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| 1. Author: OzPar Date: Tue 18th Mar 2025. 10:33 I don’t know how much coverage you’re getting in your news, but what I saw on SBS Australia tonight left me horrified. The images from Gaza were so shocking, so unbearable, that I found myself physically ill. The sheer scale of suffering—the destruction, the deaths of innocent civilians, many of them children—has become too much to take. Israel’s actions have crossed every moral and legal boundary. This is not self-defence. it is the systematic destruction of a people. Palestinians are being driven from their homes, their land taken, and their history erased. How much longer can the world allow this to continue? There is a troubling narrative that Israel’s leadership would rather the world ignore. Many who have settled in Palestine since the early 20th century are not indigenous to the region but came from Europe, changing their names to fit a nationalistic agenda. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu’s original family name was Mileikowsky, and his father had emigrated from Poland. This raises serious questions about the long-standing claim that all Jewish settlers have ancestral ties to the land. For over 80 years, Palestinians have faced dispossession, occupation, and violence. It is time to stop pretending this is a balanced conflict—it is not. It is a brutal military occupation supported by global powers that refuse to hold Israel accountable. How much longer will the world stand by in silence? Reply |
| 2. Author: The One Who Knocks Date: Tue 18th Mar 2025. 10:49 I don`t think anyone really buys Jewish ancestral claims to all of the land. I mean if you go far enough back everyone would probably have claim of some sort to land in another nation. The reality is though, as Putin and Trump are proving in Ukraine, might is right. And although my eyes were open They just might as well be closed Reply |
| 3. Author: Dandy Warhol Date: Tue 18th Mar 2025. 12:01 Israel quite simply is a dirty rat b*stard of a country. I don`t wanna go down like disco. Reply |
| 4. Author: desparado Date: Tue 18th Mar 2025. 22:34 Utterly incredible that Israel can act with impunity, slaughtering hundreds of innocent people , mostly women and children. It’s utterly abhorrent, disgusting and inhumane, barbaric and yes Genocide. The US Gov were informed of Israel’s intent to resume carpet bombing civilians …..and they gave the green light. It is truly sickening. Nobody in their right mind can support the horrific slaughter that is happening in Gaza. Collective punishment. Israeli bombs may indeed kill a few dozen Hamas but at the same time, many, many more civilians are slaughtered. It cannot in any way shape or form be justified. Evil beyond imagination…. What an opportunity we missed in 2014. Reply |
| 5. Author: Dave_1885 Date: Tue 18th Mar 2025. 23:14 Everybody knew this was going to happen……. Reply |
| 6. Author: DunfyDave Date: Wed 19th Mar 2025. 02:43 Hypocrisy from America. They allow Israel to bomb civilians indiscriminately but Biden failed to allow Ukraine to use precision weapons to attack strategic Russian assets inside Russia 🤔 Our European leaders need to wake-up and lead. At this rate the UN is sleeping like the Dodo and could never ratify anything whilst Russia and the USA hold strategic positions of "veto" on the Security Council DunfyDave Post Edited (Wed 19 Mar 02:44) Reply |
| 7. Author: Dave_1885 Date: Fri 21st Mar 2025. 18:44 Israel now looking to seize parts of Gaza and permanently occupy them………couldn’t make it up! Reply |
| 8. Author: OzPar Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 01:07 Over the past year, I’ve been working on translating a book my father wrote in Gaelic during the 1980s. The book recounts his experiences in the Second World War. He served as a paratrooper in the British Army’s 6th Airborne Division and saw action in some of the war`s most pivotal battles. He parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, fought through the frozen forests of the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, and later jumped again during the Allies’ crossing of the Rhine. While advancing across Germany toward the Baltic to link up with Soviet forces, his unit discovered a satellite camp of Bergen-Belsen. There were no gas chambers, but the conditions they found were horrific. The German guards had fled—days, possibly weeks earlier—leaving the remaining prisoners, many of them Jews, with no food, no care, and almost no hope. My father never forgot what he saw there. Not long after the war in Europe ended, the 6th Airborne was redeployed to Palestine, tasked with policing the British Mandate. It was a thankless and dangerous posting, with tensions escalating between Jewish insurgent groups and Arab communities. British soldiers were caught in the middle, with little political clarity and even less public support back home. Given what they had seen in Germany, the soldiers held a high degree of sympathy for the Jews coming to Palestine, but it did not take long for that support to diminish and ultimately disappear. With assistance from my elderly aunt and a cousin, as well as Google Translate, I have completed the translation and plan to produce a podcast of the story soon. It is worth sharing. Here follows an extract from my father’s time in Palestine. Perhaps most noticeable is how little seems to have changed in 80 years. Anyway, I hope you find this interesting… Post Edited (Sun 23 Mar 02:03) Reply |
