Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty
“Love your enemies,” a holy Jew said, a long time ago. But I am not sure I am quite ready for that. Not today at least. I am neither Jewish nor Israeli, but my wife is both, as are my two small boys. They all have Israeli citizenship. And explaining to my little ones what is happening over in their other home has felt so important, and yet completely impossible.
Why is granny hiding in a bomb shelter? Why do they want to murder people like us? I want to protect them from all of this and just let them play with their Pokémon cards. But children have an instinctive knowledge that something is not right. And their questions keep on piling up. For today, my love is reserved for creating a loving bubble around my family. Making tea, piano practice, keeping the house tidy, sharing cuddles. I don’t even like them leaving the house at the moment.
I tried to say a few words about what is happening in Israel at church on Sunday. I thought I would be ok to just ask people for their prayers. I speak in front of my parishioners all the time. But I underestimated the distress I was suppressing. I had, foolishly, spent too long scrolling through social media in search of information. And so I have seen things that cannot be unseen. The fear in the eyes of those who have been taken, the wild hatred of those parading the semi-naked bodies of murdered young people, their twisted limbs. When I stood up to speak, the words wouldn’t come. The simple mechanics of speech abandoned me. Only dumb tears.
And for today at least, I have no time for those who want to “both sides” the situation. This was a massacre, hideously reminiscent of the Shoah. They beheaded children. I do not want to hear those whose first sentence expresses condolences, and whose second sentence begins with a “But”. Nor do I want to hear your little pet theories about the politics of the Middle East, not when the world outside feels such a threatening place for my family. As Amos Oz explained in his excellent book, How to Cure a Fanatic, Arabs and Jews typically understand each other far better than we Europeans understand either of them. Cost-free wisdom from Western liberals is so often pathetically ill-informed and bathing in self-righteousness. Look at those riding their cars up and down the Edgware Road, beeping their horns in delight, Palestinians flags flying from their windows. And those B-list academics who preach decolonisation and celebrate the slaughter of innocents as some sort of noble justifiable resistance. Little wonder London’s Jewish Free School has just made the wearing of their school blazer optional for students on the way to and from school. Those who have created a culture where all this is deemed acceptable have lost any sort of contact with moral reality.
I’m not sure I have even got properly angry yet, though this will inevitably follow. Not just anger, but blazing fury. Then I will have to reckon with those impossible words: “Love your enemy.” Then I will need most to remind myself of the humanity of those who want to do my children harm. Yes, that they have children too. And that their children are now under the most enormous threat.
It was 19 years ago last week, that I first visited Gaza. We went to a primary school in Khan Yunis, right at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. Before lessons, the children had to throw balls at the wall to expend all their frustration. Without that, they were unable to concentrate on their lessons. As the children were showing me where their houses used to be, houses which had been demolished by Israeli bulldozers, a machine gun from the border emptied its load in our direction. Bullets kicked up dust all around us. Children of seven and eight — the same age as my boy — ran behind a wall like they’d done it before.
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SubscribeI don’t know how to thank Giles for attempting to express what’s surely intolerable for all of us but personal to him and his family.
Well said. My thanks and, for what little they’re worth, my best wishes to you and your family, Giles.
Agreed. Well worth my subscription. (How awful that sounds now I’ve written it.)
Actually, “love your neighbor” is a Christian thing. Jews say “v’ahavta l’reaha kamocha” – love your friend as yourself. It’s not likely Jesus actually said that. Christians in an effort to supercede and distinguish themselves from Jews massaged the Torah into their version of scripture. When it comes to enemies,… Amalek …. Jews are enjoined to wipe the memory off the earth.
Yes Jews do understand Arabs and Muslims better than Christians do because Christians are hamstrung with their own faith culture. Muslims are trapped in hatred of the kafir, and Christians are trapped in the injunction to forgive. It’s too bad that Christianity and Islam both took derivative pathways. If Judaism were the predominate religion in the world, it would be a far better place, not because Jews are better, but because their framework for operating in the world is far healthier.
What Israel needs to do now is focus on justice. Treat the Gazan men like the Shechemites and put the women and children on boats to Iran. The entire place is poisoned. Kill Hamas and exile the rest of them. The whole place put Hamas in power. They are all guilty.
Collective guilt eh? I would have thought that had awkward historical resonances for Jewish people
My reaction echoes yours. The principle underlying the verdicts delivered in the war crimes trials at Nuremberg was unambiguous: the notion of collective guilt or innocence is incoherent: each individual is responsible for making his/her own ethical way in the world, and this responsibility can’t be delegated to one’s neighbours, the law, or the state.
The ‘Palestinians’ elected Hamas, they sustain them in power – and most of them indulged in wild celebrations over this.
So, yes, they need to be removed – and every single member of Hamas needs to be dead.
I think it is more accurate to say a majority of Palestinians from Gaza elected Hamas in the hope that they might be more successful in alleviating the daily frustrations of life in Gaza and they have sustained their power by ruthless suppression of any dissent.
Of course many of them will have foolishly celebrated a blow against those they regard as their Israeli oppressors. In seeing the slaughter and capture of Israeli civilians they will remember the more technologically efficient slaughter of their own relatives and children by the Israeli army. Would they not be human not to feel some satisfaction that the killers of their own children and parents will suffer grief in return. Not a noble or wise sentiment but a human sentiment not one of “animals” as some Israelis have it.
Moreover, those who do not share the sentiment and can see that the slaughter of Israelis will bring only further devastation to their own community again will scarcely be likely to voice their thought in public and oppose the ruthlessness of Hamas risking a more targeted response than Israel can achieve.
Collective punishment was the tactic of the German occupation forces in WW2 and has been widely condemned. When the IRA slaughtered the innocent and caused many in Northern Ireland to feel unsafe would we have achieved a better outcome by flattening Catholic areas and hunting down and seeking to kill IRA members and their families because of widespread Catholic support for the cause of the IRA?
Isn’t this rather like a teenage boy who has been bullied at school and takes up a gun to slaughter children and teachers in the school?
Israelis have their faults. but they seek to live in peace with the Palestinians. Their excesses come in defense, not aggression. Or in the case of their illegal settlements, in greed and hubris.
The Gazas, and especially Hamas, do not. And nothing is an excuse for the crimes against humanity that they committed last week. They were deliberately barbaric, and must be condemned for their terrorism.
From 1951 to 2016 The Palestinians have killed or alienated fellow Arabs who have helped their cause: from killing King Abdullah in 1951 to be so corrupt and incompetent, the Saudis withdrdrew their funding.
Perhaps it is time the Palestinians asked the question why arab countries have withdrawn their support.
And why no one wants them as refugees?
Who supports terrorists is a terrorist. The man who shelters the killer is no better than he.
In the case of Menachem Begin the Israelis made a terrorist their Prime Minister . Does that make all Israelis terrorists ?
By the same logic, the people who have fun in the form of a music festival in an occupied land should also be considered occupiers, not innocent civilians anymore. Right?
You sound like a member of Hamas
???
“If Judaism were the predominate religion in the world, it would be a far better place, not because Jews are better, but because their framework for operating in the world is far healthier.”
Way to make friends with everyone out there!
“Love your neighbor” is Jewish (Leviticus 19:18). I think you’re referring to Jesus’s command “Love your enemies”
And it’s stone-cold certain that Jesus DID say it, since it’s the pivot of all His preaching and example.
Judaism is by its very nature the religion of just one ethnos. Thus incapable of effective missionary work.
In any case, it was (in human terms) the Jews who started off all this God business ! They can hardly disown Christianity or Islam. And in brute practical terms, must choose to support one or the other.
There is a universally accepted difference between Justice and Revenge. The former will help Israel, the latter will worsen its plight; and probably lead to a world war in which Jews will be prominent among the casualties.
Your plan for Justice looks very much like Revenge.
“If Judaism were the predominate religion in the world”
I know it’s a difficult truth to accept after recent events and given the centuries of oppression, not to forget WW2….
But you forget that the Jews themselves were the original fundamentalist jihadis, in a pre Christian / islamic world where wars were common but persecution based on religion, or because someone else followed some other book, was practically unknown (at least relative to modern standards).
The whole of Israel has elected politicians whose policies have contributed to the situation the Palestinians are angry with, therefore does this collective guilt also apply to those Israelis recently murdered? I’d have thought collective guilt and punishment would be a sore spot for the Jews, especially after the events of the Second World War?
I think the idea is to love your enemies so that hate doesn’t grow inside of you. So that you can be who you are and are not just the residual of what people have done to you. That doesn’t mean I’d think twice about putting down a rabid dog, but I wouldn’t do it by justifying it in a manner that harms who I want to be.
What does a rabid dog have to do with anything?
If I were to psychoanalysis myself I think it might have to do with when my brother was attacked by a rabid dog in Egypt. Really I just mean applying good neighbour fences to people in my life.
Thank you for pointing out that important distinction. Very beautifully and powerfully expressed.
Many Muslims admire Hitler. So it’s no surprise that Hamas acts like the SS. More than 100,000 Muslims fought in the European division of the Waffen-SS.Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood admired the Nazis, and during the war he worked to establish a formal alliance with Hitler and Mussolini.
During World War II, members of the Muslim Brotherhood fought for Hitler as Nazi troops in two specially formed Muslim Waffen-SS divisions.
In 1987 the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel created Hamas, whose members still use the Nazi salute and read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which the Muslim Brotherhood had re-titled, My Jihad, and translated into Arabic in the 1930s (Mein Kampf remains a best-seller in the Muslim world).
Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has the goal of destroying Israel through Jihad. The 1988 Hamas Charter states “Islam will obliterate Israel”.
The present aim of Hamas is two-fold, to drive Israel “from the river into the sea”, and to spark-off a world war between Muslim nations and democratic Western ones, primarily the USA.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar said on Al-Masirah TV last December: “This (conflict) is not about land, not just Palestine. “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.”
And in 2008 Younis Astal, Hamas, MP stated: “Soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, like Constantinople was conquered, according to the prophecy of our prophet Muhammad. Their capital will be the first post of the Islamic conquests that will spread all over Europe then it will turn to the two Americas and even to Eastern Europe.”
Agreed.
“They are all guilty.” Well, no. Guilty of putting Hamas in power; guilty of beheading children. Not the same thing. But Israel has to hit back; and since it must be nearly impossible to single out and apprehend the ones who actually beheaded children, undiscriminating ethnic cleansing of the sort advocated here is bound to occur. (By the way why just the men but not the women?)
Plus Jews belive that life begins at birth so they’ve got my vote.
I doubt that, it’s scientifically illiterate.
You doubt what?
Gayle, Christianity is Jewish.
Don’t be stupid – do you want to put a million women and boats to Iran? What have you been smoking?
Sure let’s kill all the bad people in the world .
Great solution ?
Not even one day. The haters couldn’t even wait one day to march down the streets, carrying flags and shouting worn out slogans. They couldn’t let go of the petty politics for even 24 hours, to respect those who have suffered one of the greatest indignities in decades. There is something seriously wrong with these people.
Well said, Jim. It’s sickening.
I agree.
Maybe the ‘West’s ‘ vision of the Orient as lascivious and barbaric, lambasted by Edward Said, like all stereotypes, was founded on at least a partial truth.
