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Israel’s distraction is a warning to the West Our fractured response reveals our weakness

Hamas militants (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Hamas militants (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)


October 10, 2023   4 mins

How could Israel let this happen? As footage of Gazan motorbikes pelting through holes in Israel’s “smart” border fence started to circulate, of paragliders descending on a desert rave, of entire families being kidnapped or butchered in their homes, that was the question on every Western analyst’s lips: how could Israel let this happen?

The more important question, however, is this: what will the West itself do now?

Launched from land, sea and air, the attack was unprecedented in both scale and barbarity. It was a display of Isis-like savagery. But it was also the culmination of a sophisticated military operation, probably months in the planning and aided by at least one foreign power. As a result, more than 800 Israelis have been slaughtered, and no doubt more will follow in the days and weeks to come. Again: how could Israel, with its vast intelligence apparatus and decades of experience, let this happen?

The obvious answer — at least the one doing the rounds of the think tanks in Europe and America — is that Israel was distracted. And when facing such determined enemies as Hamas and Iran, who are always on the lookout for the perfect moment to strike, distraction amounts to suicide.

There is certainly some truth to this. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. Israel, riven by internal discord over Netanyahu’s attempted reform of its supreme court, has been hamstrung for months. Instead of looking outwards to the existential threats on and within its borders, politicians have been infighting over judicial reform. And when the leadership of a civilian-led democracy becomes obsessed with such a complex issue, who leads the military? What good can tomorrow’s justices do for today’s victims of terrorism?

Yet the danger of distraction is not merely an Israeli one. It is just as prevalent, if not more so, in the US-led Western world. In recent years, old fronts have opened in the clash of civilisations (Samuel Huntington is proved more correct by the day). America is now involved indirectly in battles against Putin’s Russia and Iran-backed Hamas, while China is watching closely, perhaps eyeing up Taiwan. Between Khamenei, Putin and Xi, the new anti-Western Axis looks increasingly threatening. And how do we respond?

We can be partly grateful that both the UK and US have pledged to support Israel, as they pledged support for Ukraine against Putin. But these are not difficult decisions to make. A few words here; a press conference there. This is no substitute for strategy which, at present, is sorely missing.

In the UK, the two major political parties are busying themselves with the circus that is conference season, doing their best to emerge with some semblance of respectability. (Judging by the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the Labour Conference yesterday, Keir Starmer has his work cut out.) In the US, the situation inspires even less confidence. While the Democrats see the return of Trump to the White House as a threat to democracy itself and the Republicans view 2024 as a test of election integrity, America’s enemies continue to circle, looking for an opening. The House of Representatives lacks a Speaker. A government shutdown seems inevitable. We are distracted, and they know it. In my view, it was as much the distraction of the West as the distraction of Israel’s politicians that emboldened Hamas and its backers to launch their war of terror.

None of this is to say that the issues that dominate the media cycle and political discourse are not important: immigration, crime, the climate. But are they existential? Certainly not when compared with the threat posed to Israel by its malevolent neighbours; and certainly not when compared with the threat of an emboldened Middle East to a West that has grown complacent about the threat of terrorism. In a well-functioning democracy, there would be clarity about the need to support Israel with more than fine words. We would not ramp up the rhetoric to the apocalyptic; we would not distract ourselves with internecine infighting.

Just look at how the West has attempted — and failed — to process the carnage in Israel. Caught in a Manichean trap that prioritises moral certainty over reality, anti-Israel activists have succeeded in distracting us further. They distort reality by pretending Israel is simply paying the price for its aggression; that it must, as former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn put it, end its “occupation” of Gaza. (Ironically, these very same people tend to be the ones warning Israel not to launch an invasion of Gaza — is it occupied or not?) Further distraction follows: in the form of protests outside Israeli embassies, in those contortions that enable activists to justify attacks on Jewish shops and restaurants.

As a result, many people are unable to agree on the few facts in this interminable conflict that are clear: that Hamas is driven more by its hatred of Jewish people than its love for the Palestinians; that Hamas routinely kills, tortures and persecutes Palestinians who seek peace with Israel; that, well before Hamas paraded the dead bodies of Israeli women down its streets, it used Palestinian children as human shields.

And now, there is the fact that Iran, Russia and China are looking on with glee. They see anarchy in Israel and a weeping wound in the Western alliance. The palaces of Tehran, Moscow and Beijing are all looking West, and what do they see? Activists in Time Square calling another intifada, Jewish schoolchildren being told not to wear their uniform, national broadcasters giving airtime to Hamas apologists. Our weakness is plain for the world to see.

So the West must decide. Do we degenerate into quarrelling factions or do we reassert our enduring values and highest ideals on the global stage? Do we stand with Israel in action as in word or do we fall into a chasm of distraction and division? This might just be the most important choice our generation makes.


Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an UnHerd columnist. She is also the Founder of the AHA Foundation, and host of The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. Her Substack is called Restoration.

Ayaan

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Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

The enemies of freedom and democracy must look at the west and see a bunch of fools and imbeciles too fat and weak to respond to real threats. We bicker endlessly about absurd, childish ideas driven by our increasingly irrational ruling elite. We are the inhabitants of the Capitol in the Hunger Games – foolish, weak people totally divorced from the realities of life for 90% of the world.

Bryan Dale
Bryan Dale
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Most of the enemies of freedom and democracy live in the west. The greatest threats are from within.

Romi Elnagar
Romi Elnagar
1 year ago
Reply to  Bryan Dale

The West really has never been about “freedom and democracy.” That’s just language meant to confuse the population, the “little people,” in Leona Helmsley infamous words, so that the real decisions could be made by the rich and powerful “behind closed doors.”

Johan Rehnstrom
Johan Rehnstrom
1 year ago
Reply to  Romi Elnagar

How do you define and what do you compare the freedom and democracy in West with?

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

Free and fair elections. Free market economy.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
Reply to  Romi Elnagar

I don’t think you are correct. But even if you are, I would be astonished if you were able to name a single country that’s managed to implement a political system that has managed to improve on that.

Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Naive fools and imbeciles who just learned a lesson about blindly trusting the reliability of technology, and about underestimating their enemies.
Israel’s best in the world tech – HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT + the Gaza fence – shows, naive reliance on tech solutions is a weapon in enemy hands. Where enemies include sadistic pervert insiders at places like the Australian Signals Directorate, who have understood for many years both the power they gain via the misuse of technology and the impossibility of proving their individual guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Andrew Soltau
Andrew Soltau
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

As stated in the article: As Abraham Lincoln put it, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. Our house is deeply divided. What we seem to keep missing is that is largely the result of enemy action. And still the inquiries about Russian interferance in our democratic processes are on hold. Investigations into prominent actors in disguise in our midst – in particular a singular individual with a typical Russian name – are endlessly postponed and sidelined. We need to wake up to what is going on, especially in our governments.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Soltau

Not all the problems of the west can be blamed on Russia.

