Gaza ceasefire: Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Hamas’s proposed terms
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’s proposed ceasefire terms – saying “total victory” in Gaza is possible within months.
He was speaking after Hamas laid out a series of demands in response to an Israel-backed ceasefire proposal.
Mr Netanyahu said negotiations with the group were “not going anywhere” and described their terms as “bizarre”.
Talks are continuing to try to reach some sort of deal.
Netanyahu has no choice other than escalation and permanent conflict.
That has been his entire political career. Enrage Palestinians into violence and then using disproportionate overwhelming violence to smash the threat he created while appealing to the most damaged and frightened elements of a people still living in the memory shadow of the worst Genocide of the 20th Century.
I argued January last year that all the ingredients for a third intifada were in place after Netanyahu aligned with radical Zionists to form the most extreme right wing Government in Israel’s history.
This toxic Far Right Radical Zionist Government wanted to over rule their Judiciary to allow Zionist Settlers to illegally steal Palestinian land in the West Bank and make the lives of Palestinians prisoners held by Israel even more cruel and draconian.
The Abraham Accords sidelined Hamas and left them with desperate conditions and no hope for the future.
While Hamas has blood on their hands for their butchery on October 7th that murdered 1200, so too does Netanyahu.
Jon Oliver’s Last Week Tonight did a special on Netanyahu and pointed out how many times over his corrupt career in power he had enflamed and enabled Hamas.
From the chants of “In blood and fire we will expel Rabin” that radicalised the assassination of Rabin that Netanyahu had championed, to the huge donations of cash paid to Hamas to fuel inter-Palestinian blood feuds…
Netanyahu “has always been hard right”, Oliver emphasized, “but it’s worth taking a minute to underscore just how extreme his current government is”. In his most recent election, Netanyahu assembled the most rightwing government in Israel’s history, with a cabinet “stocked with extremists”. One top minister has said “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” and advocated for a massive expansion of settlements – seizing Palestinian land – against international law.
And Netanyahu has covertly funded Hamas to play them off their more organized and legitimate rival, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. “Netanyahu took the risk of betting that he could control Hamas, and use them to his own ends, and he was horribly wrong about that,” Oliver explained.
…blame corrupt Netanyahu as much as Hamas for this inhumanity!
The most tormented irony in this latest regurgitation of sadism between Hamas and Israel is of course Israel helped enable Hamas into the force it is now!
BLOWBACK: HOW ISRAEL WENT FROM HELPING CREATE HAMAS TO BOMBING IT
Did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)
“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.
They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.
In the past decade alone, Israel has gone to war with Hamas three times — in 2009, 2012, and 2014 — killing around 2,500 Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the process. Meanwhile, Hamas has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group. This is the human cost of blowback.
…Israeli tactics to fund the most radical and extremist groups to topple enemies is a game the Americans played with Al Qaeda and saw resources going to Osama Bin Laden to play the exact same role with the blowback of 9/11.
The problem with the brutal use of tactics like this is that it generates unforeseen consequences, the CIA term this ‘blowback’..
Hamas is one such unforeseen ‘blowback’.
Peace is our only option because the War Gods are interested only in the profit of blood loss, not the prevention of it.
These were the share prices of the war lords as violence exploded in the Middle East.
To paraphrase Gil Scott Heron, ‘they got folk out there working for war, we have to go to work for peace’.
Beyond the immediate, there has to be space for both of these furiously angry neighbours to bond and find common ground in this parched desert of hate.
Peace Academy’s are a genuine attempt to foster these social oasis.
If NZ wants to champion peace, we need to support the NZ Peace Academy concept with grants to help organise and bring Israelis and Palestinians together to find that common ground.
I am not someone who wants the State of Israel wiped from the face of the earth! I despise Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people, the outrageous 17 year blockade of Gaza and the ongoing theft of land in the West Bank, but I see Israel as a global responsibility and obligation after the obscenity of the Holocaust.
I stand with the Palestinian people AND the Israeli people!
The idea that Jews around the world are now under attack for their State’s deplorable war crimes and group punishments is as irrational as attacking Russians for Putin violence.
Muslims are not our enemy, Jews are not our enemy, Russians aren’t our enemy.
Authoritarian Muslim Regimes propped up by America’s Military Industrial Complex abusing their own faith to exert control over their own people are the enemy!
The far right Zionist Government in Israel is the enemy!
Putin is the enemy!
Hamas is the enemy and so is Netanyahu!
27 840 Palestinians have been killed, 67, 317 wounded, the vast majority are women and children, 1.9million displaced and an entire people traumatised and tortured beyond dignity.
