Israel

I'm not sure why where I was educated matters in relation to my opinions on here tbh. I recall most, if not all my lessons called for critical thinking, showing of workings out, statements of hypothesis. And I don't recall any obvious bias or attempts at social engineering from any of my teachers.

 

This will make you laugh. My brother in law, a Holmewood native, left school with knack all (found later he was offered a scholarship at Woodhouse grove but that's another story). But after a chequered career culminating in graduating from Durham University (where my lad currently is, yes i'm very a very proud dad) he now teaches at a grammar school in Buckinghamshire and makes a killing private tutoring kids to get them into grammar schools. Now he understands how the world works he tells me he wouldn't vote labour if you paid him.

 

I reckon we'd get on.

You can't put too much emphasis on academic achievements in my opinion. My boss, a CEO, left school with zero qualifications. I'm educated to GCSE level only. Of the 5 people in the Executive Team of the business I work for, only 1 has a University degree. Some of the most impressive and successful people in life will have little in the way of impressive academic achievement. And to be honest, given the state Universities are chucking young adults out in at the end of their tenure, you're better off setting fire to your money.

 

Oh you'd get on mate, he's.one of the best people I've ever met. They have quite a few prem academy players go through the school, he bagged his way onto a school football tour of the states a few years back, they actually got to the final in front of thousands. Proper chick magnet as well.

 

I asked as my daughter is an upper school teacher and a lot of her training was around critical thinking and how to get the kids to think outside the box. Whether they do that is another issue all together. Just adding some balance here.

 

Fair enough, and I don't doubt that many (or at least some) teachers genuinely care about educating children in their care in way that sets them up as free, and critical thinking individuals.

 

Excellent series of explainer articles about various aspects of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Very balanced and helpful. I particularly liked the ones on the roots ofthe conflict and the overview of Hamas.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/03/israel-and-palestine-a-complete-guide-to-the-crisis

 

Very good article (written by a Jewish journalist) that absolutely nails the horrendous nature of Hamas, but also the appalling corruption, incompetence and ideological extremism of the Israeli government.

No kind of peaceful solution is possible with either Hamas or Netanyahu and his extremist allies in place.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/17/hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-ceasefire?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Unfortunately, Corbyn has been vilified by the right wing press for years for raising these issues.

 

Very little response to this article, I see. Nobody much interested in reading balanced analysis which looks at the violent extremism on both sides that prevents any progress towards a lasting peace.

 

But remember, the left are compromised on this issue and have to find a reason to defile Israel and to put some blame on them.....

 

Ha ha ha ha ha!
You really are completely one-eyed aren’t you?

Relative peace? Not if you are a West Bank Palestinian being constantly harassed or driven out of your home by militant extremist Jewish settlers. These people (backed by extremist government ministers) want to wipe Palestinian territory off the face of the map, just like Hamas want to do to Israel. Other extremist ministers have explicitly stated that they want to completely destroy Gaza, expell all its citizens and annex it into Israel.

And did you know that Netanyahu deliberately encouraged the rise of Hamas? He persuaded Qatar to pump billions of dollars into Hamas (despite its Islamist opposition to Israel’s very existence) in order to divide the Palestinian opposition movement in Gaza from the PLO in the West Bank:

“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”

Netanyahu completely misread the room. He screwed up monumentally. He transferred the vast bulk of Israel’s military to support the illegal settlers and harass West Bank Palestinians whilst completely failing to monitor the growing threat from Hamas that his policy helped to create. He deserted the protection of Jews in Israel proper in favour of illegal expansionism.

Nothing excuses the utterly horrific brutality of what Hamas did on 7th October. It was completely beyond the pale. But the reasons why that attack happened, and the conditions that allowed Hamas to so easily breach the defences of one of the worlds most heavily armed states, are down to Netanyahu’s incompetent and extremist government. There was no ‘relative peace’ at all - just a pause in the action while Israel’s monumental stupidity allowed Hamas the time and money to gather its forces.

