X Close

Do Israel’s critics understand Evil? Calls for a 'proportionate' response are intellectual obfuscation

Pro-Palestinian activists in London (TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

Pro-Palestinian activists in London (TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)


October 16, 2023   6 mins

After the Holocaust, academics and others tried to make sense of the murder of six million Jews. Historians pointed to the rise of nationalism following the First World War; the dismal state of the German economy when Hitler rose to power; the dehumanising abstraction of Enlightenment rationality. Some rabbis argued that the Holocaust was a punishment from God, but they could not agree on why it was merited. Was it because the Jews of Europe sought to found a state of their own? Or because they didn’t? Others more prudently followed Wittgenstein’s observation: “That of which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence.”

Many historical and societal factors set the stage for the Holocaust. But none of these, individually or collectively, can explain the kind of violence to which the Nazis subjected their Jewish victims.

Jewish children and babies were, for a time, thrown alive into fire pits at Auschwitz. It has been calculated that, in this manner, the SS saved approximately two-fifths of a cent per child on Zyklon-B, the insecticide they used in the gas chambers. Were the children burned alive to save money? It would be obscene to suppose that economy explains such a horrific method of murder. The same holds for sealing people in a boxcar for as much as a week without telling them to bring water and food, neither of which the Nazis provided. Or sewing twins together back-to-back, as Dr Mengele once did at Auschwitz. (Gangrene immediately set in and they died in three days.)

In fact, nothing could explain such abominations. Primo Levi’s distinction between “useful” and “useless” violence makes this clear. Useful violence has an aim outside itself. A thief kills a witness to a crime in order to avoid capture. The victim would otherwise have been unmolested, but was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such violence is evil, but useful in that it serves a purpose outside of itself. The thief might say: “I never wanted to hurt anybody, but then she came out of the back.” Perhaps he really is just unusually callous and stupid; he didn’t go looking for evil, but he found it. This explanation makes some sense, but does not excuse: the thief is going to prison for homicide, and rightly so.

Useless violence, however, is the deliberate production of pain and suffering as an end in itself. There is nothing apart from the violence to which one could point and say “that’s why they did these things”. The sole aim of useless violence is to torture, to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. It is not evil, but Evil.

Evil (with a capital E) defies explanation, which is why it is often called “senseless”. Evil is done for its own sake, and in this it mirrors, like a photographic negative, the senseless kindness of Good. In his novel Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman writes of a Soviet woman who, prepared to strangle a wounded German soldier who had participated in deadly reprisals against her village, instead gave him water. “No one could understand [her action]; nor could she explain it herself.” That spontaneous and inexplicable act of kindness — kindness for its own sake — was Good.

Theologians have long understood Evil as an absence or privation: complete separation from God. But while mere absence is inert, Evil is as potent and contagious as certain deadly viruses. It can fill entire social classes and ethnic or religious groups with bloodlust, and drive them to frenzies of violence. Organised and routinised by the State, Evil can even give rise to an entire industry of death. The power that produced the labour, transit, concentration, and death camps of Nazi Germany was evidently substantial and virulent.

Still, the theologians have discerned something important about the negative capacity of Evil. Evil has a way of disabling moral receptivity and short-circuiting intelligence. Examples abound in Claude Lanzmann’s brave film Shoah, a 9.5-hour documentary that records the testimony of perpetrators, survivors, and witnesses of the Holocaust.

Consider Frans Suchomel, SS Unterscharführer at Treblinka, a death camp where 800,000 Jews were murdered. Suchomel embodies pure superficiality: a human outside with no inside. He is secretly filmed by a van outside his apartment building. The technology Lanzmann employs generates a grainy image in which faulty video transmission or reception obscures Suchomel’s eyes with a black line, as if to emphasise his moral blindness. He sings a song that the doomed “worker Jews” of Treblinka were forced to sing as they dealt with a noxious liquid pool of decomposing corpses. The song’s message is that the human lot, the lot of Germans and Jews alike, is determined by forces that we can neither fully understand nor control. When he finishes, he says to Lanzmann with obvious pride: “Satisfied? No Jew knows that today!”

Consider also Mrs Michelsohn, the wife of a Nazi schoolteacher at Chelmno, where 400,000 Jews were murdered in mobile gas vans. (These vans were outfitted with a pipe that fed exhaust fumes into the sealed interior of the vans, which were driven until the Jews packed within were asphyxiated.) Michelsohn cannot recall how many Jews died in Chelmno; she remembers only that the number began with a four. At one point she confuses Poles and Jews. Asked by Lanzmann what the difference is between the two, she says: “The Poles weren’t exterminated and the Jews were. That’s the difference. An external difference.” But she “can’t assess” the “inner difference,” for “I don’t know enough about psychology and anthropology”.

Today, the world is still full of wilfully blind Suchomels and obtuse Michelsohns, callous perpetrators and complicit witnesses who see no Evil and hide behind a veneer of intellectual abstraction. Lanzmann’s words about the making of Shoah ring true: “The worst moral and artistic crime that can be committed in producing a work dedicated to the Holocaust is to consider the Holocaust as past.”

When they invaded Israel on October 7, Hamas terrorists beat, robbed, raped, kidnapped, and executed Jewish men, women and children. They also burned families alive, shot babies in the head, and decapitated them. Such horrific crimes hadn’t been perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust. Yet politicians and university presidents who were previously quick to comment on issues of social justice have little or nothing to say about mass slaughter in Israel, while more than a few students and professors have applauded Hamas’s atrocities and assaulted Jewish students.

Hamas, whose hateful ideology was directly influenced by Nazism, has claimed that the brutal murder of Jewish children and babies in Israel was perpetrated by enraged civilians from Gaza. In fact, documents recovered from Hamas terrorists killed in southern Israel show “detailed plans to target children and young people”. Hamas’s supporters cite “facts” that are supposed to justify the terrorists’ vile deeds, including the seizure of Palestinian land in the 1948 War of Independence, when the Jews of the new nation of Israel fought the armies of five invading Arab nations. But there can be no justification of Hamas’s atrocities, not even in principle. They are so vile as to fall beyond the realm of explanation, let alone excuse. History teaches us at least this much.

In other words, Hamas’s vicious deeds were Evil. They exemplified useless violence, for they were designed to make their victims — Israelis, and insofar as possible, all Jews — suffer in the cruellest possible way. This must be understood, because the organs of supposedly judicious opinion are already explaining that Israel’s military response to Hamas must not be “disproportionate”. We’ve seen this movie ad nauseam: it plays on an endless loop. Israelis are murdered in terrorist attacks, and then they are denounced for taking concrete steps to protect themselves.

There is something absurd about the demand that Israel exercise proportionality in the face of Evil. As Douglas Murray has observed, that would mean that “Israel should try to locate a music festival in Gaza and rape precisely the number of women that Hamas raped… kill precisely the number of young people that Hamas killed.… [They should] go door to door and kill precisely the correct number of babies that Hamas killed.”

The revulsion this suggestion elicits in decent human beings underscores the literal impossibility of reckoning with Evil. If Good is transcendent, Evil is negatively transcendent, exceeding measurement as it exceeds explanation. To try to measure or explain either Good or Evil is like trying to capture mathematical infinity in a finite sequence of numerals. It simply can’t be done.

We must not forget this when we hear “reasonable” people at the UN, The New York Times or the US State Department urge Israel not to go too far in its attempt to eradicate Hamas, or when they condemn the country — as is inevitable — for having done so. Such judgments pose as clarity, but are in fact moral and intellectual obfuscation. They can only encourage antisemites everywhere, and give Hezbollah and other agents of Iran’s theological tyranny a pretext for opening up more fronts in their effort to effect a Final Solution: to finish, once and for all, the work of the Holocaust.

