And it's as evil as those who contrived it to silence opposition! Realistically, no one is responsible for another feelings; that's strictly the personal choice of the listener or reader. I can no more "make" you feel good or bad by my words, than I can "make" an horse drink, having led him to water! To hold another responsible for feelings chosen freely by a listener or reader in a legal sense is a control device only, and absurd on its face!
Thank you for expanding my vocabulary. "Stooshie" is a new one for me. I've seen my share of mishigas, ballyhoo, fracas, hullabaloo, rumpus, brewhaha, ruckus, kerfuffle, and bangarang, but it's never too late to learn one more descriptor of our species' interminable foolishness.
Great article about the Nazis who enjoyed their brutality, being similar to Hamas. They deserve demonizing, far more than most who are.
It’s also very true that no speaker of truth is responsible for the feelings of any listener, yet many of the listeners are not responsible for their feelings, either-just their actions, including words spoken, written, and mostly even thought. Our society needs to be more clear, accurate, and consistent about responsibilities.
Weird. I'd have said the English were the least genocidal/ most open of people, if the car game were: name one thing uniquely characteristic about a given ethnicity.
Think of "democracy" as mob rule, and it makes more sense. That was why our Founders chose a Constitutional Republic in the US. Mobs are out of control masses of undisciplined humans; dangerous, often deadly, but almost never correct in whatever "goal" they espouse at the moment.
Before humans even socialist Wilson, Congress voted our gov't a private corporation in 1871 (happy Valentine's day!), and the last shreds of controllers was severed Wilson's 1st yr in office, with ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments! America didn't even last a century!
Yes all true. And as for those privileged middle class 'Progressives' joining in the appalling 'celebrations' outside the Sydney Opera House, the Israeli Embassy in London and elsewhere around the West..... I do not believe that their hostility to Israel is even primarily about a concern for the Palestinian people. The real driver is to signal that your narcissistic little wonderful self is ever on the side of 'the oppressed'. To these people 'oppression' is a shallow abstraction that serves to inflate their personal vanity as one of the good guys. This poisonous vanity has been pouring out of Western academia for decades. I still remember the drug-addled anti-Zionist 'sit-in' at my UK university in 1972.
I already saw one left-wing person say that the Palestinians should not evacuate their kids when the war comes to them "to show the world what the Jewish Zionists are like" even though Israel has announced they cannot guarantee accuracy for their air-strikes. I was already upset by the dead Israeli kids but I can't imagine the mentality of someone who says that you should kill your babies just to stick it to the other side. No, I don't think "cheerleaders" in violent conflicts care about anyone at all.
Not just many cases....MOST cases! Many critics of the Social Justice religion - in all its poisonous manifestations (from 'trans' fetishism to pro-Hamas fetishism - make the mistake of seeing it as an evil ideology. In reality it is mostly a highly seductive psychological PATHOLOGY....people wanting to tell themselves a nice story about themselves as being on the side of their imaginary 'oppressed'. I write about this at more length on my own Substack eg this: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
A salient question is how did Palestinian babies end up slaughtering and butchering Jewish babies with such thoroughness, glee and pride and to such celebration among the Vastlajorityofpeacefulmuslims™️ and their progressive groupies?
It bears repeating, and the irony never gets old: most of the Westerners cheering on Hamas et al. would, under a Hamas regime, be among the first to be rounded up, lined up against a wall, and shot.
This is an appalling comparison! First, it omits so much of the story.
The huge power imbalance between a well intrenched, illegally occupying force supported by the wealth and power of Europe and U.S., vis a vis an impoverished, occupied population who has suffered endlessly since 1948.
The acts of violence by a well funded military giant against an imprisoned, indigenous population that if it remains quite dies a slow death and if it resits is vilified to the extent that they are worse than Nazis!
Second, it actually highlights how the tactics of the Nazis, as you describe them, to hide and obfuscate their crimes are the ones that the Israelis are copying.
Third, there is so much hatred, prejudice and overt loathing of Palestinians on public display from Israeli military and political leaders, New Yorkers on the street, US politicians etc., but that's not seen as evil or disgusting as it is always justified.
“ If you are not in thrall to the notion that claims about oppression are the bed-rock moral “facts”, then you can grasp that a group’s behaviour can be so bad, as to de-legitimise their cause. What means you choose to prosecute your cause matters. Not merely for what it says about you, but because while you may never achieve your ends, your means have immediate effects.
What we are seeing on our screens, if you can bear to look, is horrible. But it is not a mysterious horror. It is horror with a long, long history that way predates the Zionist project.”
- Lorenzo Warby
The deliberate, individualized rape and murder of women, the deliberate, individualized decapitation of children and babies, is an evil that far surpasses the general evil of war. Hamas delenda est.
The decapitation of children and babies story was totally debunked. It's Hasbara at it's coarsest.
How about we condemn all acts of violence against innocent civilians and children?
Israel has killed, displaced, imprisoned far more Palestinians than the other way around. Including children, women and the elderly: https://ifamericansknew.org/stat/.
So, debunked? Disputed, of course, but that’s normal.
And even were it actually untrue, so what. The rapes & murders still occurred. Or have those been “debunked”?
The point is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, which as a matter of policy individually targets innocents as such, & brutalizes them before killing them. These are evil people, and anyone who supports or justifies them is a participant in that evil.
I have no interest in pernicious arguments grounded on “immoral equivalence.” Atrocities occur in all wars. Sometimes, as with the Japanese in China and the Russians in Germany, it is official or unofficial policy. Israel does no such thing.
