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Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images.
Driving from Israel to the West Bank is like stepping through the looking glass. The world is almost identical, but subtly altered. Scenery deceives; palm trees line the centre of a boulevard, but they are short and stubby. The same off-white buildings that populate Jerusalem dominate Ramallah, but they are faded and dappled with wear. Everything here seems somehow diminished.
Beyond the trauma of the war in Gaza, there is another trauma in the West Bank: Israeli settlers. There are more than 450,000 Israeli settlers (and more than 100 Israeli illegal outposts) in the West Bank, with an additional 220,000 living in East Jerusalem. Since October 7, their thieving and violence has gone into overdrive. The UN humanitarian office has recorded more than 250 settler attacks, which resulted in the murder of eight Palestinians, including a child, and injuries to more than 70 others. Since late October, more than 1,000 Palestinian residents have fled several West Bank villages, claiming that Israeli settler violence and threats had driven them out.
I enter the West Bank from Israel through the Rantis checkpoint, a stark monolith etched in concrete and steel. Usually there would be a queue of cars here, but now the road is clear. Since October 7, the region has been in lockdown.
Central Ramallah is a thicket of modern bustle interspersed with building sites and the odd patch of rubble. School children — mainly girls in striped, blue uniforms — scamper across the pavement. If violence comes, it will be Palestinian youth largely battling Israeli forces in the streets. In Cafe Vanilla, a spacious bistro with an “I love Palestine” sign outside, I meet 33-year-old Gaza-born Fathi Aljhoul, a handsome man with a shaved head. On his right arm he has a tattoo of a leaf; a band encircles his left bicep. The owner of a marketing company, he looks just like a hipster in London or Brooklyn. Since the war began, he has lost 70 members of his family in Gaza — 45 cousins in one attack.
“We are very angry,” he tells me. “All of my friends are angry — and we are not afraid of anything. Every day, I watch Al-Jazeera from when I wake up until one or two in the morning. We have stopped our lives. We watch Gaza — it’s a mini-massacre every day. We watch our own cousins being killed every day.” He describes how the West Bank is spiralling. “Since the war began, the Israelis are killing three to four people here every day. An Israeli settler shot a Palestinian harvesting his olives in the heart.”
Since the war began, Israel claims it has arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives in the West Bank. The IDF carries out raids every morning and night. Aljhoul can’t even get to villages 10 minutes away in the Ramallah outskirts because the city is surrounded by Israeli Army checkpoints. “Since 7 October they have sealed off the West Bank,” he tells me. “In Ramallah things are probably easiest because you still have access from Jerusalem. But in Jenin and Hebron and across the West Bank it is harder. And this is in Area A, which is supposed to be under Palestinian control.”
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SubscribeNeither side will relent, it seems, so one must win and one must lose.
Hamas and Iran intended to disrupt the negotiations between Israel and the Saudi with their gory, depraved attacks on Israeli civilians.
This seems to have backfired, as Israelis have reached the reasonable enough conclusion that Palestinians must be strongly discouraged from considering any more attacks. Being homeless, hungry, and terrified can discourage even the devout. And the dead can’t launch attacks of any sort.
I don’t understand why Palestinians are so astonished by the level of reprisals. They must’ve known what the outcome could be, or have had some idea.
Did they not think of the consequences of their actions? Now, even reigning in settlers will be more of a challenge for the Israeli government. Reigning in tank troops, artillery, and infantry brigades will be impossible.
I wonder if the Americans would have been quite as forgiving if the British Army had used similar tactics against the IRA as Israel has against Hamas. I’d wager the condemnation would be universal if the RAF had carpet bombed the Republican areas of Belfast, killed ten thousand children and driven large numbers of Catholics from their homes.
Luckily for them Britain is a civilised country and saw civilian deaths as something to be avoided when responding to terrorism
Did any of the IRA “atrocities” compare to the October 7th attacks ?
If so, then your question may have some relevance.
The IRA murdered over 1700 people, so while none of their singular attacks was as successful as the recent Hamas one their death toll was still very high
Wasn’t it closer to 2,500? And from a much smaller population of about 1.5 million.
However whilst they were quite happy to kill innocent women and children they never got around to beheading babies, nor raping people as far as I can recall!
They did off course, just like the IDF have the full unequivocal support of the USA and still do.*
(* Via NORAID and the Kennedy Clan.)
Nah beheading wasn’t really their calling card, the tended to focus on the kneecaps instead. They also had a good few rapists hiding amongst their ranks as poor Mairia Cahill found to her cost.
If the British Army were as blasé as the IDF in regards to civilian casualties though then they’d have slaughtered around 15,000 Northern Irish souls during two months of the Troubles
You are talking total nonsense. The 2 situations on the ground are simply not comparable. Further, the casualties figures spewed forth by Hamas cannot be trusted as was clear from the claim that the Israelis had bombed a hospital killing 500, when in fact it was Hamas’ bed fellows who had launched a rocket that went off course and hit a car park with I believe almost no casualties.
The fact is that the IDF takes greater care not to harm civilians than any other military in the world, including the UK. Perhaps take a look at the number of civilians, including women and children, killed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. When you do, perhaps you’ll stop being a hypocrite. Or perhaps you are simply an anti-semite applying double standards to the IDF and everybody else.
You are joking. Tell me you’re joking.
Johann; you are pitifully deluded, or, blinded by hate. My symapthies either way.
That is on of the most ludicrous claims I have heard in a long time. From what I have witnessed I would say that they care little or nothing about civilian deaths.
Also I think you forget the scale of the Troubles. in 1972 almost 500 people were killed by paramilitaries, so adjust that figure for population.
In the same year there were about 2,000 bombings in the province.
The IRA were also in the business of kidnapping, torturing and killing people
So were the British Army at the time, both indirectly through loyalist paramilitaries and directly through the likes of Bloody Sunday. They weren’t as brazen about it as the IDF were though.
I guess the proud boast of the Hamas leader, interviewed in the comfort of Qatar, must’ve passed you by:
He’d been banging on about IDF bombing Gaza civilians who had no safe places to shelter in. He was asked why Hamas hadn’t opened its tunnels to Gaza civilians. He answered, without skipping a beat or evidencing any awareness of how his answer might be construed, that all Gazans wanted to be martyrs …..
Hate filled drivel.
Once again, a commentator who is so blinded by his hatred for anyone who disagrees with the current Israeli state that he refuses to admit the genocide taking place before all our eyes. To suggest that the IDF is taking care not to kill civilians is beyond parody. It is deluded and downright insulting to the memory of the more than 20 thousand dead and tens of thousands with life diminishing injuries. Violent revenge by a massively superior military force against a besieged, now close to starving, population insults also those whose murders are used to justify it.
Stop using words you don’t understand. ‘Genocide’ isn’t just people dying in war.
It’s officially a genocide as per a court hearing in Germany when a protestor was taken to court for using the word genocide and was cleared as the events in Gaza are now considered to be pointing towards Genocide as per the UN, Red Cross and others. If the ICJ ruling holds up (unlikely as the judiciary is controlled), that’ll be it.
What would you call a one sided indiscriminate bombing of civilians, randomly shooting them, including two of their own hostages trying to surrender, bombing refugee camps? I was hesitiant to use the word genocide at the start of this but I’m in no doubt now. This is genocide.
Extreme dereliction of duty by their government who failed to make provision for that population’s safety before the massacre of October 7th. Acres of tunnels and absolutely no places in them for the poor fools who elected them to power? Why do you think that was?
The unfortunate deaths of hostages are exactly that.
See my reply to her, that it certainly doesn’t apply to a steadily growing population whose leaders promise more massacres of Jews.
Please use a different descriptor. Need I remind you that the Palestinian birth rate is growing, in spite of the proud boast of Fathi Hamad, who is on record as saying that women, the elderly and children make the best human shields? Or that children are sent to summer camps where they learn how to want to die while murdering Israelis?