The moral duplicity of the ‘moral equivalence’ brigade, the BBC (they’re militants not terrorists dontchaknow) and even a self-deprecating ‘friendly leftie’ like dear old Yannis Varoufakis is truly sickening.
Why is it, I wonder, after seeing years of this, that the ‘liberation movements’ beloved by the left and the young generally, always end up being criminal organisations far worse than the ‘corrupt, colonial yada yada’ that they were set up to replace ? Still cheered on by the well-meaning useful idiots in the West ?
But then I was a lefty once, so maybe I should hang my head in shame.
There’s the youthful, idealistic, ignorant leftiness is’nt there ? which perhaps many of us went through, but the mature adult, moral relative kind, there is no excuse for that at such a time as this, if ever.
Would you say that applied to the French Resistance as well? ..or are we being selective? How about Polish Resistance? Russian? American Resistance? Indian Resistance? Congo Resistance? Kenyan? South African? Cuban? Chinese? Vietnamese? ..oh wait, Afghan Resistance.. yep, you got me on that one!
Repulsive. Have you no shame?
I am as appalled as you by these scenes over the past days.
But just like it’s shameless and repulsive to try and blame Israel or excuse Hamas for these crimes against humanity, it is also repulsive to use the attacks to justify racist tropes such as “vision of the Orient as lascivious and barbaric”.
There is an issue about the barbarism of certain middle Eastern countries and that one religion, agreed.
But when Western Christian countries were oppressing Jews for centuries, there were also large settlements of Jews who were tolerated, given religious freedom, and never ever persecuted…..in India.
Even today, it’s in the “civilised” West, not the “Orient”, where so many politicians, media, universities are struggling to unequivocally condemn these attacks.
Its like the so called “Asian” gangs.
If you don’t have the guts to call out the “religion of peace”, then don’t badmouth all “Asians” or “Orientals” to cover up your cowardice
Jesus, cant you just piss off?
Oh, I thought for a moment you were telling Jesus to piss off! I was going to up tick you.
One very big difference. Resistance to a ruling government is one thing. Beheading children, raping women in public and murdering families in their homes, all completely innocent, is another thing completely. If anyone fails to understand the difference, I have no more words to offer.
Is it any real difference between families being shot in their homes, or being killed by bombs dropped on their homes from above? This attack by Hamas was disgusting, however I’ll wager there will be many more dead Palestinian civilians by the end of hostilities than Israeli ones. So does the Israeli government deserve the same level of criticism for their policy of collective punishment?
Hamas made the same wager as you. They don’t care about Palestinian lives.
Neither does the IDF though. Do you think an Israeli child’s life is worth more than a Palestinians? Or why is it bad to shoot a family but ok to drop bombs on them?
The Israeli government doesn’t have a policy of collective punishment. They make every effort to avoid civilian casualties, announcing their targets in advance. They are targeting military targets, and Hamas is using civilians as shields.
Israel left Gaza to the Gazans decades ago. They would like nothing better than not to drop bombs. When you are fighting terrorists, who observe no rules and do not hesitate to commit war crimes, what else can you do?
If the Gazans chose peace, they would get peace. They chose war and terror, so they give Israel no choice but to defend itself against that.
Remember that everything the IDF does this week and next week they could have done last year and the year before. But they didn’t. Hamas couldn’t do what they did last week last year or the year before.
Nobody wants to live next to a terrorist enclave but also nobody wants to send their young men to die extirpating the terrorists. Until they have to. The IDF will not be driving up and down the streets shooting at women and children or raping women or beheading toddlers.
If you know of a better way to remove the terrorists than sending in the military you can tell us all what it is.
Terrorism is not “resistance.”
That is not a general truth.
I concur. The hypocrisy on here is frankly astounding.
Hamas are NOT resisting anything. They don’t give a toss for the people of Gaza, only for the fulfilment of their warped dream of an Islamic global theocracy.
You truly are the Master of horrible takes, sir. Have you joined any progroms recently by any chance?
Sir Winston said it best:
https://www.faithfreedom.org/what-did-winston-churchill-think-of-islam/
How do you square that with Churchill, Lindemann and Harris’s campaign of ‘area bombing’ to de-house the German civilian population on a previously unheard of scale?
The bombing you refer to was to end a regime that was firing rockets into London, a regime starving Dutch and Belgium civilians, a regime murdering MILLIONS of Jewish people. You defend a NAZI regime? Shameful.
Easy to square. It was ‘total war’ and was almost the only way the allies on the ‘western front’ could fight back untill ‘boots on the ground’ in June 1944. As you well know!
FAFO
Someone said in WW2 , ten million people were being killed per year. The quickest way to stop the slaughter was to win the war. There was the fear of the Nazis obtaining the atom bomb and with Heisenberg and Schrodinger plus Bohr in Denmark, they had the scientific skills they would develop it first.
“But then I was a lefty once…”
Does that mean you are on a register somewhere?
These people are depraved and have completely lost their moral bearings, just as Giles wrote. But would it have been any better had they waited 24 hours before celebrating? This was an eruption of evil by evil people and asking them to suppress their glee and postpone their celebrations for a day out of a sense of decency seems to me to have misunderstood who and what these people are.
Every day Europe imports thousands more of these useless barbaric people.
You are talking about Palestinians suffering indignities since 1947, right?
with a leadership that has refused every possible settlement. They have had billions directed at them….The west bank could have been a Dubai by now. And the Hamas leaders live in luxury. Don’t give us that moral equivalence bullshit. It’s despicable
The haters are on both sides.. I’m in touch with a Gazan friend almost daily.. for years. I never heard a word of hatred from him.. not once! But a neighbour of mine, a retired IDF degenerate, boasts out loud about the many Palestinian children he has murdered! ..his only regret being he didn’t murder many more! The most hateful, sad excuse for a human being I ever encountered in my 73 years.
Those are but two examples but personally I have no experience of any other beyond what I see with my own eyes on TV.. almost daily bombing of innocent civilians perpetrated by one of the most powerful armies in the world. It is state terrorism, little better than Germany’s in the 1940s.
Neither of those people exist, do they?
Do you think Liam is really Ivan ? Name sounds a bit too parodic Irish to be real
Nobody believes you.
I absolutely agreeJim! This is absolutely soul destroying, there are no words that can explain the sheer immorality and ignorant stupidity of these people. There are very dark things at play!
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world Muslim Azerbaijan is ethnically cleansing Christians using weapons many of which have been supplied by Israel and there are hundreds dead.
There is little to no media coverage and no handwringing.
If the had souls those now out demonstrating in the UK and elsewhere would have been out streets demanding that their co-religionist stop.
I’ve pointed this out many times about America’s very selective protection of democracies. The Armenians have been failed by many many nations that proclaim to support democracy.
Thank you for drawing to our attention the 120,000 Christian Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh now driven from their homes. There is information in the October 5th number of a magazine called The New Humanitarian: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2023/10/05/armenian-exodus-nagorno-karabakh
The haters are caught in a hate loop.
They’re hateful and scary, but pitiful too – for what are they doing to their own souls ?
The problem, Jim, is that “they” have gotten used to a world where they, who hate every other religion, put in place fundamentalist regimes and oppress minorities when they are in a majority, repeatedly carry out hideous crimes and genocides, readily indulge in violence in the West when they or their prophet is “insulted”….
But can still plead victim status for themselves, and shut down any criticism of their religion.
They genuinely don’t understand why this time is different. And can you blame them?
I see, for instance, a Pakistani national cricketer openly express support for “Palestine”, an Indian muslim try to gaslight those outraged by the ghastly pictures of that poor girl, a US politician openly flaunt the Palestine flag….
There was little sanction for Turks when got rid of Armenians, Pakistan were actually supported by the West in 1971, hundreds joined ISIS from the West with little open criticism for their religion….and Israel’s neighbours have been threatening genocide even before Israel was formed.
They must be really confused by the outrage now.
The Far Left are evil, it’s as simple as that. Jihadis likewise.
As is the far right. Extremists of any persuasion are problematic.
They’re misguided, ignorant and have an “us against them, good versus bad” mentality. Everything has to be either black or white, there are no gray areas where reason lies. They crave certainty because uncertainty causes them anxiety. They’re fear based so dogma makes them feel safe.
This is a very human response to a barbarism we can scarcely imagine. It is deeply impressive.
And “Love your enemies”? Jesus talked the talk, and walked the walk. He died, slowly and horribly. The resurrection is not just our route back to God. It’s the final, irrevocable triumph of love over hate. It is our confident hope for the future, that in the final sum of things it will be a happy ending.
Have you looked around you? The climate is changing faster than we are.
Yes, Giles Fraser, but so what?
Inevitably commentators will strain (somewhat narcissistically) to find the right attitude, to feel a finely tuned emotion appropriate for their self-image, Their compassion must be displayed, readers must be shown how much the writer deplores violence, how he always prefers that difficult ‘peaceful solution’.
When will the commentariat wake up and face the fact that the third world is filled with peoples who have little interest in those precious Western goals of peace and prosperity. Driven by an urge for conquest, yearning to crush their chosen enemies – never able to reconcile themselves to the humiliation of defeat and the ensuing loss of status. Overwhelming military power is the only ‘peaceful solution’ they will ever respect.
Except that people don’t know they classify as “the enemy” until they are forced to experience flaunted, heinous crimes committed in a Melbourne suburb of million $ homes – repeatedly. Without any risk of prosecution.
Australia never had functional law-enforcement, crime statistics are managed via silencing crime witnesses and victims.
Urges for conquest and to crush effigies designated as the enemy of the day play out across Australia in unpunished crimes where:
– Two young women were abducted, publicly gang-raped, tortured over several days and then bludgeoned to death*.
Police ignored multiple in-progress crime-reporting attempts.
No one was ever punished.
Many of the men committing these crimes lived to old age in peace and respect, and died of natural causes.
– Ivan MILAT** hunted hitch-hikers because he could 1989-1992.
One of his intended victims escaped in 1990 and tried to report his experience to police.
His reporting attempt was ignored.
Ivan MILAT remained able to keep hunting and killing hitch-hikers for two more years. No one knows how many he killed. Ivan MILAT died of natural causes having a blast at what he got away with.
No police officer was ever punished for enabling these heinous crimes.
Being traumatised and brutalised by ongoing crimes I am not looking for stories that normalise my experience: I could not avoid these two stories, and I must share them.
I never even dated the stalker ex-coworker, never chose to have anything to do with any of the criminals freely committing devastating crimes against me since 2009 either.
Last incident was about 11 hours ago in my own million $ home which I have owned in leafy inner-Melbourne 2001.
I had exhausted all legal avenues to stop crimes against me prior to starting my public interest disclosures on every possible forum.
You are witnessing my awkward attempt at – failure? – fighting overwhelming barbaric sadism. Bestiality evidently exists, and it is easily woken up when opportunities arise amidst seemingly opulent harmony like on the leafy streets of inner-Melbourne, Australia.
—
*
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/the-murder-victims-seen-by-many-but-helped-by-none/news-story/deea91936b2c70ff9570544c27f32f5c
**
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48346543
What you describe is horrible but what is the connection with the massacres in Israel?
Oh god not Katalin again! This woman is obsessed with these “crimes”.
Trying to love Hamas so that your feelings align with your Christian beliefs strikes me as odd. I’d be more inclined to ask myself if my beliefs weren’t wrong.
Why renounce the Christian faith ?
Why be so very foolish as to think that Jesus was mistaken ?