Indeed, Hamas and its Islamist allies are counting on exactly this. They have set a trap for Israel, baited by their Evil. They want the IDF to grind Gaza to a pulp. They hope that publicising images of suffering in Gaza (including fake ones, if past performance is any indication) will stimulate world outcry and justify a wider war — one that Israel may not be able to win. This violence might seem to be “useful”, but if so, it is useful only in the cause of Evil.

If we are to speak of Evil at all — and now is no time for decent people to be silent — we cannot rely on ordinary frameworks of evaluation. The only language that can hope to do justice to Evil is theological. Perhaps all that can be said of Hamas and the worldwide gang of Islamists is that their crimes and plans are Satanic: absolutely and completely demonic.


Jacob Howland is Provost and Dean of the Intellectual Foundations Program at the University of Austin.


Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

471 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

“Do Israel’s critics understand Evil?”
I don’t know, but they appear to want to excuse it.
The BBC and the bien pensant Left seem keen to push the idea of proportionality and restraint. They wail that Israel has a choice in how they react, and that the Palestinians didn’t choose this war. Okay, many didn’t – but plenty did. They voted in Hamas and have supported the years of almost daily rocket attacks against Israel.
No Israelis wanted it. None.
If Hamas had laid down their weapons, there could have been peace.
If Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide.
See the difference?
So, to those who call for a proportional response – Will you do the reckoning? How many Gazans should the Israelis kidnap and hold hostage, so as to be proportional? How many women should the Israelis beat, rape, sodomize and kill? How many babies should they butcher?
Please identify the streets in Gaza where you think Israeli soldiers should go door to door to murder the occupants and take women and children hostage. Let us know which of the hostages you would select, so you can broadcast their murder over their own social media channels to ensure their families get to witness the depravity.
There is a sense among many on the left that the visceral reaction most have us have felt in the wake of such barbarity is somehow unsophisticated. That the more nuanced and progressive view should be to conjure reasons why Israel is at fault – to justify some moral relativism in the face of evil. How the hell does one confront such attitudes? – Honestly, if your immediate gut reaction, alongside your more considered reaction, is not entirely with the Israelis and condemning the murderous thugs of Hamas, then I struggle to know how to start a conversation with you – without simply shouting “For Shame!” in your face.
Watching the anti-Israel marches in western cities, people overtly expressing support for Hamas, angers me more than anything I’ve seen in years. All the more so as my rage is impotent. These people are allowed to openly celebrate murderers and genocidal terrorists, all while blaming the victims for the actions of the perpetrators.
In any right-thinking society these people who marched and chanted “From the River to the Sea” would be ending their careers as surely as if they came into work with a swastika tattooed on their forehead but no, we make excuses for it.
Our own institutions like the FA, the BBC and many of our universities are offering tacit support by refusing to condemn these atrocities. The FA, so quick to kneel to BLM, and commemorate the death of a petty criminal in America, happy to light up Wembley in support of Ukraine, or France after the Bataclan attack, refuse to show solidarity with Israel after an almost unimaginable atrocity. Organisations who are usually hair-triggered when it comes to offence-peddling, who’ll condemn a contentious tweet as a hate-crime, suddenly change their rules when it comes to Israel.
They and their fellow-travellers wrap their anti-semitism in the language of compassion for Palestinians, as though there is an equivalence. 
It is utterly SHAMEFUL!
Am Yisrael chai.

Andrew H
Andrew H
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Well said indeed. In terms of what is going on just now, I thought this line from the Quillette article on the influence of Nazi ideology on Hamas and antisemitic islamism was especially apposite: “Instead, liberal and progressive outlets have attempted to explain Palestinian terror as an instrument of postcolonial thought and anti-imperialist resistance, thereby transforming an ideology of the reactionary far-Right into an ideology of the revolutionary Left.”

Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew H
P N
P N
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew H

Nazi ideology was not reactionary. It was revolutionary and progressive. While the Nazis’ racism was far-right, fascism itself was a left wing phenomenon. Before the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, Italian fascists had been lauded throughout Europe and the USA for their progressivism; Hollywood even made a film about Mussolini and Roosevelt was an admirer. Mussolini was a socialist; Hitler was a socialist. The Nazis’ 25 Point Plan is a socialist plan and if you look past the racial element, it would be lauded by many on the left today. The real enemy of fascism wasn’t communism but capitalism.

harry 0
harry 0
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

I am sick and tired of this labeling of Fascism/ Nazi ideology as „left“. Obviously, you haven’t read any of the 25 points plan even though it is easy to find online. Actually, more than half of the content is about how only ethically pure Germans (“deutsche Volksgenossen”) can have the rights of a citizen, all others are “guests” and have to live under “alien laws” (main targets of people to be excluded was the Jewish-German population). And communists and social democrats were prosecuted and detained, if not worse. And the main enemy was communist sovjet union (labelled “Jewish Bolshevism“).
Actually, Hitler himself – about 5 years before rising to power – in order to make very clear that
(deutsch)
dass das Wirtschaftskonzept der NSDAP weder antikapitalistisch noch sozialistisch war, veröffentlichte er im Völkischen Beobachter vom 19. April 1928 eine Erklärung, nach der „gegenüber den verlogenen Auslegungen des Punktes 17 von seiten unserer Gegner […] die NSDAP auf dem Boden des Privateigentums steht“. Der Passus zur unentgeltlichen Enteignung richte sich „in erster Linie gegen die jüdischen Grundspekulations-Gesellschaften“
(engl.)
that the economic concept of the NSDAP was neither anti-capitalist nor socialist, he published a statement in the Völkischer Beobachter of April 19, 1928, according to which “in opposition to the mendacious interpretations of Point 17 [of the 25 points plan ] on the part of our opponents the NSDAP stands on the ground of private property.” The passage on gratuitous expropriation was directed “primarily against the Jewish land speculation companies.”
Mussolini was actually a member of the PSI (Partito Socialista Italiano – Italian socialist party) but was thrown out in 1914 for expressing nationalist views. In 1919, he was one the founders of the fascist movement, which was radical nationalist and anti-socialist.

harry 0
harry 0
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

test

Last edited 1 year ago by harry 0
Helen Hughes
Helen Hughes
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

Fascism is actually what capitalists resort to to control the masses when their ordinary capitalism isn’t cutting it anymore. It’s a sign of capitalism struggling to hold on and being fearful that communists will win people over. Better to go nationalist and find a scapegoat that isn’t them anymore. Seems obvious to me.

David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Hughes

Or fascism is what totalitarians resort to when they realize that Hayek and vonMises were right, and socialism won’t work? The union of corporate and state power (Mussolini’s own definition) can happen with either in the driver’s seat. (Recent example of the state being in charge: American tech companies censoring views disfavored by our permanent federal bureacracy, at the behest of the state, under vague threat of some sort of onerous regulations being imposed on them.)
Or fascism (now) is what happens when the managerial class displaces capitalists as those actually in control, since managerial class floats among positions in government, commerce, finance, NGOs? (James Burnham predicted a totalitarian outcome from the rise of The Managerial Elite, in a book of that name.)

Last edited 1 year ago by David Yetter
Andrew H
Andrew H
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

Hmm, this take would have surprised the socialists and communists who were already being murdered by the Nazis in the 1920s. Might be worth reading up on the ever so subtle differences between national socialism and socialism. “If you look past the racial element….” – wow!