The story is complicated. Israel accepts Jewish refugees as citizens. The Arab states preferred to keep Palestinians as stateless hereditary refugees as sticks to beat Israel with. It is still easier for a Palestinian to become a citizen of US, UK, Australia, Canada … than most Arab states.
They COULD even become Israeli citizens, as many have done; those in Gaza refuse to, and a recent poll showed 75% would vote for Hamas again, in the midst of this war. Those 2 facts alone should tell you they are NOT "oppressed" by anyone but themselves!
This is THE source of the problem we see today. Why is nobody talking about this? The Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza have been hung out to dry by their brother and sister co-religionists for 75 years in one of the most cynical geopolitical ploys imaginable.
I saw a photo of a baby riddled with bullets, the wounds were front and to the left, indicating it was lying down possibly in its crib and shot by somebody standing over them to one side.
Its head area was pixilated so not possible to say whether it was decapitated.
Is it your argument that since decaputation has been debunked (by whom ) the riddling with bullets is of no consequence, doesn’t count?
How about recognising that the depraved individuals who did this to Jewish babies are children? Well they have mothers and fathers so they are somebody’s children aren’t they?
And civilians who bring up their children to commit atrocities are not innocent - they are complicit, responsible and accountable.
If a civil society is not responsibly or accountable for its children, then who is?
And we are not talking about one or two bad apples - they are the whole barrel, and this has been going on for decades with terror attacks in Europe against non-Jews too. Our crime? Our failure to annihilate the Jews apparently.
There have been multiple opportunities for a completely diffent outcome over the last seven decades, but various Palestinian leaders refused them all. To a great extent, this is on them.
Rape, kidnapping, targeting of non-combatants and deliberate infanticide are not "self defence", not "freedom fighting". The utter barbarity of the people who committed the atrocities on Saturday will be remembered for decades. It has served to show the world what Islamic militants are capable of, and what may be coming in Western countries that have blindly accepted so many.
That being said, I have sympathy for the non-combatant people of Palestine. In many cases they have no choice about being made targets by the policy of Hamas to cite military targets in civilian areas. Hamas are the enemy of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Sorry - it was a quick reply that sounded funny in my head. Your post above is quite correct - I'm getting to a point where I'm going to shut up for a while. I genuinely do care about civilians of both sides, and I have no doubt that Israeli soldiers are going to do bad things. I am aware, though, that my support for the Jewish cause is likely to lead me into relativism. Ultimately, I see the hatred of Jews as far worse than their (in my mind, justified) hatred of Palestinians. The Jews are the ultimate historical underdog, and deserve a great deal of leeway in what they think they need to do to survive. At the same time, however, if I was one of the Palestinian civilians waiting for the hammer to drop, with the risk that my children would not see the end of the day/week/month, I would want a different course if action to be taken.
There's a lot more I could say, but when it comes down to it, it makes no difference. What is going to happen is out of my hands. I support Israel's aims over those of Palestine's, and that colours my opinions. The end (I think!)
You do know IDF warns the "Palestinian" civilians to leave targeted areas, even to calling on their personal phones, and that Hamas shoots those who try to flee? That's all been reported by both sides for some yrs now. Hamas then blames IDF for the dead regardless how they got to be dead, and the world media slurps it up like free booze!
Hamas has been very careful to ensure it's not faced the electorate since 2006. Can't think why. Surely people have no problem with getting targets painted on their backs for the cause.
There was no need; I believe it was Poles who took the poll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but it was some no emu slim outsiders, if not Poles. That's where the 75% figure came from, just last month, reported by Memri and other news sites.
You just outlined, in encapsulated form, nearly the entire history of Islam's interactions with non-Muslims the world over, starting with Muhammad himself.
History and I will then indict you for your sins and tell you who’s land you stole.
And the Palestinians are a UN (meaning USA 🇺🇸) funded prison gang, with HAMAS as Apex Prison Gang. Other than grift there’s nothing there, that’s why Arafat had $2Billion, his wife a mansion in Cyprus, and HAMAS leaders are mostly in Villas in Qatar.
The entire Palestinian project is a USA legacy project from the Cold War. The time has come to close the Palestinian account, which is be certain fraud all along. We had it as a hedge with the Arabs and initially over Israel (a state founded by Jewish Communists that had Stalin as arms supplier in 47-48) until we allied with Israel after 1967, somewhat because Nasser played America and we were upset.
That had Czecho-Slovakia as arms supplier. The crucial weapons were bought before the Communist takeover. I've no truck with Commies; but wind your neck in, you are spreading malinformation.
The negotiations started in June 47, the first contract 10 January 1948. Jan Masaryk signed, as it happens he was dead before most of the arms arrived.
The coup was 25 Feb 1948, the shipments and indeed trainers arrived late march and over summer.
Again the idea that this happens without Stalin knowing and approving is malinforming the reader, and the USSR supported the 2 state solution and was the first state to recognize Israel.
Czechoslovakia was a cut out.
Not that I don’t actually admire them, or think they were wrong to ship arms either as nationalists or Communists. Stalin wanted to punch the British, the Arabs were pro-British in general, the Zionists usually very Leftist.
The Palestinian leadership have deliberately prevented their own people’s social and economic development, declined to put down roots and make a homeland, in order to adopt refugee status of displaced people - this is not our home!’ - even refugee camps in the West Bank - to get sympathy and money, and move their cause for the eviction of the Israelis and return to their rightful homeland. Yasser Arafat was always explaining this, so it’s no revelation. Hamas has the eradication of the Jews and reclamation of the territory inside Israel written in their constitution.