Jesus is the ONLY hope for the world.
Jesus is, as He said, “the Light of this dark world.”
And it’s getting very dark indeed.
Religion is divisive. The kingdom of god is within you, better to stop looking outside yourself and learn to trust yourself because that’s all you’ve got.
Yeah, so what has he been waiting for?Promises, promises. He’s a major procrastinator.
If you know something is a fact you don’t need to believe.
If you read back over your rant you will see that, historically and currently what you ascribe to the “heinous others” rightly belongs, far, far more to the West… Conquest, slaughter, slavery, famine, wanton destruction and pitiless exploitation are the hallmarks of the West, and always were.
Conquest? Everybody does that – or tries to at least. The conquered of course will alway complain and try to play innocent. Not really a hallmark if it is so universal. By the way, unless you fetishise and romanticise the primitive, conquest of a backward people often makes room for progress.
Slaughter? Everybody does that – some more effectively than others. All part of the means of conquest. Show me a nation of pacifists and I’ll show you a nation of losers and underachievers. Once again, not really a hallmark
Slavery? Need I say again that everybody does that. Many continue to do to this day in fact. Again, not really a hallmark
Famine? Not sure about that one but I would say that the history of 20th Century communism is rife with examples of famine used as a weapon. That hallmark belongs to the shameless communists.
Wanton destruction and pitiless exploitation? Now the communists can really lay claim to that one. Particularly bad as they like to see themselves as creating a more just world.
Normal destruction and normal exploitation? Everybody does that. Exploiters and the exploited will always be with us. The only place you won’t find it is an SJW fantasy egalitarian utopia – probably a goal not even worth struggling for.
If you’re looking to sell guilt don’t waste your (doubtless valuable) time knocking on my door.
By the way, your name suggests you are Irish. Are you aware of the highly exploitive behaviour of the Irish settlers in America? The Irish dominated Tammany Hall has long since been a byword for political corruption. Or perhaps those are not the Westerners you had in mind.
I agree that it’s unfair to single out the West.
Question is, though, if your response to Western colonialism, genocides, plunder, slavery is “everyone did it”,
How do you reconcile that with your original statement
“third world is filled with peoples who have little interest in those precious Western goals of peace and prosperity. ”
Those who murdered six million Jews or started two world wars out if feelings of vengeance, instead of going for “peace and prosperity”, were not exactly in the third world, were they?
The “urge for conquest, yearning to crush their chosen enemies” in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, the contempt for innocents being butchered, that was the third world, was it?
The attacks we have seen this week are disgusting. But while there is no excuse for such revolting inhumanity, try staying off that moral high horse on behalf of some random continent.
How do I reconcile that with my original statement?
Well, time for one thing. In the past the West had plenty of nations more interested in prosperity than peace. We have developed in terms of morality and intelligence.
The two world wars were driven by two nations, Germany and Japan, both determined to create new empires for themselves. Japan possessed an intense martial spirit of conquest augmented by newly acquired industrial power. Their methods were notoriously cruel. They picked the fight and their chosen enemies were the United States and the British Empire.
Germany was, in a sense, reverting to the primitive following a the humiliation of World War One and the attempt to dominate all of Europe. They sought to invoke a mythical past of Teutonic glory and a primitive belief in their own racial superiority. Their methods too were notoriously cruel. They too picked the fight and their chosen enemies were ‘weak and decadent’ Europe and the USSR.
Overwhelming military power was the only ‘peaceful solution they respected. By 1945 the allies had learned an important lesson. The defeated nations were not left crushed, humiliated and longing for revenge. They were given the help and means to recover and rebuild – as long as they remained peaceful they could become prosperous.
As for the moral high horse: I think Liam O’Mahony has ridden off on that one.
Oh yes Putin was saying something similar recently . Have you ever met him ?
Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and The Mongols, Timur the Lame, Mao, Stalin, Pol Plot – how many killed?
The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, Legal system free from bias from religion, race an language; democracy, modern medicine and the Green Revolution of the 1960s started by Norman Borlaug;Founding the UN. Until recently peope were only two bad harvests away from famine until modern western technology developed agriculture.
Of course the West has it faults, however a World ruled by Attila, Genghis, Timur, Stalin, Mao or Pol plot would be far worse.
The utterly depraved mass-torture-and-extinction event carried out against innocent civilians – men, women, boys, girls, and babies – proves to the world that the duly-elected Palestinian government (aka Hamas) wants nothing more than to enact an End-Game Holocaust against the Jewish people. Hamas is committed to Hitler’s Third Reich ideology.
Because of this, the Israeli government has only one viable option to protect its citizens: Destroy Hamas, remove all of their military capabilities, and place a very wide military buffer between Israel and the people who selected this murderous Hamas regime as their government.
Trust can no longer be offered to this deadly stranger who squawks to the world for sympathy concerning their life’s plight. This same stranger used trust and sympathy to get close, pull out a knife, lunge with a wicked smile, and slit the neck of their unsuspecting neighbors.
In short: ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’
One cannot negotiate or take half-measures with certifiably-deranged terrorists who are so self-assured in the delusion that their evil acts are fulfilling the desire of their God. A God who – if real – will unquestionably damn their souls to eternal Hell.
It is more constructive; far, far more constructive to seek a peaceful resolution. Yes, even if your hatred is unbridled, for purely selfish reasons, you must know that the typically savage IDF revenge attacks will simply forment yet more hatred, yet more bloodshed – maybe even your own or that of your family and friends at some point in the future.
What future is there in such Godless revenge? This heinous, hate filled attack, appalling though it was, arose from decades of evil, hate filled, crushing, murderous, inhuman treatment of the indigenous people.. While that may be very gratifying to hate filled Zionists it does nothing to protect innocent Israelis. All it does is sign future death warrants on yet more innocent lives. An eye for an eye leaves both sides blind. With all the weapons, apartheid, bombing of homes, schools and hospitals, Israel cannot win. When America abandons Israel (which it will) Israel won’t have a friend in the world. It is time for peace and reconciliation, justice and equality while there is still time.. the other way is the way to Hell!
Simple question here: What does your peaceful solution look like? Under it would the Palestinians, collectively, have the power to start a civil war, win it with the help of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian army, and expel the surviving Jews? If they had that power, what would keep them from using it? I am very much for peace, but there does not seem to be a functioning compromise here. Maybe the only choice is which side we want to help win.
What makes you think that the US will EVER “abandon Israel” Liam?
Given the current stranglehold ‘Kosher Nostra’ exerts on the US Banking world, the Media world, and the Entertainment world, I think that is highly unlikely in the near or even distant future.
I think America will become less pro Israeli as the population demographics change over time. With much more immigration from Asia, the Subcontinent and Latin America, the Evangelicals (who are often the loudest supporters of Zionism) will become a smaller percentage of the population, and thus less influential. If the American political parties decide that there’s more votes to be had by keeping their distance then that’s what they’ll do
Does it matter that lots of Latin emigrants are also pre-millennialists and/or Pentecostals? (Doing politics as demographic attrition can be trickier than it seems.)
There are some, but the vast majority are Catholic
Apparently they’re becoming evangelicals in large numbers.
I appreciate your reply and effort to debate on this topic, Liam. That said, I would suggest that your use of projected ad hominem attacks (“your hated”) weakens your position.
As for the rest of your post, I would merely sigh and say:
“..ah, yes, the rustlings of vague theory, waxing eloquent and pontificating on the topic of ‘giving peace a chance’ that seem to arrive immediately after the utterly inhuman, barbaric, and purposeful slaughter of innocent civilians.”
Theory is nice…until it shatters against the immovable stone called reality. The reality that was demonstrated this past week is as follows: The duly-elected Palestinian Government carried out a mass-torture-and-extinction event upon innocent civilians in Israel…and then the Palestinian Government celebrated after their crimes-against-humanity were complete.
My recommendation above has precedent in (probably) every country in the world. I’ll repost a comment made on another article for you to ponder and reply to:
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.
—–
There is no emotion or hate in my posts. I merely call your attention to facts and reality.
Think about the events over the past few days – the Palestinian Government gladly beheaded innocent babies and killed their innocent parents. They raped innocent women next to their dead friends who were all attending a Peace Festival. Most attendees of the Peace Festival were likely following your approach of ‘giving peace a chance!’…and then reality arrived in the air with machine guns. These peace-loving attendees were mowed down by the savages.
In your response, you suggest that any response by Israel will “..simply foment more rage….”
But from what we saw, the Palestinian Government cannot stoop any further. Rage has already consumed them. Their inhumanity is complete. Pure evil.
The only thing the Palestinian Government lacked was not rage…they were only missing sufficient resources and capabilities to carry out the complete eradication and extinction of the Jewish People.
Israel must completely address this stated and acted-upon threat.
A stitch in time, comes to mind.
It is true that there seems to be no peaceful resolution possible with Hamas, and they clearly will settle for nothing less than extermination of Israel if they could.
But its a pity that the more secular, peaceful parts of the islamic world – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, even the PLO – have been undermined by the West itself, in one way or another.
Might have made sense at that time, from a short term perspective, but long term the whole region is done for.
Until now, I’ve kept out of discussions about Middle Eastern politics and the history of Israel and Palestine: I don’t know enough, and when you don’t know much about such a sensitive topic then keeping your trap firmly shut and your fingers well away from a keyboard really is the best option.
But I would just like to say how important this piece of writing is and how much I have appreciated reading it, even though it’s hard to comprehend and contemplate these dreadful events and what’s now coming at us down the pike.
I wish Giles and his family all the best and much strength: processing this inexcusable atrocity and finding a way forward in life and faith will not be easy.
I utterly condemn the actions of Hamas; they are unforgivable. I also condemn protestors rooting for Hamas or the destruction of Israel; they are contemptible.
Unequivocally, Hamas should immediately release all the hostages. Will that stop what is coming? No, Israel has already indicated that the hostages are expendable; the messaging has been that they want to enact something in Gaza that will prevent such an attack from ever happening again.
A few inconvenient thoughts:
1. Israel, including Netanyahu, largely created Hamas and allowed it to grow in influence to create a rift between the West Bank and Gaza.
2. Moderate Israelis have warned for years that something like this would be inevitable if Israel continued its policies towards Gaza.
3. Egyptian intelligence warned the Israelis that Hamas was about to attack.
4. Hamas has committed appalling atrocities. However, some of what you are being told is possibly ‘atrocity propaganda’.
5. 50% of the population of Gaza are children.
Two hundred sixty children have been reported dead in Gaza already in the last four days. There will be many, many more. Is that OK with you? Is it OK to kill children with bombs but not with knives or guns?
In a couple of months, when it is highly likely that thousands of Palestinian children are dead, will you still feel the same way that your justifiable anger and disgust make you feel now? Will you be able to justify the deaths of children as necessary? When will you say, ‘Enough children have died now; please stop’?
Do you feel that these deaths are the fault of Hamas, perhaps? Do you think they are using children as human shields because they don’t all gather in a single place and put a sign on the roof for the Israelis to take them out in one strike?
Where do we stop if one wants to trace the chain of causation here? The Nakba? What is the end game? If they kill every adult member of Hamas in Gaza, then there will be a new Hamas in a decade, built from their even angrier and more resentful children, and it will all happen again. Perhaps it would be better to finish the ethnic cleansing job with Nakba 2? Empty Gaza into the Sinai Desert (and thence to Europe)? I have seen that comment a few times in the past few days.