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

Sure which is why the Nazis were so vociferously opposed by Communists and Social Democrats, and so assiduously courted by Germany’s capitalists and supported by other far-right parties like the German National People’s parties. One can be against communism and socialism without talking rubbish. The National Socialists were “socialist” in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is “democratic.”

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

Lots of Nazi idea have been post WW2 laundered and rebranded by academia and are now compassionate new ideas,like choice in dying.

David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

More than that: Derrida was a disciple of Heidegger (a Nazi), and much wokery depends on “theory” in the sense of Derrida and his followers.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew H

Please understand Palestinians ARE Semites. Indeed they are more Semitic that the bulk of Israelis who are largely Russians, Poles and Germans. Unlike most Jews, almost all Palestinians have lived in Palestine for thousands of years.. Many Palestinians are Christians btw but most Christians support those who murder them indiscriminately.. Nice isn’t it?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

This is false. Modern day “Palestinians” derive from the Arab colonization of the land. Also, Christians make up 1-2% of the Palestinian population in West Bank/Gaza. Jews have resided in the land for thousands of years.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

No. David Ben Gurion honoured as the Founder of Israel did research in the 1920s that proved that the Palestinians who lived in that territory then were the genetic descendants of the worker Jews,the labourers,the poorest level of biblical Jewish society,the only ones who were not taken away into captivity because that was only the aristocracy,upper and middle classes. Because they did not want to accept his offer to join his proposed new Jewish nation as most of them were Christian from at least a thousand years back he hid his research away in the.university files. The whole of this land was legally owned with proper paperwork,title.deeds, the people OWNED those fields,houses,olive groves. The first Jewish settlers bought land it was when the people who lived there woke up to the stealth takeover and stopped being willing to sell land that the finagling and outright land stealing began.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Thank you. I very much appreciate researched information but it seems others don’t want truth.. I guess they’re hooked on propaganda like the bloodthirsty majority. And they call themselves Christians!

Darena Dineva
Darena Dineva
10 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

I wonder what you mean by semites – is it people who have descended from Abraham or do you mean specifically Jewish people? I cannot possibly see how any Jews but the tiniest minority would have remained in the Gaza land or Isreal itself after so many conquests by foreign hostile to the Jews forces – Muslims in 7th century, then Crusades in the Middle Ages then the Ottoman Empire. The vast majority of Jewish people were exiled by the Romans in the 1st century after the Judean Revolt which ended in 73 AD. Whoever was left after that was killed in the subsequent Arab conquests in 7 century and then Crusades and finally Ottoman Empire. The Jews that are currently in Gaza and Isreal have only come there in the last Century or so. The Palestinians as group are as heterogeneous as the multitudes of conquerors passing through their land but one things is clear they are not Jewish neither are they semites – their are originally nomadic stateless people who up until the establishment of Israel have never had interest in having their own country and if any other Muslim nation had done what Isreal has in displaced them no one in the West or other Muslim countries would care just as hypocritically no one in the West cares about other groups made refugees because they are made refugees by their fellow Muslim nations.

Last edited 10 months ago by Darena Dineva
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

1-2% of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million is up to 48,000 ..Christians.. are they expendable? I find it odd that other Christians are baying for the blood of their fellow Christians. Actually, anyone who is baying for anyone’s blood is NOT a Christian in the literal sense since such a heinous act is anathema to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who btw was a Palestinian Jew.. who blasted his fellow Jews for believing revenge (an eye for an eye). So, such people are literally rejecting the message of Jesus and doing the opposite and as such are anti Christ. I don’t see how that can be disputed

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Ignorance is bliss. The majority of Jewish Israelis now hail from or are the offspring of Jews from the middle east and north africa.
Also, what is the point of saying what we all know, that Palestinians are semites (semitic being a language group, not a racial categorization). The term antisemitic was coined by a German who hated Jews and created the term exclusively to describe Jews. Every time I hear “palestinians are semites too” or “the real semites” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the ignorance demonstrated by this remark.
But even by your idiotic contention, given that semitic is just a language group, both Arabs and Israelis are semites, because Arabs, including Palestinians, speak Arabic and Israelis speak Hebrew, both semitic languages.
Got it?

Last edited 1 year ago by harry storm
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

You confirm my statement and then accuse me if being ignorant? Then you explain in your last sentence what I already explained to you.. is this some new kind of Woke logic?
I don’t think anyone “coined” the term Anti Semitic as both terms were in common use since Roman times!
When does a Semite stop being a Semite? Of a Jew marries a Gentile (aka a Goy) is the offspring no longer Semitic? How about the generation after that? This is all Racialist garbage..

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Practically everybody and I mean the people,just ordinary people I live among and am myself (I suppose) hear Palestinian and think Muslim.
Odd really that from my own recall the BBC etc in my lifetime has hardly ever mentioned this. For the last 30 years at least Christian Arabs have been mainly refused entry to live here unlike Muslims who just walk in. The reason given is that an influx of Christian Arabs would destabilize our society. What they mean is all those sort of migrants get housed in tightly packed,tense,dirty,unpleasant inner city communities that are mostly Muslim as most of the present ones there are from Muslim places(it’s so lovely living under Islam you’ll walk across the world and risk drowning not to live under it),so an influx of Christians would really blow the place up.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

I have worked in Muslim countries and found the people to be some of the nicest, most polite, most helpful people I met anywhere.
The least friendly place I found to be the US.
The Muslim women I met in those countries were anything but oppressed. The were outspoken and laughed at the idea they were repressed.. They were educated, beautifully dressed, self-assured..
I’m sorry to say the Christians and Buddhists living in Malaysia were no competition for their Islamic counterparts.
A great deal of misinformation is put out there that simply doesn’t apply to reality on the ground. I didn’t ever visit the repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia nor would I ever..

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Hint: Arabic, like Hebrew and Aramaic is semitic language. Please take the time to do a little research.. actually, a quick look at a dictionary (it’ll take a few seconds) will put you right. Most Israelis had to learn Hewbrew..

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

If Palestinians have lived in Palestine for thousands of years, then why have Islamists hijacked the “Palestinian cause”? At which point did the “Palestinian cause” become a battle between Jews and Muslims? Surely, the original battle was between Israelites and Palestinians, regardless of their religion!

Mel Kreitzer
Mel Kreitzer
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Allow me to share the Oxford Dictionary defi nition of “antisemite”

“an·ti-Sem·ite
/ˌanˌtīˈseˌmīt,ˌan(t)ēˈseˌmīt/
noun
noun: antisemite
a person who is hostile to or prejudiced against Jewish people”

Your point is puerile and, just in case

pu·er·ile
/ˈpyo͞orəl,ˈpyo͞oˌrīl/
adjective
adjective: puerile
childishly silly and trivial.
“you’re making puerile excuses”

Last edited 1 year ago by Mel Kreitzer
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Amongst other acts of terror, in 1946 an Israel terrorist group planted a bomb in the King David that killed 91 people. The leader of the terrorist group, Menachem Begin subsequently became prime Minister of Israel. He was not the only terrorist to achieve high office and acclaim in Israel. As they say one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Also why is there comparatively so much coverage of Israel when there is the ethic cleansing of Christians is taking place in Armenia aided and abetted by Israel

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 year ago

Irgun, the radical Zionist group that planted the King David bomb, delivered a warning before the explosion. Even if insufficient and delivered ineffectively, it still paints a huge difference between Zionist fighters and Hamas butchers, who made not even the tiniest such effort and in fact targeted the most defenseless Israelis in an act of pure intentional Evil, with a capital E.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

Yes, so much nicer and cleaner to blow children to pieces from the safety of 5,000 feet.. who cares if INNOCENT Palestinian women and children are beheaded and delimbed (bombs and collapsing buildings tend to do that) and die in agony in their fathers’ and bothers’ arms*.. 96 disposable Palestinian children for every 4 precious Israeli children, but sure Palestinian children are just rubbish – that’s why no one cares!
* oddly, those father’s and brothers then go on yo become brutal, vengeful, sadistic killers. Odd isn’t it?