Dorothy Webb Davies
Dorothy Webb Davies
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Soltau

Abraham Lincoln was quoting Jesus. It is because we have deserted the Christian faith, or in some cases watered it down, that our weakness has emerged. Secular governments have no defence against a spiritual war. In World War 2 Britain was led by a Christian King who called the nation to prayer, and there were many miracles which saved us from demonic Nazi tyranny.

Betsy Warrior
Betsy Warrior
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Soltau

Outrageous as it seems no one comments on the fact that in WW2 of the 75 million people who died (mostly Russian and Chinese) only the much smaller percentage of Europeans are given importance and mourned. Such bigotry and cruel indifference of identity politics, which continues unabated today as expressed in these comments. For shame. Seventy-five million!

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

Do we degenerate into quarrelling factions or do we reassert our enduring values and highest ideals on the global stage? …. This might just be the most important choice our generation makes.
I would reformulate the author’s question: Do we degenerate into quarreling factions or do we reassert our enduring values and highest ideals at home?
Surely that is the “most important choice our generation makes” because everything else flows from that choice. As the author notes, a house divided cannot stand. Nor can it effectively assert itself abroad, help its friends, or even reliably distinguish between friend or foe.

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Incompetence, corruption and attempts at ideological purity are the biggest causes of division at home, and both the UK and Israel have had plenty of those from their governments in recent years.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

A house divided. have we not created that situation ourselves by allowing in millions of invaders?

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago

No. It is our Progressive illberal Elite/Establishment and its capture since 2010 by a deranged DEI/Equality credo that has wilfully knowingly divided our House. They and their cowardly groupthinking legal media and academic weasle allies harbour and spread the in vogue poison of anti Israeli Hate, not the wide boy economic migrant chancers in Calais who simply take advantage of the Open Border insanity of this same Elite, specifically the rogue/out of control WFH charlatans at the Home Office. The twisted ideology of our Elite bend toward has elevated Palestinians to near the top of the Victim/Greviance Pyramid, so fomenting ancient hatreds of the Jews here and across the world.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 year ago

Of course.
But remember that Marxists, after loosing Soviet Block, clocked themselves in woke, gender, antiracist ideology to attack the West from different angle.
Problem is that you can not tackle vermin infestation via democratic means.
Enemies of the West need to be physically eliminated.

Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson
10 months ago

‘Allowing in’, don’t you mean ‘Welcoming, housing and funding’ thousands of invaders?

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Only partially true.
West was always divided.
Communism was supported by over 30% of Italians and 20% of French people.
Even in the 70s and 80s when truth about nature of communism was obvious to anyone with half a brain.
We had CND marches in uk and anti American marches in Europe weekly.
Many people in uk (including Kier Starmer) considered traitor Corbyn suitable candidate for PM.
Our institution, especially academia and uncivil service, are infested with woke Neo-Marxists.
Who conspire in flooding West with low IQ savages.
There are no leaders in the West willing to oppose this.
Just look at how Meloni just rolled over to woke dictat, after talking tough during election campaign.

Kieran P
Kieran P
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew F

‘low IQ savages’??? WTAF!!!

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago
Reply to  Kieran P

Ok high IQ savants .Calm down dear

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
1 year ago

Sadly the events of this weekend have shown just how vast the chasm is between many aspects of society where it’s got to the point that a large portion of people are willing to excuse, justify or even glorify the mass murder and abductions of civilians. Even now, the pro-Palestine lot are gaslighting the rest of us to make it look like none of these seemingly spontaneous (albeit mysteriously well organised) demonstrations are pro-Hamas.

At no point do I see this improving in the future without some sort of extreme measures. The problem is that there are now so many who live among us who are suspect that it will require measures outside the normal liberal democratic parameters to resolve. It’s that or we may as well surrender meekly and give those who would destroy us what they want.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

Your last point can’t be emphasised enough. Those in the West who advocate for “lands without borders” should be challenged about the ancient tribal conflict between Arab and Jew, which they also seem to wish to stoke with displays of anti-semitism outside Jewish embassies and businesses. What stands between the Jews in Israel and Holocaust II is its borders, breaching of which should stand as a warning to us all.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

However it has to be said that a lot of the vocal advocates for open boarders for this country and the US are of the tribe

Jav Javeds
Jav Javeds
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

The only Holocaust that happened was in the West instigated by Westerners

Andrew Stoll
Andrew Stoll
1 year ago
Reply to  Jav Javeds

Really?
What about the many ‘holocausts’, small and large, instigated and carried out by the spread of Islam? To this day, I should add.

Johan Rehnstrom
Johan Rehnstrom
1 year ago
Reply to  Jav Javeds

What? Where did that “only Holocaust” happen? What were the facts and circumstances?

starkbreath
starkbreath
11 months ago
Reply to  Jav Javeds

The amount of wilful historic ignorance required to make such a statement is staggering. You wokies deserve no respect whatsoever -you’re nothing but a bunch of narcissistic, authoritarian windbags who just make shit up.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago
Reply to  starkbreath

Well to be fair the uniqueness of The Holocaust is pretty much insisted on by those who campaign for Holocaust museums here there and everywhere .

D Walsh
D Walsh
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

And what about all the fools supporting Israel, what should we do about those clowns

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago
Reply to  D Walsh

That’s a rather contemptible sentiment.

Kim Harrison
Kim Harrison
1 year ago
Reply to  D Walsh

Eliminate them, of course. From the river to the sea. Join in the chant, D. Walsh, with all the other Nazis.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kim Harrison
D Walsh
D Walsh
1 year ago
Reply to  Kim Harrison

Just because I refuse to pick a side, I must be a Nazi

I don’t have to support any of these strange foreigners

Last edited 1 year ago by D Walsh
Andrew Stoll
Andrew Stoll
1 year ago
Reply to  D Walsh

You can’t sit on the fence here and be part of a civilised world.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  D Walsh

So if you attacked and being kicked on the ground, a passerby should not pick a side and help you ?

John Scott
John Scott
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

What they want is to see us dead.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

When we have a high school (or other) mass-casualty shooting in the US, the first step of the democratically-elected government is to remove the threat as fast as possible via state-sanctioned force. Police SWAT teams waste no time in coordinating, descending upon, and eliminating the threat on the spot or wherever the shooter may flee to after the shooting.

This action is executed immediately (long before courts and lawyers get involved) and will continue for as long as it takes to remove the threat (see: ‘manhunt’).

