“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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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!
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.”
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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?
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..
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.
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..
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..
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!
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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Harvard university apparently holds evening classes for their various student societies on “How to become a world class idiot while sounding intelligent”!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
Well, the Westminster government should at least neutralise the fundamentalist training ground and the bomb making factory in Brixton! What is there to argue?
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
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.
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..
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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!
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.”
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”?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
“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.
“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?
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!
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.
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.
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…)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We have crossed the line and theres no going back. That was part of the plan.
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.
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.
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.
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”. ?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.
“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%.
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
But, Germany wasn’t a communist nation. If you want to discount the 1938 referendum, fine, then you can’t ignore the fact that he was democratically elected in 1932. And, if you think the German electorate didn’t know what they were getting with the Nazi party, Hitler laid out his personal philosophy, his autobiographical manifesto, which was abominable, in Mein Kampf…Volume 1 published in 1925, with Volume 2 published in 1926…which he wrote while in prison. The book became a bestseller from 1933 through to 1945, selling 12 million copies, and translated into 18 languages. Bottomline…the German people knew who Hitler was when they first elected him. He spelled it out on paper and screamed it repeatedly from the bully pulpit. I’ve never accepted the post-war claim…” We didn’t know what was happening to the Jews…we didn’t like the Nazis, but what could we do?…blah, blah, blah. “
I think his point is fair. The German people were largely, perhaps massively, supportive of AH in ‘38. Your point about intimidation is better placed for the USSR, or for Germany in the early 40s. Anyway, in a democracy voters are bound by the decision, even if they didn’t vote for the winner. So they’re bound by the consequences, too.
The German people had ample time to digest what Hitler’s beliefs were, and how he planned to lead Germany once he seized power…from his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925 and ’26, in 2 volumes. This from Brittanica: ” According to Hitler, it was “the sacred mission of the German people…to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements…and raise them to the dominant position.” “All who are not of a good race are chaff,” wrote Hitler. It was necessary for Germans to “occupy themselves not merely with the breeding of dogs, horses, and cats but also with care for the purity of their own blood.” Hitler ascribed international significance to the elimination of Jews, which “must necessarily be a bloody process,” he wrote. The second volume, entitled Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung (“The National Socialist Movement”), written after Hitler’s release from prison in December 1924, outlines the political program, including the terrorist methods, that National Socialism must pursue both in gaining power and in exercising it thereafter in the new Germany. “ Mein Kampf wasn’t a bestseller until the 1930’s, but it was in circulation among the political elite in Germany in the later half of the 1920’s, when Hitler will building a power base. They knew what he was up to, and supported it.
I personally read Mein Kampf in the late 1960’s when I was a pre-teen…and, as a Jew, it gave me nightmares.
Last Democratic election in Germany was in 1933 and NSDAP got 43%of the vote and had to govern in a coalition. Once the Reichstag burnt down, the Nazis basically suspended the Constitution. The so-called “election” in 1938 consisted of an approved list of Nazi politicians. It also was a single questions Referendum for the approval of the annexation of Austria. This was “officially” accepted by 99,1% of Germans.
Governing with a coalition of political parties is normal for constitutional democracies. And, in such cases, having 43% of the vote, a bonafide democratic election, gives that member of the coalition the leadership in governance powers.
You’re trying to infer that Hitler was a dictator from the get go…but, he started out as a savvy politician, know what to say to an electorate still feeling the economic burdens of the Great Depression and the extensive domestic and geopolitical detritus associated with their defeat in WWI.
“99.1% of the German electorate voted for Hitler and his Nazi party representatives”. No they didn’t, you need to brush up your history.
After that you might consider that Israel spent over 30 years undermining Farah internationally and insisting on not negotiating with them on the grounds that they were a terrorist organisation. Having helped make Fatah/PLO toothless, Israel has paved the way for Hamas/Hezbollah who can present themselves as the only organisations prepared to stand up to Israel.
Acknowledgement of these facts doesn’t constitute endorsement of Hamas but carrying on as if Israel itself, – as distinct from individual Israelis – is in mortal danger from Hamas is an endorsement of ongoing Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories and Gaza.
The PLO was a terrorist organization. Rename it the Palestinian Authority, and it’s still a terrorist organization. Hamas and Hezbollah, just baddies no matter how you look at them, will never secure a place at the table of civilized nations, ever. The ‘Palestinians’ need to find a new leadership that’s committed to Israel’s right to exist…period.
