Assuming US gallons, $8/US gallon works out as £1.60/litre. That sounds about right for current UK prices, depending on what and where you're buying it. (Yes, fuel is expensive here compared to the US; that's largely down to fuel duty and taxes.)
I'd say being an apartheid state and conducting a live-streamed genocide could possibly be a minor issue. Just a PR issue mind, Lord knows we've given up on our souls long ago.
For what it's worth, I think the American activists on this issue bungled the messaging to disastrous effect (in the same way we bungled criminal-justice reform). It's a saturated issue with low political salience outside a specific (and increasingly constrained) demographic.
A win in Iran will be a short-term boost, in America and in Israel. Then we'll go back to being pissed about rising prices.
When it comes to Israel, polling was always lower in younger populations, although yes - the trend worsened.
Israel chose to trade popularity for having real geopolitical gains on the ground. Popularity could be won back later, but removing the Iranian ring of fire around it is a real and tangible achievement that would last decades and change the Middle East.
> No. Any other questions, or do you want to just continue feigning interest in having an actual conversation?
This is an actual question. It seems to me that you only care about Arabs dying. Jews can die left and right in the hands of Arabs and you won’t blink an eye. Am I correct?
I just want to clarify it for others who reads your comments to see.
Not really sure what to say here. Maybe it’s a lack of empathy or imagination because the victims are Palestinians?
Perhaps a good thought experiment would be to swap out Israel and Palestine with some other similar (real or fictional) conflict to help you think through your apparent confusion.
About a third of American Jews now agree that Israel is an apartheid state and committing genocide against Palestinians.
It remains to be seen what impact this will have, but it will certainly impact the ability for everyone to claim that criticism of Israel and sympathy for Palestinians is motivated by antisemitism.
The democrats lost the last election in part because of their stance on Israel.
With a bit of luck this could lead to a shift in policy within a generation.
American "activists" (didn't know being anti-genocide was a fringe belief but here we are) clearly won the narrative. Most Americans now oppose what Israel is doing in Gaza and want all support to this country to stop ASAP. This support for Israel cost Harris the election, as shown in their latest post-mortem of the 2024 election, and is making Trump and his administration ever more unpopular.
Killing kids on camera, burning people in hospitals alive, running them over in bulldozers is pretty much genocide. You can easily find these videos on internet (I don't recommend watching them even if you watch cartel beheadings for fun)
No, these things do not constitute a genocide. Genocide is the purposeful extermination of a people. What you’re describing are other alleged war crimes. While it’s a catchy and horrifying word that’s very useful against Israel, it’s dishonest to use it in this case.
All the things you described are indeed horrifying on their own, and I believe there are cases where Israeli forces did some of these things unjustifiably.
You must be asking yourself what the hell could be justified. Well, I’ve heard first accounts of kids being sent first as scouts in the battlefield, into a kill box, trying to pinpoint Israeli forces. Once the scout goes back and reports on the force’s location, an accurate barrage of RPGs will be shot at them. You can’t go into the kill box to stop them by arresting them. What would you have done? I do not envy the person that has to make that call, they are now scarred for life.
Justified? No? You pick between the life of that kid and the lives of the people under your command. Both choices are bad, this isn’t Hollywood.
Most of what you watch is edited purposefully and doesn’t give you any context for the purpose of recruiting the public opinion. It’s working amazingly.
These populists, so called leaders, don't represent everyone and are hated by many. In war everyone loses, and you seem to ignore the fact that there are two sides here. Normative people don't wake up in the morning wanting to murder children for fun. Your cartoonish image of Israelis as some kind of horned monsters is ridiculous.
I keep hearing that Israel is the only democracy of Middle East. And they keep getting elected, which means they are not some kind of extremists, but represent opinion of general population
The American/Israeli media empire is 100x larger than anything Hamas can disseminate. The "media is dishonest" excuse doesn't apply to Hamas any more than it does to the Israeli Military Censor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
I don't watch, I talk to real people who are first hand witnesses.
Second, Israel doesn't own any media empire, what exactly do you mean?
Third, Hamas doesn't need to dismantle any media organization, they got Qatar with their own world wide media empire of AlJazeera.
Not a slight against you personally, but it's genuinely frustrating discussing this with people who don't actually follow the conflict. Thank you for probing in an inquisitive manner, but please question the state propaganda, which I'm sad to say includes just about every mainstream outlet.
They're interchangeable the USA and Israel, especially at this time.
Of course I mean at the state level. Individuals is a very different story.
---
Hit the rate limit so I'm attaching my response to the comment below here.
---
Fair enough. I let the current situation cloud my vision, but I genuinely mean they're interchangeable. You can look up the involvement of people like Kushner, Witkoff, Barak with Israel and see where they sit in our government. Leaving aside the major donors.
If you listen to statements made by the USG spokespeople, they literally throw US servicemen under the bus to shield the IDF. That goes both for this admin and the last.
In the previous admin, it was Biden and Blinken that made a break impossible, despite landing on different political sides from Netanyahu. Another president would have cut them off at some point.
Obama was the only one who charted an independent path in recent years (post Bush. Sr.)
> They're interchangeable the USA and Israel, especially at this time
If America and Israel are interchangeable, so are Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. That–I believe–is an overly simplistic approach, particularly when treating even Iran as a cohesive political entity is theoretically fraught.
You're a good person and I feel similarly. We live under the Fourth Reich.
I do not think ceasing work is the right move, but definitely get involved politically and don't equivocate when you condemn our elected "representatives".
It might also soothe your soul to be in the company of like-minded individuals. A Quaker prayer is a sure place to find many.
That means autonomous killbots are a-ok. Human responsibility is not the same as human decision-making.
The president or anybody at DoD can be "responsible", and we know there will be zero accountability. The courts defer to the executive, and Congress is all-too-happy for the executive to take the flak for their wars.
Yeah, it's a nice gesture, but having watched Google handle the protests in recent years and their culture inching a step closer to Amazon, I do not foresee their leadership being swayed by employee resistance. They'll either quietly sign an agreement and discreetly implement it, or they will go scorched earth on their employees again.
We have discovered aliens!
reply