Keir Starmer - We stand with Israel

Bangersandmash said:
Didn't have a bad word to say about the UAE, where I've actually paid to go on holiday in the past. However the local Emerati's are in the Minority, with about 9 Million Indians living there & running the country. I actually have a couple of Muslim colleagues here in the Netherlands that I've been out for a beer with, one of whom arrived here via Russia with his Father having been an interpreter when the Russians invaded Afghan. At the end of the day Hamas started this war though. of course no reasonable person wants to see innocent children being slaughtered whatever race or colour they're, but you only have to look at the history of terrorist atrocities around the world in the last 25 years, to see that the vast majority (but not all) were carried out by Muslim Extremists?
Click to expand...

You do talk some 5hite.
 
Bangersandmash said:
Take it you've never worked in a Muslim Country then. Did 3 Years in Libya, a year in Tunisia, a year in Egypt & a year in Abu Dhabi. The vast majority of them hate westerners particularly in the 1st 3 Countries, so no sympathy for them whatsoever. Also witnessed an old Jewish guy being escorted off a Brussels Airlines Flight in Malaga with his Grandson in quite a bit of distress, that had obviously been subjected to a bit of inflight harassment from the rest of mostly Muslim passengers. Also try walking around the streets of Brussels where the normal police patrol with Semi Automatic weapons, to keep the loons in check from Molenbeek who assassinated the Charlie Habdo Cartoonists, massacred innocent Westerners at the Bataclan & tried to blow up Bussels Airport.
Click to expand...

I've been to the refugee camps in Beirut. I've spoken with Syrian troops and the UN Blue Helmet peacekeepers trying to maintain order after the 95 war, and seen the Hezbollah training camps in the Bekaa valley as I drove past.

I also lived in a predominantly muslim and jewish area of Paris for over 20 years.

The only time I ever saw any anti-British sentiment was on the Champs-Elysee, the night of the World Cup final when France beat Brazil 3-0. A couple of arabic kids attacked a Brit. I don't know how it started but it was just after the English fans clashed with Mahgrebs in Marseille.

My kids live within 200 yards of where 120 people were murdered on November 13th. Probably 500 yards from the Bataclan and maybe 400 yards from the Charli Hebdo offices. They have jewish and muslim friends. There's a poignant plaque on their old junior/infants school just round the corner reminding us of the 500 children from the area who disappeared, taken by the nazis.

We had a lovely old Jewish couple live in the flat above us. They had 'his and hers' matching tattoos to remind them of where they met - A German extermination camp during the 2nd world war.

I support Palastine.

How can anyone support zionism?
 
ThePrisoner said:
No it's not.

A 2010 study conducted by Statistics Lebanon, a Beirut-based research firm, cited by the United States Department of State found that Lebanon's population of approximately 4.3 million was estimated to be:[16]

There is also a very small number of other religious minorities such as, Baháʼís, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and Mormons.[16]

In 2022, the CIA World Factbook specified that of the citizen population (data do not include Lebanon's sizable Syrian and Palestinian refugee populations), 67.8% are Muslims (31.9% Sunni, 31.2% Shia, with smaller percentages of Alawites and Ismailis), 32.4% are Christians (mostly Maronites, and Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholics, Protestant, Armenian Apostolic, Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Catholic), and 4.5% are Druze.[17]
Click to expand...

Its a hell of a noise when all the minarets and churches call to prayer at the same time. Bell towers and loud hailers all kicking off together. A wonderful cacophony. It is the ultimate melting pot of races and diverse religions who had been living in peace for 1000s of years at the end of the Silk Road before capitalism and western oil greed got involved.
 
I've posted this video and text before, it's the brilliant speech in the House of Commons by the late Jewish Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman on 15th January 2009 during the Gaza war at that time


"I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.
I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.
I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.
My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that
  • “500 of them were militants.”
That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:

  • “You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools"
​
​
​


 
kuepper said:
I've posted this video and text before, it's the brilliant speech in the House of Commons by the late Jewish Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman on 15th January 2009 during the Gaza war at that time


"I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.
I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.
I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.
My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that
  • “500 of them were militants.”
That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:

  • “You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools"
​
​
​
Click to expand...

A man like Gerald Kaufman, with his family history, knowledge of, and ties to the middle east would - because of his views - be regarded as an undesirable in today's Labour party.
Imagine that.
 
Bangersandmash said:
Didn't have a bad word to say about the UAE, where I've actually paid to go on holiday in the past. However the local Emerati's are in the Minority, with about 9 Million Indians living there & running the country. I actually have a couple of Muslim colleagues here in the Netherlands that I've been out for a beer with, one of whom arrived here via Russia with his Father having been an interpreter when the Russians invaded Afghan. At the end of the day Hamas started this war though. of course no reasonable person wants to see innocent children being slaughtered whatever race or colour they're, but you only have to look at the history of terrorist atrocities around the world in the last 25 years, to see that the vast majority (but not all) were carried out by Muslim Extremists?
Click to expand...
Hamas started this war? The world didn't begin on October 7.
 
So the large majority of people I speak to and what seems to align with the views on here is that we do not stand with Isreal . I suspect if you mutiny this across the entire uk a very large majority will not be aligned with the PMs views . He might stand but mostly we don’t . I assume surely one of the PMs cronies is saying “ you do realise sir that most of the uk is probably not aligned here “ or is the UK so up the ar@e of the USA that were just their lapdog doing literally whatever they say ?
 