My heart goes out to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, two Semitic peoples locked together in a prolonged conflict over the same piece of land. Both sides feel existentially threatened.
Almost everybody commenting on this site seems to think there is a simple black/white, good/evil dichotomy here. I disagree; you can see the terrible actions of Hamas in front of your face right now, but you cannot understand any of this without knowledge of the long history. The best primer I have read is The Palestine-Israeli Conflict: A Beginner’s Guide by Dan Cohn-Sherbok & Dawoud El-Alami. It has the virtue of having two opposing authors arguing the case for each side and then debating each other’s arguments.
Downvote away, but do so in the knowledge that when children’s bodies pile up in Gaza, you may find it harder to justify doing so.
Reading history will not help with Hamas-whose views are steeped in an ideology which is pre-modern and barbaric. They have no compunctions to use children and women even of their own ilk as cannon fodder, as long as it helps their “cause”.The earlier Western Progressives understand this, the better.
This is an existential conflict between value-systems where Hamas represents a code outside the pale of modernity. Unless you understand that there is no point discussing this issue.
My post is not about competing ideologies. Hamas has committed an atrocity. The IDF is well on the way to doing the same. The children of Gaza are not Hamas. Do you think they should die?
For Hamas it doesnot matter-they use them as shields.
Incidentally one of the reasons Israeli intelligence underestimated Hamas is in the same misguided belief they play by “rules”- thus throwing welfare funds to Gaza was considered a good way of “containment”.
It doesnot work that way-for a tribe whose clarion call is Jihad-by any means and purposes.
That’s just bad luck for the children?
If you choose to cherry pick facts to suit your narrative of a moral equivalence between IDF and Hamas it is truly your problem.
Obviously you have never encountered or chosen to analyse a Jihadi mind.
Unfortunately I have- so it’s pointless arguing this anymore.
P.S Ask yourself why Hamas wins votes since 2005 in Gaza. Why Jordan doesn’t welcome Palestinians. Why Egypt shared intelligence against Hamas with Israel which the latter ignored.
Hamas is no different from ISIS or Al Qaeda or Lashkar Toiba.
These are just some recent examples. If you want to go further look up the Jordan Palestinian conflict of the early 1970s.
50% of the inhabitants of Gaza are children. They did not vote for Hamas; they weren’t alive in the last election.
Incredible to think 3 demented souls think your comment to be worthy of rejection!
Do these innocent children not bleed when you cut them? Do they not scream in agony as their limbs are blown off? What kind of people are you??
They stop being children and stop being innocent when they pick up an AK-47 or an RPG launcher.
We’ll see what age that happens at very soon. My guess would be about 10 years of age, hopefully I’m wrong.
That’s because they live in abject poverty, have no future and get brainwashed into a violent religious cult.
Don’t be silly.
Thank you for your words of sense. The discussions here are breaking my heart.
Of course we care about the children but it doesn’t seem that Hamas does.
… or any number of pogroms carried out in the Arab world since 1013 AD.
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan kicked them out. Only Israel took them in, provided for them, allowed them representation in the Knesset, and, until this horror, gave Gaza power and water – for free. But no Israeli would be left alive were he or she to attempt living in Gaza. Then again, with all these brainless Ivy League indoctrinees who know no history as a form of academic planned obsolescence, there’s really no point in imbuing commenters like Nik with any truths he can’t, obviously, mentally absorb.
I think you’ll find that if you check your history, the Palestinians rather think that it is their land which has been taken from them. This goes on to this day in the occupied West Bank with illegal settlements.
If you want to understand Gaza, try any of the books by Israeli authors Norman Finkelstein, Gideon Levy or Ilan Pappe on this open-air prison.
How far do you want ownership to go back? Two thousand years ago Israel was the land of the Jewish nation and for three thousand years before that.
That is the very point I made in my OP. I do not have a position, I am merely pointing out the Palestinian view on the matter.
I’m done with the Palestinian view
There’s a difference between Palestines and Hamas.
There was a difference between the Nazis and average Germans – doctors, teachers, nurses….who for the most part still went along with genocide….in a rather banal way (Arendt I think) and we still had to bomb the shit out of them. And plenty of innocent Germans were killed – and it was awful. The Islamicists are the new Nazis along with every single person who joined pro-Palestine/Hamas demonstrations in the West….. They should be deported. All of them. And the Israelis with our help will have to bomb the shit out of them. The reason is because Nazis are not after a rational settlement they want to Kill Jews (the Muslim Nazis) and destroy the west (the Muslim NAzis and all the woke ideologues). There are plenty of Muslims who just want to get on…..They have to do much much more to clean up their own house, disown the ideologues and sign up actively to modern, peaceful coexistence. Those women pulling down pictures of kidnapped children …..despicable. I would deport them tomorrow.
Nik:
“Almost everybody commenting on this site seems to think there is a simple black/white, good/evil dichotomy here. I disagree…”
Also Nik:
“The Palestinian view on the matter.”
You’ve lost me there?
Exactly!
What?!
Playing the devils advocate? You should have made that clear.
Before the escape from Egypt a good part of it belonged to the caanites. The old testament is full of those leaving Egypt conquering the peoples of what is now Israel
There’s always someone older until you get back to the stone age and possibly even then.
Going to fast back is totally unproductive, modern Israel has been in existence for 80 years or so, no point in going back further than that.
That is simply preposterous!
No serious scholar would claim that anything like an independent Jewish state existed in 3000 BC!*
By making such a claim you only invalidate your case.
Unless you believe the Bible is infallible the best guess for a possible Jewish state is circa 800 -600 BC, so I gather.
((* About 500 years BEFORE the Great Pyramid of Giza.)
Nevertheless it’s better to be well informed. I think we all know Hamas and other Islamic terrorists are ruthless, barbaric and beyond reason. But there is still a history behind the Conflict between Israel and Palestine that I for one want to try to understand. Ignorance is not bliss.
I think it’s contemptible (of all sides) to keep citing children, in the way you’re doing.
Shall we talk about women instead? 230 of them were reported dead this morning. Nearly 3000 women and children are injured. These are non-combatants.
No, because women, children and men are all human beings of equal value. It happens across all media and comments.
The BBC (and others) also cite the number of Britons killed, not just in this conflict but in many other conflicts or natural disasters. Why? Why would anyone think that’s of special interest, as opposed to number of Europeans, number of Americans, etc? Or to the point, number of human beings.
And yes, we all know they’re non-combatants. We don’t need it throwing at us, as you’ve done.
You all know they are non-combatants, but I don’t see many of you calling this out as a war crime. If I saw other people posting about this, then I wouldn’t need to. How many “human beings of equal value” have to die before you say ‘that’s enough now’? When they get up to the usual ~20:1 kill ratio of recent decades?
Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism, but it has no right to cut off water, food, fuel, power and medical supplies to a civilian population. Israel knows it is killing and injuring civilians.
Two terrible wrongs don’t make a right or provide a solution.
Because it’s not a war crime. They were not targeted you moron
Article 33, 4th Geneva Protocol
Israel has no responsibility to provide water, food, fuel, power, and medical supplies to Gaza.
There are not “two terrible wrongs.” There is one terrible wrong, perpetrated by Hamas. The consequent events are still part of that one, terrible wrong.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/icc-prosecutor-says-mandate-applies-current-israel-palestinian-conflict-2023-10-10/
When it has enacted a blockade, then it does surely? Otherwise the civilians would starve, which would be a war crime
True.
A long-debunked fiction.
https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/
But what’s to be done?
But you do.. you do need it to be “thrown at you” ..again and again until you finally realise what an appalling, disgusting crime it is!
But people tend to forget there’s a difference between the average Palestinian and Hamas. Palestinian childern are born innocent (like all children) but because they have no future and get brainwashed by religious zealots,they become terrorists. They don’t have much choice in life.
Thank you so very much, Steve, for having the courage to say that. Some readers have already accused you of trivializing war itself, including this one, because many people are killed despite their equal value as humans. You do no such thing.
From my point of view, as distinct from that of Hamas, no one deserves to be killed in a war. But some are, even in wars of self-defense, and every death is tragic. This applies to the victims in both Israel and Gaza.
Assigning blame for the war, however, is another matter entirely. You’ve said nothing about that. As for me, I don’t blame everyone in Gaza, even though most of them voted for Hamas after Israel withdrew in 2005, because many or most of them might well have come to yearn for liberation from Hamas. I blame the leaders of Hamas and other organizations that have rejected every offer to live in peace with Israel and boast of their plan to kill Jews (both soldiers and civilians). In the end, for that very reason, many people in Gaza (both soldiers, or terrorists, and civilians) will be killed.
All of them? A subset certainly but definitely not all of them.
We are constantly being manipulated with heartwrenching images and lurid headlines – and it is manipulation because it is from one side only.
The images are being deliberately used to generate irrational reactions – hate, fury. To me, that is contemptible, not pointing out that the policy the Israeli government have announced will, and they know and at least accept that it will, once again, kill mostly civilians.
Take an example closer to home. If some men raped your daughter and killed your wife and took your son captive and then when the police went to arrest them they got shot at or had missiles fired at them and in that same house were the small children of the perpetrators would you advise the police to give it up! The pontifications of people like you are ridiculous. You’d be the first person to call the police and back an operation and to hell with the people who did that to you. Multiply that by the hundred and add in the fact that the perpetrators have a charter for your destruction and a personal intent to murder everyone like you and you’ve still not got half of Israel’s dilemmas on your doorstep
Speak for yourself.. hatred is a poor advisor especially in a time of grief. The reason evil people use children as human shields is that they know civilised, decent, Christian people will NOT say “to hell with the innocent children” ..the IDF and most Zionists do but I’m talking about decent, civilized Christian people.. Big difference!
Claiming to be “a Christian” is not proof of anything. Actions speak louder than words.
I would want the police to get those that did an appalling crime as you mentioned. What I wouldn’t want them to do is also kill the perpetrators family and burn down his neighbours house
I’ve upvoted you for this comment but for some reason it’s done the opposite
It happens. The voting system is screwy.
Do you mean the images that were posted by Hamas themselves, as they committed the atrocities?
Indeed, but what’s to be done? Hamas knew this would happen. It was inevitable if they did what they did. It’s the never ending t*t for tat.
Why? ..don’t children matter? Please explain why this obvious fact is somehow irrelevant.. oh wait, no, it seems mentioning the inconvenient truth (that these innocent kids may die horribly at the hands of irrefutable state terrorism) is “contemptable”. Wash you mouth out!
It’s not state terrorism, it’s a legitimate act of war. Israel is targeting Hamas military forces. If Hamas hides behind their own women and children, then any deaths are their fault, not Israel’s. The civilian deaths in Japan in WW2 were the fault of the Japanese Gov’t for attacking the US, not the fault of the US for responding.
Just as many died in WWII. Perhaps we should have left Hitler alone? What is your suggestion? What happens when the Iranians get a nuke? You seem to think that there MUST be a rational solution /agreement – that it must be possible. Is it conceivable that they simply mean what they say. They want to kill all jews and destroy Israel. Is that possible? Liam seriously …Is that possible? If it is possible, who are you to tell Israelis how to weigh up that moral and strategic dilemma?
