Well, not yet. But they will, so I might as well just put that.
Only not really, obviously, it's just a limited strategic operation. You know, like what Russia started two years ago in Ukraine. Except I doubt Labanon will have all of Western Europe and the US supplying them with arms and aid like Ukraine does.
Obviously I haven't even bothered looking into Israel's justifications for this, because we all know they will be bollocks, but feel free to provide a devil's advocate perspective if any of you know any better.
What's going to happen next? Is it all kicking off?
I have heard that the leadership of Palestine Action are also big supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the top directors really are just using Palestine as an excuse to target British military assets. I got this off 4chan’s /k/ board, which is very pro-Ukraine but also suspiciously seems to quite like Israel. And you’d think 4chan would all be edgy Putin-lovers, so perhaps I shouldn’t trust anything /k/ says, not even when I agree with it. But if it is true, that definitely changes how I would feel about Palestine Action as a group.
>>42601 It's vandalism, it's, and this appears to be a word Palestine Action and their supporters want to avoid, but nevertheless, sabotage. It's the same as when they smash up an arms company. It's violence, yes, but it's not terror. The idea that PA are to be listed alongside Islamic State and the Wagner Group is utterly insane. It's worth mentioning that Palestine Action only emerged in 2020 after years of anyone who opposed Israel in any non-violent and non-confrontational manner being told to "fuck off", in effect. BDS, marches, waving a Palestinian flag are all slammed as unacceptable, so what do you think is going to happen while the political elite of whole of the, allegedly, enlightened west nods along to the barbaric abuse of Gaza and it's populace?
>>42603 George Monbiot too. I wonder if we'll get to share a cell?
>>42604 PA was formed long before the Russo-Ukraine war. While it wouldn't suprise me if they have that faintly bemusing attitude of backing anyone who gets up the nose of the Anglo-Saxons that some left-wingers have, I don't see much merit to this idea. As far as I can tell the kind of businesses that PA target have little to nothing to do with Ukraine anyway. Banning arms exports to Israel would be a fine way to prove if PA are Russian stooges or not.
I have now looked a little further into whether Palestine Action really are pro-Russia or not. One founder, 47-year-old Richard Barnard, has nothing online that I could find showing any support for Russia or against Ukraine, but then he does have quite a common name.
The other founder, Huda Ammori, has no such problems with name prevalence, and the Daily Mail chose to describe her like this in their aims to discredit her, so they must be really stuck.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun/30/bbc-should-have-pulled-live-stream-bob-vylan-glastonbury-anti-idf-chants I'm sure all our institutional free-speech defenders who might not agree with it but will defend your right to say it will be out in droves over this. Some will surely even say it's political correctness gone mad for the police to be investigating a man saying words at a concert when they should be out catching murderers, rapists, and murdering rapists.
Naturally, I condemn everything Bob Vylan and Kneecap have ever said, even if it seems that the main thing Kneecap actually said was "fuck Keir Starmer" and they're mostly being mentioned because they were the designated villain before the show and the BBC didn't broadcast them, so most people will have no clue what they actually said except what's implied.
Could it be that the last decade of political correctness, identity politics, woke liberal, diversity washing, trans BIPOC people of pronoun, radical queering was really, all of it, the entire time, just laying the ground works to make it impossible to coherently criticise Israel/support Palestine?
We were all worried about right wing dogwhistles about how you can't call a gay evangelist christian korean youtuber wog a gay evangelist christian korean youtuber wog any more, but we didn't have our eyes on the ball, and we never realised what was going on. Before we knew it, we found ourselves gagged from calling a fascist a fascist because they would cry that they were offended, and we would be the thought criminal unperson for saying hate speech at them.
This seems to be the real time realisation of many self-described lefties recently, that I've been saying for the better part of the last decade.
>>42611 Fundamentally: No. This is the point >>42609 is making. Right-wing "pro free speech" types either have nothing to say, or explain why this doesn't count as free speech. The BBC and the institutions of this country aren't pro-Israel because the woke censorship rules demand it, they're pro-Israel because they're pro-Israel.
>Israel's defence minister says he has instructed its military to prepare a plan to move all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp in the south of the territory, Israeli media reports say.
>Israel Katz told journalists on Monday he wanted to establish a "humanitarian city" on the ruins of the city of Rafah to initially house about 600,000 Palestinians - and eventually the whole 2.1 million population.
>He said the goal was to bring people inside after security screening to ensure they were not Hamas operatives, and that they would not be allowed to leave.