Yasser Arafat was a monster…he was also a thief. Upon his death in 2004, Arafat’s net worth was estimated to be 1.3 Billion dollars, all money that he embezzled from the Palestinian people.
Lastly, there are no Occupied Territories. There’s land that Israel won in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars, against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Israel gave back the Sinai to Egypt, they gifted the Gaza to the Arabs calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ in 2005, they annexed the Golan Heights from Syria, and they’re slowly absorbing the West Bank from Jordan. To the victor go the spoils of war…that’s the way it’s alway been. The anti-Zionist, antisemitic world doesn’t like that reality when it comes to the Jewish homeland, and their 75% Jewish inhabitants.
It looks like you are making this up.
The largest percentage share of the vote ever achieved by the Nazis party was just under 37% in 1933. Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 and then seized power.
I guess depending one what search engine one uses, the percentage of democrat votes won by the Nazis in 1933 differs? But, it really doesn’t matter whether it was 47% or 37%…it was enough to gain a majority versus the parties it was competing against, enabling the Hitler to be appointed Chancellor on 1/30/1933, along with his Nazis representatives, forming a coalition government, in which they controlled the power. Again, there’s no truth to the idea that Hitler wasn’t a popular person among a significant portion of the German electorate when he first came to power. They loved the guy…just Google the rallies
Western society is only insane because people are refusing to state the truth and succumbing to the perverse cults and those with small brains and loud mouths. Here we can respectfully discuss and learn. Yesterday I was spewed with the devil’s language for siting history. Yes, by a very young co-employee, who has “Pronouns”, yet walks, talks and uses the female restroom and rightly so. More backbones needed from the intelligent and sane. And this applies to world politics.
The author mentions but glosses over a subtle but important philosophical distinction. If an act is useful to a purpose but that purpose itself is senseless and Evil, does it count as purposeful or senseless. Hamas may be deliberately committing atrocities to trigger a disproportionate response and maybe even trigger a wider war, but if the ‘purpose’ behind all these supposed strategies is really the eradication of the Jewish race, a greater Evil, then they can hardly be absolved. Moreover, the supposition that Hamas might be deliberately trying to trigger a broader war or a World War to further their goal of destroying the Jews only paints them as more monstrous and indifferent to human life and decency. One rarely encounters situations that are black and white, but this situation is about as close as it gets. What’s truly disturbing to me is how few people seem to understand that and how many schmucks who probably aren’t bad themselves are enthusiastically cheering on the bad guys. Then again, Hitler was wildly popular in Germany at the time. Maybe I’m just depressed that over centuries of history, humanity seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
I actually wrote a fictional blog post a couple of years ago from the perspective of someone in 2030 about WWIII that started in 2026 between an alliance of America/Australia/UK/India/Japan against a triple axis of Iran, Russia, and China with Russia invading Ukraine as an opening gambit to occupy US attention while China invaded Taiwan and Iran used their vast terrorist networks to destabilize the Middle East. I thought when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier than I expected, I was spared being a prophet of doom. Now I’m getting nervous again. I don’t like these developments at all.
Someone read your essay and is now using it as a blueprint along with Orwell’s 1984,the film Logan’s Run,and the Book.of Revelation from The Bible. I hope you write a happy ending where it all ends up ok. No! Oh dear.
Ah, yes. Iran, Russia, China, US invaded with no borders, economically depleted, weak military with its leaders deciding which hosiery to wear- flats or low heels. Who could even have imagined this horror show. Academy Award for the Devil and his demons.
You’re close. They’ll do it if they deem US commitments in Europe and the Middle East have sufficiently weakened the US’s (or maybe the Quad’s) ability to oppose them. I don’t think they see that yet, but it may happen soon, especially if all the Iranian-backed groups move in concert to support Hamas in big way.
Saul D
1 year ago
The mark of a civilised people is how they weigh and measure their response to seek justice instead of retribution. It is a time for calculations not emotions. Time to think, plan and act from the moral highground, to avoid mirroring evil. Excise the cancer, but keep in mind the need to save the patient and to stop the disease from spreading.
I agree….but when a society teaches their children to hate, how can the cancer be excised. Get rid of Hamas now, but in a few years the cancer returns as the children grow and desire revenge. A never ending cycle of hate.
Revulsion at the barbarous horror of Hamas and its callous willingness to invite a devastating Israeli response, and even draw in other groups into the fight, does not diminish by one comma, Israel’s responsibility to adhere to International Humanitarian Law (IHL). IHL does not prevent in anyway the elimination of Hamas – indeed, given what has happened, I don’t think there is another reasonable response – but it does limit how Israel does it and that is how it should be.