| 9. Author: OzPar Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 01:11 Palestine - A Soldier’s Recollection PART ONE There came a time when it was no longer safe for a British soldier to walk unarmed through the streets of Tel Aviv — the new city built beside the old Arab port of Jaffa. Soldiers were killed in ambushes while walking alone. Military vehicles couldn’t travel far without an armed escort. Mines were hidden in potholes, waiting for a lorry to roll over them and detonate. At night, insurgent groups attacked poorly guarded army camps, stealing weapons and ammunition. Many of us wondered how the Stern Gang and Irgun always seemed to know so much about our defences — until we noticed the constant presence of fruit sellers and others just outside the wire. Some wore Arab robes, but we came to learn that didn’t always mean they were Arab. Most of us had come to Palestine with deep sympathy for the Jewish people. Some had seen the inside of concentration camps. my own unit had come across a satellite camp of Bergen-Belsen. We found no gas chambers, but what we saw — starving survivors, skeletal and dying, left without food or care — haunted us. The guards had vanished days, maybe weeks earlier. What remained was humanity on the brink of extinction. So yes, we understood why survivors wanted a homeland. We wanted to support them. But, my God, how they tested us. As unrest escalated, our unit relocated from a base in Gaza to a new camp in the greener north, nearer the orchards and the towns where most of the violence was erupting. It was a more pleasant setting — olive groves and shaded fields — but it did nothing to calm the atmosphere. We were ordered to surround cities like Tel Aviv and conduct house-to-house searches. All males between the ages of sixteen and sixty were rounded up and herded into holding pens for questioning. None of us took pride in it. This wasn’t what we’d trained for back in England. This wasn’t the kind of war we’d fought in Normandy, the Ardennes, or across Germany. This was something else — murky, brutal, demoralising. We began to feel like we were behaving like the forces we’d fought against. (cont...) Reply |
| 10. Author: OzPar Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 01:14 PART TWO Soon, soldiers were being lynched, beaten, or suffocated in trunks. The worst acts of cruelty were reserved for those who had shown the most restraint. One day in Netanya, a well-liked officer was captured while walking to a shop. He was stripped and publicly beaten in the town square. The locals stood by, silent. When news reached us, fury spread through the ranks. The commander issued strict orders: no retaliation. But many ignored him. That night, we slipped out of camp in small groups, pretending to go for a walk. We met beyond the trees, without officers, and marched to Netanya. We broke windows. We smashed up the shops opposite where the beating had taken place. No shots were fired, and thankfully, no one was harmed. We returned to camp quietly. The locals made no complaint. They understood why it happened — and perhaps realised how much worse it could have been. But relations only grew more strained. There was tension within the army, too. Rivalries between the Scottish and Welsh companies of the Airborne boiled over into fistfights. And then came the worst of it. A group of Scots were on guard duty in Tel Aviv. They slept in canvas tents in the city centre, not bothering anyone. One dark night, while they slept, the Stern Gang opened fire from nearby rooftops. Seven young men were slaughtered in their beds. We responded with a mass roundup. All the men of Tel Aviv were brought in for questioning. A few were imprisoned. But we all knew it meant little. It didn’t bring our comrades back. And with that, whatever sympathy we had left dissolved. We were seen not as liberators or peacekeepers but as obstacles to be removed. Night after night, we patrolled the roads, responding to every suspicious fire alarm, every flare, every noise in the dark. Any false move might cost a life. One night, we were posted on the road between Jerusalem and the coast. We spotted a vehicle climbing down from the hills — a bus. No vehicle should have been on that road at night. We blocked the road and signalled it to stop. But the driver accelerated. He tried to get past us. We opened fire. The bus veered into a ditch. It was full of civilians. Screaming, crying, wounded people. They said they were a choir returning late from Jerusalem. They had taken the back road to reach Tel Aviv by morning. Why they didn’t stop when signalled, no one would say. It was a tragedy. But it was also part of our duty`s bitter, tragic reality. (cont...) Reply |
| 11. Author: OzPar Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 01:16 PART THREE After two years in that country, most of us were bitter, exhausted, and more cynical than we’d ever thought possible. Military power had proved useless. Political solutions, even more so. The Zionists wanted the land to themselves, and nothing we did changed that. When orders came in the spring of 1947 for the 6th Airborne to return to England, no tears were shed. We boarded the Alcantara at Haifa under heavy guard. A large crowd of Jewish onlookers jeered and spat as we left. They were jubilant. They knew we were going — and with us, British rule. During the Mandate, the 6th Airborne Division suffered 58 dead and 236 wounded. In total, 750 British soldiers and civilians were killed in the three years before Israel’s independence. Footnote Many former members of the Stern Gang later entered Israeli politics. Their ideology lived on through parties like Herut and, eventually, Likud, the dominant political force in Israel today. (ENDS) Reply |
| 12. Author: DunfyDave Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 06:58 WOW Oz That is some read. Brutally honest. Thank you for translating and sharing this with us all 🙏 DunfyDave Reply |
