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I'm sure there is, but the way Israel has gone about fighting this war is foolish at best and malicious at worst. Israel's done nothing but bolster Palestinian propaganda because they've done nothing but show disregard for Palestinian civilian life. It is just going to create another generation of Palestinians that think Israelis and Jews see them as pests to slaughter, so they will be very easy for radicals to take advantage of and use their lives as pawns in a greater geopolitical game - just like their parents are at the moment. What's the end game? Nobody in Israel seems to know. Will they occupy Gaza like the West Bank? It seems to be an unpopular opinion amongst both Israelis or Palestinians. Is Israel just going to make the size of Gaza smaller - concentrated into a camp to live in? I think Netenyahu's popularity rating is actually dogshit right now and if Israel held an election tomorrow, he would get crushed. A lot of people view him as the guy who let October 7th's attacks happen. A ceasefire will probably let Hamas regroup a bit, but I'm sure they've been massively devastated after months of this war dragging on. Let's not forget it's one of the most heavily armed militaries in the world with nearly the full support of the West against a starving group of people with terrorists amongst them. The primary reason to have a ceasefire is because Gaza needs humanitarian aid. If you don't view Palestinians as people, you probably won't see things this way - but the fact is the way Israel fights wars creates humanitarian crises. Indiscriminate bombing campaigns, gunning down starving people trying to gather aid, and bombing refugee camps is going to do a hell of a lot more to indoctrinate the populous against Israel than a ceasefire will. This is the biggest problem with the way Israel tries to fight terror. There is no attempt to actually do anything to combat the ideologies - instead just moving in, killing people, and disregarding the human rights of the territories they occupy... it does nothing to halt extremism & this doesn't make Israel any safer. A ceasefire and Israel actually taking steps to demonstrate they respect human rights and don't have a total disregard for Palestinian life would go a long way. I'm sorry, but there is no true existential threat to Israel at the moment. If Israel was seriously facing any existential threat, the US military and likely other countries like France, Germany, the UK, etc. would all come rushing to make sure that Israel's safety is guaranteed. So that's not really any justification for Israel's continual refusal to follow international laws and for the continued illegal settlements. If anything, these illegal settlements put more Israelis at risk as they give West Bank Palestinians good reason to hate settlers and hate Israelis. A two state solution hasn't been on the table since Rabin's assassination. And has been far from Israelis minds since the day Netanyahu first took power. We're talking about the mid-90s here. So no, it's not really fair to characterise the failure of any progress towards meaningful peace just at the feet of Palestinians. There are people in both groups of people that have a longing desire to put this conflict behind them and move on to have normal lives, they've been let down by leaders who are all too happy to have the extremism grow. But in the eyes of most of the world, the failure of any two-state solution lies firmly at the feet of both Palestinians and Israelis. If the UNSC had done its job in the 90s, Netanyahu wouldn't have been in power for so long and the illegal settlements in the West Bank wouldn't exist. But the UNSC has no real legitimacy in this conflict, imo. Of the permanent members, there's 4 countries that have such close historical ties to Israel... they're basically culpable for the present day situation - especially the US, UK, and Russia. That leaves China as the only one that can truly claim to be neutral... and China's currently conducting an actual genocide of Muslims in Xinjiang. An international coalition is probably needed, but I think it doesn't necessarily have to be a UN led mission and it needs to have a significant Arab presence as a counterweight to the US/Israeli side that would be involved. I don't know if you noticed, but the US had far more success going after terror groups with targeted special forces operations and drone strikes than outright warfare on Iraq & Syria. Targeted and less sloppy strikes that actually do something to remove the source of extremism. Israel's making a strategic decision to choose to fight this fight as a conventional war. And they've ignored warnings from the US government "not to make the same mistakes we did in Iraq" in doing so - and just as the US found out in Iraq, turns out treating a civilian population as a hostile terrorist population doesn't really do a single thing to stem extremism and terrorism... I suspect Israel will find the same thing out. I suspect Israel already knows, but the leadership in Netanyahu and his little war tribunal, don't really give a fuck about the blowback from the war today. They just want to be seen as strong while simultaneously dragging out the war for as long as possible to cling to power. And it's not like Israel's incapable of precision special attacks - they made a robotic machine gun to kill a nuclear physicist in Iran that was accurate enough to kill their assassination target while simultaneously leaving his driver completely unharmed. Israel is 100% capable of actually fighting Hamas in a way that doesn't put the vast majority of Gazans in harms way. They are choosing not to for political reasons. And not political reasons that have any benefit to anyone other than Netanyahu and his coalition - just literally doing what they can to cling to power while playing with Israeli and Palestinian lives. Honestly, I think Europe generally has a lot to answer for when they decided Palestinian Arabs should pay for Europe's crimes against the Jewish people for hundreds of years. But it was such a horrifically miscalculated decision with no real thought as to the blowback that we'd be dealing with for decades that I do think Europe should generally be doing a hell of a lot more to stop the bloodshed, rather than just sit on the sidelines and refuse to condemn pretty blatant war crimes and human rights violations.