Yes. The innocent of every age always suffer when those who run their world decide to sacrifice them.
Hamas uses them as human shields and media fodder. Hamas puts its weapons, ammunition and missile launchers in residential neighborhoods knowing that an Israeli response will cause civilian death.
Perhaps you saw the video of Gazan children taunting captured Israeli kids. Perhaps that makes them fair game.
So the IDF is no better than Hamas? If Hamas are using civilians as human shields, then the IDF is just as culpable for deciding those human shields don’t matter and carrying out the air strikes anyway
Very bad luck that the people of the West Bank and Gaza keep voting for war and terrorism rather than peace and development. Keep your luxury virtue to yourself. This is not the time
The last vote in Gaza was in 2006.
Then it’s up to the good people of Gaza to depose their vicious Hamas overlords – except that they basically support them
As a political leader would you have avoided the war with Germany, because children and innocent Germans, who never voted for the Nazi regime, would be killed in the burning cities of Germany.
In the end the reckoning came like a verse of the OldTestament and wiped away not only the murderous, inhuman evil regime, but millions of innocent lives.
The question is always what comes afterwards. Will wise men/women on both sides come to a peaceful solution and will there be a new beginning like after WWII? I am not optimistic…
Multiple atrocities, including murdering their fellows who would seek a peaceful two-state solution.
Who hides amongst the children? Who does not allow them safe passage out? Those are the ones responsible.
What did Hamas think would happen after they did what they did. I doubt they were thinking about the children of Gaza. Helping the population of Gaza doesn’t seem to be their motivation. Hate is.
This isn’t an ‘existential conflict between value-systems’. It’s nothing but the age-old fight for land between two tribes.
In an earlier ‘post’ you claimed erroneously, that one of these ‘tribes’ had been ejected from the land as far back as a 70 AD.
When such myths are freely accepted by an educated chap such your goodself, what hope is there?
There were definitely mass expulsions of Jews by the Romans in 70 AD. The point I was trying to make on that thread was that Palestine was not a Jewish country by the time of the Arab conquest and that it was not, therefore, the Arabs who exiled the Jews.
Let’s keep discussions confined to the relevant threads, please, or else it’s going to get very confusing. I did respond to your post there.
I think sticking to the known fact does constitute keeping to the “relevant threads”.
Whatever Jewish sources may say they are NOT mirrored by ‘Roman’ sources.
Given the fact that the population of Judea may have been around the one million mark, depopulation on the scale you suggest would have been financially disastrous, logistically impossible, and was NOT Roman policy.
What we do know is that most of the male population of Jerusalem, a rather small city by regional standards, were killed or enslaved as a result of the siege of 70 AD. What happened to the population of Galilee, by far the most populous area, is unknown, but certainly didn’t involve deportation according to current archaeological evidence.
What maybe confusing you is the so called ‘Diaspora’, where Jews of their own volition sought commercial opportunities in the great cities of the East, such as Alexandria from as early as the second if not third century BC. By the time of the Revolt of 66-70/3 AD there were also substantial Jewish communities in Rome, Cyprus, Cyrenaica and elsewhere.
However the majority of the population of Judea remained Jewish, hence the next major revolt, that of Bar Kochba in 132/133. Even after this event when ALL Jews were banned* from the city of Jerusalem, now renamed Aeilia Capitolina, and the Province also renamed as Syria Palaestina the population were NOT deported.
Thus your assertion that the Province of Syria Palaestina/Judea was NOT Jewish at the time of the Arab Conquest by the Caliph Umar after the Battle of Yamouk in 636 AD is incorrect.
(* Except for one day of the year! Generous chaps those Romans!)
You’ve provided information until 133 AD. The Arab conquest was centuries later in 636 AD. That’s a gap of five centuries, but bizarrely you seem to think your point proved.
You also have an idiosyncratic understanding of ”relevant thread”. What is the point of hopping around from one thread to another when you could easily have responded to the original post?
Can’t YOU stick to the point?
Please give me evidence that the majority of the Jewish population had vacated the place by the time of the Arab Conquest.
Incidentally, as you should know, there were further Jewish Revolts against Constantius Galus in 351-2 AD and against Heraclius in 614-15 AD, a mere 30 odd years BEFORE the Arabs turned up!
You’re sounding more like a zealot now than a scholar. You yourself have only provided unsubstantiated claims and non sequiturs.
I’ve done some reading about this topic. There were mass expulsions and killings of Jews by the Romans after both revolts in 70 AD and 123 AD. No hard data is available to show exactly how these changed the demographics of Palestine. However, most authors believe Palestine was no longer a Jewish majority country by the middle of the 3rd century AD.
The migration of Christians into Palestine as well as the conversion of pagans, Samaritans AND Jews to Christianity turned Palestine into a Christian majority country several centuries before the Arab conquest.
Most of the descendants of these pagan and Jewish converts to Christianity eventually converted to Islam. They are the Palestinians of the present day.
I don’t wish to be unkind but your claim to have “done some reading about the topic” does not NOT fill me with confidence that you know anything of substance about this subject. So far your assertions are regrettably little more than slightly ill tempered rant.
I have given you the facts about successive Jewish rebellions against Rome from 66 AD-614 AD, none of which involved “mass expulsions” for which you have singular failed to produced a single shred of evidence. For example who are the “most authors” who believe that “ Palestine was no longer a Jewish majority country by the middle of the 3rd century AD”? This despite the rebellions of 351-2 AD & 614-15 AD, plus the archaeological evidence of numerous Synagogues still being in existence during this period.
However by the Edict(s) of Theodosius in circa 380 AD, Christianity became sole religion of the Empire. How many Jews ‘converted’ st this stage is impossible to quantify, but very substantial numbers obviously still remained for the final rebellion of 614-15 AD.
Finally I do tend to agree with you that post the Islamic conquest of 636 AD, many Jews, perhaps even the majority did CONVERT to Islam. There were obvious tax advantages, and it was a very similar, albeit simpler, monotheistic religion that revered both Abraham and Jesus. It had almost identical Semitic cultural mores such as horror of nudity, male self mutilation*, contempt for women and numerous dietary restrictions. Thus it is highly likely that the Palestinians are, as you say, the direct descendants of these people, awkward as that maybe for many.
ps. I presume you meant 132 AD and NOT 123 AD?
I was amused by use of the word Zelot! I presume you know its origin?
(*Circumcision.)
Once again, nothing but unsubstantiated claims and non sequiturs. You seem to think I should accept you as an authority on the subject but you haven’t provided any credentials. I googled ‘Charles Stanhope’, assuming it’s your actual name. and all I found was ‘Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope’. Any relation?
It is you sir who have provided NO facts whatsoever, and it also seems that you are, sadly, completely ignorant of most of the history.
Thus I think it pointless to continue such a sterile discussion.
Yes, let’s end it.
So were all the other pogroms carried out by Arab Muslims throughout history also about land? No, they were religiously mandated. We can’t hope for a solution to this problem if people keep lying about it.
There is no solution.
Do you know anything at all about Islam, the Quran, Mohammed’s life, islamic nations and so on and how extremist beliefs play out vis a vis western values?
It’s more than that.
On the contrary, reading history will demonstrate that Hamas belongs to a very long tradition. They are the direct ideological descendants of the Wahhabi missionaries whose preaching of Jew hatred led to the atrocities that took place all over the Arab world for a century before the Jewish state came into being.
I agree. What I meant is that Hamas doesn’t read history other than what’s in Sharia. And if that expounds that it’s all right to maim, kill and brutalize ” infidels” then so be it.
Incidentally Wahabism has created havoc in South Asia too.
Sorry – should have read your post more carefully.
Not sure that is true. Al Wahab was centred on Riyadh. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1924 as a result of the abolition of the Sultanate and a rejection of Western Culture. The MB created Hamas. I think Ibn Taymiyyah early 14 C may have been more influential on the MB.
The only time the killing of children, and women, will stop, is when the people who see profit from putting children and women in the way of bullets and bombs are held to account. It is a war crime, as defined by the Geneva Convention, to deliberately put the lives of civilians at risk or make them a target. Only when the people doing so, starting at the top, are held to account by the UN or ICC will this change. The problem at the heart of which is systemic raise-ism, treating ‘others’ from the ‘Global South’ (or whatever euphemism you prefer) as if they are naughty children rather than adults who are fully responsible, and accountable, for their actions. The blood of a significant proportion of the women and children who will die, or be injured, in Gaza in the coming days, weeks and months, will be at the hands of this raise-ist, intellectual, double standard.
A pox on all their houses, I detest them.
The UN? That nest of vipers? This horror likely had their stamp of approval.
Wash your mouth!
I’m not sure you’ve understood the article
Moderate Israelis have warned for years that something like this would be inevitable if Israel continued its policies towards Gaza.
Similar things happened regularly in the Maghreb, Egypt, the Middle East and even supposedly ‘tolerant’ Andalucia for a thousand years before there was an Israeli government. It really has very little to do with Israeli policies, which are mostly reactive.
So if Israel operated a reasonable and humane policy towards Gaza, Hamas would accept the existence of the state of Israel and leave in peace with their neighbours?
Oh dear, I clearly haven’t expressed myself very well if you think that’s what I’m saying. My point ultimately is that Arabs have always treated Jews badly and always will, regardless of Israeli government policy, because their sky fairy says it’s OK.
The whole appalling tragedy has EVERYTHING to do with Israeli policies! You reap what you sow!
Of everything you’ve said in your posts today Liam, this one sentence proves conclusively you haven’t a clue what you are talking about.
Hamas’s own charter disproves your point. No matter what Israeli policies are, Hamas’s aim is to destroy the state of Israel and kill or deport every Jew. Period.
How much more proof do you need than a charter written in the cold light of day? Israeli policies didn’t cause the tragedy last weekend. Hate did; and that hate is cynically manufactured and then manipulated by millionaires’, nay, billionaires’ holed up in Qatar and Tehran who are laughing all the way to the bank.
I suspect you are sincere Liam in your views, but you are expressing breathtaking naivety.
Have you ever read a book?
Not Netanyahu but their hate rate agains Israel is what drives them.Until they declaring to kill all jews and destroy Israel, there is no reason to discuss with them. And all the funds going to Palestine ultimately end up with them to buy new weapons instead to give to them which should receive it, the people of Gaza.
Hamas want to expel out of Israel or kill all Jews and they nurture the same genocidal aims as Hitler. They will never stop and I doubt they can be defeated.
Thank you. At last a fellow UnHerd reader writing some sense. Thank you! And please, any of you wanting some historical ackground, listen to the excellent BBC radio 4 series “The Mandates”.
I pressed a “down thumb” vote, and it was registered as an up thumb. UnHerd, please be advised of this glitch. I’m not inferring that anything nefarious is afoot, but this hasn’t happened to me before.
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That said, Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2005. There isn’t a single Israeli, a single Jew, a single IDF soldier residing in Gaza. This is NOT an occupied territory…and, the only prison guards in this supposed “open air prison” are Hamas, who like the Nazi party, were democratically elected by the Palestinian electorate of Gaza…this under the observation of the United Nations.
Before Israeli justifiably retaliated for the barbaric invasion of their country by Hamas terrorists, this is what the Gaza strip, again, that supposed “open air prison”, with borders so porous that 100’s of thousands of rockets could be imported, where countless armaments and munitions found their way in order to supply an invading Hamas army, looked like. Does this resemble a prison to you?