| 13. Author: dd23 Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 08:32 Agreed, that’s a very interesting read, and well written. Reply |
| 14. Author: LochgellyAlbert Date: Sun 23rd Mar 2025. 13:35 Certainly worth the read, the history of Israel explained!😮💨 Reply |
| 15. Author: Raymie the Legend Date: Tue 25th Mar 2025. 02:12 Thanks for sharing. Interesting and harrowing. Your father was a brave man.  It`s bloody tough being a legend Ron Atkinson - 1983 Reply |
| 16. Author: OzPar Date: Tue 25th Mar 2025. 05:53 They all were, Ray. Late in his life, my father told me that not a single day had passed since he hadn’t thought about the boys they had left behind in foreign fields. They were all so young, many still in their teens. These days, we can look at war as if it’s some kind of video game — all strategy and spectacle — but for many who lived it, the impact never fades. My father never truly got Palestine out of his system. He once told me they weren’t fighting an army there — they were hunting ghosts. For, unlike the Germans, the Zionist fighters wore no uniform and followed no rules of war. They struck from shadows and disappeared into crowds. Suspicion became second nature. Trust evaporated after every ambush, every attack. By the time he was demobbed, my father said he wasn’t sure what kind of soldier — what kind of man — he’d become. I don’t think post-traumatic stress was even a recognised term in the 1940s, but I have no doubt he carried it. He was a fine man. Respected and quietly liked by many. But he was never at ease in crowds — probably why we always sat in the main stand when he came with me to EEP. We owe that generation more than we’ll ever understand. Reply |
| 17. Author: parsfan Date: Wed 2nd Apr 2025. 19:08 No posts on Politics in over a week. Must not be much happening in the world. I saw an Israeli spokesperson being interviewed on TV the other day. Justifying firing on ambulances she said that Hamas used them to "transport terrorists and [b]hostages[/b]". KGM missed an opportunity there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The universe is ruled by chance and indifference  Reply |
| 18. Author: Dandy Warhol Date: Thu 3rd Apr 2025. 08:16 parsfan, Wed 2 Apr 19:08 In the past they justified a sniper blowing a kids knees off so this isn`t surprising. Evil little sh*t of a state. I don`t wanna go down like disco. Reply |
| 19. Author: Raymie the Legend Date: Fri 18th Apr 2025. 20:42 https://apple.news/a74xrt12_qcek-vl9fz3qgw It`s bloody tough being a legend Ron Atkinson - 1983 Reply |
| 20. Author: OzPar Date: Sat 19th Apr 2025. 05:56 No matter how deeply one hopes for peace in the Middle East, it`s hard to imagine it being achieved without a significant confrontation between the parties involved. The Palestinians have endured immense hardship and provocation, and at some point, there must be a reckoning. The actions of the Israelis cannot be allowed to continue unchecked. Events since October 7 have demonstrated that the Palestinians cannot face these challenges alone. While groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis have offered support, their impact has been limited. The situation could change dramatically if Iran were to become directly involved. As a major regional power with significant military capabilities -including advanced missile technology, a large standing army, and a network of allied groups across the Middle East - Iran`s entry could escalate the conflict into a much broader and more intense confrontation, potentially drawing in neighbouring countries and even global powers. It is no coincidence that Trump has sought to rein in some of Netanyahu`s more aggressive impulses. When Trump announced his intention to pursue direct talks with Iran regarding its nuclear program, close-up images of Netanyahu`s face captured a rare moment of physical discomfort and frustration - a stark contrast to his usual confident, often arrogant, demeanour. According to an article in yesterday`s New York Times, five key members of Trump`s White House team expressed serious concerns to the president about an Israeli plan to attack Iran`s nuclear facilities with US assistance. This behind-the-scenes apprehension underscores the complexity and gravity of the decisions being made. While most politicians seem beholden to the Zionist lobby, there are still voices in the Pentagon urging extreme caution. Military leaders are acutely aware that Russia has supplied Iran with some of the most advanced missile defence systems. Israel - Tel Aviv in particular - is highly vulnerable to attacks by multiple hypersonic missiles, and so are the two US aircraft carriers in the region, each carrying 5,000 crew. If one of those were to be sunk, the ramifications for Trump would be immense. We`ve already discussed the likelihood that any Israeli attack would prompt the Iranians to destroy the US bases in the region. The Pentagon announced this week that three such bases are being closed immediately. I wonder why? And then, of course, there are the oil and gas facilities in the Gulf, the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, and the prospect of increased coordinated actions with Hezbollah and the Houthis. It is an ugly picture. And to add a further dimension, earlier this week, there were well-sourced reports that China had indicated to Washington that any action by the US military against Iran could prompt China to advance on Taiwan. Just how many distant fronts can America fight at any given time? And how long before they run out of ammunition? Or, a will to continue? Post Edited (Sat 19 Apr 05:58) Reply |
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