IHL exists for two reasons: to make slightly less awful the conduct of war, so as to prevent unnecessary suffering and to focus the violence on the target not anyone who happens to be in the way; and secondly, and to me the most important reason, by behaving in a civilised manner, obeying the law, to make possible a peace, even if, in the fire and fury, it is a distant prospect. It is not therefore intellectual obfuscation to call for Israel to ‘restrain’ itself but the fundamental basis of what it means to be a law-abiding democracy.
That others, in the past including U.K., have stepped outside those bounds is neither here nor there. I was a soldier for 36 years, with service in Cyprus (UN), NI, the Gulf, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan and East Africa: my experience, for what it is worth, is that brutality, excess and disproportionate violence, is completely self-defeating. It simply invites another cycle of violence and brutality.
Ultimately therefore, it is in the interest of Israel to adhere to IHL, not just by the letter but in spirit too. I do not say it is easy, it isn’t, but it is not just the right thing to do, it’s the best course of action.
Col (Ret’d) Simon Diggins OBE
M Phil BA(Hons) psc psc(j) (Late RRF)
Col Diggins was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (RRF) in 1978 and
enjoyed a full career
with them, including tours in NI, Cyprus, Germany and Canada. He also served
two years with the
Sultan of Oman’s Army in 1990-91, coinciding with the 1st Gulf War
where he was the Omani LO to the
USMC. Staff appointments have included DCOS 24 Airmobile Bde, SO1 G3 Ops in HQ
ARRC and tours
as DS in the Army Staff College, JSCSC and the Ghanaian Staff College. During
the latter tour, whilst
running a project in Sierra Leone he was seconded to JFHQ during the May 2000
crisis in that country
(Op PALLISER) and was subsequently awarded an OBE. More recently, he was the MA
to the UN
SRSG in Iraq (2004-5), DA Kabul (2008-10) and prior to his last appointment,
was the Deputy Planner
to the US Task Force in the Horn of Africa (Dep CJ5 CJTF HOA). In his final appointment, he was
responsible for setting Training Policy and Standards for all deployed
personnel and formations, establishing
a joint training programme for the UK’s High Readiness Formations out to 2022
and acting
as a point of focus for Joint Force simulation and synthetic environment
issues. Col Diggins has a
BA (Hons) from Durham and an M Phil from Cambridge. He has two sons, and two daughters.
I think I understand most of what you are saying, but do you, with your vast military experience, have any suggestions how they achieve “the elimination of Hamas” that you recommend, without killing innocents when Hamas use those innocents as shields? And continue to mount attacks on Israel from behind those shields?
Because that’s the bit I really don’t understand.
@Brendan I wouldn’t put it past Hamas to do this but Israel’s claims of Hamas actively using human shields shouldn’t be taken at face value for 5 reasons.
1 Where’s the evidence – have we seen any yet?
2 Israel has a long and sordid history of lying about this – see for example the 187 people they shot & killed in the unarmed ‘Great March of Return’ most of whom they claimed were human shields.. Theyh even went to the extent of slicing up a video of a Palestinian medic Rouzan al-Najjar to attempt to support their BS after they murdered her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Rouzan_al-Najjar
3 Israel’s definition is exceedingly broad – it includes anyone ‘in the vicinity’ of Hamas institutions or individuals – this is essentially anywhere in Gaza.
4 Israel do just the same – they’ve placed plenty of military installations & offices in all sorts of residential areas. IDF troops are all over Israel. Are they hiding behind the civilians there?
5 Israel has drawn the borders and refuses to let anyone leave. What are the civilians supposed to do?
This sin’t to say Hamas give a flyer about the civilians – I don’t suppose they do – but its not an issue I’d take any lectures on from the IDF.
I guess you don’t understand that for Israel this is existential. Nor do you understand that hiding behind human shields is against all international law as well as being a crime against humanity. Even Egypt is other Arab countries in the region are complicit. Why doesn’t Hamas allow Gazans to leave? Why doesn’t Egypt open up its border crossing? Where are the evacuation ships? Every drop of blood spilled in Gaza will be on Hamas and its supporters, not Israel.
No other Arab country wants Palestinian refugees. Poland welcomed Ukrainian Refugees, as did other countries, and individual citizens of other countries stepped up. We don’t see those who are shouting loudly against Israel offering to take in Palestinian refugees.
