Israel - Hamas Gaza Conflict Oct-2023

Trial By Fire

Trial By Fire

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Sikhbrah said:
I would argue the Irish (similar to South Africans) do have some legitimacy in being disgruntled at how history has treated them.

Irish equivalency with Palestinians don’t exist though - because I don’t see the Irish wanting to wipe out the state of Britain and it’s people to establish a religious/radical state.

Saying that - a point that requires legitimate discussion is where does one draw the line between freedom fighter and terrorist?
Click to expand...
The original IRA were indeed heroes fighting for their rights and sovereignty. The Provisional IRA which came later around the 60s was a borderline terrorist organization that, while they might have the same aims as their predecessor, indiscriminately bombed and killed Irish civilians as well. In fact, the overall stats show that the Provos IRA killed far more civilians than British soldiers during the period of the Troubles.

1700542175780.png


These are Para-military style marchers at the Belfast funeral, 23rd November 1974, of James McDade, 26 years, married, 1 child, Roman Catholic, lieutenant, Provisional IRA, Birmingham, England, who died when bomb he was planting at a telephone exchange / sorting office in Coventry exploded prematurely.

Look how they're all teenagers or in their 20s too, they were boomers and the result of high Catholic birth rates who had never left Ulster, probably never even been to the Republic either. It's comparable to Gaza and "Palestinians" in that they were all youths who hadn't seen anything of the world or even what they were fighting for (Ireland) or against (England). The IRA was also well to the left of the political spectrum, so they were cucked from the start. The slippery slope got validated again when you look now at the New IRA who are flat-out anti-sectarian communists who welcome the foreigners because they're poor oppressed minorities. It's literally become:

OHHHH....

COME OUT YOU BLACK AND TANS
COME OUT AND FUCK MY IRISH ASS
OUR BORDERS ARE OPEN
AND WE WANT ISLAAAAAM

TELL EM HOW THE IRA
GAVE YOU IRISH GIRLS TO RAPE
ON THE GREEN AND LOVELY LANES
OF KILLASHAAAANDRAAAA!!!

As for the question about how to distinguish between terrorists and freedom fighters, it's a good one. I remember reading a great book called Nada by a French author, which precisely captured both the pointless nastiness and the sinister grandiosity of some of the movements of violence that disfigured that decade. The Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Japan—all gave themselves permission to kill, but without any announced goal or objective beyond more of the same.

There were other groups in the same epoch, such as the Basque ETA or the Palestinian “Black September,” which used unscrupulous and hateful tactics but whose aims could be understood. In the book, however, there was an earlier usage for promiscuous cruelty—nihilism. Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

I may as well get the obvious out of the way. In London and Belfast during the same period, civilians were more than once within blast or shot-range of the IRA and came to understand that the word “indiscriminate” meant that they were as likely to be killed as any other bystander. Car bombs would explode outside the High Court in London, and innocent friends of people would be taken hostage by Provisional IRA gangsters. However, at no point does it mean that the British policy in Ireland was stupid and doomed and—much more important—open to change.

The same holds, in different degrees, for Zimbabwe and for the Palestinians. It’s glib and evasive to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” because the “freedom fighters” are usually quite willing to kill their “own” civilians as well. But then, so are states. I hate and despise Hezbollah and "Palestinian" suicide-murderers, as they ought to be called, but they’d have to work day and night for years to equal the total of civilians killed in Lebanon alone, or even by Ariel Sharon alone.

Lebanese and Palestinian irregulars are, by the way, entitled by international law (not that that vapid, empty concept means anything to me, but it is there) to resist foreign occupation that has been internationally condemned. Fact. So even when people say that “there is no good terrorism and bad terrorism,” we suggests a tautology that operates at one's own expense.

All parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods. But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing is—which would mean we had lost an important word of condemnation.

This doesn’t mean that we are stuck with some dismal moral equivalence. The IRA or the Al Aqsa Brigades can be reminded, as can states and governments, that some actions or courses of action (bombs detonated without warning in civilian areas; kidnapping; rape) are crimes under every known law. And the evidence is that such awareness, along with some of its moral implications, does become available to them. (The same thought can also be instilled by other less pedagogic means.)

Then of course, you should try and imagine Nelson Mandela or Salvador Allende—leaders of peoples who really did have a beef with the “empire”—ordering their supporters to crash civilian planes into civilian buildings. Excuse me if I say no more, though Mandela was in fact on a Defense Department “terrorism” list as late as the early-1980s.

