Have I missed something?
There it is. Is there any defence of Israel that doesnât include this thought stopping cliche within the first half dozen words in an attempt to cut off any further thought or conversation? Thought stopping cliche is a great term, and one coined by Robert J Lifton (well, he called it Thought Terminating Cliche), the godfather of cult academia in his 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, the book that the entire worlds understanding of cults and brainwashing has been based on. Israel and Zionism really have excelled in all of Liftonâs â8 points of thought reformâ to the degree that people like @Diana1015 just say these things knowing that it would immediately kill any further conversation, and no one would dare mention things again. Thankfully times are changing and itâs not working like it used to.
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Agree totally John! I feel utterly exhausted by trying ( for months) to persuade people to care about the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza (because that is EXACTLY what is taking place). I have ranted pleaded, posted relevant analyses of the situation and signed petitions on FB and on Instagram in an effort to reach out to those people who â donât do politicsâ or âdonât watch the news because itâs too upsettingâ and who think sharing a photo of what theyâre having for dinner is what we need to focus on! I havenât posted much on SF because on the whole, I think that I would be preaching to the converted. Why is Israel being allowed to pursue their aims unchallenged? Its pivotal role in the global economy is a major factor as is the fear of being accused of antisemitism. To oppose the policies and actions of an Israeli government is NOT antisemitic - in the same way that to have opposed the brutal policies and actions of the Ugandan leader Idi Amin is not racist. I really do despair of the spineless, cowardly, so called âWestern Leadersâ who are incapable of making an autonomous, morally right decision and when the genocide finally ends will announce with a suitably solemn face, âthis must never happen againâ!
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How dare you glibly issue that appalling slur on the considered and thoughtful comments made here, by responsible and reasonable people on the Gaza genocide and West Bank ethnic cleansing?
The garbage Diana, is all yours. There are people being starved and murdered by Israel.
What is âpatheticâ(your word) is myopic ignorance. Nobody here condones what Hamas has done. But the Israeli governmentsâ (especially Netanyahu and Likud) policies expecting that locking 2m people up in a concentration camp, then tacitly supporting a foul regime, Hamas, to govern them, all to frustrate the two state solution, wasnât going to blow up eventually - madness. Netanyahu et al are ultimately responsible for October 7th, and they know it. Thatâs one of the reasons they keep the war going, slaughtering and starving children. They donât want an enquiry. This is so bloody obvious I despair that people, like you, canât see it. Or maybe you just donât give a damn.
This is a good article with which to start expanding your knowledge ⌠itâs from the Israel paper of record, to which I subscribe, and Iâm sure they wonât mind me posting it here.
Do you have the interest to read it, or are you really just a âTwitterâ person yourself?
Joshua Leifer Jul 24, 2025
In anticipation of a cease-fire to the Gaza war, Steve Witkoff, the Trump administrationâs special envoy to the Middle East, is on his way to the region. It cannot happen soon enough. An agreement between Israel and Hamas would be the first step towards ending the humanitarian catastrophe Israel has wrought upon Gaza. In Israel, the return of the remaining hostages would mark the beginning of the end of the war for which the public is increasingly losing support. If past agreements are precedent, in Israel there will be days of media circus, dramatic close-ups of helicopters carrying hostages en route to hospitals, tearful news anchors delivering flowery monologues. Yet no amount of public celebration or justified relief that the fighting has ended will be able to obscure the truth: Israel lost. Is Netanyahu capable of ending Israelâs pointless war in Gaza? IDF chiefs wonât tell the public and his soldiers the truth: War in Gaza has run its course
As the Gaza war claims more lives, the Israeli public grows increasingly disillusioned Israel lost the war almost as soon as it began. In the first weeks and months, Israeli officials â from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down to the anonymous brigade commander â announced their intentions: to pummel, to level, to crush, to burn, to destroy. Israel embarked on this war in a spasm of blind vengeance. Over the last 21 months, it has carried out a relentless exercise in the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza for the crimes committed by Hamas and other militant groups in the October 7 attacks.
