Yves-François Blanchet said it best: oil and gas is not an identity.

I counted them as refugees because of their stated intent. They are privileged enough that they can use non-humanitarian avenues to do it. First class vs economy…

The story of the Bergs is heartbreaking. I wonder what happened to them.

The “Safe Third Country” agreement will come under stress, I think, when the shit hits the fan.

I don’t know if that town in particular is super big on Maga. Of all the Americans, these are our closest kin.

First off, like @usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca points out, Israel’s actions have been far from helpful to begin with.

Second, let’s be completely honest here, the rockets from Hamas and to an extent the rockets from Hezbollah: they are Israel’s problem. I don’t see why my Greek-Canadian ass needs to be solving the problems created by Israel when it completely killed off the Oslo accords. Israel has all the power here. It’s Israel that has been colonizing and besieging the Palestinians. It’s Israel that has been building illegal settlements on illegally occupied land. It’s Israel that was occupying Souther Lebanon for 20 years, etc. In the last decades, unequivocally, they are the aggressors. When Hamas did the October 7th atrocities, I really don’t get why the Israelis were surprised. Gazans have lived in a city-wide concentration camp for 20 years. Any young adult participating in the October 7th atrocities has never experienced anything else in their whole lives. Is it really surprising that some significant percentage of such a people would resort to this kind of utter atrocity? Norman Finkelstein has made a great parallel with the Nat Turner rebellion in the US, when slaves rebelled and did unspeakable crimes to whites, and the abolitionists at the time were right to just say “well, what the fuck did you expect?”.

Third, fuck yes, it’s easy to say. Israel itself in its own history has shown what it is capable. If instead of prepping terrorist attacks with pagers they had been spending their time doing to Haniyeh what they did to Eichmann, kidnap him, then bring him in Israel and give him a fair trial, I would be applauding them, I would be saluting them. When I say that Israel has gone rabid and needs to be deradicalized, I draw exactly this parallel. The generation of Israelis that were the perpetrators of the 1948 Nakba (so, not a bunch of boy scouts) had the moral spine to put Eichmann on the stand, give him an Israeli lawyer who defended him in good faith, and to give him a fair trial. Those bastards, they did that noble act. These petty criminals of today? Bah!

And fourth, if there is any good journalist out there, they should ask the Jordanian minister what he means by “guarantee”. Would an pan-Arab peacekeeping force be deployed in the hot spots to maintain the terms of the deal? It is almost certain that an independent Palestine would immediately fall into some kind of civil war, just like the newly independent Ireland. Is the minister saying for example that they would be willing to fight that war on behalf of the moderate Palestinians? Don’t ask me, ask him.

Egypt and Jordan have both normalized relations with Israel. They are absolutely not threats.

Syria and Lebanon are failed states. The threats to Israel come from non state actors within them. Such actors can only be truly neutralized by (a) capturing and trying the leadership -rather than making them martyrs by extra judicial killings, and (b) by removing their legitimacy, i.e., by ending Israel’s illegal occupation and colonization of the West Bank, and by letting Gaza breathe. Basically, these non state actors can only be defeated politically at this point.

That said, it is clear that Israel has gone rabid. The rest of the world at this point is more worried about the safety of its neighbours from it. There is no credible actual threat to Israel any more. But there is a credible genocide and ethnic cleansing going on under/by Israeli arms. The Israeli far right (that is part of the government) contains powerful elements that are already planning the colonization of Gaza and Southern Lebanon. Internally, even dissenting Jewish Israelis are facing repercussions for not towing the extreme nationalist line. The settlers are the strongest political force in the country. Etc etc. Israel needs to be deradicalized. There need to be limits placed and there need to be consequences

Ultimately we need nothing less than the complete and blind application of international law. If that is too radical for Americans or Israelis, too bad.