Yeah, I dunno, that sounds a lot like... No, that sounds exactly like a concentration camp to me.
>>42634 They’re really taking full advantage of the “if you compare your enemies to the Nazis, you automatically lose the argument” rule. If this humanitarian city results in a lot of body lice, and the Palestinians need to be herded into delousing chambers, I hope they don’t go.
The blatant fucking dishonesty of that shit though. Neytanhatu would come out wearing an SS uniform and Hitler tache and still play the "it's anti-semitic to compare me to a nazi!" card with a straight face.
>The UK will recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes "substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza", Sir Keir Starmer has said.
>The PM said Israel must also meet other conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire and allowing the United Nations to restart the supply of aid, or the UK would take the step at September's UN General Assembly.
This would be a massive step in terms of international diplomacy, but in terms of actually stopping the violence, it will probably achieve close to nothing.
In other news, I have been doing some research into man-made famines.
The Holodomor, in Ukraine in 1933, killed around 10-15% of the Ukrainian population.
The even more egregious famine in Kazakhstan a couple of years earlier killed around 40% of Kazakhs.
The Ethiopian famine in 1985 killed about 20% of Ethiopians.
A 15% death rate in Gaza would equate to around 300,000 Palestinians. Currently, about 60,000 have died in total, and the deaths from starvation are just a few hundred officially so far. Of course, this number is expected to skyrocket. But if you want to know how far those numbers need to go to do Stalin numbers, there's your answer. If 6,500 people starve to death in Gaza, that would be proportionate with the 1998 Sudan famine. So it's too early for big pronouncements so far, and if we're lucky, we won't have the nightmare numbers of famous famines.
>>42671 >This would be a massive step in terms of international diplomacy
Except nothing will happen. From a man like Starmer, the words "substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza", mean zilch. The slightest crumb offered by Netenyahu's PR bods will allow Starmer to drop Palestinian recognition like a red hot stone.
I'll confess I'm likely the high-pessimist regarding this situation. It's my, publically unspoken, view that Palestine is simply doomed. Gaza is a ruinous, occupied, waste. While the determination of it's people is astonishing to behold, I do not think Israel will ever permit it to function as anything close to the society it once was. The West Bank meanwhile is slowly being annexed in the same way it was pre-war. However, it is clearer than ever that the nearly 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jeruselem are going nowhere. The "internation community" can barely muster the will to even condem a genocide of death squads, starvation and aerial obliteration in Gaza, so what chance is there anyone will make moves against Israel over their illegal settlements? They're positively humane in comparison to the slaughter in Gaza. Until we give the ICJ a battalion of SPARTAN II super soldiers to enforce international law, no one's doing fuck all about it.
>>42671 >Israel continues killing Gazans
>the UK begins acknowledging a Palestinian state which is now devoid of Palestinian people
or
>Israel does a ceasefire
>Palestinian statehood therefore does not need to be recognised, meaning in future the events of the last couple of years can happen again
It's a bad ultimatum. Why not "ceasefire AND we recognise Palestine as a state". Why can we only recognise it if it's currently being raped?
>>42671 It's probably not your intent, but your numbers give a general impression that what's happening is fairly typical and doesn't amount to much, by comparing to historical examples of famines (where we know the final result) rather than ongoing famines in 2025, which give the opposite impression: that what is happening is anomalous and very bad indeed.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-400-not-crisis-but-murder >Around the world there are eleven places where more people are at serious risk of hunger than in Gaza, but what this wider view of global famine reveals is not that Gaza is “normal”, but precisely the opposite. Being the result of deliberate policy by a powerful state, commonly regarded as belonging to the exclusive club of “advanced economies”, the mass starvation in Gaza in the summer of 2025 is quite unlike that anywhere else in the world.
>Across the hunger hot spots of the world in 2025, what is the percentage of the population that is at risk? In Nigeria - mainly in the North - it is one sixth of the population. In Myanmar and the DRC it is roughly a quarter of the population. In Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan and Haiti - the places most commonly cited in arguments about the application of “special standards” to Israel - the share of the population at risk is between 49 and 57 percent. In Gaza, the share is 100 percent. The risk of famine is total.
>A condition of total, all-inclusive starvation is highly unusual. No doubt, the reality on the ground continues to exhibit gradations of inequality and hierarchy not captured by the UN statistics. But this finding points once again to the exceptional circumstance of Gaza, which are those of a siege, a prison or a ghetto.