Last edited 1 year ago by Liam O'Mahony
harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Stupid, nasty and bigoted, quite the trifecta. Wars are very nasty, especially to the weaker side. That’s why the weaker side shouldn’t start wars, particularly with a gruesome, savage massacre.
I don’t know how people can get this idiotic. Are there classes?

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Sounds like a good description of old slave whipper Joe and his crew.
Yes,there has been.”stupid idiot” training at least since the 1960s,it’s been sugar pilled for us in popular entertainment,tv,pop songs, books,films. We’ve all graduated to ” think as you’re told to think ” status.

jack brandt
jack brandt
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

When you state that weaker sides shouldn’t start wars, particularly with gruesome and savage massacres, are you referring to the Israeli’s? They were weak (and still are without the parasitic US and UK enabling them) and started the perpetual war in the Middle East by the barbaric terrorism of the Irgun and Lehi. Speaking of gruesome and savage massacres, perhaps you should talk to a surviving crewmember of the USS LIBERTY and get the details of the savagery of that attack that killed 34 American military men. I have. Only a complete idiot would still believe that was an ‘accident”, but after reading your comment, it looks like even 3rd rate Edward Bernays propaganda will work on you. Ironic how both Edward Bernays and Karl Marx came from many generations of Talmudic Rabbi’s, and in both of their own ways, have done more to harm and destroy Christianity in the world than even their Pharisaic ancestors could have hoped for when Jesus threw them out of the temple.

David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Are there classes? I’m afraid so. Taught at many institutions of higher education throughout the Anglosphere.

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Harvard university apparently holds evening classes for their various student societies on “How to become a world class idiot while sounding intelligent”!

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Who writes the screenplays,the novels, the TV documentaries. Who writes the script. Not Palestinians.

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Careful! Your Islamist leaning is being exposed. Too many fake propaganda videos on YouTube seem to have affected your critical faculties.

Last edited 1 year ago by Vijay Kant
Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

The IRA used to “deliver warnings” occasionally. It didn’t make much difference.

Incidentally did Irgun & Co ‘deliver a warning’ when they hanged/strangled those two British sergeants before booby trapping their putrefying bodies? As I recall they DIDN’T.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 year ago

I don’t deny that there are atrocities in every conflict, merely that it’s perfectly legitimate to consider some worse than others and some perpetrators worse than other perpetrators. Refusing to distinguish between the merely wrong and the intentionally evil is junior-high level emotionalism.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

Are you an American may I ask?

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

It’s telling that you have to back to the 1940s in an effort to find some vague equivalence which is anything but. It’s also worth noting that the Jewish establishment at the time condemned the killing of the two soldiers; when 1300 Jews are slaughtered in the most unimaginable ways, where are the condemnations from leading Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and most shamefully, among the far left and far right. Nowhere, that’s where.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

Organised and paid for by America.
Well,gotta create a market for those lethal weapons. It’s only business.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

You are correct.. most of the gung-ho types here are suckers for American propaganda!

harry 0
harry 0
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

test

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

The Palestinians of Hamas are too disorganized,stupid and inneffective to have pulled off such a coup. It was organised and paid for by America in order to create a justification for genocide which is now happening and most “right thinking” people are cheering it on so it’s worked.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

My dear Jane, you are wrong about this.

jack brandt
jack brandt
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

Zionist “fighters”? You mean like the ones that slaughtered civilians at Deir Yassin and too many other places to name? The ones that assassinated foreign British and Swedish diplomats like Lord Moyne and Folke Bernadotte? The ‘fighters” of the Lavon Affair that tried to blow up American and British moviegoers and blame it on the Egyptians (and still honor the agents to this day)? The ‘fighters” that attacked the USS LIBERTY for over an hour in broad daylight and killed 34 American serviceman (probably intending to sink the ship and blame it on one of their many enemies)? How about the Zionist “fighters” that promised the Reagan administration the protection of fleeing Palestinians from Lebanon, only to stand aside and let Mossad asset Elie Hobeika slaughter THOUSANDS of woman and children at Sabra and Shatila in his sick revenge attack? How about the Israeli who drove over American protester and young girl Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer? You going to go along with their excuse that it was an “accident”? Funny how this supposed advanced nation keeps having “accidents” and keeps getting caught lying to advance their agenda’s. What can one expect from a nation that was the fantasy creation of a deranged degenerate like Edmond Rothschild who married the biological daughter of his own cousin, and started the ball rolling by pulling off the first of many false flag war acts with the Lusitania.

Guillermo Torres
Guillermo Torres
1 year ago

The Irgun terrorists warned the civilians beforehand. The hotel was also the headquarters of the British Mandate. You seem upset that there’s currently sympathy in the West for the plight of Israel and the Jews, or am I misreading your comment?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago

There was also the case of Sergeants Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice who were captured by Jewish terrorists, hanged and their bodies bobby trapped. Is that sufficiently Hamas for you?
What everyone seems to want to ignore is that the Jews moved to Palestine in huge numbers despite the vehement objects of the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world and used force of arms, including terrorism, force out the British and to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from lands they had dwelt in for hundreds of years.
When you use terrorism to displace a people and you laud the perpetrators of that terrorism, you are really not in a position to claim the moral high ground.
Also, Israel has never been a friend to this country so why does what is happening there merit so much coverage.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

It’s odd isn’t it how a simple truth is so unpopular; how balance is so unwelcome, how even-handedness is unwanted. The reason is that Palestinians are just disposable rubbish while Israelis are precious. Surely you can see that?

Kevin Godwin
Kevin Godwin
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Okay. So in your opinion what should Israel do in response to the attack by Hamas?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin Godwin

Exactly. Hamas either didn’t think through what Israel would do after such slaughter or, more likely, knew what the response would be and that it would get them sympathy on the world stage. Psychopaths turn situations around so that the perpetrator becomes the victim. Clever. It’s all unfolding as planned.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin Godwin

Stop stealing peoples land and diverting their water supply.

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Arabs have stole more land in the Middle East and North Africa than any other group!

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin Godwin

The usual approach is to arrest the suspects, gather evidence and put the accused on trial. It’s a system known as Justice.. don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s common enough..
As Israel is in total effective control of all of Israel-Palestine, with all the weapons and all the power and all the intelligence etc etc I think that shouldn’t be too difficult?
If a Brixton based Muslim mob committed dreadful crimes in Westminster would the Westminster government bomb all of Brixton into oblivion? ..or should it?

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Well, the Westminster government should at least neutralise the fundamentalist training ground and the bomb making factory in Brixton! What is there to argue?