Genocide is what’s promised by Hamas barbarians for all Jews and after them followers of other religions or anyone who refuses to follow the muslim prophet, unless they’re rendered powerless
testing
“the IDF takes greater care not to harm civilians than any other military in the world” ?????????????
Colonel Richard Kemp: “I believe that on the basis of everything that I’ve seen, that everything the IDF does to protect civilians and to stop the death of innocent civilians is a great deal more than any other army, and it’s more than the British and the American armies.”
That’ll be the same Richard Kemp who sits on the board of the IDF fundraiser and lit their Hanukkah? He’s never got anything right that lad, including predictions for the Russia-Ukraine war. He’s 100% shill.
Like shooting their own hostages trying to surrender. Carpet bombing refugee camps. Great “care” being shown there.
“the IDF takes greater care
notto harm civilians than any other military in the world”That’s better.
You still yakking on about that one hospital?
(26,667) killed and missing persons.
(19,667) killed who arrived in hospitals.
(8,000) child killed .
(6,200) female killed .
(310) killed from medical teams.
(35) Civil Defense killed .
(97) journalists killed.
(7,000) are missing, 70% of them are children and women.
(52,586) injured
(99) cases detained among health personnel.
(8) Detained journalists.
(1.8) million displaced people in the Gaza Strip.
(355,000) infected with infectious diseases as a result of overcrowding and displacement.
(126) public organizations .
(90) schools and universities were completely destroyed .
(282) Schools and universities partially destroyed.
(112) mosques completely destroyed.
(200) mosques partially destroyed.
(3) Churches targeted and destroyed.
(52,600) housing units were completely destroyed .
(254,000) housing units partially destroyed .
(23) Hospitals out of service.
(53) primary health care centers out of service.
(140) health organizations partially targeted.
You are talking nonsense, and I say that as an Irishman. The IDF are flattening refugee camps, shooting their own hostages trying to surrender and bombing areas they tell Gazans to retreat to if they don’t want to be labelled terrorists.
Was what Hamas did on October 7th reprehensible? Absolutely. Does it justify what the IDF are doing now, indiscriminate mass murder of civilians? Absolutely not.
To quote Margaret Thatcher, “murder is murder”, even though she was equally selective in it’s application, no matter what tribes the perpetrators or victims belong to.
The IRA at least punished rapists within their ranks, because they knew it would cost them support, not glorified them like Hamas and their supporters did around the world from Scotland to Sydney, and from New York to New Zealand, and might I add, were celebrating and chanting in the streets about the murder, rape and torture of Oct 7th before Israel started their deadly invasion of Gaza.
Mairia Cahill would certainly disagree with you that the IRA punished rapists in their midst
Yes, of course, privately, like so many “freedom fighters” they were just a bunch of criminals, but, once again, my point is that they did not publicly celebrate rape like Hamas and their supporters.
So the IRA didn’t actually punish rapists as you claimed previously
Split the difference . They punished rapists of catholic girls
Hamas doesn’t celebrate rape and none of the hostages were raped – this according to their own testimony.
And the earth’s flat, the moon is made of cheese and all pigs are fuelled and ready to fly.
T
Utter nonsense.
THERE WERE NO RAPES BY HAMAS BRENDAN. Do some research. Why would Hamas change it’s MO – sending rockets into Israel and taking hostages for prisoner swaps – overnight? This was a false flag for the colonisation project – the same people who told a load of traumatised Jews from WWII that they could have a ‘safe space’ which was dependent on booting out the Arabs, while surrounded by multiple oil-rich Arab countries (Israel has to rely on $11M/day handouts from the US) who weren’t going to mind one bit. Nobody (not least the Brits and the US) wanted peace in the middle east. Israel doesn’t care one jot about the Jews. Israel is merely a staging post for the West, or an aircraft carrier as RFK referred to it – and he’s supposed to be on the side of Israel.
Get professional help
The British Army were volunteers and professionals. The IDF are conscripts.
Need I say more?
The IRA didn’t get around to rape as a weapon of war – though there certainly were rapists and paedophiles among the IRA membership.
Gerry Adams tended to minimize this by describing one IRA member (who raped a 15-year-old) as silver-tongued, or indeed his own brother’s serial paedophilia as a “private family matter”.
There were no beheaded babies Charles. These are the same tropes used in all wars that only the truly dumb fall for. If you look at the data from Oct 7, one baby (one too many) was killed – believed to be in a house that was fired at by a tank. Hamas didn’t rape either. In fact one of the hostages on 60 minutes talks about being dragged to a car with her pajama bottoms falling off, in fear that she would be. Instead she was given a full burqa to cover herself. She was released 54 days later – unharmed. I suppose you don’t think 9/11 was an inside job? Wear a mask? jabbed?
Actually I was aware of that trope. It goes back to the Kaiser’s Grenadiers ‘eating Belgium babies “ in 1914, if not well before, but I hoped someone such as your good self would pick up on it. Thank you.
Of course 9/11 was an ‘inside job’. You only have to follow the logic of Cicero and ask “Cui Bono” …’who benefits’ and you have your answer.
Never wore a mask and forcefully exercised my legal right NOT to!
‘Blackmailed into having one jab! Survived, and have had NONE since.
Glad u survived.
Oh dear, Charles, I thought you were just an amusing eccentric. But apparently, you are, instead, just a seriously misguided old man.
Certainly old but not misguided!
At your advanced age you shouldn’t be such an old ‘scold’.
Cheer up old thing! Worse things ‘happen at sea’, as they say.
Lordy. lordy, are you off your meds? Flaming paranoia.
So one woman escaped being raped at that time at least. I believe the sworn testimony of those tasked with preparing the remains of those murdered or multiply raped before they were killed, for dignified burial, who would say you’re mistaken at best, lying at worst
Billy, you don’t even notice the stupidity of your comments and your comparisons between Hamas and the IRA. Tell us about the IRA cut off the heads of babies about the IRA ripped open women’s vaginas and cut off their breasts after gang rape? Yes, IRA were cruel, but in any case they operated within the Christian paradigm of inevitable restrictions even in the case of most cruel terrorist attacks.
Only idiots or deliberately biased demagogues would compare Hamas to the IRA.pare Hamas to the IRA.
Hamas didn’t behead babies ‘El Uro’. I suppose you believe a Russian passport was found floating above Nord Stream 2 and that Atta’s passport was found in the burned out ruins of the WTC? Maybe they should make buildings from passports as they can clearly survive temperatures of 500C.
Here u go – direct data from Israel’s SocSec website made easy to understand by France 24 – no beheaded babies: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths
The 1998 Omagh bombing killed 29. Had that atrocity occurred in the US it would have meant a body count of about 5,300.*
By comparison the body count of 9/11 was a mere 2996.
(* Population of US in 1998, 276 million, Northern Ireland 1.5 million, therefore a multiple of about 184.)
No, because Britain has experience with insurrections and knows how to dampen down tinderbox situations. The Israelis have no such experience nor litigation so long as they can rely on their influence within the US political system.
I rather doubt that Israel can be said to have no experience. It has been dealing with major and minor outbreaks of violence for its whole existence. What litigation may have to do with it I fail to grasp..The situation has always been far more complex, diplomatically and in practice, and we should all beware of taking any sides. That said, yes, US internal politics is a factor, but no less important than the meddling (and indifference) of the surrounding nations for reasons of their own, fuelled by nationalism and/or religious motivations.
But Israel has always showed an absolute lack of understanding about how the Palestinians must feel after 75 years of utter misery. The Israelis seem to think if they smite the Palestinians often enough, they will come to see how wrong they are and that they should be grateful to the Israelis for this enlightenment; delusional.
Palestinians feel the way they’re ordered to feel by their murderous leaders, whom they appease by offering their young to them to be “martyred” to fool people like you
Not in raw numbers in one day, no. But many IRA attacks did kill 10 or 12, or more, or roughly 1% of those killed on Oct 7th.