Furthermore, the average citizens living within the vicinity of an active shooter (or, in this case, the Israeli citizens drastically impacted by Hamas’s terrorist actions in Israel) really don’t care about the opinions of faraway navel-gazing intelligentsia. These intelligentsia safely hide within their ivory towers and get paid filthy lucre – or receive payment in the form of popularity – for slinging philosophically-inane suppositions that the killers were really the ‘victims’ and the innocent women and children lying dead on the ground were really the ‘bullies’ that deserved a bullet in the skull.

—-

When a public and brutal show-of-force from a mass-casualty shooter is not met with an overpowering show-of-force by the elected government and its police force, the citizenry start to lose confidence in the enforceability of their society’s laws and rules. And, like dominos, once this confidence is lost, so is any allegiance to the State that failed in its fundamental and primary purpose: Keeping its citizens safe.

In short: Just as the citizens of any country in the world have every right to use their government to eliminate the threat posed by an active on-the-loose mass-casualty shooter, Israel has every right to eliminate Hamas to the extent that it so chooses. Hamas proudly chose this path of killing innocent civilians to publicly destabilize a country. And they will rightly pay the utmost price at a time and place of Israel’s choosing.

Romi Elnagar
Romi Elnagar
1 year ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

Under international law Israel has NO such right either in the oPt as the Occupying Power, or if it goes to war in Gaza, in which case, its actions are subject to international rules of war.
In fact, the only rights are those of the people of Gaza and the oPt, because people in occupied territories have the right to resist, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO ARMED FORCE.
Israel has gotten so used to being entitled that people think it has all sorts of rights it doesn’t. When you are oppressing people: stealing their land, closing their borders, killing their innocent civilians, you lose the right to claim the moral high ground. Israel commits war crimes and is accountable for them.

Ddwieland
Ddwieland
1 year ago
Reply to  Romi Elnagar

Gaza is “occupied” by only Hamas radicals. How can Israel invade a territory it occupies? Logic seems to be a foreign concept to anti-Israel commenters. But illogic is the basis for rants against Israel’s efforts to quell the existential threats it has long faced.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
1 year ago
Reply to  Romi Elnagar

Your assertion is nonsense, Romi.
Israel has EVERY right under international law to destroy the premeditated, immediate and existential threat to their country and their citizens – just like every other recognized country in the world that has this same right.
In fact, NO country would NOT take action if mass-shooters thought they had a special right of killing, raping and torturing innocent civilians within that country – including and especially women, children and babies.
These innocent citizens were ruthlessly butchered and tortured in an official act of mass-extinction, both planned and executed by the Palestinian Government and in a way that only Hitler could be proud of.
The savage people who carried out this attack may do their best to pretend that ripping babies out of their cribs and cutting off their heads and then killing their innocent parents is a reasonable show of “resistance.” The savage people may pretend that raping innocent women next to their innocent dead friends at a Peace Festival is a reasonable show of “resistance.”
But in the civilized world, these are nothing more than the acts of vicious animals.
The official and duly-elected Palestinian Government planned, executed and celebrated their savagery.
And Israel will respond with force as is their right under international law.
In short: This is simply ‘Cause…’ (i.e. the Palestinian Government’s brutal effort to eradicate the Jewish people) ‘…and Effect’ (i.e. Israel’s response-in-kind that is completely based on the Palestinian Government’s Hitlerian actions).

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

Why did Israel let them do it then ?

starkbreath
starkbreath
11 months ago
Reply to  Romi Elnagar

In other words, you’re rooting for Hamas. Far lefties truly are expert at justifying murderous scumbags.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
11 months ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

So why didn’t Israel defend its border ?

Kerry Davie
Kerry Davie
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

I think it was Bismarck who said (something like) ” When I deal with a gentleman I am a ‘gentleman-and-a-half’; when I deal with a pirate, a ‘pirate-and-a-half’. It’s time we in the West dropped this silly Nietzshean stance of “Oh no, we don’t want to become like them”. We need to become a lot worse than ‘them’.

Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
1 year ago
Reply to  Kerry Davie

But “we” will never be experts at beastliness.
I have been forced to live with ongoing, devastating, unpunished crimes in Melbourne, Australia 2009-current. Last incident was about 9 hours ago in my own home while trying to sleep on my own. I never even dated the stalker. I am as angry and determined as anyone, yet I will never be able to match the barbaric sadism used against me. I don’t have it in my genes, I don’t have the decades old experience of Australia’s sadistic pervert criminal Victoria Police officers drunk on their unchecked power.
Violent, barbaric sadism is not natural for most of us.
See my ‘perfect crimes’ article on LinkedIn for what lies beneath barbaric Australia’s fake facade of opulent harmony.

Last edited 1 year ago by Katalin Kish
Dylan Blackhurst
Dylan Blackhurst
1 year ago

I really don’t know what to think about this conflict.

My immediate response is to side with Israel. My ancestry (my Jewish grandmother) means I feel the need to do this.

And yet, the main stream media definitely feels like it’s leaning into a pro Palestinian stance.

If we are to feel some sympathy towards the Palestinians, this would appear to be an odd way of going about it. Why attack civilians in this manner? It’s odd. It doesn’t generate sympathy to their cause.

The sight of a bent and broken semi naked dead soldier in the back of a pick up with a bunch of men chanting their lords name while brandishing AKs doesn’t generate fear. It generates anger. And worst of all revulsion.

I feel little to no sympathy for their cause right now. And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe this is part of something bigger. Maybe this is a draw for America and the West. Another conflict to be distracted by and supply arms too.

And in the meantime China can get on with the business of Taiwan.

Martin M
Martin M
1 year ago

One would normally have sympathy for the civilians in all this, but there is no getting away from the fact that the Palestinian ones elected Hamas to lead them, so it is difficult to be too sympathetic.

Rob N
Rob N
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin M

And the Israeli ones voted for their governments and supply their military with the arms to, over decades, oppress and take the land of the Palestinians.

As Nik said above nobody occupies the moral high ground here.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago
Reply to  Rob N

Stop conflating issues.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Rob N

From the early nineteenth century, when Wahhabi preachers travelled from the Arabian Peninsula to spread their message of Jew hate right across the Muslim world the situation of Jewish people in Arab lands became steadily worse. In the first decade of the c20 there were pogroms in every North African country. The Jewish population of Egypt, where Jews had hitherto lived in peace and security, was more than decimated. The people driven out of these countries following horrific events like the Iraqi Farhud of 1941 (Google it) went to the area that you call Palestine – not just because there were established Jewish communities there but also because the land generally was sparsely populated.
So far as the land is concerned, right and wrong in this conflict is a question entirely decided by the date on which you decide that it began.

