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.
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SubscribeThe 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.
Most of the enemies of freedom and democracy live in the west. The greatest threats are from within.
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.”
How do you define and what do you compare the freedom and democracy in West with?
Free and fair elections. Free market economy.
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.
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.
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.
Not all the problems of the west can be blamed on Russia.
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.
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!
“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.
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.
A house divided. have we not created that situation ourselves by allowing in millions of invaders?
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.
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.
‘Allowing in’, don’t you mean ‘Welcoming, housing and funding’ thousands of invaders?
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.
‘low IQ savages’??? WTAF!!!
Ok high IQ savants .Calm down dear
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.
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.
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
The only Holocaust that happened was in the West instigated by Westerners
Really?
What about the many ‘holocausts’, small and large, instigated and carried out by the spread of Islam? To this day, I should add.
What? Where did that “only Holocaust” happen? What were the facts and circumstances?
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.
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 .
And what about all the fools supporting Israel, what should we do about those clowns
That’s a rather contemptible sentiment.
Eliminate them, of course. From the river to the sea. Join in the chant, D. Walsh, with all the other Nazis.
Just because I refuse to pick a side, I must be a Nazi
I don’t have to support any of these strange foreigners
You can’t sit on the fence here and be part of a civilised world.
So if you attacked and being kicked on the ground, a passerby should not pick a side and help you ?
What they want is to see us dead.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Why did Israel let them do it then ?
In other words, you’re rooting for Hamas. Far lefties truly are expert at justifying murderous scumbags.
So why didn’t Israel defend its border ?
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stop conflating issues.
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.
It is not just the Jewish women and children they murder and butcher. Islamist are out to kill all of us.
Islam is THE MOST INTOLERANT religion on earth. Be knowledgeable about the threat it poses to the Western World.
Exactly. It’s like “karma” when did it begin?
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.
Yes…I agree. Clear the West Bank and syria….re-settle them in Syria and Jordan and build a great big wall
Who does Isreal get to have a border but not any other country
As simple as that!
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.
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.
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.
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.
You clearly know nothing about the history of Israel
Indeed, it’s like trying to negotiate with savages.
The last elections were held in 2006.
Yes, at which Hamas was elected (even though they were then, as now), a terrorist organisation.
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?
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?
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.
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 !!
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!
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).
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
Sounds more like something Shakespeare would say. “Divide and conquer”is a universal truth.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Yes. We will implement a anti new left revolution or we will perish.
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”.
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.
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?
Rubbish!
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.
Rubbish!
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.
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.
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.
And the settlements?
Bollocks. Israel holds the moral high ground. Palestinians are killed only when they attack and butcher.
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.
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.
True. Well said.
Absolutely right!..
The potesters against Israel are very misguided and ill informed.
Good comment, thank-you. From the other replies to this, it would seem most prefer binary arguments about goodies and badies.
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.
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.
The “house divided” remark was first made by Jesus Christ, whom Lincoln was quoting.
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.
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.
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.
..It might be possible to depopulate Gaza – 590,000 in 2017. They could all come here to Germany Wir schaffen das!
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.
But how can we reassert our values and ideals on the global stage if we cannot even do it in our own homes?
But ensuring people can choose their own pronouns is sooo much more important than what’s going on abroad.
“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?
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).
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?
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.
I live in Australia. Which decisions of Australian Courts are you so at odds with?
Yes, that (among other things). In a free country, the judiciary must not be subject to government control.
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.
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?
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?
The dreaded, pivotal time for western judeo-christian civilization to choose, has come.
Anyone using the term judeo-christian is a fool
I don’t like the term either, perhaps “Greco-Christian” is more appropriate. Or, better still, “Christian” civilisation.
Hamas animals. A 1,400 year old tradition of slaughter, imperialism, and slavery. Allan Akbarf.
“Allah Akbar!”
Presumably you ‘thumbs down merchants’ agree with Charlie Two above that it is in fact “ALLAN AKBARF”? (sic)
Who is Alann?
I presume CT must have meant it as a joke?
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”.
“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…
Minor point, but valid. Several others pointed it out too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But what would “standing with Israel in action” look like?
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.
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.
Hezbollah.
Handy to have an American Carrier group close by.
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?
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.
Power grows from brain washing with religion.
Dangerous lot the Quakers.
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.
It is NOT called Palestine. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people now called by its rightful name ISRAEL.
I meant that people call it Palestine – although Palestine doesn’t exist in any established sense as you say.
Neither did Israel until the 20th century. The area known as Palestine predates Israel, even if it was never independent
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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/
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.
Then what is?
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.
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.
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.
Amnesty and you are part of the problem.
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.
Excellent analysis. We’re all raving for peace.
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.
How the hell do we get MAGA Republicans to accept the highest values of democracy? Irrelevant moral grandstanding
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
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?
Duh!
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.
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.
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.
I would like to tattoo your second sentence on to the foreheads of all our politicians.
“Foreigners”?
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.
I’ve a feeling that Billy Bob veers far left, but hasn’t figured out the consequences of these policies.
“Far left”? Surely you mean far right?
You are distracted. You are making the author’s point.
Are you only able to care about one thing at a time?