Palestine v Israel.

[aufbahrung]

How many before it's declared a genocide then?

[Brian Peacock]

[rainbow]

How many before it's declared a genocide then?

Everyone except Israel and the US calls it genocide.

Where have you been?

[aufbahrung]

How many before it's declared a genocide then?

Everyone except Israel and the US calls it genocide.

Where have you been?

Will anyone miss them though? Seems the Arab world has never had much time for these poorer kin themselves?

[JimC]

It is an interesting question; how much of the vast amount of oil dollars generated in the Gulf states goes to assist fellow arabs and religionists such as the Palestinians?

[Strontium Dog]

Arabs have run out of patience with the Palestinians.

https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/ ... 2515023181

[pErvinalia]

That was incoherent.

[rainbow]

Arabs have run out of patience with the Palestinians.

https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/ ... 2515023181

The world has run out of sympathy for Israel.

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-04/ ... /103278570

Abdullah Azzam died a long time ago, in a country far from Israel.

But this Palestinian academic and preacher is a name people should know when asking if Israel has any chance of achieving its goal of "destroying Hamas" in Gaza.

Azzam was from a farming village in the northern West Bank but fled the Palestinian Territories when Israel invaded in the "Six Day War" of 1967.

He was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, but not before building the first global movement of Muslim "jihad" in modern times.

The "Father of Jihad" is credited with bringing around 50,000 foreign fighters to help the Afghan mujahadeen fight the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and mentored Osama Bin Laden in forming the terrorist network Al Qaeda.

Azzam and Hamas, the Islamist group which governs Gaza, were mutual admirers.

Hamas named its military training centre and West Bank military wing after Azzam, while Azzam fundraised for Hamas and wrote his last book about the group.

Azzam's disciples would go on to attack the World Trade Centre in New York and he was one of the founders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the 2008 Mumbai hotel attacks.

A generation later another Palestinian and contemporary of Azzam, Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi, would mentor Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that would go on to terrorise the world as the Islamic State.

Palestinian suffering has global consequences

You can draw links from the Palestinian struggle to modern jihadist movements elsewhere.

"Palestine precedes Afghanistan," Azzam wrote in his book Memories of Palestine, "The bloody story of Kabul is the story of the war of a wounded Palestine … We hereby declare to the Jews and their satellites and the Americans and the Communists: We will not rest until we return to the jihad in Palestine."

What are the rules of war?
As the UN investigates the Israel-Gaza war, what qualifies as a war crime?

The Palestinian cause has been used to attract recruits to extremist groups ever since.

This is not to conflate Palestinian nationalism with Islamism or jihadism – they are different things.

Abdullah Azzam hated and opposed the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the more secular, internationally-recognised Palestinian leadership.

It's also not a view about whether Palestinian violence is "resistance" or "terrorism".

Instead, history suggests the grievous suffering of Palestinians in Israel's current Gaza campaign can have global consequences. The Israeli military's killing of thousands of civilians in Gaza and hundreds of people in the West Bank has given the plight of Palestinians a new urgency and wide appeal.

"The tragic loss of children's lives and the bombardment of innocent civilians have led to a deep sense of victimisation among Muslims," Dr Shafi Mostofa of the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh told ABC RN's Religion and Ethics report in November.

"I can see the extremist groups, especially the Al Qaeda, they have started exploiting particularly this attack and they are exploiting this attack to attract aggrieved Muslim youths.

"This is a strong element of the extremist narrative. Muslim victimisation is the heart of that narratives. This Gaza attack, they're capitalising on those issues to attract the youths to join the militant cause."

It is not just the people who study extremism voicing this warning — senior military and intelligence officials around the Western world are too.

"I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative," United States Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said recently, citing the US experience against the Islamic State group.

"Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas. And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles," he said.

"So the lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. You see, in this kind of a fight, the centre of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat."

[Brian Peacock]

Good analysis.

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-04/ ... /103283286

Iranian officials say two explosions have killed nearly 100 people and wounded hundreds of others at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate military commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020.
A second explosion, about 15 minutes after the first, caused the most casualties
No group has claimed responsibility, and authorities have not assigned blame
The death toll was revised down after initial reports said more than 100 were killed
No-one has claimed responsibility for the blasts in the south-eastern city of Kerman, but local officials blamed unspecified "terrorists".

Could have been Israel, but Sunni moslems/ISIS are equally likely...

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-19/ ... /103244628

This report a few weeks back, but it is relevant to an issue I want to bring up.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has announced the creation of a multinational operation to safeguard commerce after attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels scared off some of the world's top shipping companies and oil giants.

The threat of missile and drone attacks has been effectively rerouting global trade away from a crucial artery for consumer goods and energy supplies which is expected to trigger delays and rising prices.

Mr Austin, who is on a trip to Bahrain, home to the US Navy's headquarters in the Middle East, said countries participating in Operation Prosperity Guardian include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain.

He said they would conduct joint patrols in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

What surprises me is why they haven't brought back a very successful WW2 naval tactic, the convoy. If a dozen or so freighters gathered at either end of the Red Sea, then made their passage in the company of a couple of destroyers, one would think they would be well protected, either against drones of speedboats, both of which should be easily dealt with by a modern warship.

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-04/ ... /103281984

With a $US5 million ($7.4 million) bounty on his head and a promise from Israel to hunt him down and assassinate him, Hamas kingpin Saleh al-Arouri seemed to greet every day with surprise.

"I am not afraid [of] their threats to kill me … I have already lived more than expected," he said during an interview on Hamas's al-Aqsa TV station in August.

"I feel I passed the age I was supposed to die…. When I die as a martyr, I will welcome it."

But on a rainy evening in Beirut, time finally ran out for the 57-year-old terrorist.

A huge explosion ripped open the third floor of a high-rise residential building in Beirut's southern suburb of Dahiyeh.

Videos on social media also showed a car on the street reduced to a burned-out, twisted hull.

Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said his government did not take responsibility for the strike, during an interview on US network MSNBC.

"Whoever did it, it must be clear that this was not an attack on the Lebanese state. It was not an attack even on Hezbollah, the terrorist organisation," he said.

"Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership. Whoever did this has a gripe with Hamas. That is very clear."

Israel being very cute about attribution. Will they next go after Hamas offices in Qatar?

[pErvinalia]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-19/ ... /103244628

This report a few weeks back, but it is relevant to an issue I want to bring up.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has announced the creation of a multinational operation to safeguard commerce after attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels scared off some of the world's top shipping companies and oil giants.

The threat of missile and drone attacks has been effectively rerouting global trade away from a crucial artery for consumer goods and energy supplies which is expected to trigger delays and rising prices.

Mr Austin, who is on a trip to Bahrain, home to the US Navy's headquarters in the Middle East, said countries participating in Operation Prosperity Guardian include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain.

He said they would conduct joint patrols in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

What surprises me is why they haven't brought back a very successful WW2 naval tactic, the convoy. If a dozen or so freighters gathered at either end of the Red Sea, then made their passage in the company of a couple of destroyers, one would think they would be well protected, either against drones of speedboats, both of which should be easily dealt with by a modern warship.

I think Yemen has cruise missiles.

[JimC]

Not sure about that, rEv. Certainly Iran does, and I suppose they may have given some to the Houthis. However, the Houthi trademark so far has been either drones or large speedboats, both of which can be dealt with by a destroyer. In theory at least, so can cruise missiles, albeit with more difficulty.