John Scott
John Scott
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

It is not just the Jewish women and children they murder and butcher. Islamist are out to kill all of us.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  John Scott

Islam is THE MOST INTOLERANT religion on earth. Be knowledgeable about the threat it poses to the Western World.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Exactly. It’s like “karma” when did it begin?

Last edited 1 year ago by Clare Knight
Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Rob N

Since the “Palestinians” are actually Syrian and Jordanian, perhaps they should return to their homelands, since they have rejected every discussion of a two-state solution.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago

Yes…I agree. Clear the West Bank and syria….re-settle them in Syria and Jordan and build a great big wall

D Walsh
D Walsh
1 year ago

Who does Isreal get to have a border but not any other country

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

As simple as that!

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 year ago

I never understood why there are still Palestinian refugee camps? Couldn’t the Palestinians settle in other Arab countries, like all the displaced people after WWII had to do. I come from a refugee family and my grandparents and parents had to settle in the West after they were booted out of their homeland.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago

It does not suit many powerful players in the Middle East to close the refugee camps. I read this many decades ago and it holds true today.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

Because those other Arab countries don’t want them either. The ‘open air prison’ of Gaza has a border with Egypt, which does not allow free movement.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Good questions, Stephanie. One wonders why Palestinean leaders don’t take care of their own, instead of focusing on oppressing them with a cruel religion.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago
Reply to  Rob N

You clearly know nothing about the history of Israel

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago

Indeed, it’s like trying to negotiate with savages.

B Moore
B Moore
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin M

The last elections were held in 2006.

Martin M
Martin M
1 year ago
Reply to  B Moore

Yes, at which Hamas was elected (even though they were then, as now), a terrorist organisation.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago

So if you were not of Jewish descent, you would side with the savage rapists who want nothing besides the elimination of an entire race?

Dylan Blackhurst
Dylan Blackhurst
1 year ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

No. That’s not what I was saying. My default position is to always side with Israel.

But, when you watch mainstream media, or have conversations with friends and colleagues you find yourself re-evaluating your position. Which I think is healthy.

I’ll be honest, after seeing video on Twitter it has hardened my position more than ever before.

I’m tired of being told we need to embrace each other’s cultures when it seems it’s okay for these same cultures to celebrate openly in our streets after such horrendous attacks have taken place.

I guess this is the price we pay for freedom of speech.

But if I’m being honest, in darker moments I’m left to wonder. Perhaps only an all out Israeli invasion and victory in Gaza will bring peace.

But at what cost?

What would that peace even look like?

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
1 year ago

The Israelis have no option…Arabs said they wanted to exterminate the entire race and obliterate the country when it was set up.
Even a two state solution looks impossible because of the impossibility of guaranteeing Israeli security, especially with the pitiful Western societies who thanks to Biden dumped Afghanistan without a backward glance.
Nobody likes some of the things they do, but at the end of the day as the saying goes, they only have to lose once to lose everything.

chris sullivan
chris sullivan
1 year ago

that is not a darker moment Dylan – it is the only way in which the average Palestinian will actually feel SAFE – when the hamas thugs have been removed and Israeli rule of law is imposed !!

Andrew Soltau
Andrew Soltau
1 year ago

Exactly. This seems to make little sense at the local level. But looking at it globally the religious fanatics are now teamed up with the psychotic Putin, and the destruction of the Western civilization is the obvious aim. The oligarchs blather on and obfuscate to protect their wealth position and apparent power while the entire edifice is under stealthy attack. Which is now starting to turn overt. The destructive factions cannot use the world ending weapronry, but by the same token nor can the democratic havens in the modern world. We are on the path to being massively outplayed. And the reason is that the wealthy are consumed with ridiculous pastimes like eliminating abortion in the name of a deity that by any sensible definition would have no desire for such insanity in an already overpopulated world. God help us all!

Mike Doyle
Mike Doyle
1 year ago

Good article, but the quotation is originally from the Bible. He knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. (Matthew 12: 25 |NRSV).

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Doyle

There’s a lot of biblical undertones here. The devil provides the distraction of money, lust, power and greed to keep us away from God’s ways.
https://www.ibelieve.com/faith/reasons-why-distraction-may-be-satans-favorite-weapon.html

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Doyle

Sounds more like something Shakespeare would say. “Divide and conquer”is a universal truth.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clare Knight
Arkadian X
Arkadian X
1 year ago

How can it be a matter of “distraction” or, as someone else put it “being caught napping”.
If this operation took months in planning and required a big logistic effort, it would require a lot more than “distraction” to go unnoticed.
And if Israel can be “distracted” we are all vulnerable to the highest degree.

Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
1 year ago
Reply to  Arkadian X

People’s blind faith in the unbreakable protective power of technology is a fundamental part of this catastrophe.
It is surreal to see such horrific proof of what I have been screaming about all over the Internet since 2015 in Melbourne, Australia, when I stopped being silent about the tech capabilities Australia’s organised crime gangs have had risk/cost-free, on-demand access to since at least 2009.
My last forced experience of devastating crime capabilities less than 7 hours ago in my own home on my own in a suburb of million $ homes where I have owned my home since 2001. See my ‘perfect crimes’ article on LinkedIn.

Miguel Reina
Miguel Reina
1 year ago

“Delenda est Carthago”… it’s simple..we in the west along with Israel are facing existential threats from those who would destroy us. If we do not face the challenges soon it will be too late. We can moralise and argue all we like but our children won’t have that luxury, they will be faced with some very stark choices.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago

We have imported millions of people who are either dedicated to or passively acquiescent and silently supportive of the destruction of Israel, of Christianity and of the West. Secular liberalism is destroying itself and taking our entire civilization down with it. When woke ‘secular’ (but nevertheless religious and zealous) liberals and Islamicists are both playing zero sum politics, it’s the only game in town. It’s time conservatives recognized this and started playing by these rules. There is now no middle ground to defend. We should start by a moratorium on all immigration and a concerted de-programming of DEI dominated institutions ….defunding universities, re-expanding trade schools, getting rid of DEI bureaucracies, re-asserting the primacy of heterosexual marriage as the building block of society, reversing the sex revolution (which has been terrible for women, catastrophic for young men and ruinous of families), banning pornography, …… this should all be bread and butter for conservatives and post-liberals. Economic liberalism and libertarianism are just forms of liberalism – and that vision of endlessly mobile, deracinated, mindlessly autonomous, self-centredly-actualizing, obligation-free individuals ‘doing their thing’ is the root cause of all of this stuff. That’s one thing Islam gets right. The West is killing itself. If we can’t protect ourselves and reassert the sacred promise of the Judeo-Christian vision of Imago Dei, we don’t deserve anything less than those butchers will deal out. Israel mostly knows this – and good for them.

