WHY ARE WE TOLERATING THIS?!

[purplkat]

It boggles my mind that, given some of the things that have been going on with Gaza, anyone who publically declares themselves to be less than on their knees blowing Israel is, instead, on their knees blowing Osama. If ANY OTHER COUNTRY (well, aside from the US) did the things that Israel has been doing, they would have sanctions coming out all

Comments

[purplkat]

There is enormous, enormous political pressure not to piss of Israel. This is partly because there are a lot of Jewish voters hanging around in the US, as Nickel said below, the Islamic countries won't do shit because Israel's dickishness keeps people with the hating of the Jews, and most other countries either also have a Jewish voting block they don't want to piss off, or else are following the lead of the countries who do, or else really don't have the resources to step in.

That, and everyone's afraid of getting called a Nazi.

[nickel]

It wasn't Israel's dickishness that keeps Islamic countries from providing relief to Palestinians prior to this new cordon.

[purplkat]

Yes it is. Because Israel is dickish, and so there's all this suffering, which gets their people fired up and pissed off. If they started sending actual relief in somehow (and I don't know how they'd do that) or putting non-'Death to Israel' political pressure on Israel to fucking stop it already, the situation would be resolved and there wouldn't be this constant reminder that Israel are being assholes. Without that, subsequent generations would stop caring so much about the whole conflict, and eventually the crazy extremists would lose power as people started saying 'What the fuck is your problem?'

Like the far right in this country, they need to keep finding issues to fire their people up. And, like the right in this country, that means doing stuff OTHER than aid to the poor and other humanitarian things.

[nickel]

Where is the Red Cross? Where are the surrounding Islamic countries? Where is the love for their fellow humans

[purplkat]

The Red Cross are probably trying to get in. I know the UN are trying to get in. The Israelis won't let them. They're literally not letting anyone in, not even the relief agencies

[weaselofjustice]

The "western world" needs an ally in the Middle East. It's basically that simple. Most countries, including (especially) the United States, have a marked tendency to turn a blind eye to systematic human rights violations by their allies when it's politically expedient not to notice them. The political influence wielded by Jewish populations in the US and other western nations also makes a difference

[purplkat]

I agree, if this gets dealt with, it's going to be an EU nation -- probably France or Germany, where the US is pretty unpopular and going against us gives you points.

I don't think Obama's going to do much (despite the fact that I do think that he sees the problem) except maybe try to persuade people to back off behind closed doors, because he's been -very- careful with his political capital so far, spending it in places where he can get maximum results for minimum effort, and politically, the whole Israel thing would be a black hole for that. Especially since his cabinet choices so far indicate that he's going to be focusing on domestic policy.

Egypt has been trying to mediate this whole damn conflict for years. What I think is most likely to happen is that Egypt finally gets some more influential countries to side with them give them the political influence that they need to bring down the hammer.