By casting Palestinians as helpless victims, they are robbed of agency, self-respect, self-determination, and reduced to welfare dependency on US/UN/EU charity.
With the billions they have received they could have built infrastructure, and by their own investment, endevour, and attracting inward investment, they could have become a thriving, peaceful, stable society.
In 70 years, Israel which started out with mostly poor people with only their Human capital and labour did that. In 70 years the Palestinians are no further forward. Why? Nobody has stopped them, except themselves.
Despite their endless suffering they certainly had a lot of babies in that time, usually a sign people are thriving and hopeful; certainly biology would call them winners. I guess a different view is that people who are endlessly suffering want to indroduce a lot of babies into that situation.
From scattered reading here and there plus some of the Koran (couldn't stomach the whole thing) I've gotten this impression:
They have a different culture, one with a different way of warfare. It works on a longer timeline, centuries not election cycles. As I understand it, increasing their number and suppressing the infidel's by enslaving, gang-raping or killing their young females is one of several methods to strengthen them against a targeted city, ethnicity or system.
In this systems slave women do not transmit language and culture to their children; that is the sole right of the father and not the mother. Along that line, during Ottoman rule a tax was placed on Christian families. The tax was the taking of boys to be raised into warriors against other Christians. It seems that it's a system to either destroy or possess the target's women, which of course insures their eventual defeat.
That method probably goes back thousands of years, but was enhanced and made holy by Mohammad and the armies such as Tamerlayne's that followed him. Looking at territory and populations gained vs those lost, Islam's various methods of conquest are more effective than Westerners admit.
I image that the situation in the news today is well more complex than the above; I'm writing about that part of it because it's absent from corporate media.
What a mistake it was to end the Mandate. And no 50/50 profit sharing. How much more straightforward relations would have been. How much less potent a weapon oil would have been. I think the West thought Arabs would be flattered and grateful that we pretended the things Westerners built (the trains - I have a marvelous collection of paper ephemera from my husband's great-uncle, a Union Pacific man, from his time in the Middle East in the 20s; the oil derricks, the refineries) were "theirs". But that is not how they think, or something they could ever honor. They themselves are masters of deception - there is a quote somewhere in a Bernard Lewis book, from someone he met in his time there, which essentially boils down to - you know we would never tell you the truth, that is ridiculous; and one will always be in a false position with such people if you have the idealistic notion that they will respect something other than strength.
The kill the men take the woman and breed goes back to the dawn of history, is borne out in DNA, and was actually practiced during the Balkans wars in the 90s at scale.
(Me; Gaza should be leveled and the survivors driven off for context. However putting this on the Arabs or Islam is wrong. )
Killed the man took and bred to the woman; sorry all, if you’re reading this that’s your male ancestors. Especially if you’re an Indo European descendant, and most of us are...
Nothing new happened here, and if you flatter yourself evolved;
I couldn't put it into words, but you clarified it here. What I did write about is how people in the US are longing to do the same thing to their "enemies" in my opinion. People want to be gleefully able to have a purge of their "enemies," and it is shocking to see people celebrate this evil. I think they desire to do it themselves so they don't see what is wrong about it. That thought can be terrifying.
Looking forward to your next piece. The fact that Harvard student groups blamed Israel for the Hamas atrocities so quickly and decisively must be questioned. What have our universities been inculcating? The delayed and lukewarm response from administration (until public outrage became overwhelming) reveals how academia has been indoctrinating its students. I don’t believe the current crop of statements in support of Israel from these administrators.
It very easy to set up influence networks in the west. You need merely to pay for their recreational chemicals. The only problem is that it’s difficult to get them to show up for anything before noon.
Since the 80s at latest the Anglosphere has been conquered by something called Critical Studies (aka Social Justice), which is a reheated form of Marxism (sprinkled w a dash of Protestantism) that sees all of European liberal democracy as a mask for oppression and a single continuous hate crime against "the marginalized".
In this belief system, which was hatched and incubated first in the Humanities before it escaped the lab, Europeans and their culture and history are all ipso facto "Oppressors" with the "Oppressed" being any historical victims of discrimination, most esp blacks, gays and women.
And just as with the Bolsheviks and the kulaks, any and all assaults against the Oppressor class are righteous and moral, while any member of any Oppressed class is always only a righteous victim whose revolutionary violence is justified and sanctified.
It's very clever, too. A great portion of critical theory true believers are motivated primarily by the knowledge and fear that they themselves are public enemy number one. Oppressors attacking oppressors are in full survival mode, 'not me, I'm one of the good ones', which makes them especially dangerous, because that's how scapegoats are created. So this is what we're seeing, old as the hills.
Thank you. Despite studying history for years, I've shuddered and shielded myself from lurid details of the Holocaust. (A family member of mine liberated a camp. And was left traumatized). The gleeful bloodlust you describe is terrifying.
It is a war a century or more old. War 101: demonise your enemy. This is now set in stone for Israelis and Palestinians. Until all the external actors, actors who haven't a clue because for them it is only words on paper or images on a screen, stop fuelling the fire it'll never die. Bluntly, there are only two "solutions": Maximum Israel with no Arabs; or Maximum Palestine with no Jews.