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago

Yes. We will implement a anti new left revolution or we will perish.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Yikes, nasty stuff.If by “millions of immigrants” you mean those who are arriving from south of the border they are predominately Roman Catholics in other words Christians, so what’s your problem? I know of no other “millions”.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clare Knight
Chuck Burns
Chuck Burns
1 year ago

AYAAN HIRSI ALI wrote; “Do we degenerate into quarrelling factions or do we reassert our enduring values and highest ideals on the global stage?” The US reasserting it’s values? You mean like our woke military and woke administration of Joe Biden and his handlers? You mean the values that led the NeoCons to commit an act of war against the German economy? You mean the values that caused the NeoCons to intervene in Ukraine and use the Ukrainian people as worthless consumable cannon fodder? What values has the US asserted in the last decades or even century that real Americans can be proud of? We are led by a degenerate faction of our society. Drag Queens teaching kindergarten or rather Drag Queens grooming children! This is the America of 2023.

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago
Reply to  Chuck Burns

The problem with the US is that it is under the control of the New Left and has no values to offer anyone, anymore other than hedonism and identity narcissism.
When will the Neocons admit that their Golem is out of juice?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Rubbish!

Simon Tavanyar
Simon Tavanyar
1 year ago
Reply to  Chuck Burns

Ms Hirsi Ali is not looking deep enough for the root of the issue. Good and evil have been redefined by the cultural Marxists now in ascendancy in the West. Good and evil used to describe actions that one does – you do good or you do evil. Now, under CRT, good and evil are characteristics of race and/or wealth. If you are rich and white, you are from the evil oppressor class, evil. If you are poor or black, or indigenous, or Arab you are from the victim class, which makes you ‘good’; and any action you do, however heinous in classical morality, is justified, if you are by identity, a victim. So poor, Arab groups cannot be evil, and white oppressors, like Israel, cannot be good.
This Critical Race Theory cannot be tolerated. It must be called out and destroyed in every political forum because defining evil as good and good as evil is literally evil.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Chuck Burns

Rubbish!

Nik Jewell
Nik Jewell
1 year ago

Nobody occupies any moral high ground here. There is a long, terrible and complex history, and Palestinians have been killed at a ratio of ~20:1 in recent decades whilst losing more and more of their land. Nothing, however, excuses the monstrous cruelty of Hamas’s attack, and both sides are now in breach of the Geneva Convention: Hamas for taking and threatening hostages and Israel for collective punishment. Now, thousands more will die if Israel goes into Gaza, many of them non-combatants.
The stakes could not be higher in geopolitics. The global financial system is already on life support, and the disruption of energy supplies and/or global shipping could easily push it over the edge. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, Russia and China are well-placed to seize opportunities here. I just posted a short speculation on how WWIII could begin if the US gets sucked into this conflict. I’m not saying that is likely, but it is possible.

Jacqueline Burns
Jacqueline Burns
1 year ago
Reply to  Nik Jewell

You make it sound like Israel has invaded the so-called palestinian land for no cause other than to steal it. Yet, in fact,:-
They have no land since they have never accepted a state even when it was offered to them on a plate numerous times. They do not even WANT a state of their own. They just want the destruction of the Jewish State & the destruction of the Jewish nation.They are not even palestinian. They are Arabs of Egyptian, Syrian & Jordanian descent. Israel has NEVER invaded palestinian areas except to root out terrorist entities/bomb-making factories & weapons stores. Neither has it wilfully massacred anyone, let alone women, children, elderly & disabled people. Yes people have been unavoidably killed but that is because of the palestinians using their own women & children as human shields. Israel has gone out of its way to avoid this by both warning residents when they were about to strike a terrorist target AND pulling back from a target when they found civilians in their way. Many leaders have described the IDF as the most moral army in the world. Anything the palestinians have accused the Israelis of doing was, in fact, done only by their own side.

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
1 year ago

Arab states could be as advanced as Israel is but they aren’t. I think this has been done to derail the growing Israel/Saudi detente which is feared by Shiite Arabs as well as, and especially, Iran,
That is the one seed of hope. Do what your enemy fears most.
Turn this conflict from Jew v Arab, into a modern 21st Century Middle East v a medievalist un-reformed poor middle East.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

And the settlements?

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago
Reply to  Nik Jewell

Bollocks. Israel holds the moral high ground. Palestinians are killed only when they attack and butcher.

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago
Reply to  Nik Jewell

Until Hamas is removed as the governing and ruling elite of the Gaza Strip, Israel will hold the high ground. I mean, that is why the Jewish State encourage their development in the 80s to begin with, because they knew it would undermine the legitimacy of the PLO and the Palestinian cause by their extremism and Islamic irridentism.
If you see any protestors on the street protesting for the Palestinian cause, calmly ask them if they support the overthrow of Hamas in the Gaza Strip to Liberate the Palestinian people from their yoke. If they object, they are not serious, they are just ethno-religious partisans, not humanitarians striving for the cause of peace.

Au Contraire
Au Contraire
1 year ago

PLO was offered a Palestinian State by Rabin Government but they chose to walk away from it. A serious statesman would have worked on the spirit of that moment and build upon it. They would have received huge sums in development aid. Palestinians have languished in refugee camps and under terror governance of Hamas and Fatah for so long. They deserve a decent life which has been denied them by their corrupt selfish leadership. Living in peace with Israelis and in acceptance of a Jewish neighbour state they would have so much to gain for their people. Instead they have constantly allowed themselves to be deployed as a geopolitical tool coupled with self defeating zealotry.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Au Contraire

True. Well said.

Sally Owen
Sally Owen
1 year ago
Reply to  Au Contraire

Absolutely right!..

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

The potesters against Israel are very misguided and ill informed.

Richard Irons
Richard Irons
1 year ago
Reply to  Nik Jewell

Good comment, thank-you. From the other replies to this, it would seem most prefer binary arguments about goodies and badies.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago
Reply to  Nik Jewell

Let’s just take pause and reflect that ‘here’ babies and toddlers were murdered and beheaded with their families and hundreds of young people were mown down at a music festival.

Saul D
Saul D
1 year ago

Unherd had a discussion on Hamas back in 2021 which is worth reviewing in the light of events: https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-hamas-became-so-deadly/ – prescient even.
My sense is that the Abraham Accords were having the effect of sidelining the Palestinians, and reducing their aid-income (a sizeable chunk of state funds) and influence in the Middle East. A ‘spectacular’ was then Hamas’s way of banging the table to regain attention to undermine the Abraham Accords.