Quite. The Egyptians keep a lid on Gaza’s Southern Border because they (and the Saudis, etc) don’t want Gazans (which would, of course, include Hamas) spilling their political bile and murderous actions in their own countries.
Quite. Sadly it is an impossible task in a territory where the enemy hides among civilians. All we can reasonably ask is that Israel does not target civilians as such; and that it burns Hamas from the face of the Earth completely and forever.
I guess you don’t understand that for Israel this is existential. Nor do you understand that hiding behind human shields is against all international law as well as being a crime against humanity. Even Egypt and other Arab countries in the region are complicit. Why doesn’t Hamas allow Gazans to leave? Why doesn’t Egypt open up its border crossing? Where are the evacuation ships? Every drop of blood spilled in Gaza will be on Hamas and its supporters, not Israel.
I’m sure that for the Palestinians it’s existential too. Except that Israel has slowly but steadily tried to push them out of existence since 1948. The Palestinians are not the Nazis.
As I’ve commented elsewhere, existential for Israel, but not for Jewish people. They can live safely elsewhere, and likely quite comfortably. Australia and US come to mind.
Israel has been acting very badly towards the Palestinians for many decades. Unfortunately, Hamas have given Israel the excuse it needs, and Israel is happy to oblige.
I remember seeing a poll done on the conflict (before the current bout) of Britons views on the situation. It fell roughly as 10% said they were pro Israeli, 20% were pro Palestinian, 20% didn’t know and 50% thought they were all as bad as each other. My view matches that of the 50% to be honest
Main Edition
US
FR
“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.
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.”
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.
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.
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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.
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.)
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!
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.”
Lots of Nazi idea have been post WW2 laundered and rebranded by academia and are now compassionate new ideas,like choice in dying.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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?
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..
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.
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..
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..
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!
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”
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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Are there classes? I’m afraid so. Taught at many institutions of higher education throughout the Anglosphere.
Harvard university apparently holds evening classes for their various student societies on “How to become a world class idiot while sounding intelligent”!
Who writes the screenplays,the novels, the TV documentaries. Who writes the script. Not Palestinians.
Careful! Your Islamist leaning is being exposed. Too many fake propaganda videos on YouTube seem to have affected your critical faculties.
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.
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.
Are you an American may I ask?
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.
Organised and paid for by America.
Well,gotta create a market for those lethal weapons. It’s only business.
You are correct.. most of the gung-ho types here are suckers for American propaganda!
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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.
My dear Jane, you are wrong about this.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Okay. So in your opinion what should Israel do in response to the attack by Hamas?
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.
Stop stealing peoples land and diverting their water supply.
Arabs have stole more land in the Middle East and North Africa than any other group!
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?
Well, the Westminster government should at least neutralise the fundamentalist training ground and the bomb making factory in Brixton! What is there to argue?
What is odd is your idea of balance.
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
Most of the dead were civilians, NOT the British Army, who only occupied part of the Hotel, as you well know.
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.
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..
The Maidan so-called coup did not install Zelensky.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the only organisation who has the agenda of World Governance!
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.
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
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.
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.
2 Swedes and a French teacher have already died this week – what exactly did they do to the Palestinians?
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.
Ooh scary,scary,yet another thing to be delightfully.frightened by. We do love our fears and.scares.
So has the WEF.. and they are far more likely to succeed.. indeed they’re doing so already!!
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
But dropping a bomb on a hospital and killing 600 people is NOT genocide.
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?
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.
Turns out the hospital was not bombed, but the leftist media was quick to believe a Hamas account, unverified by fact checkers.
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?
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?
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!
US supplied the IRA too, did you support them?
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..
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.
Give back all the land they stole and return the water supplies they illegally diverted That would be a start.
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.
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.
Liam, the Chicago & Mafia analogy does not work. Most Gazans love Hamas and regard them as good muslims. They celebrate their atrocities.
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.
True.
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.
I don’t know where you get this stuff, Jane.
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
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!
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.
If someone issued me with an ultimatum like that I would stay and die rather than comply with such bullying.
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.”
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”?
They also believe that it is a crime punishable by death to sell land to an Israeli.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
But what I don’t get is that if it’s all fake why are people celebrating it?
Please see https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/israeli-arms-quietly-helped-azerbaijan-retake-nagorno-karabakh-103743850
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?
It’s tragic that the cycle of violence never ends and never will
It might.. there are good people on both sides.. not enough but maybe this will grow the numbers of the peacemakers. We pray.
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?
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.
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.
Or both.
don’t forget really really stupid.