Other part of the truth is Israel opposed the two nations solution themselfes and supported illegal Jewish settlements on the west bank both ideologically and financially. Surely you only forgot to mention these details. Also it's debattable, if a South African can rightfully call Israel their civilization regardless whether they're Jewish or not.

A monumental week for @Rajabhat Rovers to extend his lead at the top with only 10 game-weeks remaining, although some of those are likely to have extra fixtures. A score of 25 means the lead over @Redcanuck and @6666 is 17 points. Those two overtook @Dan, who picked the wrong week to make a single-digit score of 7. @Bluewolf's score of 18 was very respectable, and that took him above @nawoo.

Most of the international community have been calling for a ceasefire - it's mostly been Israel and the US resistant to that. And even now the US is beginning to put pressure on Israel to stop fighting the war as though all Palestinians are enemy combatants. The simple truth is that Netanyahu sees the war as his "stay out of jail" card - he's got no incentive to stop the war, he benefits from it going on longer. His coalition sees the war as an excuse to back the illegal settlements in the West Bank as well, so he sees supporting them as supporting his coalition and retaining his tenuous grip on the country. It's only Palestinian leadership in Hamas and Israel that aren't interested in stopping the war at this point. I also find it interesting, your fervent support for Russia and their foreign policy goals - yet your strong opposition to Iran's foreign policy goals. Iran and Russia at this point are allies out of necessity, being the two largest economies cut off from being normal participants in the global economy. And as a result, they see instability as the only way to even the playing field - they can't build themselves up like their allies have been able to, so their plan is to drag the whole world down with them. Meanwhile Russia's taken advantage of US politics having a 20 second attention span and used the Israel-Palestine conflict as a wedge issue to break up US support for Ukraine, and Putin's probably laughing his arse off at how easy it was to cause this wedge.

I like how he tries to play himself off as some sort of intellectual. "Russia borders Europe, Asia, and the Middle East" - dickhead, the Middle East is... in Asia. To Shapiro's credit, he's accurately describing how shit of a job Putin's done managing Russia as opposed to Tuck the Cuck Carlson, who went over to Moscow to give Putin a blowjob before giving him the biggest softball interview in the history of journalism - including blaming Poland for the Nazis starting WW2 (which I assume Russians teach in school so they can blame someone else other than the Nazis, who Russia were initially allied with as they both carved up Poland - thus meaning Mother Russia did nothing wrong at all in the second world war). The biggest highlight is halfway through the video, Ben Shapiro suddenly and swiftly transitions into an advert to sell gold to his followers. The grift never stops with these people, even if they're saying the right things. But actually on the whole, that video isn't too bad - if Ben Shapiro is giving the radicalised right-wing fans around the world an off-ramp from supporting Russia blindly and has them questioning all the weirdly pro-Russian bullshit they've been spreading around the world... this is a good sign. Sure, it might just be telling them things about Russia that people have been saying about Russia for years... but some people simply won't listen until their youtuber of choice tells what they need to think. So this is a rare moment where Ben Shapiro doesn't come off as a complete and utter clown, tbh. Still has a face and a voice that only a mother could love, but taking a step away from the normal far-right bullshit that's fed to his followers to present a more accurate picture.