Johnnyweetabix said:
So the large majority of people I speak to and what seems to align with the views on here is that we do not stand with Isreal . I suspect if you mutiny this across the entire uk a very large majority will not be aligned with the PMs views . He might stand but mostly we don’t . I assume surely one of the PMs cronies is saying “ you do realise sir that most of the uk is probably not aligned here “ or is the UK so up the ar@e of the USA that were just their lapdog doing literally whatever they say ?
Click to expand...
Up the @rse of the USA and in the pockets of Zionism.
 
Hap said:
I lived in Libya too. There are huge cultural differences between our and their societies, but focusing on those only widens the divide.

There are a great many similarities too. They are also warm generous people.

I am happy to have friends of many faiths, and despite my own atheism remain respectful of their beliefs and practices.

It’s essential that Israel steps back from this path. The Muslim states in the region are almost all calling for peaceful coexistence. The awful terror attack Hamas staged doesn’t justify plunging the entire region into destruction, darkness, and decades of hatred.
Click to expand...
I have worked in Libya, the UAE and Qatar and Libyans were some of the nicest, most generous people you could meet. It's awful what has happened there since Gaddafi's overthrow. He obviously had to go but it has been left to go feral and tribal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hap
Littlejimmy said:
I have worked in Libya, the UAE and Qatar and Libyans were some of the nicest, most generous people you could meet. It's awful what has happened there since Gaddafi's overthrow. He obviously had to go but it has been left to go feral and tribal.
Click to expand...
I was in Brega, still in touch with a handful of them.
 
I have to admit that Middle Eastern politics for me is a bit of a blind spot so this may be incorrect but I read recently that Israel attacking Lebanon and Palestinians predates both Hezbollah and Hamas. Both those groups exist because of Israeli attacks, not the other way round.

Seems to be like Israel aren't the good guys, even if Hamas and Hezbollah are bad guys.
 
Nano said:
I have to admit that Middle Eastern politics for me is a bit of a blind spot so this may be incorrect but I read recently that Israel attacking Lebanon and Palestinians predates both Hezbollah and Hamas. Both those groups exist because of Israeli attacks, not the other way round.

Seems to be like Israel aren't the good guys, even if Hamas and Hezbollah are bad guys.
Click to expand...
That's exactly it
 
Anyway I hope all those naughty boys in the Middle East sort there act out shortly, as I'm quite fancying being in Doha for NYE & don't want any unexpected fireworks in the air, spoiling my NYE Celebrations.
 
Nano said:
I have to admit that Middle Eastern politics for me is a bit of a blind spot so this may be incorrect but I read recently that Israel attacking Lebanon and Palestinians predates both Hezbollah and Hamas. Both those groups exist because of Israeli attacks, not the other way round.

Seems to be like Israel aren't the good guys, even if Hamas and Hezbollah are bad guys.
Click to expand...
Zionists (the Stern Gang and others) were using terrorism in the 40s and even asking for assistance from Germany.
 
ThePrisoner said:
No it's not.

A 2010 study conducted by Statistics Lebanon, a Beirut-based research firm, cited by the United States Department of State found that Lebanon's population of approximately 4.3 million was estimated to be:[16]

There is also a very small number of other religious minorities such as, Baháʼís, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and Mormons.[16]

In 2022, the CIA World Factbook specified that of the citizen population (data do not include Lebanon's sizable Syrian and Palestinian refugee populations), 67.8% are Muslims (31.9% Sunni, 31.2% Shia, with smaller percentages of Alawites and Ismailis), 32.4% are Christians (mostly Maronites, and Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholics, Protestant, Armenian Apostolic, Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Catholic), and 4.5% are Druze.[17]
Click to expand...
There isn’t much current reliable data but, depending upon what you read, the majority of the 5.5 million population inside Lebanon is mostly Muslim, with a huge number of refugees that have swollen that number.

What surprised me was that some 14 million Lebanese are displaced, refugees or migrants, outside of Lebanon, and the majority of these people are Christian.

What a mess and a tragedy.
 
Wiseman_Vaughn said:
I lived in a couple of muslim countries and found them generally very peaceful. Like everywhere else, the biggest divider of people is wealth, not religion.
Click to expand...

I'm sure that's true but the issue here is that there are several Arab states ruled by despotic and extreme regimes. Those regimes do not represent the wishes of their people. Iran's government is intent on attacking the west any way it can, and the current ways include attacking Israel.

Meanwhile Israel has a despotic regime, which presented with an open goal on Oct 7 2023 is going to use every opportunity to avenge the Israelis killed by Hamas and Hezbollah.

It's about governments, not people.
 
Johnnyweetabix said:
So the large majority of people I speak to and what seems to align with the views on here is that we do not stand with Isreal . I suspect if you mutiny this across the entire uk a very large majority will not be aligned with the PMs views . He might stand but mostly we don’t . I assume surely one of the PMs cronies is saying “ you do realise sir that most of the uk is probably not aligned here “ or is the UK so up the ar@e of the USA that were just their lapdog doing literally whatever they say ?
Click to expand...
It's not just about Starmer though.

I know he's a figure of hate for some on here and it suits their purpose to make out he's a complete evil b****d with no redeeming qualities. But the reality is even more depressing.

Anyone in the position of UK prime minster would be taking the same position (with the exception of Corbyn and we know the lengths the establishment went to to make sure that didn't happen). As are the leaders of many other western countries. Even though I dare say probably a majority of the people in those countries don't feel the same way.

This isn't about Starmer (disappointing as it is that he won't grow a pair. But as I say no other PM would do any different). The real question is how the Israeli government have so much power and influence over other western nations that they don't dare call them out, even when they're clearly acting like terrorists and committing war crimes.

It's shameful. But Starmer is a symptom, he's not the cause.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top