Take the case of al-Qaida. Its supporters do not live under a foreign occupation, even if you count the apparently useless and now embarrassing American bases in Saudi Arabia. It is partly a corrupt multinational corporation, partly a crime family, partly a surrogate for the Saudi oligarchy and the Pakistani secret police, partly a sectarian religious cult, and partly a fascist organization. Its taped proclamations, whether uttered by its leader or not, prove its status as a death cult, for example when it denounced Australia and celebrated the murder of Australians—for the crime of assisting East Timorese independence from “Muslim” Indonesia.

And this doesn’t begin to make the case against Islamism and Jihad. What does it demand from non-Muslim societies? It demands that they acknowledge their loathsome blasphemy and realize their own fitness for destruction. What does it demand for Muslim societies? It demands that they adopt 17th-century norms of clerical absolutism. How does it demand this? By a program of indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population of both. (Yes, both: The Afghan population was reduced by as many Hazara Shiites as the Taliban could manage to kill.) This is to demand the impossible, and to demand it by means of the most ruthless and disgusting tactics.

Enfolded in any definition of “terrorism,” it seems to me, there should be a clear finding of fundamental irrationality. Islamic Jihad meets and exceeds all of these criteria, to a degree that leaves previous nihilist groups way behind. Its means, its ends, and its ideology all consist of the application of fanatical violence and violent fanaticism, and of no other things. It’s “terrorist,” all right.

What this means in practice is the corollary impossibility of any compromise with it. Because one has seen many previously “intransigent” forces of undemocratic violence, including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran death-squads and the Irgun, make precisely that transition. Even Saddam Hussein, who became irrational but was not always completely so, could perhaps, and certainly until the end, have decided to save his life and his regime.

But some definitions cannot be stretched beyond a certain point, and the death wish of the Abrahamics, for themselves and others, is too impressive to overlook. One has to say sternly: If you wish martyrdom, we are here to help—within reason.
 
Sanglamorre

Sanglamorre

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Trial By Fire said:
The original IRA were indeed heroes fighting for their rights and sovereignty. The Provisional IRA which came later around the 60s was a borderline terrorist organization that, while they might have the same aims as their predecessor, indiscriminately bombed and killed Irish civilians as well. In fact, the overall stats show that the Provos IRA killed far more civilians than British soldiers during the period of the Troubles.

View attachment 229661

These are Para-military style marchers at the Belfast funeral, 23rd November 1974, of James McDade, 26 years, married, 1 child, Roman Catholic, lieutenant, Provisional IRA, Birmingham, England, who died when bomb he was planting at a telephone exchange / sorting office in Coventry exploded prematurely.

Look how they're all teenagers or in their 20s too, they were boomers and the result of high Catholic birth rates who had never left Ulster, probably never even been to the Republic either. It's comparable to Gaza and "Palestinians" in that they were all youths who hadn't seen anything of the world or even what they were fighting for (Ireland) or against (England). The IRA was also well to the left of the political spectrum, so they were cucked from the start. The slippery slope got validated again when you look now at the New IRA who are flat-out anti-sectarian communists who welcome the foreigners because they're poor oppressed minorities. It's literally become:

OHHHH....

COME OUT YOU BLACK AND TANS
COME OUT AND FUCK MY IRISH ASS
OUR BORDERS ARE OPEN
AND WE WANT ISLAAAAAM

TELL EM HOW THE IRA
GAVE YOU IRISH GIRLS TO RAPE
ON THE GREEN AND LOVELY LANES
OF KILLASHAAAANDRAAAA!!!

As for the question about how to distinguish between terrorists and freedom fighters, it's a good one. I remember reading a great book called Nada by a French author, which precisely captured both the pointless nastiness and the sinister grandiosity of some of the movements of violence that disfigured that decade. The Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Japan—all gave themselves permission to kill, but without any announced goal or objective beyond more of the same.

There were other groups in the same epoch, such as the Basque ETA or the Palestinian “Black September,” which used unscrupulous and hateful tactics but whose aims could be understood. In the book, however, there was an earlier usage for promiscuous cruelty—nihilism. Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

I may as well get the obvious out of the way. In London and Belfast during the same period, civilians were more than once within blast or shot-range of the IRA and came to understand that the word “indiscriminate” meant that they were as likely to be killed as any other bystander. Car bombs would explode outside the High Court in London, and innocent friends of people would be taken hostage by Provisional IRA gangsters. However, at no point does it mean that the British policy in Ireland was stupid and doomed and—much more important—open to change.