Who’s gunna buy the houses Ben, fucking Aquaman?

Ben Shapiro. You have to be fucking kidding me. Every time I think it can't get any dumber, he pulls another youtube video out of his ass.

Its just so good! One of Cages many bangers in the 90's.

NATO's been keeping Ukraine in a fight against a much larger military by sending off their decades old equipment to Ukraine though? The war has shown that basically all NATO allies but the US don't have war readiness, but that's also because the EU (and UK) have defacto decided that if war comes to Europe, the US will be their protector. Also Turkey is... in NATO... so not really a potential enemy.

Tim Sherwood, Paul Merson, in the same bracket of pundits where you wonder how theyve got a job

Guess Springer papers will start crying about only 5 of their Bayern sweethearts in the squad.

It is a classic

Nothing dodgy about this.

I guess it's no different to the fixtures for the Premier League and other leagues being drawn by computer, but I agree, this does seem a little suss.

Results - Saudi Grand Prix Qualifying on Friday saw everybody take the safe, but correct route of a Max Verstappen pole position, setting everyone off on 5 points despite a decent challenge from Charles Leclerc. Before I go any further, I'll just clarify that anyone who had Sainz left in their final predictions saw him automatically replaced with Bearman. The race was more interesting as the "non-Verstappen" top three resulted in Sergio Perez in 1st ahead of Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri. @RandoEFC, @The Palace Fan and @Coma were the big winners here, getting two of the first three members of the "podium" exactly correct for 10 points. @MUFC wasn't far behind with Perez in the correct spot and Leclerc missing out by one place for 7 points. @Stan, @Tommy, @nudge, @DeadLinesman and @OrangeKhrush all scored 4 points with both Leclerc and Perez featuring in their top threes, but neither of them in the correct slot. @Whiskey was let down by Alonso and Russell and picks up just 2 points here for having Perez in his top three. Nobody had Oscar Piastri at all in their top three, so no points for anyone from him. On to this week's random driver, and we had a big hitter for the second week running in Charles Leclerc. @RandoEFC, @The Palace Fan and @Coma made further ground here with their prediction of 3rd matching up with their podium predictions and bagging them another 5 points. @Stan decided to hedge his bets with Leclerc's finishing position and where he missed out in the main podium prediction, he scores the full 5 points here as well. Everyone else was out by one position on either side, which is bad luck for them! Finally, nobody nailed the bonus question by predicting Haas to secure the highest finishing position outside of the "top five" teams. Alex Albon's 11th place was the highest out of the team's who saw any backing so @Tommy, @nudge and @OrangeKhrush collect an extra 2 points here for the best wrong answer. Here's what it does for the early standings: A middling week for @Tommy sees his lead slashed to 1 point as Saudi's 20-pointers @RandoEFC, @The Palace Fan and @Coma are hot on his heels. There isn't a lot of field spread anywhere at this early stage. This week's top scorers were Mercedes, and its enough to see @The Palace Fan and @MUFC rise to the top of the Constructors standings. A poor start for Ferrari, the lowest scorers in both weeks so far, sees them with work to do to catch up to the close pack of the other four teams.

Results - Gameweek Four A boring week indeed as all of @Michael, @Tommy, @Lucas, @Stan and @Storts backed Barcelona ahead of their 1-0 win over Mallorca and progress through to Gameweek Five. Please see the fixtures below! Preview - Gameweek Five Below are the next set of fixtures and the last before the international break. Make sure you're not picking a team you've already used! Real Sociedad vs Cadiz Mallorca vs Granada Osasuna vs Real Madrid Getafe vs Girona Athletic Club vs Deportivo Alaves Sevilla vs Celta Vigo Las Palmas vs Almeria Villarreal vs Valencia Rayo Vallecano vs Real Betis Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona Good luck!

The Rock (1996) Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage - 8.5/10 Great film, lost count how many times I have watched it.