Jill Gunsell
Jill Gunsell
1 year ago

The “house divided” remark was first made by Jesus Christ, whom Lincoln was quoting.

Walter Lantz
Walter Lantz
1 year ago

The Bolsheviks were convinced their success depended on how fast they could establish control through ideological purity. There was no time to build consensus with the assorted liberal and socialist fellow travelers. Faster to eliminate them. As we all know they ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater by eliminating many talented people that could have helped them establish a socialist economy. They became pure and poor which eventually lead to their demise. Not until Russia and China realized that you need money to maintain control did we see these countries challenge the hegemony of the West.
The West meanwhile, has gone the other way. An ideology based on real and perceived historical injustice, equity of outcomes and “every child gets a prize” has inexorably dismissed and dismantled the very foundations that made the West strong enough to indulge such fanciful neo-socialist musings to begin with. The West now uses the same “buy in or disappear” tactics used a hundred years ago.
As Ms. Ali states, it appears that even Israel, which is notable for “staying the course”, may have been guilty of taking their eyes off the truly important things.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Lantz

The Soviets did not fail because they didn’t have enough talent. Communism would not succeed with the most talented people in the world. It’s the system that doesn’t work.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 year ago

A show of Western strength would be to empty the area completely, Gaza. It’s simply a training ground for terrorists.
I imagine permanent occupation will be tried but a short sharp shock would achieve a greater permanence.
The problem of the West Bank still remaine
but territoriality speaking this is a small, toxic problem. I imagine most Israelis see Gaza similar to a building full of delinquents that needs to be demolished.

Lewis Eliot
Lewis Eliot
1 year ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

..It might be possible to depopulate Gaza – 590,000 in 2017. They could all come here to Germany Wir schaffen das!

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago
Reply to  Lewis Eliot

If Germany had State Mandated Christianity I would agree, but with current year progressive open borders and open legs policies… I can’t. It just leads to misery.

Nanda Kishor das
Nanda Kishor das
1 year ago

But how can we reassert our values and ideals on the global stage if we cannot even do it in our own homes?

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago

But ensuring people can choose their own pronouns is sooo much more important than what’s going on abroad.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago

So the West must decide.”
That is certainly the bottom line question. Perhaps we need a few hundred more “Think Tanks”, NGO’s, Community Organizers and armchair pundits to think about it versus electing leaders who have a spine and can actually do something about it?
Speaking of being distracted…..can there be any more distraction that the rotten culture of the U.S., where dozens of different groups are pitted against each other for frivolous reasons whilst our elected leaders gorge ravenously in the public trough?

Martin M
Martin M
1 year ago

It seems clear to me that much of the blame for this occurrence must be laid at the feet of Benjamin Netanyahu. He took his eye off the ball, which allowed this to happen. There was a time that the Israeli Army would have dealt with this incursion quickly and efficiently (although they probably wouldn’t have needed to, because the Mossad would have known that it was planned long in advance). For all his Right Wing posturing, Netanyahu has allowed Israel’s security apparatus to atrophy (which is a dangerous thing to do when one is surrounded by enemies).

Jacqueline Burns
Jacqueline Burns
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin M

Right-wing posturing…do you mean his attempts to put a democratically elected parliament over unelected judges chosen only by their own selves who feel they have the right to throw down the laws they don’t like not because they are ultra vires the country’s raison d’etre. but because they are not ‘woke’ enough for the left wingers & NGO’s?

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago

I agree this whole don’t touch our illiberal progressive judges schtick is wearing thin. It’s the same BS all over the West. Just look at the monstrous decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Look at the decisions in Canada, Australia and New Zealand – one progressive restriction after another. Even the so called Republican Far Right Supreme Court in America has not produced solid rulings, they are tepid and symbolic and let the progressive deformation of the law continue unhindered – just look at how affirmative action was treated.
We are living in the dictatorship of the Judges and the people cry out for it to end.

Martin M
Martin M
1 year ago

I live in Australia. Which decisions of Australian Courts are you so at odds with?

Martin M
Martin M
1 year ago

Yes, that (among other things). In a free country, the judiciary must not be subject to government control.

Phil Gough
Phil Gough
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin M

The further to the Right you go on the political spectrum the more in thrall to dogma and therefore the more unable to process reality, result is incompetence.

George Scipio
George Scipio
1 year ago

The Hamas action is a dangerous provocation to ignite a general conflict and wreck all regional acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy. Flattening Gaza is therefore not the way forward. Israel must come up with ways to isolate and punish only Hamas even to annihilation. But how? Is there anyone in Israel with the strength and will to refrain?

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  George Scipio

Do you not understand that ‘non-combatant’ Palestinians freely voted for terrorist Hamas to control the Palestinian Authority? What is the moral culpability of such a vote?

Ardath Blauvelt
Ardath Blauvelt
1 year ago

The dreaded, pivotal time for western judeo-christian civilization to choose, has come.

D Walsh
D Walsh
1 year ago

Anyone using the term judeo-christian is a fool

John Greatorex
John Greatorex
1 year ago
Reply to  D Walsh

I don’t like the term either, perhaps “Greco-Christian” is more appropriate. Or, better still, “Christian” civilisation.

Charlie Two
Charlie Two
1 year ago

Hamas animals. A 1,400 year old tradition of slaughter, imperialism, and slavery. Allan Akbarf.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Charlie Two

“Allah Akbar!”

Presumably you ‘thumbs down merchants’ agree with Charlie Two above that it is in fact “ALLAN AKBARF”? (sic)

Last edited 1 year ago by Charles Stanhope
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Charlie Two

Who is Alann?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

I presume CT must have meant it as a joke?

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
1 year ago

Great article, very well written. The point about moral certainty versus reality was especially pertinent as exemplified by a youngish (but old enough to know better) Momentum Corbynista pontificating about Palestinians on breakfast TV this morning. If he did know any facts about the region, he wasn’t demonstrating it. These people fill young minds with simplistic nonsense and that enrages me. I liken it to 1970’s Miss World contestants, , asked about their ambitions, invariably said “World peace”.

William Warren
William Warren
1 year ago

“A house divided against itself” is a quote from Jesus Christ, not Abraham Lincoln (see Matthew 12:25). Surprised subs didn’t pick that up…

Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
1 year ago
Reply to  William Warren

Minor point, but valid. Several others pointed it out too.

jason mann
jason mann
1 year ago

Hopefully the 2 party group of idiots we continue to fund with ever growing tax dollars won’t view the evolving issue in the middle east as another crisis opportunity to gain more control over us…I stopped holding my breath long ago.