The same holds, in different degrees, for Zimbabwe and for the Palestinians. It’s glib and evasive to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” because the “freedom fighters” are usually quite willing to kill their “own” civilians as well. But then, so are states. I hate and despise Hezbollah and "Palestinian" suicide-murderers, as they ought to be called, but they’d have to work day and night for years to equal the total of civilians killed in Lebanon alone, or even by Ariel Sharon alone.

Lebanese and Palestinian irregulars are, by the way, entitled by international law (not that that vapid, empty concept means anything to me, but it is there) to resist foreign occupation that has been internationally condemned. Fact. So even when people say that “there is no good terrorism and bad terrorism,” we suggests a tautology that operates at one's own expense.

All parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods. But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing is—which would mean we had lost an important word of condemnation.

This doesn’t mean that we are stuck with some dismal moral equivalence. The IRA or the Al Aqsa Brigades can be reminded, as can states and governments, that some actions or courses of action (bombs detonated without warning in civilian areas; kidnapping; rape) are crimes under every known law. And the evidence is that such awareness, along with some of its moral implications, does become available to them. (The same thought can also be instilled by other less pedagogic means.)

Then of course, you should try and imagine Nelson Mandela or Salvador Allende—leaders of peoples who really did have a beef with the “empire”—ordering their supporters to crash civilian planes into civilian buildings. Excuse me if I say no more, though Mandela was in fact on a Defense Department “terrorism” list as late as the early-1980s.

Take the case of al-Qaida. Its supporters do not live under a foreign occupation, even if you count the apparently useless and now embarrassing American bases in Saudi Arabia. It is partly a corrupt multinational corporation, partly a crime family, partly a surrogate for the Saudi oligarchy and the Pakistani secret police, partly a sectarian religious cult, and partly a fascist organization. Its taped proclamations, whether uttered by its leader or not, prove its status as a death cult, for example when it denounced Australia and celebrated the murder of Australians—for the crime of assisting East Timorese independence from “Muslim” Indonesia.

And this doesn’t begin to make the case against Islamism and Jihad. What does it demand from non-Muslim societies? It demands that they acknowledge their loathsome blasphemy and realize their own fitness for destruction. What does it demand for Muslim societies? It demands that they adopt 17th-century norms of clerical absolutism. How does it demand this? By a program of indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population of both. (Yes, both: The Afghan population was reduced by as many Hazara Shiites as the Taliban could manage to kill.) This is to demand the impossible, and to demand it by means of the most ruthless and disgusting tactics.

Enfolded in any definition of “terrorism,” it seems to me, there should be a clear finding of fundamental irrationality. Islamic Jihad meets and exceeds all of these criteria, to a degree that leaves previous nihilist groups way behind. Its means, its ends, and its ideology all consist of the application of fanatical violence and violent fanaticism, and of no other things. It’s “terrorist,” all right.

What this means in practice is the corollary impossibility of any compromise with it. Because one has seen many previously “intransigent” forces of undemocratic violence, including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran death-squads and the Irgun, make precisely that transition. Even Saddam Hussein, who became irrational but was not always completely so, could perhaps, and certainly until the end, have decided to save his life and his regime.

But some definitions cannot be stretched beyond a certain point, and the death wish of the Abrahamics, for themselves and others, is too impressive to overlook. One has to say sternly: If you wish martyrdom, we are here to help—within reason.
Click to expand...
Extremely well written post
 
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Hari Sud

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HAMAS Type of attack at LOC

Previously the tactic of countries like Pakistan was to undermine Indian defences by infiltrating dedicated fighters with guns and bombs and create a mayhem in the unsuspecting civil society. They were very successful in it. Not until the Urhi attack that India decided to hit back in kind and killed the fighters in their den. Since then, lesser attacks of that kind have happened other than Pulwama where India retaliated by air with huge success of demolishing training camps. Pakistan now is well advised not to attempt similar attacks.

HAMAS attack on Israel opened a new tactic. That is mass attack with 2000 fighters, with intent to kill civilians and then disappear underground. This tactic is highly successful if there is huge civilian population next door. It succeeded against Israel on October 7th.

Can it succeed against India?

At Hills and valleys of LOC, it is not possible. There is not a big civilian population around LOC. Moreover, nearest LOC population is Muslim Kashmiris, which the attackers are unlikely to kill.

Yes, they can do it in Jammu area. A bulk of population in the area is Hindu there. A sudden attack and quick retreat is possible. That was HAMAS tactic. Also, it is possible to do it along the international border except the attackers will be bogged down in the wheat/sugarcane/maize fields and then they will be open to capture or killed. No underground tunnels can be built to come out and retreat.

Hence, we can imagine a HAMAS type of attack on India but logistics do not permit its success.
 
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