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

What is odd is your idea of balance.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

The good old Jewish one might be considered “balance”.. an eye for an eye etc. but I’m pretty sure you were supposed knock the eye out of the head of the same guy who knocked out you eye. I’m pretty sure it didn’t mean blinding 24* children who might be related to the heinous Hamas guy.
*96:4 is the IDF / Settler kill ratio to Hamas’s

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago

Most of the dead were civilians, NOT the British Army, who only occupied part of the Hotel, as you well know.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

If some bully told me I must vacate my home. I would not. I’d rather stay and have my throat cut. It’s not about Jews or Christian Arabs,it’s about the military-industrial complex in partnership with corporate capitalism intending World Governance.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Ultimately, yes.. you are correct. But the MIC cannot achieve that without terrorism including state terrorism.. What you do is find some brutal extremists (Islamic Brotherhood), set them up against the moderates (PLO) and change their name (to Hamas).. That way you’ll..
1) prevent a stable two state solution (which has been done since time immemorial all over the World, eg Northern Ireland, + ROI)..
2) keep the conflict going and so enrich yourself with arms sales. Ideally you support both sides to be sure peace is averted.
The US set up Al Qaida to keep the Afghan v Russia war going and then the 20 year USUK war going.. Also the US set up ISIS in Syria to fight Assad (+ the Russians who support Assad).. The NATO push to Russia’s border and Maidan coup to install Zelenskyy was the same old game.. it’s all about money! Sick isn’t it? Lives don’t matter, especially brown Islamic lives (and shortly yellow Buddhist and Tao lives).. Be glad you live in a white, Christian vassal state or you too would be bombed to oblivion..

Andrew E Walker
Andrew E Walker
11 months ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

The Maidan so-called coup did not install Zelensky.

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

The Muslim Brotherhood is the only organisation who has the agenda of World Governance!

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 year ago

Never heard that Israel aided and abetted ethnic cleansing in Armenia. Would you elaborate on this?
Yes, leading Zionist did plant a bomb in the King David Hotel and committed a condemnable terrorist attack against the British army. Also there were thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths caused by the IDF, defending their country. But I would defy you, that this is on an equal moral level as acting on a booklet, which instructs, how to torture and kill innocent civilians in the most cruel way possible. Actually the worst crimes were conducted in a kibbutz, which collected money for their Palestinian neighbours across the fence. This opens a whole new chapter of absolute Evil.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago

As to Israel aiding and abetting ethic cleansing in Armenia, I have posted a link below chosen from many.
As to “acting on a booklet, which instructs, how to torture and kill innocent civilians in the most cruel way possible” I will believe that when I see it. Seems to be going the same way as the beheading babies claim.
As to “thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths caused by the IDF, defending their country” is that not the whole issue. The Palestinians, with considerable justification, believe they are fighting to reclaim their country

P N
P N
1 year ago

I’m sure the Palestinians do believe they are fighting to reclaim their country. So what? Does that justify killing babies? Does that justify rape? Does that justify parading naked bodies through the streets so “innocent” Palestinians can desecrate them and take selfies?
You appear to be excusing horrific acts of violence and it makes me feel grubby just engaging with you.
Hamas is not your friend. When they shout, “death to the West,” that means you too.

Dominic S
Dominic S
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

They have publicly stated that Israel will only be their first step, they will then proceed to travel through the world taking it all over in the name of the Religion of Peace.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic S

2 Swedes and a French teacher have already died this week – what exactly did they do to the Palestinians?

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic S

People only pay attention when their front door is rammed down and their family is butchered. Holding up a copy of NYT won’t spare them.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic S

Ooh scary,scary,yet another thing to be delightfully.frightened by. We do love our fears and.scares.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic S

So has the WEF.. and they are far more likely to succeed.. indeed they’re doing so already!!

jack brandt
jack brandt
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic S

The only folks who have declared to rule the world over their goyim are Talmudic Jews (the chosen people), descendants of the Pharisees that Jesus kicked out of the temple, who have given us financial usury, communism, socialism, and perpetual world war. This is why they’ve been kicked out of over 150 countries and kingdoms over the last 2,000 years, and if Christian America doesn’t realize its real enemy, they will be destroyed by the Pharisaic scourge, just as Orthodox Christian Russia was by the Bolsheviks, and Europe is slowly being suffocated by atheistic internationalists. Israel was a fantasy engineered by Edmond Rothschild, a degenerate who married the actual biological daughter of his own cousin, and Israel, whose first Prime Minister was a former member of the Marxist Poale Zion, and whose first citizens through Law Of Return were former Soviet NKVD officers and gulag commanders, was founded by the slaughter of innocents and by the terrorism of the Irgun and Lehi, and has been nothing but a death cult using Talmudic deception and victimization. They have been the enemy of Christianity and humanity, and sadly, with the sponsorship and enabling of the United Kingdom and America (both taken over by hostile forces), they will continue to cause death, destruction, and war until their illegitimate fantasy land that the puppet Truman allowed is no more.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

I am not excusing anything. I am just saying that I can see the Palestinian point of view and observing that Israel does not have clean hands.
If you want another example how about the Sabra and Shatila massacre. An independent commission, headed by Seán MacBride, found that that the concept of genocide applied to the massacre as the intention of those behind it was “the deliberate destruction of the national and cultural rights and identity of the Palestinian people”. The Commission concluded that the Israeli authorities or forces were responsible in the massacres and other killings carried out by Lebanese militiamen in Sabra and Shatila in the Beirut area between 16 and 18 September.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

So the t*t for tat is justified?
Unheard is going to edit the t*t which is silly because it’s not a breast in this context or in bird-watching for the t*t, a sweet little bird.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clare Knight
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Isn’t it termed “an eye for an eye”? Jesus rebuked the Jews for adhering to it. Indeed he told the Jews to love their enemies.. it seems some didn’t approve.. like the majority here baying for innocent blood! And the call themselves Christians! What a sick joke! What a sick world..

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

There’s no “t*t-for-tat.” These haters have to go back to 1946, 1948, 1982 to find acts of violence that don’t even come close to Oct. 7, never mind the hundreds of acts of terror Palestinian groups have perpetrated between 1982 and now. It’s pathetic, driven by irrational hatred of Israel.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Happily Israelis love Palestinians and never bomb their homes, schools, hospitals and mosques, and never arrest and torture children, and never “Mow the lawn” as they term it (it means culling the Palestinian child population), and never engage in “drying out” innocent young men just going about their lives (standing them in the baking sun for hours, without water until they collapse from dehydration and heatstroke).
It also explains why the death rate is so one-sided, 96 Israelis for every 4 Palestinians killed.. oh no, wait.. it’s the other way ’round isn’t it? Do you know the meaning of the term unbalanced? one-sided? biased? No? I thought not.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

But dropping a bomb on a hospital and killing 600 people is NOT genocide.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

So Jane, when it transpires that the bombing of the hospital was the fault of Hamas terrorists and not the IDF will you open your eyes to the monsters for whom you seem to be an apologist?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Better catch up, Jane. A bomb was not dropped on the hospital by the Israelis. It was in fact an accident by Hamas. Shot themselves in the foot, so to speak. Nevertheless, it got them some mileage in the eyes of fanatics like you.

Norm Haug
Norm Haug
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Turns out the hospital was not bombed, but the leftist media was quick to believe a Hamas account, unverified by fact checkers.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

Hamas are degenerate, brutal, inhuman* savage murderers.. no excuses! They also terrorise ordinary Palestinians btw.. forcing them to store weapons in their schools and mosques!
Annihilating Gaza in revenge for Hamas atrocities is akin to annihilating Chicago for the actions oft the Mafia living there!
* Watching your wife and children die in agony have been blown to bits by IDF (US supplied) bombs tends to brutalise and dehumanise people.. odd isn’t it?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

You final paragraph could also read:-
“* Watching your wife and children die in agony have been blown to bits by the IRA (US supplied) bombs tends to brutalise and dehumanise people.. odd isn’t it?” (sic)

Yes it is odd? The IRA have made terrorism almost an ‘art form’ for over a century. Perhaps you are not in a position to criticise others?