Agree entirely. But you have to encounter Jihadist Islamists to understand this. Can’t see many pro- Hamas voices on UH carefully crafting their responses as ” humanitarian” to either be familiar with these unfortunate realities. Or to be deluded by the proto -Marxist garbage taught in ” liberal arts” departments of Western academy to believe that the IDF is as bad as Hamas.
Surely this is a matter of the haves and the have nots? There is another Palestine that we see pictures of. These photos must be the ruling class not the disenfranchised.
Arafat worth $500m at his death and wife living in luxury. The Saudis finally stopped funding the Palestinians due to corruption and incompetence. How much of the money given to the Palestinians has ended up in the leaders bank accounts?
Yes, Clare, that’s the point of this comment, and a few others of mine in this multi-article Israeli/Hamas war thread. Take any dictatorship or authoritarian regime, of which there are an estimated 52 countries, the dictator(s) and their cadre live enriched lives, the rest don’t. The top Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Authority leaders are at minimum centi-millionaires, while the very top of the pyramid are billionaires. Former Palestinian President (and PLO leader), Yasser Arafat, by the time he died in 2004, had accumulated between 1 to 3 billion dollars in diversified assets from stealing from the Palestinian people.
Very sad. Such injustice. I understand some Palestinians go to America, make a ton of money and return to the west bank to build tasteless mansions in what has become known as the “Miami of Palestine”. They don’t care about the have nots.
Reading your comments it is very clear that your heart does not go out ‘to both Palestinians and Israelis’, as you claim. When discussing Israel you are very cerebral, reserving all your sympathy for the Palestinians. Which is your right but why pretend otherwise?
Fair enough, but what is your proposed solution? And why do you think it will work?
Well written.
Thanks for the book referral, just what I’m looking for. I don’t know enough about this very complex situation.
I bought the book you suggested,Nik, and am about to start reading. I understand that reading history will not help to understand the minds of religious fanatics, Sayantani, nevertheless, I do want to be more informed than I am on a complicated subject.
Of course you must. But I should suggest a wide book list of not just the local context but also of the contexts of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the origins of World War One.
Preferably pre 1970s too when historiography wasn’t as Marxist as it subsequently became.
I read Peter Calvocoressi and J Robert Wegs as an undergrad many moons ago to get the broad narrative of international relations 20th century context.
Rory Stewart does a good take too on the latest pod of Rest is Politics despite ACs humbug interventions.
Ok you convinced me. We should end the Gaza “occupation” right now.
“Crickets…”
Guess that didn’t work. I agree, the Palestinians are pawns in a game and we all know what happens to pawns. And it will go on until there is a just settlement in the middle east. And just settlements have only been made in world history through force of arms.
And its not just the people of Gaza who will bare the marks of this conflict. All those involved are tainted by this inhumanity.
Giles I am so sorry. I am neither Jewish nor Israeli but I am so appalled by the loss of innocent people and, as appalled by the sheer hatred spilling onto the streets in support of murderers.
That anyone can celebrate in the streets of London for people who have cut the heads off babies shows that the barbarians are storming Rome as we watch.
In brief moments such as this we see their true faces:
People who in one breath say Israel is killing their brothers but who have nothing to say about Uigars in China.
People who shout black lives matter over a single death in the USA, but who are silent when the same black lives are taken by beheadings of entire villages in Northern Mozambique.
People who say that words are violence, and who treat their own violence as though they are mere words.
Seeing the photos of the family of 5 who were butchered before each other’s eyes woke me in the night. I had to hug my son as I contemplated involuntarily what the final moments of that family must have been: “if someone burst through that door and killed me in front of my 3 year old, and then killed him…” I cannot even contemplate the horror of the final moments that each and every family member will have experienced. To think of it is to weep.
There’s no need to love your enemies; however, there is a need to try to understand them lest they get the better of you.
Hamas’ decision to commit atrocities and take hostages into Gaza is presumably intended as bait for an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. So the question is what are they hoping to achieve by inviting destruction upon themselves?
It could well be that the attacks were intended to lead to such death and destruction in Gaza that it provides a casus belli for allies of Hamas to invade Israel on a different front, and an opportunity to win given that Israel’s military may be substantially committed in Gaza (a place whose Vietcong-like warren of tunnels has ‘trap’ written all over it.) The symbolic choice of the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War seems indicative that there might be a coalition of invaders involved, after all.
This is surely a time for cool heads in the face of plainly deliberate, plainly planned — and thus in some way strategic — provocation. And for focusing not on understanding your enemies’ motivation and their claimed justifications, but on what their actions may be intended to achieve.
I like your comments, although I expect for those emotionally involved, time is needed for heads to cool down. Giles’ outburst, although restrained, frankly, is understandable.
Exactly! Well said. Hamas knew there would be brutal retaliation, as you say, so what’s their next move?
Palestinians are now largely a rag tag and bobtail of fanatics from around the region; Syria, Jordan, Lebanon whose reason for settling there is to hope to alienate the Jewish race. They drink in hatred with mother’s milk, inherited, blind, soul sapping hatred. This fight is not about protecting Palestine it is about destroying Israel. What a very insecure religion Islam is, one tiny country in a vast sea of the caliphate cannot be tolerated. To see the people on the streets of every capital city in the West demonstrating their support for horror is truly appalling. To see white British people rallying to the flag of terror simply tells the story of the age, another cause of the moment, another thing to brag about in the student’s union. Have any of them, white or Middle Eastern packed their bags for Palestine to go and flight? No, far safer to stay in Blighty and be allowed to spit bile at indigenous British Jews. If you can expect a visit from the Met for any anti woke opinion on Twitter how are you free to celebrate the most disgusting murder of innocents?
Facing overwhelming barbaric sadism, anger is necessary to forget the pointlessness of fighting back. When beauty and love, everything worth living for is lost, fighting back risking awkward failure as one’s last act on Earth is the right thing to do.
Barbaric sadism is alive, parading in bikie gangs on the streets of Melbourne, Australia also.
Though reprehensible it is understandable.. and forgivable even? But it is never, ever right. Only the guilty must be punished and only the most guilty punished in the most aggressive way.. Murdering innocent children is the work of Satan and there is never, ever any excuse for it!
There is no difference between doing it from 5,000 feet in the air and face to face.. merely the degree of cowardice and hatred involved.
Until last weekend, I had deep sympathy for ordinary Palestinians, but I’m just so appalled at what Hamas has done that right now, all my sympathy is with the people of Israel. There is nothing to understand and nothing to forgive after such horrors. It’s not unchristian to feel that way, but I do hope the prayers will eventually comfort you.
You’ll do even better to have sympathy with ALL innocent people irrespective of their ethnicity and religious background. There are great wrongs on both sides but only one side – the one with all the power and all the WMDs the one that crushes and indiscriminantly bombs the other, and steals its land… can put right. If you sow the grapes of wrath you will reap the whirlwind!
Yes, I know. And right now, I’m seeing articles on ordinary Palestinians who have just lost their homes after the swift retaliation. Sympathy for Palestine is slowly returning, but it has been a roller coaster.
It’s sad that your compassion is so limited. In the comfort of your safe home it wouldn’t hurt you to spread it about a bit.
With all this escalating conflicts in the world – in this age of information – it’s hard enough to stay centred and clear minded; especially when we’re so accustomed to scrolling social media and seeing a barrage of takes and perspectives, some of them being incredibly callous and dissociated.
But I understand it’s even harder for people in your position, Giles, when it involves your family. And I can really sense this in your candid article.
God bless.
Thank you Giles. I needed to read this as it’s one of the few honest and humane responses I’ve found to this catastrophe. Your words: “He and I are going to have words when this is over. I have more than a few questions — and in the silence of my prayers, they won’t be gently put.” reminds me of the Book of Job and the innocent who suffer, harking back to the Holocaust.
It is beyond shameful that in the UK and other so-called ‘free’ countries that hoards of ‘people’ came out into the streets to celebrate the depraved butchering, slaughter and rape of innocents, including beheading of babies and little children, with chants to bring back the gas chambers. This hideous horror infests our communities as well as the killing fields of Israel. These disgusting people are fellow citizens, possibly neighbours and colleagues. It’s truly awful.
There’s zero reason to love Hamas. Christianity doesn’t call for us to love evil organizations. We should have love for the individuals involved, but that doesn’t preclude legitimate self-defense and war. You can try and love your enemy, but you still have the right (and duty) to kill him as long as he is trying to kill you and you family and neighbors. Your life and your family’s has precedence over that of an aggressor and any of his people he uses as a shield.
There is a lot of violence in this generation. We may say in the West that it’s lucky it’s expressed on the Internet, but what about the politics of gender filtering down to what’s been done to teenage bodies? Islamic State is the model of digital praxis and given the opportunity wouldn’t many exact the same physical politics if their ideologies today are patently driven by paranoia at best and psychosis at worst?
A sentence followed by ‘but…’ loses its meaning
I’m sure you’re right, but…….
Exactly!!
Aye..all before but is bullshit.
So true, it negates the first half!
Thank you Giles for your moving words. I pray that your wife’s family will be safe.
“Cost-free wisdom from Western liberals is so often pathetically ill-informed and bathing in self-righteousness.”
Great summation, but “pathetically ill-informed” is the understatement of the year. This is the price we pay for moral relativism. If anything goes, then ANYTHING will go. ANYTHING.
How do you get to write big, black letters?
Hear! Hear! …from a Canadian of Irish-Scottish descent, who loves Jewish literature and has been impressed by the friendliness, intelligence and sense of humour of every Jewish person he’s ever had the good fortune to meet. I congratulate you on your wise choice of a life companion.
Well said, Giles Fraser. Thank you.
The Hamas factions of Islam are trying to bait Israel into attacking Iran. Hamas wants the “war” to begin. They sacrifice their own people in Gaza, their own children to destroy Israel. Hamas are the NeoCons of Islam. All they know is war, killing, and regime change. The only difference is that the NeoCons get kick backs from the Military Industrial Complex. Other than that they are both cults of war, destruction, and death.
I feel for you and your family, Giles. I also feel for Palestinian friends who are now terrified about what is going to happen to them. And I have a Jewish friend supporting survivors on the ground there in Israel.
Violence begets violence, that’s why we are asked to love our enemies. Maybe not to feel an emotion of affection towards them – that’s what you cannot feel, Giles, and no-one can ask that of you or anyone. But to remember that they are as human as you are despite their horrendous acts. So that you don’t respond in kind.
And what else is going on here? The evidence that Israel failed to protect its border from 15 breaches and no help was sent for hours is reminiscent of what happened in Maui. Israel and the US really had no idea at all that this was being planned? They are that incompetent? Whatever the truth of all this, to me it’s clear it is another attempt by those with power to divide and rule, to keep our limbic systems permanently triggered, judging and blaming one another and not looking at them.
Basically, you should not love Hamas.
Compared to the atrocities of Hamas even an intellectual bumbler like Giles is a wise man, and i am glad to see people thanking him. The salient thing for those in the UK is not the horrors on the ground in Israel: It is Rishi Sunak saying he will come down hard on those who support Hamas whilst showing he has no power to do so. Labour supporters applaud Hamas’ terror at their conference, demonstrators besiege the Israeli embassy with police protection, well paid NHS staffers and luvvies jeer at the victims of terror and the “prime minister” has no power to act. We may ask Sunak about the protection of British civil society from Hamas supporters and their kind with the question “you and who’s army?” This is my point – if the Prime Minister can’t ensure the rule of law is enforced he needs to admit this and hand over to the military until such time as civil society can be restored. I expect most of the 65% of people who didn’t vote last week in Hamilton probably share that view, which is why they didn’t bother to vote!