 

For those actually interested in understanding more of the extremism on both sides and the complexities of the situation, this excellent long article (written by a Jewish journalist) is eye-opening.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-doctrine-how-israels-longest-serving-leader-reshaped-the-country-in-his-image?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Read the article, and the other one I’ve just posted, and then come back and say that Israel shares no blame for creating the conditions for the 7th October massacre. Read this slowly - Israel actually deliberately promoted the rise of Hamas and persuaded Qatar to fund Hamas, FFS!!!

Of course you won’t. Because it’s much more comfortable seeing the world entirely from your simplistic, one-eyed view.

 

Good read that

 

Just to play devil's advocate, every single link you post is from the guardian so you're definitely not going to persuade everyone that they are balanced articles in the same way that you'd completely dismiss any links from a Daily Mail article.

I'll have a read through both though as I enjoyed the first one you posted, it was very informative and not nearly as "leftist" as I feared it would be.

 

I’d happily post articles from different sources but
a) the likes of the Daily Mail don’t tend to do the in depth analytical articles that you get in the Grauniad, and
b) the Times, Telegraph, Independent etc (ie the other ‘proper’ papers) and most of the monthly mags like the New Statesman and Spectator are all behind paywalls, so even if I paid to access them (which I don’t) there would be no point in pasting links because others couldn’t read them.

You may or may not choose to believe this, but I’m pretty careful about which articles/journalists I link on here. What most of the right wing knee jerkers on here don’t realise is that there is a wide range of journalistic opinion in the Graun, from out and out lefties like Owen Jones, to people like Simon Jenkins and Jonathan Freedland, who are much more middle of the road. Don’t forget that several Guardian journalists (eg Polly Toynbee) have supported the Lib Dems ahead of Labour in the not too distant past.

Everything I’ve posted on this and the Demonstration threads has been from the moderate centre - usually written by Jewish journalists. Eg, the ‘long read’ article above is written by an American Jew. None of this is done to support Hamas or what they did on 7th October - I’m as appalled as anyone by the despicable massacre, torture and abduction of innocent Israelis, as I’ve made crystal clear numerous times. I’m simply trying to provide some balance to the ‘Israel good, Palestine/Islam bad’ mindset on here.

Id happily read considered articles from more right wing sources and be prepared to debate the points they make. I may not agree with them but I would at least read them properly rather than making simplistic uninformed kiss-off responses like the right wingers (who laughably believe they are moderates) do on here. But nobody posts any such articles. I take this to mean that they don’t read serious papers or journals, aren’t in the slightest bit interested in reading anything in depth and are happy to get their entrenched views from GB News or the populist comics. To your credit, you are always prepared to read, debate and not just dismiss out of hand.

Since 7th October I have actually shifted my view quite significantly. The horror of that attack has made me more sympathetic than I was to the Israeli fears for their existence. Although I think the blanket destruction of lives and infrastructure in Gaza is excessive, I can understand why they want to root out Hamas for good, even though I think that strategy is doomed to failure. But I also think it’s important to flag up the hypocrisy in the current Israeli onslaught in Gaza by pointing out that Netanyahu’s Israel deliberately encouraged the growth and financing of Hamas in order to drive a wedge between Palestinians in Gaza and those in the West Bank and they then compounded the felony by shifting most of their military muscle to the West Bank, leaving the kibbuzniks defenceless. So they have actively sown and nurtured the seeds of their own misery.

 

Eh.

All that is, is a very long slagging off of the Israeli PM.

That's the first article of yours that I decided to read, in the slight hope that what you preach is true and that there is some neutrality in the Guardian's writing.

Couldn't be further than the truth. If these are what you call neutral write ups then you are seriously, seriously deluded. It might be an idea to try broaden your horizons beyond the self-admitted left-only circles you associate with because clearly the only person with one-eyed vision is you and not @Idlebantam and I mean that respectfully.