Please supply details about Armenia and Israeli involvement – all news to me
Please see https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/israeli-arms-quietly-helped-azerbaijan-retake-nagorno-karabakh-103743850
Did they deliberately go in and murder women and children then boast about it?
“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.
It’s even been mentioned on the BBC..
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.
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.
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?
And a.little Palestinian boy was slaughtered in the US…
“Aided and abetted by Israel”?!! That’s just a lie.
They supplied Azerbaijan the arms and knew how they would be used
It’s American and British propaganda..
‘We’ were about to HANG Begin when he was “saved by the bell”.
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.
Well said
“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.
“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?
The Hamas founding document quotes the Koran. Both propound evil.
Saying this in Britain is now ‘a hate crime’.
Tough. Truth is truth.
Am Yisrael chai.
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!
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.
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.
Attitudes like yours depress me and terrify me in equal measure.
I genuinely cannot understand how you rationalise your position in good faith.
Have you heard anyone here say Palestinian children are just “rubbish”? You are doing yourself a disservice by insulting us.
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…)
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.
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.
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.
You haven’t a clue, you poor deluded sap
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.
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.
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
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.
I totally agree, Jim.
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.
We have crossed the line and theres no going back. That was part of the plan.
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.
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.
Time for heads containing working brains.
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.
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”.
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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.
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.
Often there is not much of a choice.
“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%.
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
Yes, if you are forced to vote under intimidation the outcome is always 99%, same as in Communist Countries.
But, Germany wasn’t a communist nation. If you want to discount the 1938 referendum, fine, then you can’t ignore the fact that he was democratically elected in 1932. And, if you think the German electorate didn’t know what they were getting with the Nazi party, Hitler laid out his personal philosophy, his autobiographical manifesto, which was abominable, in Mein Kampf…Volume 1 published in 1925, with Volume 2 published in 1926…which he wrote while in prison. The book became a bestseller from 1933 through to 1945, selling 12 million copies, and translated into 18 languages.
Bottomline…the German people knew who Hitler was when they first elected him. He spelled it out on paper and screamed it repeatedly from the bully pulpit. I’ve never accepted the post-war claim…” We didn’t know what was happening to the Jews…we didn’t like the Nazis, but what could we do?…blah, blah, blah. “
The train drivers knew where they were driving their trains to.
I think his point is fair. The German people were largely, perhaps massively, supportive of AH in ‘38. Your point about intimidation is better placed for the USSR, or for Germany in the early 40s. Anyway, in a democracy voters are bound by the decision, even if they didn’t vote for the winner. So they’re bound by the consequences, too.
You consider the 1938 “election” the same as a normal free and fair one? Alex, please . . .
The German people had ample time to digest what Hitler’s beliefs were, and how he planned to lead Germany once he seized power…from his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925 and ’26, in 2 volumes. This from Brittanica:
” According to Hitler, it was “the sacred mission of the German people…to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements…and raise them to the dominant position.” “All who are not of a good race are chaff,” wrote Hitler. It was necessary for Germans to “occupy themselves not merely with the breeding of dogs, horses, and cats but also with care for the purity of their own blood.” Hitler ascribed international significance to the elimination of Jews, which “must necessarily be a bloody process,” he wrote.
The second volume, entitled Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung (“The National Socialist Movement”), written after Hitler’s release from prison in December 1924, outlines the political program, including the terrorist methods, that National Socialism must pursue both in gaining power and in exercising it thereafter in the new Germany. “
Mein Kampf wasn’t a bestseller until the 1930’s, but it was in circulation among the political elite in Germany in the later half of the 1920’s, when Hitler will building a power base. They knew what he was up to, and supported it.
I personally read Mein Kampf in the late 1960’s when I was a pre-teen…and, as a Jew, it gave me nightmares.
I doubt there has ever been a free and fair election with 99% of people voting the same way. This notion is silly on its face.
Last Democratic election in Germany was in 1933 and NSDAP got 43%of the vote and had to govern in a coalition. Once the Reichstag burnt down, the Nazis basically suspended the Constitution. The so-called “election” in 1938 consisted of an approved list of Nazi politicians. It also was a single questions Referendum for the approval of the annexation of Austria. This was “officially” accepted by 99,1% of Germans.
Governing with a coalition of political parties is normal for constitutional democracies. And, in such cases, having 43% of the vote, a bonafide democratic election, gives that member of the coalition the leadership in governance powers.