All academic to me: just as with Russia v Ukraine it ain't my war and it ain't my business. Except insofar as Islam is an existential threat and even if Israel/Palestine went pfft! overnight, Islam as existential threat would remain. Callous? We routinely ignore wars just as bad, even worse. Hypocrisy. I'm neither interested, nor do I want to know.
"Before Saturday and Sunday—the cause of Palestinian autonomy and statehood probably held the moral high ground. This was in large part because they are so outgunned: a developing-world statelet up against a militarily powerful, developed-world regional hegemon."
Seriously, WTF? Why is Hamas "up against" anyone, particularly Israel? Israel acquired the Gaza in decades ago wars initiated by Hamas' brethren in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria. Israel ceded the Sanai after those wars - it was on the verge of crossing into Egypt proper but desisted. In 2004 or 2005 it walked away from Gaza. Leaving the place to the "Palestinians".
Why is Hamas up against Israel? This has to be the most incoherent thing you've written. Try to answer it coherently.
They aren’t wrong that the framing of this situation has been manufactured out of whole cloth by Arabs seeking to manipulate Western opinion. There was no Palestinian identity prior to the 70s. It was known as the Jewish-Arab conflict prior to that.
The commenter is also correct that Israel “gave” Gaza back to the Arabs as a peace offering.
Conflict comes from incompatible aims. Whether they are legitimate aims is a fair question, but that those of Hamas and Israel are incompatible is obvious. Hence “up against”.
LW: The term Palestinian is from the 1960s at the Earliest, although often attributed to Arafat the Egyptian in 1975 at the UN.
The Arabs displaced in the camps, funded by the UN via UNWRA became the Palestinians.
The UN for those who don't know is a well known alias of the USA.
[I'm American].
We the People of the USA weren't allies of Israel until after they won in the 1967 war.
We were prior allies of Nasser in Egypt, who played us [played Kermit Roosevelt BTW].
Nasser turned on us and caused trouble, then went hard for the Soviets.
At that point the Lady from Brooklyn, one Golda Meir was able to form alliance with the USA.
Now this is just Empire, and in our defense America didn't want it.
The point: Israel despite common misconception was not an American project.
Israel was a Zionist [Jewish Communists] and British Empire project and we inherited all the mess after we kiboshed Suez intervention in 1956 and then, and only then bought down the British Empire. Probably unintentionally but in reaction to being lied to, and the mess in Hungary. Europe has always been the primary theater and interest of the USA since WW2. Recent events via Ukraine show this truth.
If we had any project going in Palestine...by degrees and by endless funding of camps that should have been phased out in the 1950s...our project has been; The Palestinians.
They DID cross into Egypt proper. They kettled the Egyptian Third army against the Canal after the brutal Battle of Chinese Farm allowed them to secure crossings. Sadat cried 'Uncle!'
You'll note I've been proper learned, and now I have to be interested and want to know,
I see there have been a few drive-by comments by partisans of this interminable stooshie.
A few observations.
1. Anyone who thinks I'm "in the tank for Israel" is invited to google me and learn just a little of my history as a novelist and commentator.
2. Anyone who disagrees with my word choice is reminded that I am a professional writer and I will choose my words.
3. I am not responsible for your feelings about this issue. You are responsible for your feelings about this issue.
What's a Stooshie ?
As a sometimes borderline crank, and aspiring wise @ss amateur writer, what is Stooshie ?
PS as America expands and contracts simultaneously [now I am serious] under American Law you CAN be responsible for other people's feelings.
Unfortunately I am serious.
It's called "Hostile Work Environment" and it extends well beyond work.
And it's as evil as those who contrived it to silence opposition! Realistically, no one is responsible for another feelings; that's strictly the personal choice of the listener or reader. I can no more "make" you feel good or bad by my words, than I can "make" an horse drink, having led him to water! To hold another responsible for feelings chosen freely by a listener or reader in a legal sense is a control device only, and absurd on its face!
Thank you for expanding my vocabulary. "Stooshie" is a new one for me. I've seen my share of mishigas, ballyhoo, fracas, hullabaloo, rumpus, brewhaha, ruckus, kerfuffle, and bangarang, but it's never too late to learn one more descriptor of our species' interminable foolishness.
Two more for vocab: (British mostly) argy bargy or argle bargle; donnybrook.
Great article about the Nazis who enjoyed their brutality, being similar to Hamas. They deserve demonizing, far more than most who are.
It’s also very true that no speaker of truth is responsible for the feelings of any listener, yet many of the listeners are not responsible for their feelings, either-just their actions, including words spoken, written, and mostly even thought. Our society needs to be more clear, accurate, and consistent about responsibilities.
I’m extremely glad you’ve accepted publishing Lorenzo!
I do hope the Israelis turn to genocide.
They're competent.
The other are just over armed desert marauders and worse incompetent.
BTW I do appreciate the dry humor of the English calling others genocidal.
Truly British Humor is matchless.
Example please.
Weird. I'd have said the English were the least genocidal/ most open of people, if the car game were: name one thing uniquely characteristic about a given ethnicity.
Excellent essay. I usually try to save the weightier reading for after my first cup of coffee, but I’m so glad I didn’t follow that rule this morning.
Funny, I do that too.
It’s a beneficial practice, I think, but one must divert from it, on occasion.
Now THAT’S some strong coffee!
Great essay on a hideous subject. Thank you for posting.
Yes.
This is also human nature once it gets going.
This is why I say - and the rest of you will discover- that Pallas Athena (democracy) is one Bloodthirsty Bitch.
Because she’s us.
Humanity unbound.
This was observed in Iraq.