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

I AM in a position to criticise them just as I criticised the IRA for EVERY atrocity they committed. I understood their anger but never, ever condoned their heinous crimes!

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

US supplied the IRA too, did you support them?

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

Not for a second. I abhorred their every crime and atrocity, and indeed their killing of British soldiers. I abhor violence from whatever source.. However, I do understand the hatred born of abuses, oppression, from an apartheid regime.. But violence would not be my approach to countering it. There are better ways..

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

It’s not in “revenge, you moronic creep, it’s to finally prevent more attacks, instead of just “containing” them, which clearly hasn’t worked as Oct. 7 demonstrated. What would you have the Israelis do? I can guess: nothing, or end the “occupation” that, in gaza at least, isn’t one.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

Give back all the land they stole and return the water supplies they illegally diverted That would be a start.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Indeed.. it would also be compliant with UN resolution 242, the Geneva Convention, the rules against war crimes and genocide, human rights law and ordinary, common decency.. expecting that of hate filled Zionists might be a bit OTT however.

Last edited 1 year ago by Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

You seem like such a nice guy.. The usual approach from civilised authorities is to arrest the suspects, gather evidence, put them on trial and punish the guilty appropriately. It’s called justice..
What you advocate, you very nice person is called savagery, brutality, revenge (against the innocent) and genocide.. It’s different in many ways from Justice.
Justice has values, more or less Christian values although Christ told us to love our enemies. Actually that system works very well, surpringly..
Hatred simply begets more hatred.. it’s not really effective.. that is why it isn’t used much now that most hominids have evolved fully into human beings, but not all, clearly.

Steve Adams
Steve Adams
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Liam, the Chicago & Mafia analogy does not work. Most Gazans love Hamas and regard them as good muslims. They celebrate their atrocities.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Adams

Rubbish. I have friends in Gaza who are intimidated by Hamas and want nothing but a quiet, peaceful decent life. What they get is Hamas threats and endless Israeli bombs.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Adams

True.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

How did a bunch of useless misfits only good for.stone throwing and a bit of in the shadows knifing turn into the SAS. The USA Jews paid for it and organised it,and enabled it by ensuring all border defence was off on a tea break.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

I don’t know where you get this stuff, Jane.

jack brandt
jack brandt
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

Weird take, since Israel was founded by the barbaric terrorism of the Irgun and Lehi, and for the last 80 years Israeli goons have been killing babies, raping woman, and murdering civilians. Guess you “forgot” about places like Deir Yessin or Sabra and Shatila, but then again I’m also guessing you forgot about many of Israel’s first citizens through Law Of Return being former Soviet NKVD officers and gulag commanders, the folks that killed 40 MILLION Orthodox Christians in former Russia and Ukraine between 1922-1939, most under the orders of Jewish mass murderers Lazar Kaganovich and Genrich Yagoda. Heck, even when sadistic killers like Solomon Morell and Nachman Dushanski were convicted in courts of law for their crimes against humanity, Israel wouldn’t extradite them (although they themselves had no problem assassinating people like Cukurs in foreign countries without a trial simply on hearsay). Is running over an American girl like Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer, or shooting an autistic adult like Eyad al-Hallaq “justified” to you?
I have no problem denouncing the animals in Hamas, but that doesn’t give Israel’s history of barbarism, terrorism, and murder a free pass. Strange how people are choosing sides and wanting to forgive barbaric acts as long as they’re done by their ‘team”. It’s disgusting

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

Look, no one wants your truth, your balance or your even-handedness.. We’re all gung-ho here and looking forward to seeing tens of thousands of disposable Palestinian women and children blown to pieces, incinerated with white phosphorous, starved, deprived of water, fuel and electricity.. and here’s you just spoiling our demonic glee, our revenge, our sadism!

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

You might be, the Israeli’s aren’t. They told them to get out by telling their enemy exactly where they are going to attack. Meanwhile Hamas stops them.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

If someone issued me with an ultimatum like that I would stay and die rather than comply with such bullying.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

Yes they did.. it went something like: “The 1.1 million of you who live in the northern half of Gaza are to go south or into Egypt.. You will have no food, no water and no fuel for your cars and busses. Those on life support (lots given all the bombing) can unplug themselves and walk. And btw we’ll bomb the roads going south and bomb the crossing point into Egypt. Thank you for fleeing from Israeli Air. Do enjoy the flight. We hope never to see you alive again.”

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

But it’s not the Palestinians, is it? It’s Hamas, very different. Hamas doesn’t care about disenfranchised Palestinians and neither do the wealthy (haves) Palestinians who go to America, make millions, then return to Palestine and build ostentatious mansions. What did they do to help the “have nots”?

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago

They also believe that it is a crime punishable by death to sell land to an Israeli.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

Sell? Did you say sell? Ha ha..
Would you sell your land to those nice Germans who almost invaded your land in 1941? Would you approve of your neighbours selling?
The truth is Israelis steal the land, and evict or kill the owners. It saves estate agents fees.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

The dead babies claim has been verified. Even beheadiangs,though not 40. I suppose that’s the hill you’ve chosen to die on, like the good little bigot you clearly are.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  harry storm

When bombs fall all around and buildings collapse it tends to behead people as well, including babies; and de-limb them and eviscerate them. There is NO difference except in scale: the Israelis kill rate is 24 times higher than Hamas’s kill rate, you very nice person.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

We have AI and CGI now. I haven’t seen any of these images and I dont want to but how do we know they’re not fake. I believe any of these images I’ve heard about are faked up. To outrage us. To make us shout “kill,kill” and be on the side of true barbarism

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

The story was perpetrated by a crazed, hate filled degenerate ex soldier, we’re now told.. and was published as if it was eye witnessed.. I suspect much fakery was involved BUT it was still a heinous, brutal, savage attack and no right-thinking person could condone it. We can understand it of course because hate filled atrocities by both sides simply generate more of the same.. The IĎF kill rate is 24 times that of Hamas.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

But what I don’t get is that if it’s all fake why are people celebrating it?

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

Yes, so much nicer to do your butchering from 5,000 feet.. cleaner from the air.. more humane too.. No need to worry that on the ground, women and children are blown to pieces, beheaded, delimbed and then die in horrible agony in their fathers’ and brothers’ arms ..who then, inexplicably, go on to be brutal, merciless, savage murderers themselves.. odd isn’t it?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

It’s tragic that the cycle of violence never ends and never will

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

It might.. there are good people on both sides.. not enough but maybe this will grow the numbers of the peacemakers. We pray.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

What’s odd is your ideas that Hamas deliberately targeting women and children is the same as Israel targeting legitimate targets while seemingly leaving the men folk in one piece kills and maims women and children.
Sounds contrived, or were the men safe somewhere while the women and children weren’t?

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

In order to “clinically and surgically” defeat Hamas you dont target young men. You target wombs. It’s what I would do if I were the strategist in charge. Luckily for me I’m not. But if I was it’s what I would do. Cruel,inhuman and effective.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

There is no moral equivalence here. Anyone who claims some moral relativism is either ignorant or evil.
I’m not sure which category you fall into – but any attempt to draw moral parity between the people who deliberately murder women and children and the people who are attempting to avoid killing civilians, but cannot avoid it when Hamas are deliberately hiding behind women children, is as absurd as it is chilling.
Hamas is intentionally putting Gazan civilians into the firing line. They want the Israelis to try and kill Hamas fighters and kill as many civilians as possible in the collateral damage to a strike, because it encourages apologists like you to try and draw a moral equivalence.
I say again, anyone who tries to claim they are equivalent is either an idiot or morally bankrupt.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Or both.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

don’t forget really really stupid.

