What’s scariest is that the West has abandoned any pretense of caring about human rights or moving beyond its colonial mindset. We are told that genocide is fine, actually, and that those who commit it are our friends. We are told to just let go and become Nazis. It is in this moment that we must decide whether we are to embrace our humanity and resist this psychopathic vision for our species and take the first steps towards a future in which humanity explores its potential among the stars or whether we simply give up and exist as orcs for as long as our habitat allows before we finally manage to destroy it.
@aral We live in a world in which a person who says "I will always be a friend of [a state actively committing #Genocide]" is not only not arrested, not only not expelled from Parliament and from her political party, but is allowed to hold the second highest political office in a country which considers itself 'civilised'.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25510910.rachel-reeves-says-will-always-friend-israel/
I have no problem with this, BUT, friends don't usually let friends break the law, sometimes even your closest friend has to be told NO, sometimes you HAVE to stop friends doing stuff that is illegal, even if that results in their arrest, it may get them the help they need, if nothing else, for their own good.
A friend is not much of a friend if they stick by you while you commit serious offenses such as rape, murder.
Lets see if Rachael Reeves has the ability to actually understand this and put pressure on Netenyau to either seek peace or step aside so someone else in his country can take israel forward as a civilised nation or cement them in this part of history as complicit in Gencide (UN has used that word).
@aral
You don’t engage in friendship with nazis. You punch nazis. You keep punching nazis until there are no more nazis.
@zleap @simon_brooke
@aral do
The point I was trying to make was if she is a 'friend' she needs to be putting pressure on Israel to start doing the 'right thing' and yes if you have a friend who is demonstrating far right attitudes you, as a friend can put pressure on them to rethink their ideas, and as a friend question / challange them, you would not be a good friend just sitting by and doing nothing.
Same as if a friend gets in a car drunk, would YOU let them drive off knowing they are not fit to drive?
There is a statement somewhere 'Friends don't let Friends use windows' using MS windows is kinda trivial compared to letting friends commit genocide and letting friends be Racist without challenge.
There is a point where you as a friend can just walk away and abandon them, but people don't really like doing that for numerous reasons.
@zleap friends are not telling friends NO. Friends are still selling friends (record anounts of) lethal munitions. Friends are still flying daily reconaissance flights from their RAF base in Cyprus so that they can tell their friends precisely which schools, hospitals or refugee camps to drop those munitions on.
The UK — our #Labour UK government — is not standing on the sidelines saying 'oh, please, friend, don't do that'. It is actively participating — on our behalf — in #GazaGenocide
@zleap MY friend @Nouran's house was hit by one of those munitions yesterday. Many of her family were killed. Was it a British made munition? Was the targetting for that munition provided by a British reconnaisance team? I don't know.
But I do know this. Some families in #Gaza died yesterday from British munitions. Some families in Gaza yesterday died because they were targetted by RAF reconnaisance planes flying in support of the IDF. In our name. On our behalf.
We own this #GazaGenocide.
@simon_brooke I fully agree with you, My choice of words was just poor, but if Reeves and the current westminster lot want to be 'friends' with israel (or netenyahu) then so be it, being friends still means you stop friends doing stuff that is illegal or dangerous, which we are not doing. So therefore the UK is complicit.
We should stand up for what is right, stand up for the people of Gaza, the west band AND the people IN Israel who want to end this, perhaps they need our friendship more than anyone else in their genocidal government, even former israeli PMs have strongly condemed what is going on.
That could be a real test when so called friendship starts to result in UK politicians being summoned to the ICC to face serious charges.
Sympathy to your friends / family. This horror has to stop, I am not sure what Trump has planned but it will result in the deaths of far more people in Gaza.
I think Trump / Netenyahu want Gazans simply out of the way fully (like Hitler wanted the jews out of the way) and that is the end game here.
It was mentioned a while back on here that there was a potential legal case against british companies making and supplying weapons to the IDF. I am British and fully back these legal cases, they are needed, bring those who make the weapons to court, is also probably much easier than trying to bring politicians to justice, in fact you don't need criminal cases, you can probably launch civil cases or even a case via the ECHR against those companues, as they would know full well what their products are being used for.
I just did a quick ddg search and came up with these, but I think others here can find better links.
UK Arms Exports to Israel Under Legal Scrutiny as High Court Hearing Begins
https://dpglaw.co.uk/uk-arms-exports-to-israel-under-legal-scrutiny-as-high-court-hearing-begins/
Also interesting
UK withheld evidence from court in Israel arms export case
https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-withheld-evidence-from-court-in-israel-arms-export-case/
Indeed, so we are not much of a real friend are we, we stood by the USA 100 percent when they illegally invaded iraq in 2003, even though we knew full well what we were doing was not sanctioned by the UN. Blair is married to a barrister so can hardly make excuses as to not understanding the law an international law, Kier is also a former barrister so knows the law, and as we do know the law, makes it much easier to stand up to friends and get them to change what they are doing.
Time will tell over this, WHEN this comes before the ICC and the UK gets implicated as complicit, then we will see a total change of rhetoric to trying to wriggle out of the fact we stood by and did nothing when as friends and allys we should have stood up to them and told them to stop.
@zleap @simon_brooke She is not "friends" with #IsraelTerroristState she is a PARTNER. It's all about the money, power and colonisation (wich will give them lots of money)
Friendship and 💰 are a bad merge.
Well now that war criminal, Tony B Liar is involved, he will rake in the money.
@zleap @simon_brooke I do have a problem with this: if you’re friends with a Nazi, you’re a Nazi.