You’re trying to infer that Hitler was a dictator from the get go…but, he started out as a savvy politician, know what to say to an electorate still feeling the economic burdens of the Great Depression and the extensive domestic and geopolitical detritus associated with their defeat in WWI.
“99.1% of the German electorate voted for Hitler and his Nazi party representatives”. No they didn’t, you need to brush up your history.
After that you might consider that Israel spent over 30 years undermining Farah internationally and insisting on not negotiating with them on the grounds that they were a terrorist organisation. Having helped make Fatah/PLO toothless, Israel has paved the way for Hamas/Hezbollah who can present themselves as the only organisations prepared to stand up to Israel.
Acknowledgement of these facts doesn’t constitute endorsement of Hamas but carrying on as if Israel itself, – as distinct from individual Israelis – is in mortal danger from Hamas is an endorsement of ongoing Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories and Gaza.
The PLO was a terrorist organization. Rename it the Palestinian Authority, and it’s still a terrorist organization. Hamas and Hezbollah, just baddies no matter how you look at them, will never secure a place at the table of civilized nations, ever. The ‘Palestinians’ need to find a new leadership that’s committed to Israel’s right to exist…period.
Yasser Arafat was a monster…he was also a thief. Upon his death in 2004, Arafat’s net worth was estimated to be 1.3 Billion dollars, all money that he embezzled from the Palestinian people.
Lastly, there are no Occupied Territories. There’s land that Israel won in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars, against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Israel gave back the Sinai to Egypt, they gifted the Gaza to the Arabs calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ in 2005, they annexed the Golan Heights from Syria, and they’re slowly absorbing the West Bank from Jordan. To the victor go the spoils of war…that’s the way it’s alway been. The anti-Zionist, antisemitic world doesn’t like that reality when it comes to the Jewish homeland, and their 75% Jewish inhabitants.
It looks like you are making this up.
The largest percentage share of the vote ever achieved by the Nazis party was just under 37% in 1933. Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 and then seized power.
I guess depending one what search engine one uses, the percentage of democrat votes won by the Nazis in 1933 differs? But, it really doesn’t matter whether it was 47% or 37%…it was enough to gain a majority versus the parties it was competing against, enabling the Hitler to be appointed Chancellor on 1/30/1933, along with his Nazis representatives, forming a coalition government, in which they controlled the power. Again, there’s no truth to the idea that Hitler wasn’t a popular person among a significant portion of the German electorate when he first came to power. They loved the guy…just Google the rallies
Insane they might be, but not as insane as Western societies.
Western society is only insane because people are refusing to state the truth and succumbing to the perverse cults and those with small brains and loud mouths. Here we can respectfully discuss and learn. Yesterday I was spewed with the devil’s language for siting history. Yes, by a very young co-employee, who has “Pronouns”, yet walks, talks and uses the female restroom and rightly so. More backbones needed from the intelligent and sane. And this applies to world politics.
Yes, we now live in a world where intelligent people are forced to censor themselves for fear of offending a stupid person.
They aren’t so insane as to be clearly in the firing line to Israel’s response.
The author mentions but glosses over a subtle but important philosophical distinction. If an act is useful to a purpose but that purpose itself is senseless and Evil, does it count as purposeful or senseless. Hamas may be deliberately committing atrocities to trigger a disproportionate response and maybe even trigger a wider war, but if the ‘purpose’ behind all these supposed strategies is really the eradication of the Jewish race, a greater Evil, then they can hardly be absolved. Moreover, the supposition that Hamas might be deliberately trying to trigger a broader war or a World War to further their goal of destroying the Jews only paints them as more monstrous and indifferent to human life and decency. One rarely encounters situations that are black and white, but this situation is about as close as it gets. What’s truly disturbing to me is how few people seem to understand that and how many schmucks who probably aren’t bad themselves are enthusiastically cheering on the bad guys. Then again, Hitler was wildly popular in Germany at the time. Maybe I’m just depressed that over centuries of history, humanity seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
I actually wrote a fictional blog post a couple of years ago from the perspective of someone in 2030 about WWIII that started in 2026 between an alliance of America/Australia/UK/India/Japan against a triple axis of Iran, Russia, and China with Russia invading Ukraine as an opening gambit to occupy US attention while China invaded Taiwan and Iran used their vast terrorist networks to destabilize the Middle East. I thought when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier than I expected, I was spared being a prophet of doom. Now I’m getting nervous again. I don’t like these developments at all.
Who does!!
Someone read your essay and is now using it as a blueprint along with Orwell’s 1984,the film Logan’s Run,and the Book.of Revelation from The Bible. I hope you write a happy ending where it all ends up ok. No! Oh dear.