So the more relevant, and proportionate question is; Had the British military responded to say the Birmingham bombing (21 killed), or the Brighton bombing (PM almost killed), or the shelling of Downing Street, etc, by killing 200 -300 people, most of them civilians in Catholic areas of Belfast and Derry, had that happened, would Northern Ireland be the relatively peaceful place it has been for pretty much all of this century?
Of course it wouldn’t
Stop falling for the Israeli propaganda Ian and do some research. There are 124 witness reports from those at the music festival and beyond from Oct 7th who talk about being told to run with their arms in the air to prevent being shot from the skies, how some Hamas came and left their house without taking anything, how tanks fired directly into buildings (in one incident killing 15 Israelis) and how 200 of the bodies burned to a crisp were Palestinians – who clearly didn’t burn themselves. Even the ex-CIA counterintelligence puts the figure as 600 IDF killed by Hamas and 80% of the civilians killed by Israeli security forces.
There is video of the atrocities taken by the terrorists themselves. Reverand Giles Fraser, who writes here, has witnessed it, and written about seeing it. Perhaps you should read what he’s written. It’s available in Unheard’s library. I don’t think he lies.
Riddle me this: why didn’t Hamas offer space in their tunnels to Gazan civilians? Do you actually believe the Hamas official who’s on record as saying that all Gazans wanted to be martyrs?
Arab proverb which sums up Hamas and their useful idiots, “He strikes me & weeps, and then he runs before me weeping and saying that I struck him.
Northern Ireland is part of the UK, so the RAF would have been bombing its own state. The IRA did not govern Northern Ireland, was not elected and did not enjoy widespread support. Catholicism was not committed to the destruction of the Britain and did not have a 20th century track record of consistent barbarism, human rights abuses and terrorism.
The analogy that Mssrs BoB and Stanhope are offering is really quite easy to understand, both parties have murdered numerous civilians, you however don’t want to hear this because of your partisan mind set. You are well represented on unherd (unfortunately).
Yet it seems you have failed to understand the analogy.
Murdered? Look up the meaning before commenting. Do try not to use emotive language unnecessarily and innaccurately.
What a tyrant.
According to most Zionists Gaza and the West Bank are part of a Greater Israel. Until the Palestinians have a state of their own then it’s classed as Israeli soil according to any map
Thanks, your analogy is now watertight. I’m off to correct some cartographers.
Why do the “Palestinians” keep refusing the offers of a state of their own, then?
Why bother with BB? He apparently doesn’t know what would have happened if Hamas had the bomb. It’s probably just a few years away as the current American administration falls all over themselves in the insane attempt to allow Iran to have it. When Iran finally pushed the button, we’ll hear BB suddenly change his tune.
I’ve heard many comments on here justify Israeli policy as essentially “might has right”, with Israel being the stronger party so the Palestinians should simply accept what they’re given. Therefore I’ll assume if the situation is reversed in the future they’ll accept the situation with good grace if the Israelis are forcibly removed from their land?
For what it’s worth I certainly won’t be cheering any Iranian attempt at killing Israeli civilians. I never want to see civilians targeted in any conflict
The Palestinians already a state of their own. It’s called Jordan, where a slim majority of the inhabitants consider themselves Palestinian. But they won’t be satisfied until they eradicate “the Zionist Entity.”
Most of those in Israel are Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews with zero connection to the Holy Land as they hail from Europe. This according to Hebrew and Israeli University studies (plus a CIA report from 2007) that have been looking into the DNA. In which case, if their ancestors were nowhere near the land, their claim to it is somewhat moot.
The main reason that these areas are now Israeli “supervised” is that the surrounding Arab countries wanted Palestine land for themselves – resulting in the lack of a state for the Palestinians.
But then the UK mainland never belonged to Ireland – we didn’t steal the land from them. So it’s a ridiculous comparison.
The population in Ireland before the famine was 8,000,000. During the famine the British exported record levels of crops out of Ireland into Britain, while watching as over 1,000,000 Irish starved to death and some 3,000,000 fled to the US, to save their lives and the lives of their families. There are 7,600,000 people in Ireland now. It has yet to recover.
So because Westminster made some extremely heartless and callous policy decisions that made a famine worse nearly 200 years ago, Israel today is allowed to mercilessly bomb civilian areas in Gaza in retaliation to a terrorist attack?
That’s a rather long bow to draw in my opinion
What is the relevance of carpet bombing to this conversation? This didn’t happen in Ireland and nor is it happening in Gaza.
A third of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged beyond repair (by contrast only 10% of German buildings suffered the same fate throughout the entirety of the Second World War), and in the first two months the IDF dropped the equivalent of both atom bombs exploded over Japan, all this in an area the size of the Isle of Wight. You don’t have to call it carpet bombing if you like but it’s certainly wanton destruction
And in the whole Second World War, the London Blitz killed pretty much the same number of people as the IDF killed in 11 weeks. If you scale up to the UK, the the IDF has killed or injured the whole population of Birmingham twice over.
Really?!? So what do you call the complete destruction of a city of 2m+ people?
Justice
Anger? Desperation? What is the remedy to a backward people who only have one goal in mind. Perhaps this is the only way forward. Everything else seems to have been tried.
Are you truly that stupid? THE UK and US stole the land for their own ‘interests’. Here at UnHerd colonial central, that’s ok – if the victims are Arab.
is this a typo? the word you were looking for is GENOCIDE!
There are 465 million Arabs in the world. There are 5 million Arabs who self identify as Palestinian. So even if you killed them all it wouldn’t be genocide.
Genocide: A crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.
Or ‘in part’. Get it now?
The much touted genocide, and yet the number of Palestinians increases every single year! I always thought that a genocide results in reducing population size.
As for the oft repeated victim figures in Gaza, consider the source! I for one don’t trust Hamas to properly report the colour of the sky, and their death toll numbers call for the greatest scrutiny.
Hamas is not concerned with Palestinian welfare! They don’t care one bit about civilians unless it supports their narrative. This is a terrorist group, and they have proven that they shy away from nothing, including the use of children as human shields, if it helps them achieve their goals.
Hamas is not a liberation movement wanting to establish a Palestinian nation. It seeks the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic empire on its ruins, and we know this because senior Hamas leaders openly say so!
The British did far worse to Hamburg in WWII. Why the double standard regarding Israel?
We should be aiming for a high bar – not a war crime. The problem is that no warmongers like Blair ever get prosecuted, so all leaders think they can get away with murder – of their own people and anybody else. There is no moral compass, that’s one of the reasons (the rest being $$$) why a psychopath like Netanyahu with an approval rating of 4% can bomb the crap out of Gaza and no-one does anything.
My grandfather flew Lancaster bombers in WWII, and participated in the bombing of Dresden in February of 1945. 25,000 people were killed in just three days; almost all of them women, children, and old people. The three-day air raid destroyed 25,000 out of ca. 28,000 buildings in the city.
I am not in a position to judge my grandfather, but he felt guilty about his role in Operation Thunderclap for the rest of his life.
As for the double standard, I think Douglas Murray said it best: the root cause is anti-Semitism. https://youtu.be/zF328-6bZtI?si=OkTqt_FI7GyR9xVY
You’re not there though, are you Simon. Israel has dropped 53,000 tonnes of explosives, that’s 3 times more than the Hiroshima bomb.
The IRA never won any popular election and never controlled any territory. It never had a territory and the economy of a territory to fight to eliminate the existence of Britain and the British to establish an Irish Catholic theocracy extending from the Atlantic to the North Sea.
Hamas won a popular election, now uses the economy of the territory it controls to fight to eliminate the existence of Israel and Jews to establish an ethnically exclusive Arab Muslim theocracy extending from the river to the sea.
Northern Ireland’s troubles were low level intra-community sectarian terrorism and criminal gang fighting and score settling. Less than 1% of the Northern Irish population – on both sides – were ever involved in paramilitary activity. No paramilitaries had any formal support at any level of government inside or outside of Northern Ireland. That is one reason why the eventual settlement of the troubles that saw the IRA give up its arms left the constitutional arrangements unchanged and Northern Ireland part of the UK.