James van den Heever
James van den Heever
1 year ago

Please supply details about Armenia and Israeli involvement – all news to me

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago

Did they deliberately go in and murder women and children then boast about it?

Dominic S
Dominic S
1 year ago

“largely supplied by Israel and Turkey, according to experts”
…and anyone who still thinks experts know anything hasn’t been paying attention over the last few years.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

It’s even been mentioned on the BBC..

P N
P N
1 year ago

Whataboutery.
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” has been used as a lazy excuse for all sorts of heinous acts. People even used it in respect of the IRA who were fighting against Parliamentary democracy.
But let’s pretend that there’s some validity in it and Hamas is genuinely fighting for freedom. That still doesn’t justify Hamas’s grotesque acts of Saturday 7 October. That still doesn’t justify Hamas’s sadism and sexual violence, its bloodlust and savagery. That’s why your comment is whataboutery.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  P N

It is not whataboutery at all and I am not excusing what Hamas did.
The likes of Irgun were terrorists and were treated by Israel as heroes so they are not really are strong round when they start denouncing Hamas as evil.
Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, is a flagrant violation of international law, so there is no pretending about it, the Palestinian cause has merit. I know how I would feel if I had been driven from my ancestral lands into a ghetto and I defy anyone to say they would feel differently.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago

Jordan was but one large tract of land that was agreed for the Jews, thy ended up in a tiny rump state that the ‘Arabs’ wouldn’t even accept then and tried to wipe them out.
Israel does not do what Hamas rejoiced and announced to the world it had done. The Israelis have given warning for Civilians to get out of the targeted area. If you can’t see the difference, you have a problem not the rest of us.
Meanwhile 2 Swedes and a French teacher are somehow murdered in the name of the same cult, is that acceptable or Israel’s fault?

Walter Schwager
Walter Schwager
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Bailey

And a.little Palestinian boy was slaughtered in the US…

Dominic S
Dominic S
1 year ago

“Aided and abetted by Israel”?!! That’s just a lie.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic S

They supplied Azerbaijan the arms and knew how they would be used

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

It’s American and British propaganda..

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago

‘We’ were about to HANG Begin when he was “saved by the bell”.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

I love it when the Israel haters have to go back to 1946 or 1948 or 1982 to justify their anti”zionist” views. If I played the same game, I could point to a plethora of much much more recent events, including Oct. 7.

Carol Moore
Carol Moore
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Well said

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

“Theologians have long understood Evil as an absence or privation: complete separation from God. But….”

As an amateur theologian, I agree with the basic concept, and have had to wrestle with the problem.

The “but” is that there is a will behind every evil act. Every evil act entails seeing the lesser good and the greater good, and choosing the lesser. Choosing to tear down the greater, to elevate the lesser. 

Evil is a choice.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kelly Madden
IATDE
IATDE
1 year ago
Reply to  Kelly Madden

“Theologians have long understood Evil as an absence or privation: complete separation from God.”
The Jewish, Christian and even Muslim Gods all refer to a personalized incarnate creature as Evil: Satan or Iblīs.
God heard Job’s prayers, even while Satan was destroying everything Job loved. Separation from God is not Evil, it is Hell.
Theologians without a deep prayer life understand very little about God or Evil. How do you understand a person you have no relationship with or how do you understand a person from afar without ever engaging with them?

David Jory
David Jory
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

The Hamas founding document quotes the Koran. Both propound evil.
Saying this in Britain is now ‘a hate crime’.
Tough. Truth is truth.

Dominic S
Dominic S
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Am Yisrael chai.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

You conveniently omitted to mention the appalling atrocities perpetrated by murderous Israelis that caused such hatred! 70 years of barbaric, brutal, apartheid treatment.
You conveniently omitted to mention the fact that before the Nakba Palestinians lived side by side in prace with their Jewish neighbours and indeed welcomed Jews into Palestine (having no idea how their generosity would be repaid)..
You conveniently omitted to mention the fact that Israelis murder 96 Palestinians for ever 4 Israelis Palestinians kill.
You conveniently omitted to mention the fact that Israel set up Hamas to scupper the two state solution almost agreed with the moderate PLO.. This is an uncontested fact btw!
You conveniently omitted to mention the fact that Hamas ALSO terrorises Palestinians and uses them as human shields. Do you imagine schools and mosques willingly allow Hamas brutes to use them as arms dumps?
You conveniently omitted to mention that Israel has committed numerous war crimes, crimes against humanity and human rights abuses over many decades; that they continue to steal land, murder Palestinian farmers, throw them out of the homes; that the IDF bulldozes homes!
What the Zionist degenerates are guilty of is akin to what they suffered under N¤z¡ brutality for 5 years except the Zionists have been doing it for 14 times as many years! If the atrocities are a 1/14th as bad then I guess it’s about even, right?
Now we have indiscriminate carpet bombing, even the use of white phosphorous!! We have denial of warer, food, fuel and electricity.. a heinous crime against humanity!
I abhor the brutal savagery of Hamas as well just in case any of you think otherwise, you that believe that Palestine children are just rubbish to be binned after they’ve been incinerated and blown to pieces!

Last edited 1 year ago by Liam O'Mahony
Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Wow – you’ve got some nerve talking about things anyone else might have “Conveniently Omitted”.
How about the simple, historical fact that there was never a Palestinian state. There was never a political entity that was “Palestine”. Palestine was the disparaging name given to Judea by the Romans when they expelled the Jews from the area. Judea means “Land of the Jews”. Many Jews didn’t leave. There has always been a Jewish presence there since that time.
The last owner of the land was the Ottoman Empire. As the empire was falling at the end of WWI, it ceded legal authority over the whole region to the League of Nations, (the precursor to the UN) who gave it to Britain, as part of the Mandate for Palestine.
The Mandate for Palestine was a specific directive to the British to create a Jewish national home in the land of what is today, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The British immediately gave the whole eastern part to the Arabs. And that became Jordan. But they set aside the rest for the Jewish national home. So what does that mean? ‘Israel is the Jewish national home’? The only country in the world that actually has a legal claim to the land of Gaza, is Israel.
The Israelis have tried co-existence, the Israelis have agreed to a “Two state solution” multiple times. Each time the Arabs – who only started calling themselves “Palestinians” in the 1960s – destroyed any hope of a deal, because they refused to agree to Israels right to exist.
You say you “abhor the brutal savagery of Hamas as well” yet strain every sinew to justify them. Forgive me if i simply don’t believe you. I’ve seen far too much comment from people like you over the last few days who wrap their anti-semitism in the language of compassion for Palestinians, as though there is an equivalence. Their claimed Anti-Zionism is a tissue-thin cover for anti-semitism.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Here we go again,” it says so in The Bible so it must be true”. An ancient Holy Book of Bronze Age literature is NOT Title Deeds. The whole idea of all the land on earth being separate nations with defined borders drawn as lines on maps is a nineteenth century notion.borne out of the Romantic movement and the.embracing of the concept of nationalism by clever but mostly disturbed and unemployable young men,a lot of them Jewish by the by,who needed a cause.The land of Palestine was under the power and control of The Ottoman Empire but the land was not state owned. All the land was owned by the inhabitants piecemeal, farms, fields,houses,olive groves. The territory may have changed political control after 1917 but the LAND remained in private ownership.
And I’m fed up with this fascist attitude that any critiscm of the Israeli state with or without atrocities is “anti -semitism”.
And I’m starting to ask why do I have to love everybody anyway.. Hey peace and love man. I lurve everybody. I don’t have to like and approve of everybody or every.ethnicity.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
Reply to  jane baker

Attitudes like yours depress me and terrify me in equal measure.