Can you give us a few clues as to where to find that essay?
Ah, yes. Iran, Russia, China, US invaded with no borders, economically depleted, weak military with its leaders deciding which hosiery to wear- flats or low heels. Who could even have imagined this horror show. Academy Award for the Devil and his demons.
Very dangerous times, indeed. I, also, thought it would be an opportune time for China to invade Taiwan.
You’re close. They’ll do it if they deem US commitments in Europe and the Middle East have sufficiently weakened the US’s (or maybe the Quad’s) ability to oppose them. I don’t think they see that yet, but it may happen soon, especially if all the Iranian-backed groups move in concert to support Hamas in big way.
The mark of a civilised people is how they weigh and measure their response to seek justice instead of retribution. It is a time for calculations not emotions. Time to think, plan and act from the moral highground, to avoid mirroring evil. Excise the cancer, but keep in mind the need to save the patient and to stop the disease from spreading.
I agree….but when a society teaches their children to hate, how can the cancer be excised. Get rid of Hamas now, but in a few years the cancer returns as the children grow and desire revenge. A never ending cycle of hate.
Exactly. It is a never-ending cycle of revenge and violence.
Which is why if my discernment is correct, they (whoever they are) are now targeting wombs.
Who’s targeting your womb?
Revulsion at the barbarous horror of Hamas and its callous willingness to invite a devastating Israeli response, and even draw in other groups into the fight, does not diminish by one comma, Israel’s responsibility to adhere to International Humanitarian Law (IHL). IHL does not prevent in anyway the elimination of Hamas – indeed, given what has happened, I don’t think there is another reasonable response – but it does limit how Israel does it and that is how it should be.
IHL exists for two reasons: to make slightly less awful the conduct of war, so as to prevent unnecessary suffering and to focus the violence on the target not anyone who happens to be in the way; and secondly, and to me the most important reason, by behaving in a civilised manner, obeying the law, to make possible a peace, even if, in the fire and fury, it is a distant prospect. It is not therefore intellectual obfuscation to call for Israel to ‘restrain’ itself but the fundamental basis of what it means to be a law-abiding democracy.
That others, in the past including U.K., have stepped outside those bounds is neither here nor there. I was a soldier for 36 years, with service in Cyprus (UN), NI, the Gulf, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan and East Africa: my experience, for what it is worth, is that brutality, excess and disproportionate violence, is completely self-defeating. It simply invites another cycle of violence and brutality.
Ultimately therefore, it is in the interest of Israel to adhere to IHL, not just by the letter but in spirit too. I do not say it is easy, it isn’t, but it is not just the right thing to do, it’s the best course of action.
What were you doing in Colombia and East Africa?
Merc?
Hopefully he returns to flesh out the tale …
Col (Ret’d) Simon Diggins OBE
M Phil BA(Hons) psc psc(j) (Late RRF)
Col Diggins was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (RRF) in 1978 and
enjoyed a full career
with them, including tours in NI, Cyprus, Germany and Canada. He also served
two years with the
Sultan of Oman’s Army in 1990-91, coinciding with the 1st Gulf War
where he was the Omani LO to the
USMC. Staff appointments have included DCOS 24 Airmobile Bde, SO1 G3 Ops in HQ
ARRC and tours
as DS in the Army Staff College, JSCSC and the Ghanaian Staff College. During
the latter tour, whilst
running a project in Sierra Leone he was seconded to JFHQ during the May 2000
crisis in that country
(Op PALLISER) and was subsequently awarded an OBE. More recently, he was the MA
to the UN
SRSG in Iraq (2004-5), DA Kabul (2008-10) and prior to his last appointment,
was the Deputy Planner
to the US Task Force in the Horn of Africa (Dep CJ5 CJTF HOA). In his final appointment, he was
responsible for setting Training Policy and Standards for all deployed
personnel and formations, establishing
a joint training programme for the UK’s High Readiness Formations out to 2022
and acting
as a point of focus for Joint Force simulation and synthetic environment
issues. Col Diggins has a
BA (Hons) from Durham and an M Phil from Cambridge. He has two sons, and two daughters.
Wow, what an amazing career, and now a modest and wise elder statesman.
Don’t ask!
I think I understand most of what you are saying, but do you, with your vast military experience, have any suggestions how they achieve “the elimination of Hamas” that you recommend, without killing innocents when Hamas use those innocents as shields? And continue to mount attacks on Israel from behind those shields?
