What? You seem to have slept through ancient history class. The invasion of Palestine is even depicted in detail in the Bible besides the millions of archeological backup.
An expert's point of view on a current event. Israel Could Win This Gaza Battle and Lose the War An all-out effort is again underway to maintain an unsustainable regional status quo. By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/09/israel-hamas-gaza-war-battle/ An Israeli soldier directs a self-propelled howitzer near the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on October 8, 2023. Another bloodletting is underway between Israel and Hamas. Hamas started the latest round by launching a well-coordinated missile and ground attack on Israel, including the kidnapping of some number of Israeli soldiers and civilians and the temporary seizure of several border communities. To say Israel was caught off guard is an understatement, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that Israel is now “at war,” and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are retaliating, just as they have done on previous occasions. Predictably, each side blames the other. Israel and its supporters portray Hamas as nothing but a brutal gang of Iranian-backed terrorists who have deliberately attacked civilians in particularly disturbing ways. Palestinians and their supporters acknowledge that attacking civilians is wrong but blame Israel for imposing an apartheid regime over its Palestinian subjects and subjecting them to systematic and disproportionate violence over many decades. They also point out that international law permits oppressed peoples to resist unlawful occupation, even if the methods Hamas has chosen are illegitimate. What are we to make of this shocking event? Unlike Paul Poast, I don’t see the fighting as further evidence that the global security order is deteriorating. Why not? Because this is hardly the first time that large-scale violence has erupted between Israel and Hamas. Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, did it again in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and then did so once more (on a smaller scale) in May 2021. These attacks killed several thousand civilians (perhaps a quarter of them children) and further impoverished the trapped population of Gaza, but they didn’t bring us any closer to a lasting and just solution. It was, as some Israelis commented, just a case of “mowing the lawn.” The novel feature of this latest round of fighting is that Hamas achieved near-total surprise (much as Egypt and Syria did 50 years ago, during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War) and has demonstrated unexpected combat capabilities. The attack inflicted more harm on Israel than any of its previous operations; more than 700 Israelis have reportedly been killed, with the death toll expected to rise, and an unknown number have been captured, including some IDF soldiers. The attack has clearly shocked Israeli society. The government’s failure to detect or prevent the attack may eventually mark the end of Netanyahu’s political career, and like the intelligence failure back in 1973, it is likely to lead to recriminations inside Israel that will reverberate for years. But Hamas is still much weaker than Israel, and the fighting is not going to shift the overall balance of power between them. Israel will almost certainly retaliate harshly, and Palestinian civilians in Gaza and elsewhere—including many who do not support Hamas—will pay a high price. No one knows for certain where this crisis is headed or what the long-term impact will be, but here are some tentative conclusions. First, this latest tragedy confirms the bankruptcy of U.S. policy toward the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is not the place for a detailed rehearsal of the ways the United States has mishandled this issue (for excellent accounts, see the books by Galen Jackson, Jerome Slater, Sara Roy, Seth Anziska, and Aaron David Miller), but suffice it to say that U.S. leaders from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama had repeated opportunities to shut this conflict down and failed to do so. They had plenty of help from misguided or inept Israeli and Palestinian leaders, of course, not to mention the potent political opposition from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other hard-line elements of the Israel lobby, but that’s only a partial excuse. Instead of acting as an evenhanded mediator and exploiting the enormous leverage at their disposal, both Democratic and Republican administrations bowed to pressure from the lobby, acted like “Israel’s lawyer,” pressed Palestinian leaders to make onerous concessions while giving Israel unconditional support, and turned a blind eye to Israel’s decades-long effort to gobble up the lands supposedly reserved for a future Palestinian state. Even today, the U.S. government continues to shovel money at Israel and defend it in international forums while insisting that it is committed to a “two-state solution.” Given the “one-state reality” that is apparent to most everyone, I’m still surprised that the press corps doesn’t burst out laughing every time some poor State Department spokesperson invokes that obsolete and utterly meaningless pledge. Why should anyone take the U.S. position on this issue seriously when its declared goals are so disconnected from the actual situation on the ground? As usual, the official U.S. response to the fighting is to condemn Hamas for its “unprovoked attacks,” express rock-solid support for Israel, and studiously ignore the broader context in which this is occurring and the reasons why some Palestinians feel they have no choice but to use force in response to the force that is routinely employed against them. Yes, it was “unprovoked” in the narrow legal sense that Israel wasn’t about to attack Gaza, which might justify preemption by Hamas. But it was surely “provoked” in the commonsense meaning of the term—that is, as a violent response to the conditions that Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere have faced for decades—even if Hamas’s willingness to deliberately attack civilians in particularly brutal ways is cruel, indefensible, and quite possibly counterproductive. If U.S. politicians from both parties were less craven, they would rightly condemn Hamas’s actions and at the same time denounce the cruel and illegal acts that Israel routinely inflicts on its Palestinian subjects. Israeli military veterans say these things, but U.S. leaders don’t. If you ever wonder why past U.S. peace efforts failed and why many people around the world no longer see the United States as a moral beacon, here’s part of your answer. Second, this new bloodletting is yet another sad reminder that in international politics, power matters more than justice. Israel has been able to expand in the West Bank and keep the Gazan population in an open-air prison for decades because it is much stronger than the Palestinians and because it has co-opted or neutralized other parties (e.g., the United States, Egypt, the European Union) that might have opposed these efforts and forced it to negotiate a lasting peace. Instead, Israel will go to great lengths to deny Hamas even the appearance of a tactical success, and it may even try to expel Hamas from Gaza once and for all. The U.S. government will stand firmly behind whatever Israel decides to do. Voices calling for moderation will be ignored, and the cycle of vengeance, suffering, and injustice will continue. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This I did not know but I guess is obvious as the are easy to tell apart from the Palestinians. Israel attack: 12 Thais killed and 11 kidnapped by Hamas gunmen Twelve Thais have been killed and another 11 kidnapped by Palestinian Hamas militants who launched a mass assault from Gaza on Israel. Another eight Thai nationals have been injured in the violence since Saturday, said Thailand's foreign ministry. It said air force planes were on standby to fly its citizens home. There are some 30,000 Thais in Israel working in agriculture, many near the Gaza border. Nepal said 10 of its citizens had been killed. Other countries which have reported citizens killed, abducted or missing in the violence in Israel include the US, UK and Germany. Thailand's labour minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn told AFP news agency that some 5,000 Thai labourers work in the zone where fighting has been taking place, but that Israeli forces had begun moving them to safety. He added that 1,099 workers have registered to return home
They have them paying large "recruitment fees". Of course that will be obtained via loan with interest. Labour abuse fears rise for Thai migrant workers in Israel under new deal By Nanchanok Wongsamuth https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-israel-workers-trfn-idUSKCN24M126 BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Thai agricultural workers in Israel will be at greater risk of labour abuses under a new partnership between the governments, advocates said, voicing concerns that the United Nations migration agency (IOM) would no longer oversee the process. Thailand’s Department of Employment (DOE) this week signed a deal with the Israeli government - replacing a 2010 agreement that was facilitated and managed by the IOM - to keep sending 5,000 Thai migrants a year to work in Israel’s farming industry. Yet activists and academics said they feared workers’ rights would suffer as the two governments took over from the IOM in handling the selection and training of applicants, and dealing with complaints from Thai agricultural workers in Israel. Israel has faced scrutiny in recent years after campaigner and media reports that Thai migrant labourers are underpaid, forced to work long hours and exposed to dangerous conditions. “The big problem is that the Thai Department of Employment has a ... shoddy record of protecting rights of Thai farmworkers in Israel,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. DOE director-general Suchat Pornchaiwiseskul said the new agreement would follow the same procedures as implemented by the IOM, and that workers would continue to pay a recruitment fee of about 70,000 baht ($2,200) to secure a job in Israel. Israel’s ambassador to Thailand, Meir Shlomo, said the recruitment process would be “legal and transparent”. The IOM declined to comment. The U.N. agency’s departure from the process was confirmed by the Thai labour ministry. LOW PAY, UNSAFE CONDITIONS More than 25,000 Thai migrant workers supply the majority of the labour for Israel’s agriculture industry. They are entitled to a salary worth about $1,545 a month, whereas the average monthly wage in Thailand is in the region of $220. Kav La’Oved, a workers’ rights charity in Israel, said it was often approached by Thai migrants who were underpaid, kept in unsanitary accommodation and working in unsafe conditions. “We will follow closely ... the new agreement as we are concerned about the return of unfair practices such as unreasonable brokerage fees,” said coordinator Miriam Anati. Activists said private recruitment firms may take advantage of the new deal by sourcing workers for the Thai government and charging them high fees that can trap people in debt bondage. Yahel Kurlander, a researcher at Tel Aviv University with expertise in human trafficking, said she was worried about the IOM’s departure from the process and that the new agreement did not properly address the vulnerability of Thai migrant workers. “No new solutions are suggested for workers that are exposed to exploitation and basic rights violations with regard to wages, access to healthcare, living conditions and a safe working environment,” she said. A Thai farm labourer in Israel said he was fired on Sunday and attacked by his employer for not working quickly enough. The 28-year-old said he had sought assistance from the Thai embassy in Tel Aviv to file a complaint with the local police. “I want to go back home (to Thailand) because I’m afraid of him (the employer),” he said by phone, declining to give his name for fear of reprisals. “I’m afraid he will hurt me.”
Taliban complain that Xer makes them look bad. Musk begs Twitter users to stay ‘as close to the truth as possible’ as fake news about Gaza war proliferates Since takeover of Twitter, Musk has altered verfication process and slashed fact-checking efforts https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-twitter-war-gaza-b2426241.html
Islam is just 1400 years old. Judaism is over 2600 years old. Israel and so called "Palestine" has always belonged to The Jewish People and they have been kind in the past. The idea of a two state solution embraced by Democrats and Liberals/Marxists must now be abandoned.
There'll be American hostages. This is gonna get ugly. The game-board just changed. Big time. Trade accordingly.
So you will be giving your home to your local Indian tribe? Why was it (Judea) renamed Syria Palaestina (later simply called Palaestina) by the Romans? Wait you that mean the Jews had it for a thousand years but the Palestinians 2000? But the Canaanites* had it before the Jews... *Lebanese have 90 percent ancient Cananite genes.
Hamas regularly uses civilians has human shields. Their rockets are launched from homes, the mosques are used to hide weapon -- making these legitimate targets to stop the Hamas terrorism. Sadly due to Hamas using people as human shields the casualties include children, the elderly and others -- which is very unfortunate -- but is directly due to Hamas who is responsible for this entire situation.