I genuinely cannot understand how you rationalise your position in good faith.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Have you heard anyone here say Palestinian children are just “rubbish”? You are doing yourself a disservice by insulting us.

Carl Valentine
Carl Valentine
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Unfortunately you can not change peoples minds with facts.
The Unherd lot only see ‘good or evil’ no nuance on this site (not on this topic, at least…)

Ed Nuhfer
Ed Nuhfer
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

An ethical decision to act gets based on beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. Addressing all four in deciding to act prevents one from committing evil. “Usefulness” is not a component of ethical decisions and “proportionality” is not a component. Neither is having a reason to enact evil to be confused with an excuse for enacting it.

Last edited 1 year ago by Ed Nuhfer
jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

If I was running an operation to eliminate Hamas I wouldn’t go after young men. I would go after wombs. And that is what someone,whoever,is doing.

David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

The Israeli response will almost certainly be proportionate, in the way that word is actually used in international law. When the opposing belligerents colocate offensive military assets with civilians and civilian infrastructure (which, by the way, is a war crime), a proportionate response under international law is to use the minimum force needed to destroy those assets. The resulting civilian deaths and destruction of civilian infrastructure do not render the response disproportionate, and in fact, under international law are the responsibility of the party which placed their own (or captive) civilians in harm’s way by their deployment. For example, if a rocket battery is on the roof of an apartment building, blowing up the top of the building would be proportionate (even if the building collapsed as a result). Leveling the entire block in which the building was located would be disproportionate.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
10 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

You haven’t a clue, you poor deluded sap

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

I was thinking about the protest in Sydney where the protestors were chanting “gas the Jews.” At no time since WWII would this be a socially acceptable thing to do. We’ve somehow crossed a threshold where the Overton window has swung wide open. Our moral compass has spun out of control. All the other garbage going on – trans people imposing themselves on women and children, BLM, lawlessness – is a reflection of that as well. The Sydney thing for me, and the reaction at the most privileged schools in the US, sinks to a new low and crosses a line that troubles me deeply.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

We are in topsy turvy world. Screaming “gas the Jews” after the incidents last week is ok, a joke video with a dog is antisemitic.

Just like a football president being an idiot and randomly kissing a female footballer, or make believe rape culture in perfectly safe colleges are an attack on women or “misogyny”………..
But not FGM, mass grooming gangs, hijabs or various atrocities in the name of “honour”.
And of course, the ethnic groups that have the worst levels of violence against women…..cannot be touched, because that would be racism.

Extremely touchy and offended about non issues, no concern for genuine attacks on women or society.

It’s a sick world.

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Extremely touchy and offended about non issues, no concern for genuine attacks on women or society.

Exactly.

The ‘Babylon Bee’ offers the following satirical headline to sum up this grotesque stance:

Harvard Student Leaves Lecture On Microaggressions To Attend ‘Kill The Jews’ Rally

starkbreath
starkbreath
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Yes, amazing how eager the Social Justice Warriors are to align themselves with the most brutally oppressive ideology going, one which would gladly execute them for their crimes against Allah. Good to see the pushback this is getting but we need it to grow and continue. They must be stopped, decisively and permanently.

Andrew H
Andrew H
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I totally agree, Jim.

P N
P N
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Social media licences the opinions of the most foolish. Even the most ludicrous or heinous ideas will find support somewhere and so like-minded people can affirm each other’s beliefs. They are also very shouty so get lots of attention.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

We have crossed the line and theres no going back. That was part of the plan.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

Interesting essay, but as the author states himself, the massacre could very well be useful evil. In fact, it likely is. Hamas knows the response from Israel will be devastating and they may be using this to spark a regional war. Now the US will be supporting war on two fronts. I generally don’t buy into conspiracies, but maybe this is an effort to topple the U.S. This would be an opportune time for China to invade Taiwan. Or maybe a third war starts somewhere else. Very dangerous times.

rupert carnegie
rupert carnegie
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Agree. I think the essay should be seen as a powerful expression of rage and horror and not as a logical analysis. It is, as you point out, self contradictory in that first defines “Evil” as the purposeless infliction of “evil” but then suggests that Hamas probably had a purpose in trying to provoke an extreme and counterproductive Israeli response. I also agree that the situation globally is becoming very concerning. How coordinated the various flare ups are is moot, but either way the combination threatens to rally anti-western forces into a coherent bloc, create strategic over stretch for America and leave the Chinese with the initiative in the emerging Cold War. Where will the next flare up be? Time for cool heads.

Christine Lucas
Christine Lucas
1 year ago

Time for heads containing working brains.

Mangle Tangle
Mangle Tangle
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I’m afraid I agree with you. There is a usefulness to Hamas’s Evil. But the author is correct on this point too. For the usefulness of Hamas’s actions is that they generate more death and destruction, and are not designed – ever – to actually create or build anything. These people are literally insane, just as the Hitlers and the Eichmanns were. This relatively small proportion of insane and violent people in human societies has always been able to dominate by conning or bullying the stupid or the cowardly, who form the bulk of the rest of a typical society. Witness the election of Hitler. Or Hamas by the citizens of Gaza (what did they think was ever going to result from that??). Or even the drift to the right in Israeli society.

Last edited 1 year ago by Mangle Tangle
Abe Stamm
Abe Stamm
1 year ago
Reply to  Mangle Tangle

When Hitler was elected, before he ordered the invasion of Poland (1939) and a fully operational Final Solution (1941), the German electorate couldn’t wait to celebrate his 1938 victory. People forget that 99.1% of the German electorate voted for Hitler and his Nazi party representatives. After the war, humiliated and abashed Germans would say, ” I was never a Nazi, I just voted that way because … “. Comically, after the WW11, it was revealed that apparently every French citizen was clandestinely a member of the Nazi “Resistance”.
comment image?h=33252b2e&itok=RmzZmpy1
Hamas is a terrorist group, but they were democratically elected under the supervision of the United Nations, winning with 44.45% of the Gazan vote against the ruling Fatah [Palestinian National Liberation Movement] party. Today 57% of Gazans support Hamas, a solid majority in any democracy. So, I’m not going separate Hamas from the Palestinians of Gaza…just as I don’t separate Democrats, Republicans, or independents from the whole of American citizens.

Last edited 1 year ago by Abe Stamm
Mangle Tangle
Mangle Tangle
1 year ago
Reply to  Abe Stamm

I completely agree. Whoever and wherever you are, if you use your vote to vote in bad people, then you must take responsibility for what ensues.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Mangle Tangle

Often there is not much of a choice.

Russell Sharpe
Russell Sharpe
1 year ago
Reply to  Abe Stamm

“People forget that 99.1% of the German electorate voted for Hitler and his Nazi party representatives.”
Where and when was this? Even in March 1933, after Hitler had become Reichskanzler and in the face of massive Nazi intimidation of anyone who opposed them, the Nazis and their DNVP allies together only managed 51.9% of the vote. At the last (relatively) free election, in November 1932, that figure stood at 41.4%.

Abe Stamm
Abe Stamm
1 year ago
Reply to  Russell Sharpe

As stated above, I was referencing the 1938 election, not 1932. The election took place in the form of a single-question referendum to approve candidates for the 814-member Reichstag

Last edited 1 year ago by Abe Stamm
Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 year ago
Reply to  Abe Stamm

Yes, if you are forced to vote under intimidation the outcome is always 99%, same as in Communist Countries.