Such moving words, father…!
Such an excellent article. I could not my feelings into words such as these. Thoughts are with all those whose lives have been torn apart by this gross act of terrorism, including those who can only watch and hope for better times.
However inexcusable Hamas’s attack, it (like the 9-11 attacks) needs to be explained rather than merely excoriated. Otherwise, the Israeli response to these recent attacks will be as catastrophically inhumane and ineffective as was the American response to 9-11. Specifically, what needs to be acknowledged is that Israel is largely to blame for the conflict with the Palestinians. First, because it refused to allow the 700,000 Palestinian refugees to return home after the 1948, in violation of international law. Second, because it has continued since 1967 to annex and settle Palestinian territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — again in violation of international law. Third, because it has ignored numerous peace offers from the PLO and various Arab states, probably because it would have required Israel to comply with international law. Fourth, because it has imposed horrendous collective punishment on the Palestinians of Gaza in retaliation for sporadic Hamas attacks, once again in violation of international law.
From its beginnings, Israel chose expansion over security, with the approval and support of the United States. I’m afraid Giles Fraser’s eloquent but morally blind response may increase his sons’ — and many other children’s on both sides — jeopardy in future.
Perfectly put Sir. Thank you, the voice of sanity………at last!
Charles, do you think there are interesting parallels to be drawn with The Indian Mutiny/War of Independence; in particular the Bibighar Massacre & subsequent reactions?
Very much so!
To lapse into the vernacular we certainly ‘lost the plot’ there.
Indeed – and all set off by the murder of woman and children. Nothing generates more rage than that – so what were/are Hamas thinking in drawing out that dark force from a nation that could flatten them?
‘We’ behaved rather similarly during the Mau Mau rebellion, and for the same reason, during the 1950’s!
These analyses are so bizarre. They all boil down to siblings yelling at each other “he started it!” when they are caught fighting by their parents. It is absurd to look to what the Romans did, what the Ottomans did, what the British did, etc. to try to “explain away” the conflict or to try to resolve it. There is now and has long been plenty of mutual ill-will on both the Muslim side and the Jewish side of this conflict.
The “right side” and the “wrong side” should not be determined by who punched who first, but by which group has built the kind of society that is good for people to flourish in. One people has built a functioning free market, liberal democracy in the desert. The other has built a society which demonstrates authoritarianism, oppression, religious discrimination, corruption, etc. *That* simple observation about which society is the kind of society people need, tells us which side we should support.
Interesting perspective, makes sense.
It was the arab nations which broadcast over the radio in 1948 requesting the Arabs leave their home as they expected to defeat Israel. The arabs promied the extermination of all Jews in 1948. King Abdullah was close to neogotiating a deal with Israel but was attacked by fellow arab leaders. Abdullah was murdered in 1951 by a Palestinian and then forced out John Glubb. The only Arab army to defeat Israel was The Jordanian, trained by Glubb and it had served with the allies in WW2.
The Palestinians are town Arabs: the finest soldiers in the Arab World are the Beduin in the Jordanian Army. Therefore turning the finest soldiers in the Arab World into one’s enemy by frisking the wives of the officers is foolish. The Palestinians were expelled from Jordan.
The Muslim Brotherhood murdered Sadat in 1981 who was on the way of creating peaceful coexistance with Israel.
If one has promised the extermination of a people, then one better not lose the war ; to mak matters worse do not kill the only leader who has defeated your enemy because of resentment. Sadat was able to neogotiate peace with Israel because Egypt had been relatively successful in the Yom Kippur War. Do not be corrupt and incompetent with the money given to one so that in the case of Saudi Arabai in 2016 they stop funding one.
The the Palestinians had followed steps of King Abdullah in his relations with Israel with the vast amounts of money from the GCC countries there could have been a secure, peaceful and prosperous nation.
Thank you Giles. I am also clergy and share your sentiments and viewpoint. I am grateful for your clarity and what the Finnish call Sisu/beyond courage. Thank you again.
This is why Judaism preaches loving your neighbor and not loving your enemy. It is true that Judaism says “יתמו חטאים מן הארץ – חטאים לא חוטאים” (evil will be eradicated from the world – evil, not evil-doers), but sometimes they are inseparable.
True.
I used to draw a distinction between those active antisemites who explicitly support for example bombing synagogues, and those passive ones who would deplore such behaviour and merely become very agitated at the spectacle of Jews organising effectively to defend themselves and demand that they should stop. Most of my antisemitic friends (who of course do not remotely regard themselves as antisemitic, identifying as liberals, social democrats and progressives, all perfectly civilised and very nice, educated people) are in the latter category.
But what we have seen over the last few days has made me realise that Jew-hatred is triggered not even when Jews have the effrontery to defend themselves against being slaughtered, but already just at the very moment they are being slaughtered. For the most heinous offence the Jews can commit – and one, it has to be admitted, they commit regularly – is to be the victims of antisemitic outrages. They don’t even have to defend themselves to awaken resentment and unrelenting hostility. It is their victimhood as such which will never be forgiven by the Jew-haters (including those who don’ t have the slightest intuition that they are Jew-haters). The massacres had barely taken place when protestors were out on the streets and signing petitions calling for an end to “Israeli barbarism”.
And the world is once again awash with Jew-hatred. Brimming with it, all across the globe. We owe a debt of thanks to those self-identifying “supporters” of Palestinians who came out to protest Israeli reactions to the massacres outside the Sydney Opera House on Monday for the clarity and honesty in their chants of “Gas the Jews!”, for they could easily have hidden behind the mendacious slogans about Free Palestine usually wheeled out on these occasions. For this is what is really behind all the “humanitarian” calls for “ceasefires”, “negotiations” and “rational responses”. And now we can all see it clear. Those of us who wish to, anyway.
For now no-one who has a scintilla of integrity will any longer be tempted to believe the lie that if Israel were to come to an accommodation with its enemies, it would be welcomed into the comity of nations and lose its pariah status. For it is not a pariah because of its actions. It is a pariah because of its very existence. Much like the Jews themselves. Which is why Israel will now do what it has to do, in a world whose ugly and visceral Jew-hatred is now apparent as perhaps never before.
It isn’t foolish to have seen what cannot be unseen.
Beautiful writing. Thank you Giles. You speak for so many of us.
You are right, Giles. What we witnessed was evil. We have seen the works of evil in Bosnia, against the Rohingya, daily in the eastern Congo, in Syria. ” “Love your enemies,” a holy Jew said, a long time ago.” He was going against the tide when he said that. It was not a bland statement. Killing more children won’t make things better, though it will happen. We should be hoping that those tasked with finding those responsible, and rescuing those who were captured and are being terrorized, are better people than most of us. Then it is less likely to happen again. And let’s hope something greater than we can provide can be in the hearts of those who are imprisoned.
Giles, thank you so much for saying all this. I don’t have cogent thoughts to add but do promise my prayers.
Long ago, when I was a reporter, I interviewed filmmakers who had taken as their subect the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which “was set up by the Government of National Unity to help deal with what happened under apartheid. The conflict during this period resulted in violence and human rights abuses from all sides. No section of society escaped these abuses.”
What I remember most from that interview was the filmmakers’ observation that, when hatred of the enemy becomes part of one’s identity, peace is impossible; reconciliation is impossible. It seems this is true of both Israelis and Palestinians, though the outward expression of that enmity has waxed and waned over the decades.
“Love your enemy” is likely too high a bar here. But is the same true of not hating? Until hating the other — and exacting vengence/seeking retribution based on that hatred — is separated from what it means to be Israeli or Palestinian, peace will not be possible, and each will continue to suffer.
Speaking of filmmakers, do you remember the one whose documentary got survivors of the battle of Stalingrad together–from both the German and Russian side? Things went a bit tentatively at first, but before too long the ice was broken and these veterans, once deadly foes, found they could sit down and eat and drink together in peace and even mutual respect. I would suggest if you can reconcile these two groups, you can reconcile anybody.
Age tends to bring many things into perspective. This is especially true in male warrior psychology. As the testosterone reduces, the territorial aggression fades. There are numerous examples of long ago former adversaries breaking bread and sharing stories. People seem surprised, but it’s true. I have no idea how that process of meeting former adversaries works in female space. Anybody got any comparisons to offer?
We’re not warriors!!
Because they were old.
The orcs are in The Shire
An amazing article .
The images we have seen call to mind lines from Book 6 of Jeremiah.
11 …even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days.
12 And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord.
It is one of those days when we who are so happy to strain the allegory of Biblical meaning in our readings are confronted with the terrifying underlying historical reality of human wickedness, the logic of which the Prince of Peace came to overturn.
Our complacent understanding of forgiveness, that subsists in a country and context where insult and shame are so abstract, so mild, are almost affronted to think that anyone could be expected to forgive a persecution of this sort. A real persecution. Actual child murder.
I agree with Rev Fraser that ‘Love your Enemies’ feels amost insultingly hard. It is extremely hard. Yet this is the difficulty of The Gospel and its world altering significance.
There is a very good book on this subject, Forgive, by Tim Keller.
It’s you who were boasting quite recently about publicly converting Muslim asylum seekers to Christianity who you knew were only doing it as a scam to avoid deportation.
So now you’re moaning about large numbers of Muslims riding up and down Edgware Road bleeping horns and shouting their support for Hamas . Suddenly mass migration and multiculturalism doesn’t appear so attractive when the result happens to impinge on your ‘nearest and dearest’ . Moral narcissism about wickedness of Georgia Meloni suddenly on the back burner !
If I was the Israeli government, after last weekend’s pogrom my overriding concern would be to prevent anyone from Gaza ever setting foot on Israeli soil again. This is all Hamas has achieved.
UnHerd, the “down thumb” button on multiple comments is registering as an up thumb vote on this article. Please correct this glitch.
It worked for me.
Why do you discount the possibility that as you thumbs up other people are thumbs downing? And hence when the counter resets, it appears to show the opposite of what you intended?
If UnHerd showed absolute ups-and-downs (rather than a net) it would solve this problem and be much more illuminating.
Exactly. We all need to protest.
It’s not a glich it happens the whole time. Other strange things happen. If only there was a simple up down voting. I’ve been complaining for a long time to no avail.
I think what is happening is that when we hit one of the voting buttons, as well as adding our individual vote you, at the same time, update the vote count since you loaded the page. You upvote, but if three other people have very recently downvoted that comment, as you hit the button it will go down two votes.
My heart goes out to Giles and appreciate his candor and the honest expression. I also found it fascinating that a CoE vicar has a Jewish wife. I hope he will discuss the relationship between his vows to the Church and his vows to his wife in another post.
Giles asks “why should I love my enemy?”. God is happy to outsource vengeance to us under the right circumstances. When the Amalekites attacked the Israelites (coincidentally in the Negev), God told the Israelites to give the Amalekites a good kicking. The reason King Saul lost favour with God was because he only gave them a moderate kicking. This is not just Old Testament: according to St. Peter, our leaders have been set over us as God’s instruments of vengeance.