That was Iraqi democracy.
Think of "democracy" as mob rule, and it makes more sense. That was why our Founders chose a Constitutional Republic in the US. Mobs are out of control masses of undisciplined humans; dangerous, often deadly, but almost never correct in whatever "goal" they espouse at the moment.
Too late.
Sure the Founders were clear.
FDR was indirect, vague, psychopathic yet filled with the light of Progress.
The rules didn’t apply... except they DO.
Before humans even socialist Wilson, Congress voted our gov't a private corporation in 1871 (happy Valentine's day!), and the last shreds of controllers was severed Wilson's 1st yr in office, with ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments! America didn't even last a century!
Yes all true. And as for those privileged middle class 'Progressives' joining in the appalling 'celebrations' outside the Sydney Opera House, the Israeli Embassy in London and elsewhere around the West..... I do not believe that their hostility to Israel is even primarily about a concern for the Palestinian people. The real driver is to signal that your narcissistic little wonderful self is ever on the side of 'the oppressed'. To these people 'oppression' is a shallow abstraction that serves to inflate their personal vanity as one of the good guys. This poisonous vanity has been pouring out of Western academia for decades. I still remember the drug-addled anti-Zionist 'sit-in' at my UK university in 1972.
I already saw one left-wing person say that the Palestinians should not evacuate their kids when the war comes to them "to show the world what the Jewish Zionists are like" even though Israel has announced they cannot guarantee accuracy for their air-strikes. I was already upset by the dead Israeli kids but I can't imagine the mentality of someone who says that you should kill your babies just to stick it to the other side. No, I don't think "cheerleaders" in violent conflicts care about anyone at all.
There's just no accounting for how much nonsense some people will talk.
The problem, in many cases, is that those also believe the nonsense they spout!
Not just many cases....MOST cases! Many critics of the Social Justice religion - in all its poisonous manifestations (from 'trans' fetishism to pro-Hamas fetishism - make the mistake of seeing it as an evil ideology. In reality it is mostly a highly seductive psychological PATHOLOGY....people wanting to tell themselves a nice story about themselves as being on the side of their imaginary 'oppressed'. I write about this at more length on my own Substack eg this: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
You are correct, from a clinical standpoint. The fact,however , that this seductive pathology is orchestrated with intent, also makes it evil.
A salient question is how did Palestinian babies end up slaughtering and butchering Jewish babies with such thoroughness, glee and pride and to such celebration among the Vastlajorityofpeacefulmuslims™️ and their progressive groupies?
Training and practice, of course; it starts very early.
Great, great, great .. now where can I get my Che Guevara-inspired Hang-glider t-shirt with free next day shipping?
It bears repeating, and the irony never gets old: most of the Westerners cheering on Hamas et al. would, under a Hamas regime, be among the first to be rounded up, lined up against a wall, and shot.
Salient point.
sounds like an excellent teachable moment
Well since the only place left to evacuate them is America or Europe, we'll soon see.
The rest of the Arab world won't have them.
And yes, like 1982 in Lebanon we're going to evacuate Gaza.
Watch.
Or thrown off roofs of tall buildings.
Same is true of the unzipped public school valedictorians out there lionizing Communism and Socialism (Communism with training wheels).
This is an appalling comparison! First, it omits so much of the story.
The huge power imbalance between a well intrenched, illegally occupying force supported by the wealth and power of Europe and U.S., vis a vis an impoverished, occupied population who has suffered endlessly since 1948.
The acts of violence by a well funded military giant against an imprisoned, indigenous population that if it remains quite dies a slow death and if it resits is vilified to the extent that they are worse than Nazis!
Second, it actually highlights how the tactics of the Nazis, as you describe them, to hide and obfuscate their crimes are the ones that the Israelis are copying.
Third, there is so much hatred, prejudice and overt loathing of Palestinians on public display from Israeli military and political leaders, New Yorkers on the street, US politicians etc., but that's not seen as evil or disgusting as it is always justified.
It's all Hamas' fault after all.
“ If you are not in thrall to the notion that claims about oppression are the bed-rock moral “facts”, then you can grasp that a group’s behaviour can be so bad, as to de-legitimise their cause. What means you choose to prosecute your cause matters. Not merely for what it says about you, but because while you may never achieve your ends, your means have immediate effects.
What we are seeing on our screens, if you can bear to look, is horrible. But it is not a mysterious horror. It is horror with a long, long history that way predates the Zionist project.”
- Lorenzo Warby
The deliberate, individualized rape and murder of women, the deliberate, individualized decapitation of children and babies, is an evil that far surpasses the general evil of war. Hamas delenda est.
The decapitation of children and babies story was totally debunked. It's Hasbara at it's coarsest.
How about we condemn all acts of violence against innocent civilians and children?
Israel has killed, displaced, imprisoned far more Palestinians than the other way around. Including children, women and the elderly: https://ifamericansknew.org/stat/.
"Yossi Landau, the head of operations for the southern region of Zaka, Israel's volunteer civilian emergency response organization, told CBS News he saw with his own eyes children and babies who had been beheaded." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-babies-killed-hamas-terror-attack-kibbutz-kfar-aza-first-responders-say/
So, debunked? Disputed, of course, but that’s normal.
And even were it actually untrue, so what. The rapes & murders still occurred. Or have those been “debunked”?
The point is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, which as a matter of policy individually targets innocents as such, & brutalizes them before killing them. These are evil people, and anyone who supports or justifies them is a participant in that evil.