Revenge, however, is not a strategy. Even the war aims professed by Netanyahu â eliminating Hamas and returning the hostages â were widely recognized as mutually exclusive. It was never possible to achieve both. The insistence on these goals, in effect if not in intent, became cover for the devastation of Gaza and the elimination in the besieged territory of nearly every basic element required for dignified human survival.
The scale of the destruction is so immense as to give the impression of a systematic effort, meticulous, premeditated. But the reality is perhaps even grimmer. Gaza also looks the way it does in large part because of the ad hoc, improvised, impulsive and often sadistic discretionary decisions of officers and rank-and-file soldiers who turned the Israeli army into a kind of anarchic force.
Over the last several weeks, Israelâs forced starvation of Gaza and the weaponization of aid has, after months of warning, reduced Gaza to a state of famine. In addition to the daily stream of war crimes broadcast on social media by IDF soldiers since the warâs start, the world has become witness to a new gruesome spectacle: hundreds of Palestinians killed in the desperate search for food and aid; children, their faces hollowed out by hunger, waiting amid crushing crowds for bare sustenance.
Over 1,000 Palestinians, according to the UN, have been killed trying to reach the aid distribution centers operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. Dozens have died of starvation over the last several days. In a war of already unprecedented proportions in the history of Israel and Palestine, this is yet another atrocity without parallel in this blood-soaked land.
A moral failure of unspeakable proportions, it is also the result of a tactical, strategic and military failure. Israel is starving Gaza because it has proved unable to defeat Hamas by force of arms. Israelâs leadership appears to hold the belief â mistaken, inhumane â that Gazaâs population can be somehow starved into revolting against Hamasâ control, and thatoutsourcing aid distribution to the GHFâs military contractors will bring the Islamist group to its knees.
But the real reason Hamas remains in power in Gaza is because Prime Minister Netanyahu has, in effect, decided to keep it there. Out of a combination of petty personal concerns (his corruption trial), political calculations (his coalitionâs survival) and genuine ideological conviction (his right-wing revisionist heritage), Netanyahu has refused to contemplate any alternative. Israelâs allies in the region have presented no shortage of proposals, offers and roadmaps. He has refused them all.
Such has been Netanyahuâs approach to Gaza for more than a decade and a half. To maintain a weak and divided Palestinian national movement, and thereby prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu consistently weakened the Palestinian Authority while propping up Hamas.Despite his claims to want the contrary â all his talk of bringing down
Hamas â Netanyahu is continuing his political project that predated and, in part, produced the conditions for October 7. Instead of strengthening the PA and preparing it for an eventual governance role in Gaza amid their pledge to reform, his government has threatened the PAâs already tentative hold in the West Bank and allowed settler violence to rage almost without impediment.
A Palestinian man inspects the damage at the site of an overnight Israeli strike on a tent sheltering displaced people, in Gaza CityCredit: Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters Israel, in other words, has failed to defeat Hamas because its government prefers perpetual occupation and eternal war to the prospect of genuine Palestinian self-determination. If and when a cease-fire deal is reached that finally ends this war, it will not change the fact that more hostages could have returned home alive, and that Hamas, however battered and degraded, remains the governing power in Gaza â because Netanyahuopted for it to be so.
Indeed, so immense is Israelâs failure that the day a cease-fire is signed, the fundamental political reality will be almost identical to what it was onOctober 6, 2023: Hamas ruling in Gaza and the PA hanging by a thread in the West Bank. The âconceptziaâ â the paradigm â so often rumored to have been shattered in Israel by the horror of October 7 has, in fact, prevailed.
As a result, the settler rightâs most psychotic visions of resettling Gaza or the mass displacement of Palestinians has fortunately been arrested, at least for now. But that also means that this war has resulted in what those of us who opposed it from its first days knew it would: senseless, horrific, preventable death.
