashar al-Assad, when Hezbollah assisted the Syrian dictator as he set about the murder of more than 600,000 of his own people.

Bit weird. I posted a link to that a couple of weeks ago. And you even 'liked' it.

This is hilariously fragile.

It can be nice to try out new material, but sometimes the crowd just want to hear the hits.

Halevi acquits himself somewhat better than Jacobson but seriously, if Isaac Chotiner requests an interview, say no.

It’s difficult to judge tone from a transcript but ‘yell’ seems the wrong verb to choose based on text alone. You do not, as a rule, get people who consider themselves humane and moderate liberals to let slip that - par exemple - they consider coverage of dead Palestinian children equates to blood libel, or that approximately twenty-four thousand dead Palestinian civilians as set against eighteen-thousand claimed Hamas casualties (according to the IDF) constitutes acceptable wastage, by shouting at them.

That's what he does though or at least too people he doesn't like when it's people he does well his approach is very different.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/thom-yor ... ow-3808026

Thom Yorke seemingly on the blacklist now for taking umbrage at someone... shouting things that Yorke couldn't necessarily comprehend which threw him off stride in the middle of his set (which after a 15 minute recess to calm down, Yorke did return to complete).

Not sure how this makes him complicit in Israel's doing in Gaza but online trot circles are adamant this has ruined Yorke's artistic legacy FOREVER.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

Claire Fox has been trolling before social media existed. Like Farage, she has a semi permanent seat at the BBC.

Can’t quite shake the suspicion that a rogue camera operator is deliberately taking the piss here.

If you’d responded all those months ago to the question ‘What is the IDF’s mission in Gaza?’ with ‘The creation of a sparsely-peopled moonscape’ some very serious and important people would’ve got rather cross with you.

I have genuinely lost track of what the proper grown-ups-are-back-in-charge response to this ongoing carnage is, beyond an affected pseudo-sophisticate boredom elevating oneself above it all. Still, I await the response of our brave government with interest bordering on wry amusement.



P.S. I keep underestimating the guy.

The modern day Captain Dreyfuss's only friend is an antisemitic conspiracist. Perhaps Bibi should consider governing a different country.

Orbán will invite Netanyahu for visit to scorn the ICC’s arrest warrant
https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor- ... t-warrant/