Israel has killed as many civilians in 6 weeks as Russia has in 22 months!
Israel dropped more bombs on Gaza in a week than America did in 1 year of war with Afghanistan.
This isn’t a proportional response, it is an ethnic cleansing war crime that the UN have now ruled against Israel.
The only solution is an immediate ceasefire.
Now!
Meanwhile…
…Warmongers Uncle Winston and Aunty Crusher have instead of using our Independence and Peace diplomacy have decided to sign us up to a pointless American war against the Houthi with counter productive military action that will only empower them!
Pretending there is no connection between the Houthi attacking commercial shipping and the ethnic cleansing war crime that Israel is carrying out is simply bullshit!
We are escalating which is what Netanyahu needs, because the moment there is a ceasefire the Israeli people are going to turn on him and demand justice against his legacy of provocation that ended up dangerously destabilising Israel rather than defending it.
New Zealand should not be helping bomb one of the poorest people in the Middle East.
Where the hell has our moral compass gone?
How could our values dissipate so quickly once a hard right Government gets elected?
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A few facts about the rotten state and accelerating decline of Israel …
2022 was the most deadly year in two decades for Palestinians in the West bank (no Hama’s there)
Israeli violence and murder against Palestinians in the west bank has a conviction rate of approx 3% ( impunity, encouragement and incitement to commit violence/pogroms)
Palestinians can be locked up with no charges under ‘administrative detention’ (over 1000 prisoners) ,,, and those convicted of ‘a crime’ (like waving a flag) receive trials in military courts with ‘conviction rates too good to be true’ — “According to the Israeli government’s own data, a whopping 99.7 percent of cases that went through Israeli military courts in 2010 ended in a conviction.”
Does this sound like a democracy? ,,, or more like Nazi Germany? ….. Getting rid of Germanys Nazi ideology did not mean exterminating all the Germans ,,, Zionists like to claim/pretend reforming Israel is a call to exterminate Jewish Israelis.
Some other points — “Israel dropped more bombs on Gaza in a week than America did in 1 year of war with Afghanistan.” — Since Israel commence it’s ethnic cleansing/Genocide against Gaza civilians the Usa has supplied/flown in around 250 Cargo planes of weapons/bombs along with 20 container ships full of them ,,, So more USA bombs are dropped in one week upon Gaza than America did in 1 year of war with Afghanistan. ,,, . Using the stated Biden/Usa logic of blaming Iran because their weapons were used to attack an American base,,,,then this is an admission it is the Usa (along with help from the UK,Germany etc) who are attacking and directly participating in the ethnic cleansing/genocide of Gaza.
Our politicians who want to help Israel continue it’s war crimes (by attacking Yemen) show a particularly nasty streak about them ,,, they are fine with being murderously ruthless to those they consider unworthy victims ,,, this mentality shows what a threat they are to New Zealand, because there will be many here who they also consider unworthy,,, where do they draw the line?, because it’s not with the way Israel behaves.
I’m going to read this thoughtful and impassioned post after I have had a sustaining lunch because ….it is so draining to think the thoughts I have. The quotes of thoughtful people from the past have not been absorbed and so have not changed things for the better. It shows in the decline in morality and the descent from enlightenment we are shocked in ourselves when we become aware, and despairing to view in those in PoP (positions of power). Eternal truth No. 1? – ‘Power tends to corrupt; absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.’ Important to put in the ‘tends’ as the hardened will argue against posits on feeble points so they can ignore the whole unsatisfactory truth.
Another saying ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party’ a case for a utilitarian phrase for a typing class to enter users’ minds by repetition. Has it?
Also **Remember Rachel.**
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rachel-corrie-activist-crushed-israel-bulldozer
Going to the general about war – General Age, Try a different perspective to break this bubble of necessity and serenity, about war amongst, particularly, those considered too old to fight. Notice how many grey haired, if not dyed like Trump, cranky old men there are at the top. Even younger pollies wouldn’t solve the war(ts) problem of being too ready to shoot from the hip (or the desktop these days) so make it obligatory that it is servicemen on the War Cabinet that have done a tour of duty and been wounded. Worth a try!
I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George McGovern
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_mcgovern_101220
http://wesclark.com/jw/old_men.html
They’ve got the whole thing backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join until you’re at least 35.
But, I’m over 50 now and the Armed Forces say I’m too old to track down terrorists. You can’t be older than 35 to join the military.
Researchers say 18-year- olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy. (Inserting a bit of humour here. Ok?)
Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. If we can’t kill the enemy, we’ll complain them into submission. “My back hurts!” “I’m hungry!” “Where’s the remote control?” (Inserting painful facts here.)
If you want a different perspective to your typical western-centric viewpoint Grey try this: https://medium.economist.com/big-love-and-big-war-exploring-the-link-between-polygamy-and-violence-67306fb3c41b. P.S. Wasn’t it Helen Clark that sent our troops off to Afghanistan?
Hamas is being decimated and Palestinians are more and more speaking out against them, however if Hamas could surrender or be toppled from power it would be over quick smart.
So no comment on the arsehole Netanyahu?
Any and every Israeli leader would have done the same.
Which bit? The corruption? The unhinged response? The pretending to want the hostages back but not really?
Countering jihad.
“Decimated” Israeli/zionist style means 1 cin 10 or less of the people they kill in their collective punishment campaign ( another Israel war crime) will be a al qassam fighters.
Hamas are the excuse for Israeli to engage in barbarism and terrorism for the purpose of ethnic cleansing ,,, and failing that outright genocide…. Leave or Die are the Israel options towards Palestinians.
The proof is in their words and actions https://youtu.be/Am1GNTHGQMM?t=69
Winston, Judith, let me ask you one question…
https://youtu.be/9ki-jd2P8cU?feature=shared
Benjamin Netanyahu has been a force to be reckoned with in Israel military and politics.
Has he been in combat and been injured? He has been wounded in combat multiple times, and been shot in the shoulder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu
In between various sorties to advance Israel’s position, he would return to the United States and study, and seems to have been in a very favourable position in his mobility and choices, and made useful contacts and relationships there.
4 November 1995 Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
…at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo agreements held in the center of Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated. The murderer, Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish radical, was a law student at the Bar-Ilan University…
Main articles: Jaffa Road bus bombings and Dizengoff Center suicide bombing
(Israeli sensitivity and vulnerability would be high and exacerbated by Palestinian terror campaign between February–March 1996. People abstained from voting, or decisions made on reason were affected by emotions raised from violence in and around Israel.)
CAMPAIGN
After taking over from Yitzhak Rabin following his assassination [Shimon] Peres decided to call early elections in order to give the government a mandate to advance the peace process…
Netanyahu’s campaign was helped by Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick, who donated over $1 million to Likud.
Nevertheless, Labour and Peres were comfortably ahead in the polls early in 1996, holding a lead of 20%.
However, the country was hit by a spate of suicide attacks by Hamas including the Jerusalem bus 18 massacres and other attacks in Ashkelon and the Dizengoff Center, which killed 59 people and severely damaged Peres’ election chances.[9] Polls taken in mid-May showed Peres ahead by just 4-6%, whilst two days before the election his lead was down to 2%.
Several leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis, including Elazar Shach, called on their followers to vote for Netanyahu,[12] whilst Leah Rabin, Yitzhak’s widow, called on Israelis to vote for Peres so that her husband’s death “would not be in vain.”[13] Netanyahu also warned that a Peres victory would lead to the division of Jerusalem in a final peace deal with the Palestinians.
Despite the national trauma which the assassination of Rabin caused, and although many blamed at the time the leaders of Israeli political right for the incitement that preceded the assassination, due to the series of suicide bombings carried out in Israel, and due to the failed military operation “Grapes of Wrath” conducted in Lebanon that caused many casualties among Lebanese civilians, a significant change occurred in the position of the Israeli voters which resulted eventually in 50.5% percent of voters supporting Netanyahu on election day.
A significant number of Israeli Arabs boycotted the elections amidst rising Lebanese casualties, which became an advantage for Netanyahu as the vast majority of Arabs would have supported Peres but declined to vote. In addition, the intensive campaign conducted by Netanyahu versus the failed campaign of Shimon Peres, as well as the support Netanyahu got at the last moment from the Chabad movement, were all in Netanyahu’s favor.
Netanyahu became the first Israeli President by popular vote from an election on 29 May 1996.
The voting went this way –
Benjamin Netanyahu – Likud Party 1,501,023 Percentage 50.50%
Shimon Peres – Labour Party 1,471,566 Percentage 49.50%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Israeli_general_election
One gets the feel that Hamas shot itself in the foot and other places! Both sides seem unstable and with hotheads arising within each side, achieving a lasting peace would require superior determination and constant interaction between leaders of each side to calm affairs after violations rather than retaliation. Impossible one would say!
The voting was so close! This underlines heavily the great problem of adopting the democratic election system on sentiment and positive beliefs without the safeguard of a definite majority that gave a clear indication from a sizable majority.