Palestinians gather as they carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, amid a hunger crisis, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza StripCredit: Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters
None of Israelâs recent military achievements â not the defanging of Hezbollah nor the blows to the Iranâs nuclear program â can compensate for the scale of Israelâs defeat in Gaza. True, Israel has projected its military might throughout the region, but this is, at best, a pyrrhic victory.
On the world stage, Israel is in a worse position than perhaps at any time in recent memory. Israel began the war with the sympathy and backing ofthe entire Western world. Nearly seven-hundred days later, it is an international pariah state, its leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court, its cultural representatives increasingly boycotted, its most important trading partner â the EU â now reconsidering its existing agreements. And this is likely just the beginning. History has no arc, no moral, no telos. Atonement, penance, redemption â these terms belong to theology, not politics. Still, after the tanks have withdrawn, the drones and jets returned to their hangars, Israelis will be left to face the task of coming to terms with just how much â and why â they lost.
Joshua Leifer is a journalist and historian. He is the author of âTablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life,â which was published by Dutton in 2024.
So Diana, please quit the trite, casual slurs, if you want a real discussion on whoâs right and whoâ s wrong (and thereâs both on both sides as usual) youâve picked the right boy, and I will engage with respectful rigour (onerous travel commitments notwithstanding 
)
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Our posting rules are relaxed. We assume that people are adults and can discuss even emotive issues in an adult manner. Ok it doesnât always work but be careful about describing other peopleâs posts as garbage.
Thatâs the moderator bit over.
More generally itâs well known that Netanyahu clandestinely encouraged Hamas behind the scenes for his own reasons.
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What you donât seem to realise, is that the repeated over and inappropriate use of the term âanti-semiticâ has effectively neutered it and rendered it useless. Which is tragic on so many fronts, because anti-semitism does indeed exist and it is sadly on the rise, but fuelled by the Netan-Yahoo much more than by Hamas or anything they have done or could do. The Haaretz article featured here is absolutely correct in suggesting that Hamas have already won, even if they might have to rename and rebrand in order to maintain power (and maybe some officials might change, but does anybody really think the real power will change)? And many people are starting to question for the first time whether the state of Israel really does have a right to exist, if this is they way it conducts itself. Where that argument lies I really donât know, but if evidence of the total failure of Israeli policy in recent years is needed, this is compelling.
I fear for my Jewish friends and relatives - for their safety but also their sanity in such a confusing and mentally challenging time. They are pawns for the NetanYahoo whose nefarious plan actually benefits from a rise in anti-semitism in Europe. Anti-semitism has been weaponised by Zionists since their foundation (see Tony Greensteinâs harrowing book as just part of the evidence) but I am not sure I even think this is a Zionist project - it us a pure power-play by psycopaths who care nothing about Israeli Jews, let alone those in the diaspora.
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And BTW, for absence of doubt, the leadership of Hamas clearly does not care for the lives of Palestinian people any more than the NetanYahoo does. I have no sympathy for their worldview either.
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Agreed, but they did at least agree a cease fire with Israel during which hostages on both sides were released. It is entirely down to the Israelis who reneged on the cease fire agreement which caused further releases, again on both sides, to stop.
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Good article IMO, good appreciation of Manuâs role.
Really powerful breakdownâyouâve captured the complexity and contradictions of global leadership on this issue very well. Recognition of Palestine by a G7 country is definitely a turning point, and itâs striking to see how much influence symbolic moves like Macronâs can have. Thanks for also highlighting Bâtselemâs report, voices like theirs often get buried but are crucial for understanding whatâs really happening on the ground."
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Welcome, @Arlen4 !
If you have a moment, why not introduce yourself and tell us about your links to France?
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Hi everyone! Iâm happy to join in here. I donât have direct roots in France, but Iâve always admired its culture, history, and of course the food. iam also connected with a few friends from France over the years, so Iâm looking forward to learning more and sharing experiences here
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