Gaza is a politically united de facto war state. More than 10% of its population is directly and indirectly engaged in the attempted military destruction of its neighbour; Gaza is one large military base and its resources – such as EU aid – diverted to military ends. Hamas is overwhelmingly supported by the people and has huge financial support. There is no political solution that will make Hamas peaceful.
Many British have a poor grasp of the Northern Ireland troubles and what went on. But to even start to compare Gaza and Hamas with Northen Ireland and the IRA is simply bizarre.
Good luck. We are dealing here with a terrorist apologist . No depths to which he will not stoop. I’m wondering now if he is not a member of Hamas. Complete with false name.
Being critical of Israel murdering nearly 10,00 children doesn’t make me an apologist for a deplorable terrorist group whose attack killed 30
It does here at UnHerd colonisers central.
Yaaaaawn.
Woeful historical knowledge of NI on display here! As for large ‘military bases’: Israel is really just one almighty arms dump for US foreign policy. And rather than reflexly slating my opinion, please find out how much money and weaponary the US has diverted to the upkeep of Israel’s blind & inhumane flailings.
Nell Glover, a “terrorist apologist”? I don’t think so. Still, comparing Gaza with Northern Ireland is a valid comparison, so long as we are aware of the differences as well as the similarities.
Hamas and the Provisional IRA are both terrorist organisations. They are irregular ‘armies’, which attempt to impose their political will through indiscriminate violence. The IRA aimed to make life so painful for the British, that they would withdraw from the province. Hamas wants to destabilise Israel, so that the Palestinians rise up in revolt.
So far, as Patrikarakos’ excellent and balanced piece makes clear, it’s working perfectly. Doing what terrorists want you to do is rarely a good idea.
Incidentally, I was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, and I write this in front of a roaring fire in east Belfast. So I have some acquaintance with the Troubles.
Another difference is that the Jews are indigenous to the land but the British aren’t. We are fighting for our homeland against nasty (nice word) terrorists.
55% of Jews in Israel trace their ethnicity to Europe, the Americas and ex Soviet states. How is this indigenous to the Middle East?
It isn’t!
In fact ‘they’ should have been given Austria as compensation for the Holocaust in 1945, as of all the Germans they were/are the most culpable.
The Jews are not indigenous to Israel. You could say a) All those living in Israel/ Palestine in, say, 1900 were indigenous (as they were not there by some coordinated politically motivated immigration). Or b) There are no indigenous peoples as the area has always been a crossroads as people have come and gone and stayed. Or c) The indigenous inhabitants are those from whom the Israelites stole it when they came out of Egypt. a) = a very small percentage of Jews.
Palestinians who didn’t leave the land have 97% ancient Hebrew DNA according to various Israel University studies.
Indigenous to the land? You sure about that? Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews hail from Europe. Some from Germany, Turkey and some from the Khazars who converted to Judaism in 740 AD. These people (Golda, Ben G, BB) have no ancient Hebrew DNA and zero ancestral connection to the Holy Land and don’t even believe in God.
Gaza has 2 million people living there, and around 20,000 Hamas fighters, which would be fairly close to your 1% analogy for Northern Ireland would it not?
The proportion of Hamas is far larger and the general population is very supportive of their terrorism against Jews.
The Provos are estimated to have had around 10,000 members at the height of the Troubles, when Northern Irelands population was around 1.5 million. A slight majority of those would have been Unionist at the time so you can say they had 10k members out of sympathetic population of around 700k. This is fairly close to Hamas having 20k-30k fighters from Gaza’s population of 2 million
But then all Israelis pass through the IDF and remain reservists (including women), so a far greater percentage of the population are ‘armed combatants’ than in Gaza. And nearly all non Arab Israelis support the war on Gaza.
You asked them all did you?
You asked them all did you? YouGov in Gaza is it? No you didn’t. Most weren’t even born when Hamas was elected in 2006 and anyone under 35 would have been too young to vote. Maybe try reading something other than UnHerd, UnHerd reader.
1:How many IRA killers were ever extradited from the US?
2:What was NORAID?
3:Did the Irish Republic both overtly and covertly support the IRA?
4:Please do stop using that euphemism the ‘troubles’, it was squalid little war, or ‘low intensity operation’ to get technical.
5: Do you really believe the IRA have “given up their arms”?
Had a similar insurrection occurred amongst say the Latino population of the USA and raged from 1971-1998, it would have claimed the lives of over 500,000 souls.
What drivel. We didn’t steal the England mainland from the Irish, did we.
False analogy. Hamas is not the IRA, Hamas is the Nazis, and the Gaza is a small Nazi Germany.
In addition, there are far less then 10 thousand killed children. I realize that rounding up makes your arguments more impressive, but hardly any more compelling.
Driven from their homes and carpet bombing? “Driven from homes” means to save lives of civilians, “carpet bombing” means to kill as much as possible. – If you use demagogic techniques, at least try to ensure that your arguments are not mutually contradictory
Obviously you are completely blind to reality but before you broadcast further apologies for genocide please Google something like “white phosphorous Palestine”.
Google white phosphorous Palestine (Palestine? Oh right, yeah, I see where you’re coming from), and find some extremist nut job leftwing conspiracist website. Nah. Won’t waste my time. If there were anything so deliciously slanderous to Israelis as white phosphorous attacks, it’d be all over the MSM, and the UN would pontificate about nothing else for months. Be less credulous.
It is. Try harder. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/human-rights-watch-says-israel-used-white-phosphorous-gaza-lebanon-2023-10-12/ There’s even a pic for you from Israel’s use of it in Lebanon: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/lebanon-evidence-of-israels-unlawful-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-southern-lebanon-as-cross-border-hostilities-escalate/
If I’m not mistaken, but correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t believe the IRA built a huge terror network of tunnels under hospitals, schools and churches, and daily launched missiles into mainland England. Had that been the case, I suspect the response from the British Government may have been far more severe. You can’t compare apples and oranges.
Nor did 90% of them wake up each day praying for the death of every Englishman?
I disagree, that is precisely what many prayed for and still do.
In yet, for all the whinging, it’s actually Israel wiping Gaza off the map.
No they didn’t have to as thanks to the Irish diaspora there were thousands of ‘safe houses’ to scuttle off to!
I do wonder if Ms Nell Clover’s was one of them?
So according to most on here the RAF would have been justified in bombing peoples homes in Bogside, and any civilian deaths would have been the fault of the Provo’s?
Yes it does appear like that!
However in the event ‘we’ decided on a far more moderate policy.
Because we’re a civilised society that is able to understand that people aren’t responsible for the crimes of others
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe we stole mainland England from the Irish in 1948.
You are writing like Oct 7th murder and rape spree was an isolated attack and the last 22 years of tens of thousands of rockets , mostly after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, were just party games, not deadly bombs.
They didn’t kill as many as they could have otherwise, because unlike Hamas, Israel spent serious money on defence of their people, not on trying to exterminate their neighbour’s people.
They’re not defending their people Brendan. They are defending their colonisation project. The Israeli leadership (BB doesn’t believe in God, neither did Golda or Ben G) is merely a holding base for the US of A. If they cared about their people, they’ve have defended them on Oct 7th, not left the gates open and taken 5 hours (at the earliest point) to respond.
Spot on Billy Bob. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
If the IRA had done to our women what Hamas did to Israeli civilians you can bet your life we’d have levelled Belfast.
See Dresden for examples…
You don’t know what they did Avro – you weren’t there. Where there’s occupation, there will always be resistance.
I’ve viewed enough Hamas guncam footage to know you’re talking nonsense mate – I’ve seen exactly what they did hence my comment. Have a great day.