0 0
0 0
1 year ago

Just a note, A Lincoln was not the originator of the comment, ‘a house divide against itself…..’ but J Christ, as quoted in Luke ch 17 v11. Otherwise a very helpful insight.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago

A fish rots from the head, Persian saying. Humans will need gods as long as they cowardly, venal and lazy, comment by Zeus.Those who are protected by walls and garrisons lose their uprightness and manliness- Ibn Khaldun.
The above three sayings sum up Western leadership post Thatcher/ Reagan.
The Greeks and Romans realised that poverty was their greatest instructor in hardihood and self reliance unlike the soft and wealthy people of the East. As Joe Calzaghe said , the greatest threat to a world champion is a five star hotel.

Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
1 year ago

Blind hubris about the benefits of technology enables distraction from existential threats.
As the catastrophic failure of Israel’s best in the world tech – HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT + the Gaza fence – shows, naive reliance on tech solutions is a weapon in enemy hands.
Where enemies include insiders at places like the Australian Signals Directorate, who have understood for many years both the power they gain via the misuse of technology, and the impossibility of proving their individual guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Last edited 1 year ago by Katalin Kish
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

But what would “standing with Israel in action” look like?

Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
1 year ago

The West is not a unitary, homogeneous entity. In fact, ever since the fall lf the Roman Empire (and the numerous failed attempts to reconstruct it), what has characterized the West, meaning Christendom, has been division, (sometimes extreme) political fragmentation, and internal conflicts and rivalries.

Bruno Lucy
Bruno Lucy
1 year ago

Another article wallowing in sensationalism. Someone remember the Cuban crisis ?? That was a real one and how many times in the past has the world been …..on the brink.
A lot of people will die…..and that is a tragedy….no more tragic than crisis of the past because since the dawn of times, we have lived a lot less times of peace than times of war.
Iran very well knows that if they ever pushed the button they would be the first to be turned to dust.
Nor Russia, nor the US, nor China would ever follow. Russia because it only nukes if its territorial integrity is at stake, China because it is not stupid and the US …….whatever for ?. The buck stops with Israel and even there, i don’t think they would retaliate against Iran. I hope the author had a splendid times trying to scare the living light out of his readers……for my part…..I’ll get on with things. This is not the first horror show and unfortunately not the last.

Steve Houseman
Steve Houseman
1 year ago

Hezbollah.
Handy to have an American Carrier group close by.

Rip Durham
Rip Durham
1 year ago

While I agree with the main points Ali makes, my main worry is the fine line. This is how we descend into a jingoistic and authoritarian state. How do we navigate this? I don’t know. The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians has carried on for almost 80 years. And the Hamas got involved, so the western order has more on our plate. Well….shit.
The only thing that stopped this was talks. Not with Hamas, but between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. There’s been so much bad blood that it’s hard to figure where we go from here. So between a choice of “they’ve been killing each other for ages” and “for fucks sake, can we just SIT DOWN and figure something out?”
I realize this is a naive view, but what other option do we have? Besides death and destruction and everybody saying, “It’s YOUR fault?”
What other option do any of us have?

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago
Reply to  Rip Durham

The Palestinian Authority has had no authority in Gaza since many years ago. Power grows from the barrel of a gun, to paraphrase Mao Zedong, and Hamas are the violent men with the guns.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Power grows from brain washing with religion.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Dangerous lot the Quakers.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Rip Durham

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians has carried on for almost 80 years.

Actually, the modern conflict between Arabs and Jews dates back at least to the 1860s when, following the spread of Wahhabi ideology (of which ‘Islamism’ is the heir), hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven out of the Maghreb, Iraq and Syria, and sought refuge in the land now called Palestine. 

Jacqueline Burns
Jacqueline Burns
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

It is NOT called Palestine. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people now called by its rightful name ISRAEL.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago

I meant that people call it Palestine – although Palestine doesn’t exist in any established sense as you say.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Neither did Israel until the 20th century. The area known as Palestine predates Israel, even if it was never independent

Romi Elnagar
Romi Elnagar
1 year ago

Philistia and Palestine are cognates, and Philistia is mentioned in the Bible. The name goes back millennia, and refers to the Levant, south of Lebanon.

Romi Elnagar
Romi Elnagar
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Cite your sources, please. I have studied Palestinian history for years and I know of nobody who has said that thousands of Jews emigrated from the Maghreb, Iraq or Syria to Palestine.

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago
Reply to  Rip Durham

Sometimes War is the only answer. The Gaza Strip must be liberated from Hamas and rebuilt without it. There is no other solution. The entire World should support this effort.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  Rip Durham

“Death and destruction” was the right response to Nazis war machine and its the right response to Hamas war machine too.

How anyone can play the moral equivalence game between a functioning liberal democratic state and a cabal of racist terrorists who cut off babies’ heads is totally beyond me.

Dick Barrett
Dick Barrett
1 year ago

Israel is not an innocent party to what has happened. Sooner or later, Israel will need to be succeeded by a single, shared, secular, unitary state of Israel/Palestine. Extremists who oppose such a way forward are the true enemies of peace.

Darwin K Godwin
Darwin K Godwin
1 year ago

Excellent analysis. We’re all raving for peace.

Helen Murray
Helen Murray
1 year ago

You talk as if Israel is a totally innocent party. Far from it. Here is what Amnesty has to say about the oppression of the Palestinians and it’s atrocious.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Murray

Oh, how the mediocre come with their defence of the indefensible. Hamas have murdered babies and slaughtered hundreds of youths. No entity or individual is innocent. That is not the issue at hand.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Then what is?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Murray

Yes but, what are Palestinian leaders doing about it other than feeding hatred, which distracts from the fact that they are doing nothing. The hatred spewing from the mouths of the terrorists in the video of them taking a woman hostage, as they shouted” Allah Akbar,” was more than chilling. Those men were totally brain washed and can never be reasoned with
And just so you know I’m a liberal.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clare Knight
Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Murray

Amnesty International have a biased view of what they consider unjust.
AI did not respond to my pleas for help years ago, being reduced to survive crime-to-crime in a Melbourne suburb of million $ homes. I am a highly educated woman who never chose to have anything to do with a stalker ex-coworker trading info for crimes as a service with bikies, corrupt Victoria Police officers and sadistic insiders from the Australian Signals Directorate. Crimes against me are ongoing. Last incident about 7 hours ago in my own home.
See my ‘perfect crimes’ article on LinkedIn about what to expect in/from barbaric Australia.

Romi Elnagar
Romi Elnagar
1 year ago
Reply to  Katalin Kish

There are many cases of injustice around the world that Amnesty and other social justice groups choose not to address because they simply lack the money. They probably declined to take your case at that time because they felt they had more pressing issues to address. Don’t take it personally.