Obviously the distinction can be captured in the word risk, maybe Israel will back down in the face of Sir Kier Starmer's paper-rattling... but if they don't, things get even uglier than they already are very quickly.
It's perfectly fair to criticise Israel for the effects that the war is having on medical services in Gaza, but presenting a bunch of chronically ill people as victims of famine is pure disinformation. It's clearly not accidental at this point - there are multiple, verifiable instances where terminally ill people were represented as victims of famine. You don't have to like Israel to care about the truth, if only because distortions and lies play into the hands of propagandists on both sides.
>>42675 I'm reminded of the jokes during arguments about COVID numbers. You can't count all the deaths on the titanic or in 9/11 or whatever because many of them also had "preexisting conditions", there's no risk to healthy people...
I suppose Gaza has an elegant closed loop to it: you can't call that a famine death, she was already suffering malnutrition!
What an absolutely tone-deaf response. Taking the social media post at face value (and it's not clear to me at all why that account deserves that benefit of the doubt), we can say that hypercatabolism of this severity in a diabetic person can be due to a chronic lack of insulin, but that treating them would also involve an amino acid (protein) supplement and a managed diet, which is equally difficult in a famine. If they are indeed diabetic, we are very likely looking at someone who is both affected by lack of medical care and is dying due to famine, because recovery from that state even with a steady supply of insulin would be extremely "touch-and-go".
Even if it were the case that al-Hasanat could have miraculously recovered with insulin and whatever nutritional supplements were available (which would have to come from healthcare infrastructure which has been deliberately targeted) and then on a continued diet of grains and lentils from GHF food boxes (provided he could access them), you can find plenty of evidence of victims of famine if you want to go and find them. It is completely unsurprising that his case would be confused with the other cases of starvation that are certainly happening.
The "distortion" of someone taking a picture and either failing to mention or not being aware of the complications of diabetes amidst a blockade that includes medical supplies and food is so trivial as to be non-existent. To latch onto one case and present it as propaganda when there is rife evidence of both death by starvation and death by insufficient medical care is itself only done to create confusion and doubt around the issue. The truth matters, but without context can become a lie of omission.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165517 >[O]ne in three people is now going without food for days at a time, the IPC said. Hospitals are also overwhelmed and have treated more than 20,000 children for acute malnutrition since April. At least 16 children under five have died from hunger-related causes since mid-July.
>The alert follows a May 2025 IPC analysis that projected catastrophic levels of food insecurity for the entire population by September. According to the platform’s experts, at least half a million people are expected to be in IPC Phase 5 – catastrophe – which is marked by starvation, destitution and death.
https://archive.is/oDolQ >Dr. al-Farra said the number of children dying of malnutrition had risen sharply in recent days. He described harrowing scenes of people too exhausted to walk. Many of the children he sees have no pre-existing medical conditions, he said, giving the example of Siwar Barbaq, who was born healthy and now, at 11 months old, should weigh about 20 pounds but is under nine pounds.
>The Gaza ministry of health has reported more than 40 hunger-related deaths this month, including 16 children, and 111 since the beginning of the war, 81 of them children. The data could not be independently verified.
Qatar's capital of Doha was being used as a neutral place where a ceasefire could be negotiated. Some leaders of Hamas went there to negotiate, and instead of negotiating, Israel decided to just bomb the Qatari building they were in instead. This is absolutely feral behaviour. I don't think any other country would do something like this. North Korea wouldn't do this. Iran wouldn't do this. America wouldn't; the British Empire might have done it to some flimsy tribe, but they'd have to have covered it up because it's not a story I've ever heard. Russia, to be fair, would probably try it if Zelensky went to Moscow for the negotiations, but I don't think they'd bomb a neutral third country.
Thankfully, the international response seems to be universally condemnatory.
>>42830 The international response to most of the things Israel does is "condemnatory". However, much like those dog owners who have full blown conversations with their pets in an attempt to explain why they should stop barking, it means nothing and the little bastard's still getting belly scratches and treats anyway.
>A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
>A new report says there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out since the start of the war with Hamas in 2023: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.
>It cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence of genocidal intent.
>Israel's foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the report, denouncing it as "distorted and false".
>It accused the three experts on the commission of serving as "Hamas proxies" and relying "entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others" that had "already been thoroughly debunked".
>The commission said its latest report, external was "the strongest and most authoritative UN finding to date" on the war. However, it does not officially speak for the UN.
Perhaps this isn't quite the conclusive ruling I was hoping for, then. But it seems quite big.