Well, couple of key differences mate. First, unlike in Gaza, N Ireland has (or had) a majority British settler population, descended from lowland Scots and N English. Inconveniently, the 2 NI communities were not neatly segregated, but lived (and continue to live), side by side in a random fashion. Thus, wiping out large numbers of the Irish community to kill a few IRA members would inevitably have meant killing significant numbers of local British also. So, while it was discussed as an option on the British isde, it was never really a very practicable option, even though of course various Unionist hotheads (e.g. George Seawright) occasionally called for Irish republican villages in NI to be carpet bombed by the RAF. Instead, and after some early old-style “bash the natives” style disasters, the British learned fast and began to use an effective blend of serious (behind the scenes) political engagement, increased administrative fairness, and widespread use of intelligence (informers). This is the most effective way to deal with paramilitaries embedded in a community. The Israelis / the IDF are no mugs and well know this too. In fact, recently, the sensible and hard-headed Ben Wallace reminded them of this: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/former-defence-secretary-ben-wallace-urges-israel-to-learn-from-northern-ireland-in-gaza-conflict/a268550014.html
But Israel’s aims are very different from those of the British different in that they don’t wish merely to “defeat Hamas”, as naïve Westerners think, their obvious long term goal is large scale clearances / ethnic cleansing and de factor absorption of the Gaza territory into Israel.
As Thoreau remarked, judge Israel’s intent from its ruthless actions, not from its honeyed words.
A smart, long-term approach aimed purely at neutralising Hamas, is not what Israel wants, for heaven’s sake.
This is very unlike Britain, who has always been largely indifferent about NI. Remember, the British even discussed pulling out with the IRA in the early 1970s: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30002102
You get all these decent Western folk, convinced that Israel must have attacked in a blind fury, with no or little thought about what to do next.
C’mon folks, it’s a well-thought plan, there is a hard-headed long-term strategy at play here, and it’s working a treat. It only appears inchoate if you’re a bit gullible. That is, if you’re naive enough to wonder about “how Gaza and Israel will get along after the war”, you’re obviously tender-hearted enough / soft-headed enough to assume that there ever was any serious intention to have a Gaza afterwards that would even need to be dealt with.
Well, fair dues, this guy is honest about the ethnic cleansing:
https://twitter.com/AsafRonel/status/1741363175314919482
Legally, genocide includes “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; …”
Note “or in part”.
However, such nuances are lost on the hoi polloi who assume that, for a charge of genocide or ethnic cleansing to stick, the carnage and/or displacement must be absolute, i.e. nobody remaining in situ / nobody left alive etc.
Hence, in terms of popular PR in the indulgent Western media, it’s a win for Israel, as “there still will be Palestinians in Gaza” (just not very many of them lol); and the rest can conveniently be dismissed either as terrorists or who just coincidentally decided they would prefer to live elsewhere, for “humanitarian reasons”.
This is the Orwellian meaning of “ethnic cleansing corridors”, oops sorry “HUMANITARIAN” corridors lol. There, corrected myself ha ha.
This is how they do it, the stick we know about, more civilians killed in 2 months than Putin has managed in 2 years (“surgical” strikes indeed), but also the carrots – backed with endless and unlimited US cash, exploiting the relative impecuniousness of neighbouring states:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/israel-latest-weapon-palestine-egypt-debt-gaza/
Israel has read the room well, and perceives, correctly, that the governments and populations of powerful states in the world are quite relaxed about a spot of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Wholescale ethnic cleansing in Gaza would of course be cheered to the echo by right wingers in Britain and in the US.
(Churchill would of course have approved. In 1937, in testimony Churchill thought would remain secret, he spoke about the Arab inhabitants of Palestine to the Peel Commission on a Jewish Homeland that the British had set up.
Churchill said, “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time.
“I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia.
“I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has come in and taken their place.”
That viewpoint is still extant in London, in Washington and in Tel Aviv.)
The attack by Hamas (of course an organisation that Israel had not-so-secretly been funding all along, as, in addition to the obvious divide-and-conquer part, it’s in any event strategically preferable to deal with blatantly unreasonable opponents (their predictable rhetoric and lack of political and PR nous means you can easily justify never having to engage, since there are risks of a compromise when one engages, and the Israelis certainly do not wish to be manoeuvred into any sort of tedious do-gooder compromise, when all that land and offshore gas is available for the taking) than e.g., the more reasonable PLO or PA) was a golden opportunity for Netanyahoo (he doesn’t give a fig about dead liberal kibbutzis), and Israel is on a roll, and final victory for them looks increasingly likely. Soon, Gaza will de facto have ceased to exist, and the W Bank is on a similar trajectory, at which point the Israeli project will (for now at least) be complete. Prorsum!
This does not take in to account the thousands of rockets Hamas have fired at Israel over the years. The UK response may have been different had there been frequent rockets fired indiscriminately at civilian populations
The Israelis have known for many years that their strategy of deterrence (you kill one of us, we’ll kill twenty of you) doesn’t deter Hamas attacks, it encourages them because mass killings of Palestinians by Israel ignites global anti-semitism. Hamas couldn’t care less about Palestinian suffering. Containment hasn’t worked either, look what happened when the border fence was breached on 7 October. Israel is now in an impossible situation, having fallen into Hamas’s trap and destroying any hopes of winning Palestinian hearts and minds for a peaceful two-state solution. And as a lifelong admirer of Israel and its achievements, I’m finding it’s becoming increasingly difficult to feel much sympathy for them, especially the settlers.
Nobody was concerned about winning the hearts and minds of nazis. And if you find it difficult to feel sympathy for those fighting fascist totalitarianism, then perhaps you rather admire it.
I’m not sure you had it.
https://www.msn.com/…/i-saw-the-children…/ar-AA1m3dAH
“Israel is now in an impossible situation, having fallen into Hamas’s trap and destroying any hopes of winning Palestinian hearts and minds for a peaceful two-state solution”
Uhm…… no, sorry.
*Since* October 7th Israel has lost Palestinian hearts and minds??
These would be the same blackened, diseased Palestinian hearts inside of the Hamas terrorists (and civilians who followed them in) who murdered 1,400 people in a single morning, raped women and children to death and kidnapped hundreds of others as bargaining chips and sex slaves?
The same diseased hearts in the crowds of thousands of whooping Palestinian civilians cheering wildly as Hamas dragged bloodstained bodies and dead bodies of captured civilians through the streets.
You are concerned that *since* Oct 8th those people have turned against the Israelis?
Wake up.
The Palestinians are a lost cause. They should be expelled en masse. Expelled from Gaza, expelled from Judea & Samaria.
Sounds like you’d support a final solution to deal with Israel’s Palestinian problem. Now where have I heard that phrase before?
Yes it is quite extraordinary how that huge reservoir of sympathy garnered after ‘Mr Richard Dimbleby liberated Belsen’ has been dissipated over the years.
Even Aeschylus couldn’t have done better.
Most Israelis aren’t Semites, so it isn’t anti-Semitism.
And the leaders of Iran, Qatar and Turkey, together with all the western money that UNRWA & the UN have seen line the pockets of Hamas leaders & used to build Hamas terror are COMPLICIT ..
Although I’m completely supportive of Israel’s response to the attacks on Oct 7th, I’m equally unsupportive of the attacks of the settlers. I’ve seen video of them taking advantage of the war in Gaza to run Palestinian farmers off their land and take it for themselves. It’s painful and inexcusable to watch. Of course, this has been going on before the October 7th attacks and is a contributing factor to the war. The settlers should and could be stopped so why aren’t they?
They were often punished in the past, under other Israeli governments. And military reprisals and/or operations against Hamas were restrained, so that if a Hamas commander was hiding in his grandchildrens’ nursery, the IDF would let him live, in order to spare his grandkids.
Up until 7 October, potable water and electricity still flowed into Gaza from Israeli utilities, and Gazans often crossed into Israeli areas for employment.
Israel still exercises considerable restraint, notifying their enemies of incoming attacks, and allowing civillians (amongst whom are likely Hamas operatives) to escape, which is an option Hamas frequently doesn’t allow their own people.
But beheadings, rapes, gory tortures, and gruesome deaths (well beyond the bombings & occasional shootings that were the usual IRA tactics) have the habit of eliminating sympathy for the enemy. The gloves have come off, and the rubble will bounce.