Because that’s the bit I really don’t understand.
@Brendan I wouldn’t put it past Hamas to do this but Israel’s claims of Hamas actively using human shields shouldn’t be taken at face value for 5 reasons.
1 Where’s the evidence – have we seen any yet?
2 Israel has a long and sordid history of lying about this – see for example the 187 people they shot & killed in the unarmed ‘Great March of Return’ most of whom they claimed were human shields.. Theyh even went to the extent of slicing up a video of a Palestinian medic Rouzan al-Najjar to attempt to support their BS after they murdered her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Rouzan_al-Najjar
3 Israel’s definition is exceedingly broad – it includes anyone ‘in the vicinity’ of Hamas institutions or individuals – this is essentially anywhere in Gaza.
4 Israel do just the same – they’ve placed plenty of military installations & offices in all sorts of residential areas. IDF troops are all over Israel. Are they hiding behind the civilians there?
5 Israel has drawn the borders and refuses to let anyone leave. What are the civilians supposed to do?
This sin’t to say Hamas give a flyer about the civilians – I don’t suppose they do – but its not an issue I’d take any lectures on from the IDF.
Liar or fool? Just yesterday they were trying to prevent citizens from moving south so they be killed and idiots like you would blame israel
Israel doesn’t control Egypt’s border.
I guess you don’t understand that for Israel this is existential. Nor do you understand that hiding behind human shields is against all international law as well as being a crime against humanity. Even Egypt is other Arab countries in the region are complicit. Why doesn’t Hamas allow Gazans to leave? Why doesn’t Egypt open up its border crossing? Where are the evacuation ships? Every drop of blood spilled in Gaza will be on Hamas and its supporters, not Israel.
No other Arab country wants Palestinian refugees. Poland welcomed Ukrainian Refugees, as did other countries, and individual citizens of other countries stepped up. We don’t see those who are shouting loudly against Israel offering to take in Palestinian refugees.
Quite. The Egyptians keep a lid on Gaza’s Southern Border because they (and the Saudis, etc) don’t want Gazans (which would, of course, include Hamas) spilling their political bile and murderous actions in their own countries.
Existential for Israel, but not for Jewish people. They can live safely elsewhere, and likely quite comfortably. Australia and US come to mind.
Can they, though? Recent events have shown that many in Australia and the US hate the Jews.
Quite. Sadly it is an impossible task in a territory where the enemy hides among civilians. All we can reasonably ask is that Israel does not target civilians as such; and that it burns Hamas from the face of the Earth completely and forever.
Or under them.
Sadly the Hamas mentality will still remain.
They are operating a new and potentially effective strategy.
It’s to target wombs. That’s how you eliminate Hamas.
I guess you don’t understand that for Israel this is existential. Nor do you understand that hiding behind human shields is against all international law as well as being a crime against humanity. Even Egypt and other Arab countries in the region are complicit. Why doesn’t Hamas allow Gazans to leave? Why doesn’t Egypt open up its border crossing? Where are the evacuation ships? Every drop of blood spilled in Gaza will be on Hamas and its supporters, not Israel.
I’m sure that for the Palestinians it’s existential too. Except that Israel has slowly but steadily tried to push them out of existence since 1948. The Palestinians are not the Nazis.
There are many ‘Palestinians’ living in Israel and gosh they have political representation and are allowed to own businesses.
As I’ve commented elsewhere, existential for Israel, but not for Jewish people. They can live safely elsewhere, and likely quite comfortably. Australia and US come to mind.
So Israel must abide by IHL, but Hamas is free to ignore it?
If Israel doesn’t abide by IHL, is it any better than Hamas?
Israel has been acting very badly towards the Palestinians for many decades. Unfortunately, Hamas have given Israel the excuse it needs, and Israel is happy to oblige.
I remember seeing a poll done on the conflict (before the current bout) of Britons views on the situation. It fell roughly as 10% said they were pro Israeli, 20% were pro Palestinian, 20% didn’t know and 50% thought they were all as bad as each other. My view matches that of the 50% to be honest
Really? But who would you invite for dinner?
In the words of the great Peter Ustinov: “never go south of Dover again”.
https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7221830732518313221
I’m slightly ashamed to say I’m moving towards the 50%.
Hamas has a larger game plan.
They’ve already made a start, they have told their enemy where they intend to attack by telling civilians to get out.
I got it wrong
Sorry, responded to wrong post.
Exactly, well said. A sophisticated, thoughtful, and reasoned comment.