I have no interest in pernicious arguments grounded on “immoral equivalence.” Atrocities occur in all wars. Sometimes, as with the Japanese in China and the Russians in Germany, it is official or unofficial policy. Israel does no such thing.
But for Hamas, it’s how they roll.
GME is a pawn of Hamas.
So it would seem...
Not debunked from my reading. Confirmed by multiple sources.
The story is complicated. Israel accepts Jewish refugees as citizens. The Arab states preferred to keep Palestinians as stateless hereditary refugees as sticks to beat Israel with. It is still easier for a Palestinian to become a citizen of US, UK, Australia, Canada … than most Arab states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
They COULD even become Israeli citizens, as many have done; those in Gaza refuse to, and a recent poll showed 75% would vote for Hamas again, in the midst of this war. Those 2 facts alone should tell you they are NOT "oppressed" by anyone but themselves!
The C20th saw sadly many population “transfers”. Palestinians were the only ones deliberately not assimilated by their ethno-religious confreres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer
This is THE source of the problem we see today. Why is nobody talking about this? The Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza have been hung out to dry by their brother and sister co-religionists for 75 years in one of the most cynical geopolitical ploys imaginable.
Arnold Kling has a particularly pertinent and moving short memoir on this.
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/gaza-memories
I read it this morning and found it enlightening as well. One of those many pieces that makes me wish I was more well-travelled.
The Palestinian refuge diaspora and the Gazans were certainly hung out to dry.
The West Bankers not so much: Jordan did give them citizenship, and only stripped it from them after the PLO tried to take over Jordan in 1970.
Suits THEIR narrative.
I saw a photo of a baby riddled with bullets, the wounds were front and to the left, indicating it was lying down possibly in its crib and shot by somebody standing over them to one side.
Its head area was pixilated so not possible to say whether it was decapitated.
Is it your argument that since decaputation has been debunked (by whom ) the riddling with bullets is of no consequence, doesn’t count?
How about recognising that the depraved individuals who did this to Jewish babies are children? Well they have mothers and fathers so they are somebody’s children aren’t they?
And civilians who bring up their children to commit atrocities are not innocent - they are complicit, responsible and accountable.
If a civil society is not responsibly or accountable for its children, then who is?
And we are not talking about one or two bad apples - they are the whole barrel, and this has been going on for decades with terror attacks in Europe against non-Jews too. Our crime? Our failure to annihilate the Jews apparently.
There have been multiple opportunities for a completely diffent outcome over the last seven decades, but various Palestinian leaders refused them all. To a great extent, this is on them.
Rape, kidnapping, targeting of non-combatants and deliberate infanticide are not "self defence", not "freedom fighting". The utter barbarity of the people who committed the atrocities on Saturday will be remembered for decades. It has served to show the world what Islamic militants are capable of, and what may be coming in Western countries that have blindly accepted so many.
That being said, I have sympathy for the non-combatant people of Palestine. In many cases they have no choice about being made targets by the policy of Hamas to cite military targets in civilian areas. Hamas are the enemy of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Well, I'm not afraid of what Jews might do in Western countries.
Sorry - it was a quick reply that sounded funny in my head. Your post above is quite correct - I'm getting to a point where I'm going to shut up for a while. I genuinely do care about civilians of both sides, and I have no doubt that Israeli soldiers are going to do bad things. I am aware, though, that my support for the Jewish cause is likely to lead me into relativism. Ultimately, I see the hatred of Jews as far worse than their (in my mind, justified) hatred of Palestinians. The Jews are the ultimate historical underdog, and deserve a great deal of leeway in what they think they need to do to survive. At the same time, however, if I was one of the Palestinian civilians waiting for the hammer to drop, with the risk that my children would not see the end of the day/week/month, I would want a different course if action to be taken.
There's a lot more I could say, but when it comes down to it, it makes no difference. What is going to happen is out of my hands. I support Israel's aims over those of Palestine's, and that colours my opinions. The end (I think!)
You do know IDF warns the "Palestinian" civilians to leave targeted areas, even to calling on their personal phones, and that Hamas shoots those who try to flee? That's all been reported by both sides for some yrs now. Hamas then blames IDF for the dead regardless how they got to be dead, and the world media slurps it up like free booze!
Hamas has been very careful to ensure it's not faced the electorate since 2006. Can't think why. Surely people have no problem with getting targets painted on their backs for the cause.
/sarc.
There was no need; I believe it was Poles who took the poll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but it was some no emu slim outsiders, if not Poles. That's where the 75% figure came from, just last month, reported by Memri and other news sites.
You just outlined, in encapsulated form, nearly the entire history of Islam's interactions with non-Muslims the world over, starting with Muhammad himself.
GME; send me your country.
History and I will then indict you for your sins and tell you who’s land you stole.
And the Palestinians are a UN (meaning USA 🇺🇸) funded prison gang, with HAMAS as Apex Prison Gang. Other than grift there’s nothing there, that’s why Arafat had $2Billion, his wife a mansion in Cyprus, and HAMAS leaders are mostly in Villas in Qatar.
The entire Palestinian project is a USA legacy project from the Cold War. The time has come to close the Palestinian account, which is be certain fraud all along. We had it as a hedge with the Arabs and initially over Israel (a state founded by Jewish Communists that had Stalin as arms supplier in 47-48) until we allied with Israel after 1967, somewhat because Nasser played America and we were upset.
That had Czecho-Slovakia as arms supplier. The crucial weapons were bought before the Communist takeover. I've no truck with Commies; but wind your neck in, you are spreading malinformation.