Palestinians, who were in general celebrating Hamas’ psychotic orgy of carnage, should hardly be so astonished.
And, as vicious as the IRA could be, they did not to my knowledge murder and rape hundreds of young people in one go at a rock concert, nor did they long for the death of every Protestant in Ulster.
There exist no films of Provos beheading Protestants with a garden hoe, nor of them shooting the family dog, nor torturing children to death before murdering and raping their parents.
If there were, I’m fairly certain my government wouldn’t have tried to pressure the British authorities for restraint. But in any event the actions of the British government were largely self restrained, excepting one or two incidents that were moreso low level, brutish bungling (Bloody Sunday, for example) than any official policy of intentional, punitive cruelty towards the Irish.
The Biden administration did pressure the Israelis into accepting a brief cease-fire, ostensibly in exchange for hostages, which Hamas almost immediately violated.
Biden’s State Department is also infested with Obama acolytes, who are inexplicably generous towards, and in several instances compromised by, the Iranians.
The Obama era staffers have made no bones about their pro-Palestinian sympathies (hence their protest letters circulating through US embassy and consulate networks) and these attitudes are frighteningly common among our hard left progressives, as is an appalling level of antisemitism. Many Democrats in our government today (and our federal employees are largely Democrats) have a low level of support for Israel, and grudgingly tolerate Israel’s existence because of liberal Jewish loyalty and generosity towards their party.
It’s probably to the good that American Jews are very politically active, and very politically powerful, among the Democrats. If they weren’t, their lives could be far more precarious in the States, and in Israel as well.
The Biden Administration’s support for Israel is stronger, somewhat, than Obama’s near hostility towards Israel, but their support for Israel is far more qualified than imagined.
Boy, you went way off topic in answer to my question “Why does Israel allow the settlers to continue to steal land from Palestinian Farmers?”
I’d have thought even a fairly shallow acquaintance with the Old Testament will tell you why the Israeli settlers are being allowed to run the Palestinians off their land.
I don’t have even a shallow acquaintance with the Old Testament, I’ve never read The Bible.
Hamas did know what Israel’s response would be that’s part of the plan.
Settlers aggravate matters hugely and I don’t agree with their actions, but that doesn’t resolve the problem that Hamas doesn’t want a solution. The Settlers heighten tension and this should be stopped. All Hamas’s deliberate terrorism does (see the difference between Settlers and Hamas?) is drive Israel to the right – and it must be noted that they were liberal enough not to endorse Bibi with a majority. I wonder what the vote would be now, but I’m betting the sophistication of Israelis would still win out.
The job must be now be done. Enough. I have not seen Jews celebrating deaths en masse, nor have I seen them celebrating killing of civilians. I have seen Muslims do it and even though this is not their only voice it must be said, it is an overwhelming voice coming from their land of choice – the West.
You don’t think Hamas were deliberately allowed to create havoc to give ‘Bibi’ the chance to be a ‘hero’ and drive out the Palestinians from Gaza first and then elsewhere . Lebensraum in ‘Judaea and Samaria ‘ It’s slightly hard to see how the Israeli could have been quite so inept . It’s almost as though a house holder in a dodgy area deliberately kept the windows unlocked and the house unprotected .
I don’t understand why Israelis are so astonished by the level of reprisals? How would you react if someone stole your home, land, killed your relatives, humiliated you for decades and then you watched as they built on your land and stole more of it, limiting you electricity to 4 hours per day, cutting off the water supply at will? You’d have rolled over would you? Never judge a man until you’ve walked in his shoes.
The Arabs in Israel deserve no more sympathy than minorities in many countries. Anybody crying for the hundreds of thousands kicked out of Kuwait? Sudan? Black September? The reason sympathy is elicited for the people above is obvious.
Car ramming, stabbing, shooting, suicide bombing? It’s done to Jews. Tell your boys to throw rocks at your police. Israeli Arabs could live in peace and many do. Apartheid? Same hospitals, restaurants, bathrooms, professionals, MDs, entrepreneurs, universities, etc. Everything was open to Arabs and Jews alike. Not so much now. This author ignores the ubiquitous Holy Jihad. Does anybody need Jihad explained?
Like George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi Jews made the British leave. Then there were the 3?, 5? wars of self-defense? Jews fought and died for the land and it’s the Arabs that encroach upon Jewish towns and villages. Only Jews build fences with lights facing out to guard themselves against the Holy Jihad.
Now, how can Arabs be trusted? Before October 7th Arabs earned good money working as they mapped out and planned their surprise attack- their murderous sucker punch taking hundreds of hostages old and young. 1,200 killed that day. Teens at a music festival. I could repeat the telling of horrors. Now without Arab labor and the call up of soldiers, Jews would rather crops rot in the fields than trust Jihadists.
And that’s what they are. Aren’t you sick of the media hiding their criminal behavior, infringement, intrusion and intentions in London, Paris, Stockholm etc.? Sheiks had many sharecroppers on their land. When those Sheiks sold their land they knew they’d get cash and a plus. The sharecroppers would say it was their land and fight like Arabs do.
Israel used to be sparse with gun permits. Now thousands of licenses are being approved. Israel gave Gaza as a land-for-peace experiment. In Oslo, Israel gave thousands of weapons to PA police as an experiment in self control. We may see bloody results of that experiment too.
So here we are. Sorry, Eastern Europe isn’t an ancestral homeland for Jews. There’s no going back. What’s one more war of self-defense in a neighborhood of deathly hate? How many times must citizens run to bomb shelters in days, weeks, months or years? You can call it resistance. We call it existence, survival and destiny. So do your worst and we shall do ours and may the disproportionally stronger one win.
Now, how can Arabs be trusted?
There’s a question no one else is asking. Instead, some will say “what about the Israelis?” Well, what about them? Leave them alone and see how that works out.
Yes Jihad is an obnoxious concept and behind a lot of the attitudes of Muslims to Jews in Israel / Palestine.
However didn’t Begin also make
Religious claims to Israeli ‘ownership’ of what he called Judea and Samaria (to explicitly include the West Bank) it is hardly surprising the local Arabs would be attracted to extremist Islam , given old testament claims to their land made by the Israeli government . Seems to me a sequence of provocations.
And why did Egypt, Syria and Jordan attack in ’67 and ’73? Was it because they thought it was their land?
If I were a correspondent, I would ask how many relatives he has in Gaza and what “relatives” are in his understanding. I don’t even want to dispute the numbers, I would like to better understand the local mentality. But, alas, the correspondent seems more concerned with making an impression than with providing insight.
Yes, that is food for thought!! I have about 5 family members living throughout the world, 70 does seem a bit excessive.
I have 22 first cousins (I think). If you included their spouses, children, second cousins and the like I could get up near 70 I reckon, and our birth rates are a long way behind that of Gaza.
Goodness. What is your ‘our’? I can only muster a half portion of that. Then the half portion only produced a handful. My ‘our’ is part of Africa and they can beat a lot of punters here. You must see the problem. Birth rates in the West are plummeting and rising hugely in parts of the world.
I might be pressing some buttons here, but it would be interesting to measure IQ to birth rate. Not sophistication – just IQ. Unless there is deliberate increase in birth rate.
That does rather sound like the spirit of ‘Apartheid’ lives on, which under the circumstances is not that surprising.
My “our” is English, even though I’ve since disappeared to the antipodes.
Your opinions sound more like eugenics to me, it appears you pine for the good old days of apartheid. It’s amazing how you regularly accuse me of antisemitism and then seemingly throw out rather racist opinions that largely disappeared with the fall of a certain German regime in the 40’s, and that others seemingly agree with you.
For what it’s worth no, I don’t agree with you in regards to their being a link between IQ and birth rates. There’s definitely a link between how wealthy a society is and the birth rate, though I think this more to do with birth control and cost of living pressures
I do not wish to engage in any sort of bigotry, but consanguinous marriages over many generations do lower the IQs of their societies, and aren’t uncommon in clan-based societies. It’s been reported that about half of Palestinians are the product of consanguinous unions.