Last edited 1 year ago by Romi Elnagar
m pathy
m pathy
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Murray

Amnesty and you are part of the problem.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  Helen Murray

The Muslim Brotherhood, Founders of Hamas murdered Sadat in 1981. Palestinians had good offer at the 2000 Camp David talks but Arafat walked away as he did the Jeddah Accord set up by Saudi Arabia. The Palestinians tried to take over Kuwait in the 1950s, Jordan in 1970 and started the Civil War in Lebanon in 1975 and supported S Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait. Most Arab countries are fed up with the Palestinians and do not trust them: Oman will not have them in their country.

Romi Elnagar
Romi Elnagar
1 year ago

I have to say I am deeply disappointed that Unherd would publish this lame excuse for journalism. The author’s bias toward Israel is clear from the very first sentence, so it is hard to begin to deconstruct this piece of propaganda.
When you have a country divided between ruled and rulers as Israel is, you cannot claim it is a “democracy.” So, to talk about “enduring values and highest ideals” is just plain nonsense when you are kidnapping young children off the street and torturing them, as Israel does in the oPt, or when you are completing blockading a population and “putting [them] on a diet,” as Israelis jokingly refer to their years-long restriction of food and water to Gaza. It’s disingenuous and immoral. Israeli soldiers RAPE Palestinian women they have kidnapped for no reason, and Israeli soldiers have been raping women ever since the atrocity at Deir Yassin, so what Hamas does needs to be put into context. Isaelis justify anything they do by saying “that’s the Middle East,” so they really can’t have it both ways when they brutalize Palestinians. Chris Hedges said it better than I can, in his article, “Palestinians Speak the Language of Violence Israel Taught Them.” It’s a shame Unherd couldn’t publish something like that. Hamas may be guilty, but Israel has been at it a lot longer, and there are a lot more victims of the Zionist state.
Israel is in violation of international law when it restricts food and other necessities into Gaza. So, how can it claim the moral high ground when people break out of what has been termed “the largest open air prison in the world”? How can it claim the moral high ground when its settlers illegally occupy farms and villages of Palestinians, and attack and even murder them with impunity? Under international law, people in Occupied Territory have a RIGHT to resist, even to use armed force. You don’t hear about that much in the Zionist-controlled Western MSM, but I am disappointed that you don’t even hear it in Unherd. You should also know that people in Occupied Territories have ALL the rights: to freedom, to resist, and to maintenance, and that Occupying Powers have NONE.
Go check it out if you don’t believe me. Google “Geneva Conventions,” and you will discover that Israel has been “criminally negligent” in its treatment of Palestinians for decades. If you don’t understand how disproportionate the violence against Palestinians is, check out the website “If Americans Knew.” It might just open your eyes to the truth.
The accusation that anyone who counters Israeli imperialism must be “antisemitic” is an old trope that I thought would be discredited on the Left by now. Apparently, we are supposed to “stand with Israel” even when it commits genocide. Israel has been committing genocide since the massacres of over 400 Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin in 1948, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, and the repeated wars on the defenseless population in Gaza. These atrocities are not justified by the antisemitism of the West, a bias that–until the State of Israel started ethnically cleansing Arabs–was absent from Muslim societies, which respect the Qur’anic dictate to honor Jews and Christians.
It is not just that Arabs–who are Semites themselves, it should be noted–are paying for the abuses of Jews by Europe. Europe does not “get off the hook” by sponsoring more colonialism of the sort it engaged in throughout the Middle East prior to WWI. Britain–a European country–had no right to “give” the land of Palestine to anybody, and if you think the Balfour Declaration was just, I suggest you give YOUR house and land to a Jewish refugee and go live in some refugee camp YOURSELF instead of forcing anybody else to. Europe has been trying ever since the Crusades to invade Arab lands and enslave Arabs, and Israel is just its latest colonial foray into foreign lands, promulgated with the excuse that Palestine was “a land without people…” Thus, by erasing Palestinians, the Zionist project could justify its own existence. It turns out that wasn’t all that easy.
Israel wasn’t just “distracted”: its colonialism and the genocide it visits on Arabs have hollowed it out; it is immoral and rotten to the core. Netanyahu’s failure to stop Hamas shows his weakness, and the rage and violence he will visit on Gaza is the violence that impotent men visit on those who dare to defy them.
Buckle your seatbelt. Netanyahu promises this is only the beginning. In that, I am afraid, he is right.

Last edited 1 year ago by Romi Elnagar
Walter Schwager
Walter Schwager
1 year ago

How the hell do we get MAGA Republicans to accept the highest values of democracy? Irrelevant moral grandstanding

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

What does an attack in the Middle East (which aren’t exactly a rare occurrence in the part of the world unfortunately) have to do with the problems faced by those in western countries? I feel sorry for those murdered, but ultimately I don’t care about the fate of Israel. I’m much more concerned about the current high rate of inflation and the cost of living. If politicians had to get involved every time one group attacked another in the Middle East there’d never be enough time for any domestic problems to be discussed

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

To those downvoting me, should every terrorist bombing in Iraq, the war in Yemen or the Armenian defeat be of more importance to me than domestic politics which directly affect my life? Or is it only because this one involves Israel that I’m supposed to deem it more important?

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Duh!

Jacqueline Burns
Jacqueline Burns
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

I don’t know where you live Billy, but if you look around you, you will probably see why it is exactly your problem. Or do you want your daughters wrapped up in black shrouds & sold to the highest bidder or gang raped by those who think that is their right because they are unbelievers in a cult? Do you want to see your sons sold as slaves while those who enslave them live of the fruits of your son’s hard labours? Read the Koran for what they have in store for you.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

You’re not “supposed” to do anything. No one is telling you what to think or feel, you have a choice, and if you can only care about one thing, so be it.

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

It’s the same reason ‘we’ send money to Pakistan and India. If you permit foreigners to settle in your country they will drag you into their disputes.

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

I would like to tattoo your second sentence on to the foreheads of all our politicians.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

“Foreigners”?

Northern Observer
Northern Observer
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

You are right of course, but 60 years of New Left policies and laws have allowed this problem to come and live among us. So unfortunately our struggle and Israel’s struggle are linked. In a way that the Ukrainian conflict never was. We are fighting the wrong people and indulging the wrong people all at once. Reverse course if you want to live Western Man.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
1 year ago

I’ve a feeling that Billy Bob veers far left, but hasn’t figured out the consequences of these policies.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

“Far left”? Surely you mean far right?

Andrea Rudenko
Andrea Rudenko
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

You are distracted. You are making the author’s point.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Are you only able to care about one thing at a time?