I’ll check. I’m doubtful the Czechs (er Czechoslovakians) could do that without Stalin’s approval, their troops being there...
and the USSR was a supporter of Israel, until The Kingdom of Israel Lehi offshoot blew up their embassy .
Not quite. In fact mostly I was correct.
The negotiations started in June 47, the first contract 10 January 1948. Jan Masaryk signed, as it happens he was dead before most of the arms arrived.
The coup was 25 Feb 1948, the shipments and indeed trainers arrived late march and over summer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_shipments_from_Czechoslovakia_to_Israel_1947%E2%80%931949
Again the idea that this happens without Stalin knowing and approving is malinforming the reader, and the USSR supported the 2 state solution and was the first state to recognize Israel.
Czechoslovakia was a cut out.
Not that I don’t actually admire them, or think they were wrong to ship arms either as nationalists or Communists. Stalin wanted to punch the British, the Arabs were pro-British in general, the Zionists usually very Leftist.
https://www.rbth.com/history/327040-ussr-and-israel-from-friends-to-foes
The Palestinian leadership have deliberately prevented their own people’s social and economic development, declined to put down roots and make a homeland, in order to adopt refugee status of displaced people - this is not our home!’ - even refugee camps in the West Bank - to get sympathy and money, and move their cause for the eviction of the Israelis and return to their rightful homeland. Yasser Arafat was always explaining this, so it’s no revelation. Hamas has the eradication of the Jews and reclamation of the territory inside Israel written in their constitution.
By casting Palestinians as helpless victims, they are robbed of agency, self-respect, self-determination, and reduced to welfare dependency on US/UN/EU charity.
With the billions they have received they could have built infrastructure, and by their own investment, endevour, and attracting inward investment, they could have become a thriving, peaceful, stable society.
In 70 years, Israel which started out with mostly poor people with only their Human capital and labour did that. In 70 years the Palestinians are no further forward. Why? Nobody has stopped them, except themselves.
The Palestinian leadership has mansions in Cyprus and most of the HAMAS leadership is in Qatar 🤣🤣
The Lip Syncing Liberation Organization 🤣
Despite their endless suffering they certainly had a lot of babies in that time, usually a sign people are thriving and hopeful; certainly biology would call them winners. I guess a different view is that people who are endlessly suffering want to indroduce a lot of babies into that situation.
From scattered reading here and there plus some of the Koran (couldn't stomach the whole thing) I've gotten this impression:
They have a different culture, one with a different way of warfare. It works on a longer timeline, centuries not election cycles. As I understand it, increasing their number and suppressing the infidel's by enslaving, gang-raping or killing their young females is one of several methods to strengthen them against a targeted city, ethnicity or system.
In this systems slave women do not transmit language and culture to their children; that is the sole right of the father and not the mother. Along that line, during Ottoman rule a tax was placed on Christian families. The tax was the taking of boys to be raised into warriors against other Christians. It seems that it's a system to either destroy or possess the target's women, which of course insures their eventual defeat.
That method probably goes back thousands of years, but was enhanced and made holy by Mohammad and the armies such as Tamerlayne's that followed him. Looking at territory and populations gained vs those lost, Islam's various methods of conquest are more effective than Westerners admit.
I image that the situation in the news today is well more complex than the above; I'm writing about that part of it because it's absent from corporate media.
What a mistake it was to end the Mandate. And no 50/50 profit sharing. How much more straightforward relations would have been. How much less potent a weapon oil would have been. I think the West thought Arabs would be flattered and grateful that we pretended the things Westerners built (the trains - I have a marvelous collection of paper ephemera from my husband's great-uncle, a Union Pacific man, from his time in the Middle East in the 20s; the oil derricks, the refineries) were "theirs". But that is not how they think, or something they could ever honor. They themselves are masters of deception - there is a quote somewhere in a Bernard Lewis book, from someone he met in his time there, which essentially boils down to - you know we would never tell you the truth, that is ridiculous; and one will always be in a false position with such people if you have the idealistic notion that they will respect something other than strength.
The kill the men take the woman and breed goes back to the dawn of history, is borne out in DNA, and was actually practiced during the Balkans wars in the 90s at scale.
(Me; Gaza should be leveled and the survivors driven off for context. However putting this on the Arabs or Islam is wrong. )
Killed the man took and bred to the woman; sorry all, if you’re reading this that’s your male ancestors. Especially if you’re an Indo European descendant, and most of us are...
Nothing new happened here, and if you flatter yourself evolved;
Has your moral evolution been tested?
Well; it will be.
A stunning lack of history in this post. But time cannot be reversed. The past is.
I couldn't put it into words, but you clarified it here. What I did write about is how people in the US are longing to do the same thing to their "enemies" in my opinion. People want to be gleefully able to have a purge of their "enemies," and it is shocking to see people celebrate this evil. I think they desire to do it themselves so they don't see what is wrong about it. That thought can be terrifying.
That’s human nature.
Looking forward to your next piece. The fact that Harvard student groups blamed Israel for the Hamas atrocities so quickly and decisively must be questioned. What have our universities been inculcating? The delayed and lukewarm response from administration (until public outrage became overwhelming) reveals how academia has been indoctrinating its students. I don’t believe the current crop of statements in support of Israel from these administrators.
Who pays for their drugs?
Whose drugs? I have no idea what you mean.
Their parents silly.