Be careful…. Mention IQ and logic leaves the room and slurs begin. The people have been well trained.
We’re just not as racist as yourself. It was a tragedy when apartheid finished in your opinion wasn’t it?
No, I voted for the end of apartheid as a matter of principle, while knowing we were on a slippery slope. Have you ever done that with your future?
Well if you consider how many generations Jews lived in Shtetls in Eastern Europe , and don’t let’s get started with consanguineous marriages among the Haredi Jews in Israel ,London and New York .
Nothing clan-based there?
Why are the IQs highest in places like Japan, China and Korea?
You mean rich countries which have a strong education culture?
No, they do not allow large amounts of immigration.
70 in the same place? And yes birth rates in Gaza would be high because Allah encourages it to make more Muslims.
Mostly in the same general area yes. I’ve left, there’s a couple in France and a couple in the west country somewhere and I few I’ve no idea but the bulk are still close to where I grew up. Obviously if I was born in Gaza we wouldn’t be allowed to leave so would all be in the same place
Billy Bob who left for the Antipodes which allows hugely controlled immigration. You are a fraud imo.
You know nothing of my reasons for leaving. It was essentially a drunken holiday that got out of hand
Why wouldn’t you be allowed to leave? Palestinians are going to the US, making a bundle, and going back to build huge mansions on the West Bank.
Gaza is not in the West Bank.
I am in my 70s so it does not seem unlikely that, as my father was one of 8, I have more than 70 relatives across 3 generations. You are not a yardstick, Claire, for the size of families!
“Every day, I watch Al-Jazeera from when I wake up until one or two in the morning.”
I’m sure that’s helpful, kinda like watching MSNBC all day in the States.
It must get a bit repetitious.
Jewish settlers are the crazy religious zealots for wanting to live in JUDEA, but Al Aqsa mosque built on the remnants of the Jewish Temple is divinely Muslim, because Mohammed flew there on his horse Buraq in a dream? Right.
Hamas’s horror attack started this cycle.
My surname is Saxon (according to Google anyway) so does that mean I should be allowed to go over to Germany and kick a family off their land, seeing as some distant ancestor of mine (not as distant as many Jewish settlers claim to the Middle East mind you) probably lived on that land in the past? Should those with Celtic surnames be allowed to displace those with Norman surnames in England for the same reason? If not why should a Jewish settler from Europe with no known ancestry from the Middle East be able to displace a Palestinian who has farmed the land for generations?
There was a two state solution – the Palestinians were given Jordan. Sooner or later that is where they must go, and stay.
Except that, in common with other neighbouring Arab States, Jordan doesn’t want Palestinian refugees either, too many bad memories of Black September 1970 when 300,000 Palestinian refugees flowed into Jordan following the 1967 Six-Day War against Israel. Jordan gave them safe haven and shelter, yet in such gratitude to their benevolent hosts, the PLO fedayeen attempted armed insurrection and the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan, even trying to kill King Hussain of Jordan himself. A bloody campaign ensued with Jordan finally expelling all the Palestinians. History shows that they make for difficult neighbours and even more dangerous guests. This is why the neighbouring Arab States will only accept Palestinian workers on short-term contracts but under no circumstances will allow Palestinian refugees’ entry. Black September was a great example of how the Arab nations despise the Palestinians, and their support of them would only go as far as to conceivably encourage and, in some cases, tacitly help the Palestinians to eradicate the Jews without direct involvement themselves.
The Lebanese had a similar experience. PLO fighters played a significant role in starting their civil war which lasted 15 years.
In what alternate reality were they “given Jordan”? Ask the Jordanians whether that’s accurate. Neither Lebanon nor Jordan nor Iran nor any other state that purports to stand up for the Palestinians will take in many of them when it comes down to it, not yet at least.
Most Jordananians have ‘Palestinian’ Arab roots.
I believe in the original carve-up, the plan was to allocate 78% of the territory that is now Jordan to the Palestinians. However, the British government at the time did one of their customary double-deals and strangely, little more has been heard about this since
The original carve up split what is now Israel into two parts with the Jews having the slightly larger area, with a few specially administered areas such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem. TransJordan was nothing to do with it as it was a seperate country
Those are details I wasn’t aware of, and I admit I’m far from an expert on historical or present-day conditions in the region. But I keep coming come across claims that I’m quite sure are one-sided or only partly true, stated like established facts, or missed chances that could have been so easily grasped at key moments in the past.
Maybe, in one or two isolated cases, but the reality is more complicated than the claims suggest and there’s no blanket consensus on these things. I think I could get most experts to agree with me there.
“Neither Lebanon nor Jordan nor Iran nor any other state that purports to stand up for the Palestinians will take in many of them when it comes down to it, not yet at least.” Perhaps you should ask yourself why that’s the case?
Egypt does not much care for them either although many Palestinians have Egyptian surnames.
Well James has spoken.
I agree with elements of the point of view you express on this fraught topic, but you indulge in some strained or free-swinging parallels that don’t help your case.
First there was your South Africa comparison, which you “doubled-down on” when challenged.
Now you’re asserting a connection between Saxons and the members of a global Diaspora? After the Norman Conquest, were the Saxons expelled from England, as Jews were in 1290? Were the Saxons targeted by a total elimination attempt that was “half-successful” 80 years ago? Are there no Saxons in present-day Saxony, so that their ancestral presence is under existential threat?
The prospect of a two-state solution must re-emerge from these ashes. Co-existence is a mutual endeavor and the world needs to be involved too. Because these current residents on either side of a religious, ethnic, and cultural divide cannot, will not work it out. Not enough of them, on either side, want to. But the wider world is paying for all this madness too.
Your perspective pushes back against the pro-Netanyahu extremists that thrive here. But your perspective is itself an extreme one most of the time. Please dial it back. The truth dwells somewhere between the warring extremes.
I’ll admit that I’m prone to exaggerations on my opinions, but it’s often done as a way to highlight what I deem to be the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of others.
How people can honestly believe that a Jewish American can have more claim to a Middle Eastern plot of land than a Palestinian farmer whose family have tended it for generations, simply because some people who shared his religion may have been in the area thousands of years ago to me is an absolutely stupid proposition, yet many on here seem happy to defend it. And while the South Africa analogy obviously isn’t an identical case, it’s still a fact that Israel controls large areas of land yet severely restricts the rights and movements of those born there, in effect making them very much second class citizens as was the case in apartheid South Africa. The Americans also seem happy for Israel to kill thousands of civilians in response to a terrorist attack, yet not only funded the IRA but put enormous diplomatic pressure on Britain whenever they pushed back against that terrorist group despite civilian casualties being almost non existent in comparison
It’s futile to try and work throughout history what country was justified in what action they took. There is no justice. Countries will do what it’s their best interest, they always have and they always will.
Fair enough in your opening paragraph.
Some individual Americans were in favor of IRA actions, but where’s you evidence for American support in a general or governmental sense?
The US has long been far more closely allied with Britain than Ireland
Also you claim that The Americans*, as a group, seem “happy” about the status quo in Gaza? Is that the message coming from Biden and members of his cabinet such as Blinken?
It’s hard to combat ridiculousness with more ridiculousness. I’ll stop objecting for now and just look for the parts of your comments that seem more balanced.
*Do you mean the right-leaning, heavily pro-Israel Americans who comment on this website?
I was referring to Noraid and the like in regards to the IRA funding, which always had a blind eye turned towards it due to large numbers of American politicians claiming to be Irish because their Grandad once owned an Irish Wolfhound (looking at you Biden!)
The Americans have also allowed the Israelis to get away with some appalling behaviour in my opinion. By this I mean the American government, however the general population there is much more sympathetic to the Israeli position than any other country is. I think you’d be hard pressed to find another nation whose citizens are more pro Israeli than Palestinian to be honest, America is quite unique in that regard. How long this remains the case with Americas changing demographics however I’m not so sure, which is why the IDF doing so much to alienate international support is a dangerous long term tactic in my eyes
Those remarks make more sense to me.