So a few countries just recognised Palestine but I'm not seeing it have any effect at all. I don't mean in the sense of it being a symbolic gesture but even on Twitter it's not even being commented on.
The whole laplanderstan-Saudi Arabia 'NATO-like' alliance didn't get any air-time either. Neither did the two building connections with Iran.
>>42860 I'm inclined to think that getting a war criminal to run Gaza is better than both the current situation of it being run by unabummers and the prospect of it being taken over by a coalition of war criminals and unabummers.
He made Benjamin Netanyahu phone Qatar from the White House phone to personally apologise for shooting a missile at Doha to kill the Palestinian peace negotiators. There will be a transitional government headed by Donald Trump and Tony Blair. The Palestinian authority support the deal, and Benjamin Netanyahu supports it with conditions, but it depends on Hamas accepting the deal and they haven't been consulted yet. So Hamas could scupper the deal, in which case Netanyahu says Israel "will finish the job alone". But all in all, this seems like good news.
What are the odds that the deal itself is one Hamas would never accept in a million years, or if they do, the kind that just leaves them likely to kick off again in future.
'[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and
international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the I slamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of I slam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by J ihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.' (Article 13)
'The Day of Judgment will not come about until M oslems fight J ews and kill them. Then, the J ews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O M oslem, there is a J ew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' (Article 7)
To illustrate this, the new Article 7 says:
>7. Palestine is at the heart of the Arab and Islamic Ummah and enjoys a special status. Within Palestine there exists Jerusalem, whose precincts are blessed by Allah. Palestine is the Holy Land, which Allah has blessed for humanity. It is the eskimos’ first Qiblah and the destination of the journey performed at night by Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. It is the location from where he ascended to the upper heavens. It is the birthplace of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. Its soil contains the remains of thousands of Prophets, Companions and Mujahidin. It is the land of people who are determined to defend the truth – within Jerusalem and its surroundings – who are not deterred or intimidated by those who oppose them and by those who betray them, and they will continue their mission until the Promise of Allah is fulfilled.
And the new Article 13 says:
>13. Hamas rejects all attempts to erase the rights of the refugees, including the attempts to settle them outside Palestine and through the projects of the alternative homeland. Compensation to the Palestinian refugees for the harm they have suffered as a consequence of banishing them and occupying their land is an absolute right that goes hand in hand with their right to return. They are to receive compensation upon their return and this does not negate or diminish their right to return.
What about this Mad Manchester Synagogue Stabber then. May as well mention it in here because it was more than likely motivated by the ongoing hostilities.
What kind of draconian new laws do we reckon they'll use this as an excuse to ram through?
>>42867 I got two messages on my phone within five minutes, from people I know who don't live in Manchester, asking if it was near me. When I found out it was nearly 15 miles away, I felt like I'd missed out.
It does feel like an overreaction that Keir Starmer dropped whatever he was doing in Denmark to fly back for a COBRA meeting about it. That's going to fuel some conspiracy theories. It's just a guy doing a terrorism; we get a couple of these a year. Maybe the meeting in Denmark was going to be really boring. Maybe Keir Starmer asked someone to do it so he could duck out of the meeting.
Of course, I suppose the real question is if Kier would have been so quick to leap into having a meeting about it if it was a mental rabbi hatcheting eskimos in Sheffield.
Bloody hell. Sometimes, you just can't buy good PR. I was so impressed that someone rang the police and everything was over ten minutes later, but no, the cops shot one of the victims too.
Trump's ceasefire deal is looking pretty successful so far. Israel have ratified it, and they're saying they are observing it. There are still some problems, almost inevitably, but I haven't seen any reports yet of anything going wrong with the ceasefire at all.
This year, Donald Trump's much-desired Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a Venezuelan woman who opposes the president there. I don't know her full story, but maybe Trump will actually win the next one if this ceasefire holds.
>>42879 I bet he was hoping that they'd get it all signed before this morning so he'd be in with a shout, as if he thought they would somehow decide it on the day, when the name had probably already been in the envelope for at least a couple of weeks.
I read somewhere today that the committee had its final meeting, where they finalised their decision, this Monday. Which Trump must have been well aware of, because it seems like the kind of information that doesn't normally elude a U.S. government, with all its channels of intel. He was probably hoping to wrestle his way in at the last minute. Kudos to the Nobel committee for sticking to its principles.
Time Magazine put it best today, saying in an aricle, "No amount of bullying could buy Trump a prize for peace, an irony lost only on the President."