It very easy to set up influence networks in the west. You need merely to pay for their recreational chemicals. The only problem is that it’s difficult to get them to show up for anything before noon.
I'll try to answer your questions in my follow-up piece.
"What have our universities been inculcating?"
This wins today's Rip Van Winkle Award! ;)
Since the 80s at latest the Anglosphere has been conquered by something called Critical Studies (aka Social Justice), which is a reheated form of Marxism (sprinkled w a dash of Protestantism) that sees all of European liberal democracy as a mask for oppression and a single continuous hate crime against "the marginalized".
In this belief system, which was hatched and incubated first in the Humanities before it escaped the lab, Europeans and their culture and history are all ipso facto "Oppressors" with the "Oppressed" being any historical victims of discrimination, most esp blacks, gays and women.
And just as with the Bolsheviks and the kulaks, any and all assaults against the Oppressor class are righteous and moral, while any member of any Oppressed class is always only a righteous victim whose revolutionary violence is justified and sanctified.
I wish I were exaggerating!
So are you wrinkled then Rip?
It's very clever, too. A great portion of critical theory true believers are motivated primarily by the knowledge and fear that they themselves are public enemy number one. Oppressors attacking oppressors are in full survival mode, 'not me, I'm one of the good ones', which makes them especially dangerous, because that's how scapegoats are created. So this is what we're seeing, old as the hills.
Thank you. Despite studying history for years, I've shuddered and shielded myself from lurid details of the Holocaust. (A family member of mine liberated a camp. And was left traumatized). The gleeful bloodlust you describe is terrifying.
It’s human nature.
It is a war a century or more old. War 101: demonise your enemy. This is now set in stone for Israelis and Palestinians. Until all the external actors, actors who haven't a clue because for them it is only words on paper or images on a screen, stop fuelling the fire it'll never die. Bluntly, there are only two "solutions": Maximum Israel with no Arabs; or Maximum Palestine with no Jews.
All academic to me: just as with Russia v Ukraine it ain't my war and it ain't my business. Except insofar as Islam is an existential threat and even if Israel/Palestine went pfft! overnight, Islam as existential threat would remain. Callous? We routinely ignore wars just as bad, even worse. Hypocrisy. I'm neither interested, nor do I want to know.
So remain in ignorance. No one forced you to read this.
As no one forced you to read Steven C’s comment. Toady.
Your naivete and pseudo-sophistication is breathtaking. The ideas that are animating the war over there are on your doorstep.
Whatever do you mean by "up against"?
"Before Saturday and Sunday—the cause of Palestinian autonomy and statehood probably held the moral high ground. This was in large part because they are so outgunned: a developing-world statelet up against a militarily powerful, developed-world regional hegemon."
Seriously, WTF? Why is Hamas "up against" anyone, particularly Israel? Israel acquired the Gaza in decades ago wars initiated by Hamas' brethren in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria. Israel ceded the Sanai after those wars - it was on the verge of crossing into Egypt proper but desisted. In 2004 or 2005 it walked away from Gaza. Leaving the place to the "Palestinians".
Why is Hamas up against Israel? This has to be the most incoherent thing you've written. Try to answer it coherently.
Any incoherence evinced here is yours.
They aren’t wrong that the framing of this situation has been manufactured out of whole cloth by Arabs seeking to manipulate Western opinion. There was no Palestinian identity prior to the 70s. It was known as the Jewish-Arab conflict prior to that.
The commenter is also correct that Israel “gave” Gaza back to the Arabs as a peace offering.
Oh, I don't disagree with any of that.
Conflict comes from incompatible aims. Whether they are legitimate aims is a fair question, but that those of Hamas and Israel are incompatible is obvious. Hence “up against”.
LW: The term Palestinian is from the 1960s at the Earliest, although often attributed to Arafat the Egyptian in 1975 at the UN.
The Arabs displaced in the camps, funded by the UN via UNWRA became the Palestinians.
The UN for those who don't know is a well known alias of the USA.
[I'm American].
We the People of the USA weren't allies of Israel until after they won in the 1967 war.
We were prior allies of Nasser in Egypt, who played us [played Kermit Roosevelt BTW].
Nasser turned on us and caused trouble, then went hard for the Soviets.
At that point the Lady from Brooklyn, one Golda Meir was able to form alliance with the USA.
Now this is just Empire, and in our defense America didn't want it.
The point: Israel despite common misconception was not an American project.
Israel was a Zionist [Jewish Communists] and British Empire project and we inherited all the mess after we kiboshed Suez intervention in 1956 and then, and only then bought down the British Empire. Probably unintentionally but in reaction to being lied to, and the mess in Hungary. Europe has always been the primary theater and interest of the USA since WW2. Recent events via Ukraine show this truth.
If we had any project going in Palestine...by degrees and by endless funding of camps that should have been phased out in the 1950s...our project has been; The Palestinians.
Now we've tried to end this with justice.
The Palestinians won't have it.
So it ends the other way.
They're not in a position to complain.
They DID cross into Egypt proper. They kettled the Egyptian Third army against the Canal after the brutal Battle of Chinese Farm allowed them to secure crossings. Sadat cried 'Uncle!'
You'll note I've been proper learned, and now I have to be interested and want to know,
Yep. I knew that but was thinking in terms of the Nile or the Suez which was the barrier where they were stopped. My bad.
Hard reading.
But necessary.
Thanks for articulating what most of us shy away from.
Indeed.
HAMAS
On the other hand we have a Hitler at last !
They're not much of a Hitler, but it's all the Hitlers we really got !