So the answer to Giles’ question is “because Jesus told you to”. Chistians can love enemies all they like, but it makes no difference to how we deal with those enemies.
With respect, Christians are commanded not just to love enemies but to bless them, pray for them and ‘do good to them’. To offer no personal resistance to injury and insult.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
Only an inversion of the ethic of retaliation will ever end the spiral of violence in the world. Only that can bring us up from Gehenna. But who can really live like that? Hoc Opus, Hic Labor Est.
I am a member of the Church of Scotland and a very lacklustre Christian. I have a problem with Christian ethics: it places too much emphasis on the individual, rather than the wider community. You correctly italicised the word ‘personal’ and there we sing from the same hymn sheet. The problem arises when dealing with an enemy who also hates third parties, such as babies and the elderly. You can love, bless, do good to and pray for that enemy as much as you like, but if that is all you do, then I pity the babies.
Believe.. the babies stand a much better chance with love than with hate.. with forgiveness than with revenge.. indeed, isn’t it revenge that got us where we are today??
..indeed, if you follow that advice, not only does your enemy win but you win as well! it’s win, win.. whereas an eye for an eye leaves all blind, as if they weren’t blind enough!
… which is why the Old Testament requires a lot of interpretation.
On the other hand, the Lord says “Vengeance is mine.” Not ours – His.
Which is exactly why I pointed out that God is prepared to outsource vengeance.
Best not to take advice on how to live, from books.
…when the first generation of Crusaders took Jerusalem, it is claimed they waded knee deep in the blood of the slain. As I look at the horror perpetrated by these remorseless savages…all I can hear in my head is Deus Veult! Deus Veult..! coursing through my blood, and thundering in my ears…
Just waiting for Liam O mahoney to pipe up with todays little jew hating gem………oh, too late, off he goes below…..
‘Thank you, Mummy’.
A dedication in a book of remembrance entered a long time ago.
‘I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.’ A wife’s dedication to her husband inscribed in another such book even longer before. She was quoting a religious man, a contemporary of the Holy Jew, who, despite his conversion, was arguably the one of the truest of all Jews.
In whatever happened in the world at the time that those dedications were earned, or whatever else happened to both pairs of people – out of all sorrows, losses, disappointments and difficulties – it is what earned those dedications that is permanent. The entries in the books speak down the years and amplify the truth of it.
The religious man was also convinced that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us’. Those sufferings, even the midnight of horror, will no longer touch the glorified. If what earned those dedications are permanent, so are those who earned them.
The Holy Jew wasn’t a Man of the 21st century. Evidently, He didn’t believe in equality. He didn’t advance liberal ideas about divorce. To try to dress Him and His sayings up in the values of the 21st century only makes great and unnecessary difficulties for Christians.
‘Unless you forgive, your heavenly Father will not forgive you’.
I once was acquainted with a person, an atheist, who argued that, since Christians are compelled to forgive, this person could commit any act of spitefulness to a Christian and the Christian would have to forgive them. Obviously, not only an acknowledgment that they had committed a wickedness but that in absolution they sought power.
The compulsion to forgive that is evident among Christians is a result of not having understood and applied the conditions placed on giving and receiving forgiveness set out by the Holy Jew and recorded in Matthew 18.
‘Love your enemy’. The enemy is still an enemy. ‘Resist not evil’. Evil is still evil. By their fruits ye shall know them. The command not to repay evil for evil, like that of not confining love to neighbour only, is a command to live above tradition, above history. Be that tradition ever so dear and that history ever so defining, quietly but firmly take a line perpendicular to it. Or, as that other religious man said to his converts, be not conformed to this world, be transformed.
One last word from that religious man. Death is not the bringer of the 21st century value of democracy. Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. One last word from the Holy Jew. When an anguished complaint was put to Him from a woman that if He had been paying attention her brother would not have died, He wept. He responds, not that her brother returns to live only to die again, but that in His presence death is removed.
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Giles makes some excellent points, and this isn’t a justification of the barbarity of Hamas, but I fear the Israeli incursion and blockade will far exceed the remit of a “rescue mission”,
“The Sabra and Shatila massacre refers to the 1982 killings of between 460 and 3,500 (unarmed) civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It was perpetrated by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, with heavy guidance and support from Israel and the IDF. The killings were carried out in Beirut’s Sabra neighbourhood and in the adjacent Shatila refugee camp.” Would that qualify as evil?
I want to join the discussion, but fear an attempt to convey the brutality of both sides will get shouted down at the current moment in time.
Fact Check Giles: As the historian William Dalrymple reports, the “beheaded babies” story is false. https://x.com/dalrymplewill/status/1712107769321734470?s=46
Check again… he has recanted. The beheaded babies story is true.
“Why should I love Hamas?” That is either deeply amoral or rampant clickbait.
Either way Yukk. Unherd must do better than that if you want me to stick around.
We might not notice if you weren’t around. One swallow does not a summer make
Now. Good. We’ve had our little insignificant say.
Comment to yourself?
Yes. “We” includes me.
Not speaking personally, just using your language – the difficulty with loving this enemy is that you created this enemy, partly through your actions, partly by investing your enemy with properties they objectively don’t have.
So long as you are stuck in that mind-set, you cannot forgive or love.
What?!
While I sympathise enormously with the dreadful suffering of Israelis today I cannot help wondering why it is we react in so visceral a manner to one dreadful attack but not another. Equally we humans react in a similar way when the number of victims is high in a single, rare attack but not when a much, much higher number is murdered over a period of time ..the slow, grinding, crushing of an entire people in their own homeland by invaders from all around the World.. we don’t react at all! Why is that?
Thirdly, we celebrate the freedom fighters on Ukraine as they prepare the Molitov cocktails to kill the hated Russian invaders but cry foul when Palestinians do the exact same.. indeed, the Jewish invaders of Palestine are also largely Russians but somehow (as my ex would say) “that’s totally different”.
A cursory glance at the number of victims of Hamas terrorism vs Israeli state terrorism shows a huge imbalance, maybe 100 innocent Palestinian deaths to 1 Israeli death!
Of course Muslim deaths don’t matter in the eyes of the average Zionist, indeed such atrocities are celebrated on an almost daily basis after the murder of innocent Palestinian children – I witnessed it with my own eyes and ears as a retired IDF degenerate gloated to me about how many children he had killed – his only regret being he had killed many more! – but surely that hatred, so rampant among Zionists has no part in our Christian values.. unlike you, I do love my enemies.
Is it because Judaism (the religion of Jesus) and Christianity (the faith of Jesus’s followers) are valid and Islam is not? Is it that white skin is somehow superior to brown skin?
But yes, I do condemn this latest atrocity, albeit born out of decades of torture, death and wanton destruction of mosques, schools, hospitals and homes and now 2.3 million innocent people are to be bombed and starved and deprived of water and electricity in revenge for the heinous actions of 0.023 million terrorists.. 99 innocents must suffer for 1 guilty criminal.
Israel is guilty of heinous war crimes, breaches of UN peace resolutions, many breaches of international law, blatant apartheid, land theft, torture and murder; but that, its seems is all ok..
Interestingly your comment can’t be upvoted. Others should also try this to confirm. It can be downvoted but not upvoted. The dark arts at play perhaps.
It can be upvoted or downvoted for me.
It didn’t register a down vote for me.
I up ticked your post. The sytem has registered it as a down vote.
It is because whatever the number of deaths we find it disgusting when people deliberately, as a matter of policy, aim to rape and murder children and non-combatants. Israel would be quite happy to kill enemy fighters while leaving the civilians alone, only they do not get that choice. Hamas did not have to kill and rape civilains – they did it because they wanted to
Exactly. It’s slaughter not war.
I’ve upvoted.at least the balance is pretty close to even.
I am pleased to read this honest piece. This author knows that to hate is a psychologically easy path to follow, taken by those too traumatized, or too intellectually lazy, to resist it. Hatred gives people somewhere more comfortable to put their fear or their pain, which can otherwise feel unbearable. But the author knows too that hate must always be resisted, no matter how terrible the incidents triggering it. (Whether the triggers are Hamas murdering civilians this week in truly horrific ways, or the ongoing reality that Palestinians continue to live caged and walled under Israeli domination, as they are slowly but relentlessly erased from historic Palestine). This is because hate dehmanises entire peoples and populations, driving more hate and more death in a positive feedback loop of hell. This is where we are. Love Thy Enemy.
The Palestinians have refused the two-state solution over and over ad nauseam. They need to be seen as victims or they lose the benefits that victimhood inoculates them with. They’ll have to take responsibility for themselves and lose all that lovely victimhood cash. There are reasons Egypt, Syria, and Jordan kicked them out of their countries and the Arab world wants nothing to do with them. As long as there’s a “Palestinian Problem” in Israel, the Muslim world can continue to fund terror campaigns elsewhere with little notice.
To say the Palestinians have refused the two-state solution is at best a simplification and at worst simply echoing Israeli propaganda.
The history is quite clear, there has never been an offer of a two-state solution that any but the most blinkered would say was fair. Most have been skewed to Israeli concerns only and even when the Palestinians agreed, as they did in Oslo, a faction of the Israeli Govt immediately began reneging on the terms and altering facts on the ground. It was this backsliding that ultimately cost the PLO what legitimacy it had and even led to the unfortunate murder of Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli.
The problem is the mediator in all of these attempts, the US, is fundamentally only concerned with the requirements of one side, Israel.
I up voted this the ystem has reduced what was already up ticked.
Yes, the system is a b****r, isn’t it. It always frustrates me. We need to campaign for a simple up and down tick system.Or if you can only uptick it would encourage people to write a comment rather than just down tick.
The system is working if the upvote turns green or the downvote turns red. If the total of votes seems not to reflect your vote it’s because others have voted since the total was refreshed. Rest assured, your vote was counted if the grey hand turns color.
Yes but what about if an up tick doesn’t register?
Israel did not make a particularly good offer, no. But then the Palestinians were never willing to renounce their claim to getting all of Palestine back. Arafat’s first counter-demand was the ‘right of return’ I seem to remember. If the deal was ‘land for peace’ then arguably Israel gave up the land but the PLO never accepted to deliver peace.
The war crimes committed by Hamas are truly awful but so are the war crimes committed by the Israeli Government. No one should shy away from the fact that the Israeli Government has occupied Palestinian territory for decades.
We need more love and empathy in the world.
I find it incomprehensible that this has garnered so many down ticks.
Israel has occupied Palestinian territory ever since it was attacked from that territory and had to defend itself. If the Palestinians would disarm and stop terrorist attacks, Israel would be happy to leave.
In the last 3 days both Hamas and the IDF have carried out a massacre of civilians. You couldn’t tell, though, from reading this and other articles like it in the Western media.
What about the rules based order. Will Israel survive the economic sanctions imposed on them for targeting civilians
Oh dear. Please go troll somewhere else.
They’re not targeting civilians.
The Hamas attack was not out of the blue – the causes have probably been simmering since 1993 when the Palestinians were given hope that they would gain self-rule. A Jewish extremist assassinated Rabin in 1994. Since then it’s all been down hill for the Palestinians.
Yes violence is ghastly. But the fury directed against the Palestinians is far in excess of the fury directed at Putin today and Assad in the past.
I don’t see any Israeli flag hanging beside my neighbor’s Ukrainian flag.