Democracy has traps such as this displays – that of introducing the idea of a majority vote as sacrosanct without thinking of the wisdom of not settling just for a simple majority. Political decisions are never simple! It would be wise to insist on showing a definite mindset of at least 60/40 percent.
By having a simple majority Israel gave this guy a chance to make his way into a leading political position and he has locked the country into a driven negative state. Same with
the UK over Brexit which has destabilised that country and made it more vulnerable because of its lean to the United States of America which has its own problems with federal powers and dominant nation powers. And its ties to Israel’s intransigent policies send tremors through the whole chain of relationships and weaken the world’s stability, already fragile.
It’s not as if wars, intifadas and suicide bombings didn’t occur under left-wing Israeli leaders is it. Oct. 7 was years in the making and would have occurred whoever was in power at the time.
Politics shouldn’t be played out on a fine edge – so easy to topple down and hurt ourselves! If a close conclusion occurs, another election should be held with a clear restatement of national problems and hopes, and what the political competitors have to say about sensibly dealing to them. We go forward in a mist of anodyne promises, white teeth, firm chins, good suits, declarations of being passionate about this or that. Nothing to do with good considered decision making for best outcomes possible.
Politics shouldn’t be played out on a fine edge – so easy to topple down and hurt ourselves! If a close conclusion occurs, another election should be held with a clear restatement of national problems and hopes, and what the political competitors have to say about sensibly dealing to them. We go forward in a mist of anodyne promises, white teeth, firm chins, good suits, declarations of being passionate about this or that. Nothing to do with good considered decision making for best outcomes possible.
Netanyahu needs perpetual conflict and by joining America’s Red Sea War, NZ is empowering that
By Martyn Bradbury -February 9, 2024
If the above wasn’t bad enough, by cutting off our aid to Gaza and starving the Palestinians to death, we are helping Netanyahu commit genocide.
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/2/7/millions-at-risk-of-starving-in-gaza-as-israelis-prevent-aid-deliveries
Despite all the points raised about how incredibly dodgy the Israelis are, the likes of Gaby, Anne E etc will just trot out the old ‘but the holocaust’ line.
Well now, that depends which Holocaust you’re referring to doesn’t it. This little Jew hater clearly is inciting a future one. He obviously didn’t get your ‘it’s not anti-semitism, it’s anti-Zionism’ message. https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/01/you-wont-believe-what-this-wisconsin-imam-preached-on-second-thought-you-probably-will
Even Wikipedia is against Ann E’s garbage source of information ,,, it’s that bad.
“Jihad Watch is an American far-right[4] anti-Muslim[10] conspiracy blog operated by Robert Spencer.[6][11][12][13] A project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch is the most popular blog within the counter-jihad movement.[14] ”
“The website was cited 64 times by Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, ” … who was Brendon Tarrents Hero,- ‘ In his 74-page manifesto he posted before his rampage, he praises the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik and draws on his work’ ….
Ann E’s an extremist who spreads hate to justify Israel acting like Nazis ,,,, she probably thinks Tarrant was ‘protecting’ us and had the defense for his mass murder of ‘self defense’.
The source of information is Imam Alhagie Jallow’s address at at the Madinah Community Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
I could not give a rats arse as to whether it’s anti semitism ( a completely stupid misuse of the word Semite) or anti Zionism. The fact remains Netanyahu is bent and the IDF are being completely negligent on purpose ( either that or they couldn’t hit the side of a barn).
Then clearly you are a hypocritical little weasel who has no regard for the right of Jews around the world to live their lives free of the discrimination, intimidation, hatred and violence which they suffer as a result of some people’s perception and interpretation of the Israeli govt’s policies.
You’re a bit all other the place. Israel from the start was a piss into a strong wind — uric. A full-on assault. I just can’t see wolves turning into sheep. Let the innocent Palestinians go home and the Israelis come to our countries. Antelope can’t make peace with lions. Let them talk shit about Arabs in NZ. Like our white South Africans about Blacks.
If America can enforce 2 states, good for everyone. If the US can get over their voter groups. It’s just very difficult to think possible, given 120 years of verbal and physical violence towards the natives of Palestine.
If the last social democrat, Norman Kirk, was still in power, it wouldn’t need sending a warship, just a nominal declaration of war and the whole ice-pack supporting Israel would break up. A gesture like that from a country would explode the nonsense and a child in Gaza would be saved.
No holocaust before my eyes.
Islamists and jihadists are the enemy of all freedom-loving people everywhere. Why are they excluded from your list of nasties?