Changing demographics will do little to erase singular American support for Israel and its people. More than 6 million of the 8 million non-Israeli Jews in the world live here in the States.
As you know, American Zionists were primary architects in the creation of the modern State of Israel. In addition to the large and influential Jewish-American community at the time, there was also major general guilt for the numbers of Jewish would-be refugees who were refused entry into the USA between 1933-1945, many of whom then perished for well-documented reasons. I think some of that Gentile guilt– or sense of duty–was justified.
Your plausible claim of America’s unique level of support for Israel–in the face of an international community far more sympathetic to the Palestinians–also suggests that Israel, surrounded by hostile neighbors, deserves a champion and a defender. Perhaps not one that is so one-sidedly sympathetic, but a defender nonetheless.
I wish rah-rah advocates on both sides of the Gaza-Israel barrier could approach this crisis with less anger and other raw emotion. But how can that be, and how can anyone expect that right now, when their loved ones, on either side, may be dead, or captured?
I am not some pro-Israel no-matter-what war drum jingoist. I think Netanyahu and his Likud Party pals have had a dreadful net-impact on an already bad situation. But I think Israel deserves some defending too, of a sort that might not happen if the forces joined against them are allowed to operate too freely, across the whole Arab world. And among some anti-Jewish actors that inhabit every pocket of the world, large or small, where they are likely to have at least a few Jewish neighbors they can find excuses to hate.
I agree with all of that, I’ve absolutely no problem with Israel forcefully defending itself. They’d get my full support if the strung up every Hamas commander off the nearest lamppost. However what I don’t agree with is them killing thousands of civilians to do so, especially as those civilians have nowhere to run due to Israel’s blockade of the area. Every conflict unfortunately will have civilian casualties, but the amount killed in the current one is simply appalling, and starts to resemble the sort of collective punishment dished out by a certain regime in the 40’s rather than being a precise military operation you’d expect from a civilised armed forces
We can conclude this exchange on a note of total agreement. I could quibble but I won’t. Please have the last word if you’d like to.
How kind.
You’ve tried hard, AJ, to rely on civility and reason in an unpromising context. I admire you for that. As for me, though, I’m not yet ready to refrain from “quibbling” or to let Billy Bob have the last word.
For one thing, the main obstacle to civilians leaving Gaza is not Israel but Hamas (along with Egypt, which controls the southern border of Gaza).
Moreover, we don’t actually know how many civilians in Gaza have been killed. We have as evidence only what Hamas tells us and some emotionally troubling images. But let’s say that the number is notably higher than it is in other conflicts in other parts of the world (including the Islamic world). How many would make it too high? And how is that number established? International law has relied on centuries of just-war theory to establish the notion of “proportionality” but doesn’t define that word arithmetically. Rather, it defines that word as the relation between a legitimate end (such as self-defense) and the necessary means to achieve it. It might or might not be that Israel has exceeded proportionality, but I’d have to study the case carefully in view of realistic alternatives to the necessary means for Israel to accomplish its legitimate end. Actually, this is not quibbling. It’s the way that we make moral arguments (which, by definition, cannot be reduced to emotional reactions).
Finally, Billy Bob makes the same mistake that he refutes when discussing it with supporters of Israel. The mistake is historicism. It’s true that an American or European Jew, as such, has no more legitimacy is Israel than a Palestinian Arab. But not all Israeli Jews are from Europe or America. The majority came to Israel after being expelled by Arab countries. And not all Israeli Arabs are from the British mandate of Palestine. Many were from Egypt, Trans-Jordan and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Some were (and are) nomadic bedouin tribes who are indifferent to national borders. And why argue only about the recent past? What about the ancient ancestors of both groups? In my opinion, this argument is beside the point. It makes no sense, morally, which group can trace its remote ancestors to which place first. Moreover, it makes no sense even theologically, at least from a Jewish perspective. Scripture says that God gave the land to ancient Israelites, sure, but also that God threw them out of the land–not once but twice. As the ultra-orthodox insist, the only legitimate Jewish state would be a messianic one (not the secular state of Israel). What matters now, at any rate, is that both groups are there and should live together by partitioning the land between them.
It’s true that the partition plan of 1948 gave slightly more territory to the Israelis than to the Arabs. It’s true also, however, that most Israeli territory was the Negev desert, and most Arab territory was fertile. As for Trans-Jordan, that was not part of the partition plan. But most of its people, to this day, consider themselves Palestinian Arabs.
Here’s a minor point about history (although it takes on some importance for current political reasons). You say that American Zionists were the state of Israel’s main architects in 1948. I’m not so sure of that. I think that the British were.
It’s true that guilt for indifference to Jewish suffering during the inter-war period influenced both the British and the United Nations in 1948. But they didn’t create the new state ex nihilo. Jews had been living there in significant communities since the late nineteenth century (and smaller ones, such as Jerusalem and Safed, for many centuries). The British, in cooperation with the United Nations, created two new states by partitioning the British mandate.
It’s true also that Netanyahu has allowed the Israelis to build “settlements” in both Israeli and Palestinian parts of the West Bank. (Netanyahu has never been popular among Israelis in general, however, and never had even a bare majority in the Knesset.) This definitely contributes to (but did not create) the current impasse. On moral grounds, I disagree with those who argue that Netanyahu’s policy on the West Bank is excusable by claiming that no Palestinian group could agree to negotiate on partition and that several had resorted to recurring violence. Whatever the circumstances, these Israeli villages should never have been there. They continue to defy both common sense and common decency, which makes them inherently wrong. Unfortunately, the latest Hamas attack will discourage many Israelis from removing them.
Since were into what seems like at least the outskirts of Quibbling Territory: What if my wording were “among the primary architects”?
If you’re trying to establish a general standard wherein proportionality can only be assessed or opined on after intensive, rigorous study–or after all relevant events have occurred–I disagree. The facts may never become sufficiently clear to some, especially to those with rather fixed views on either side.
I understand that life in Israel emerges from a complex history, and exists in a fraught context (an understatement) one that I only partially understand. Comment board chimings-in, even those that attempt to observe civility and balance, are not held to rigorous standards of objectivity or strict research protocols, to put it mildly. Nor should they be. However, it’s best to maintain civility and balance whenever possible, which you consistently do yourself, Paul. I’ve been less consistent on that, but attempting to “agree to disagree” more often of late, rather than prolong or further spoil exchanges that have already gone sour. Sometimes, I still think direct opposition and forceful pushback is totally called for. The threshold and topics of central concern will, of course, vary from commenter to commenter. Billy Bob sometimes just hurls invective or “plays the troll”, but he is capable of more, and sometimes shows it*.
Personally, I find the pro-Israel “argument from general mistreatment” of Jews to be quite compelling. I mean the claim that the global exile of Jewish communities, the enduring diaspora, made (and continues to make) a strong case for the necessity of a dedicated Jewish homeland, preferably one that is is some sense an ancestral one.
Of course that is not interchangeable with unbounded support for anything that Israel does or could do from a political or military standpoint.
I think the Israeli response is understandable and warranted in kind and principle. But I also think we are looking at a lack of proportionality in that response at this point, in terms of scale and pace. Too deadly to civilians, too hastily prosecuted. To forestall claims about a suspiciously high bar or curated standard for Israel alone: The American military has “overdone it” in a comparable way in many instances, for example in Iraq. One gentile American’s opinion.
Happy New Year.
*Also, some boards get way too chummy and become lazy venting chambers or forums of loud agreement. Some puncturing–if it’s not merely moronic or abusive–can be better than nothing sometimes.
***comment posted above
There won’t be a two-state solution – it clearly doesn’t work. What there won’t be is a Jewish State as Israel is now an embarrassment to those Jews who refused to build a country which relied on the expulsion and misery of Arabs. Those who did, have zero connection to The Holy Land as they come from Europe – and that is where they should return – instead of spouting David and Solomon nonsense which has largely been debunked by carbon dating.
A zero-state “solution”? As if they’d receive general welcome in Europe, and in willful disregard of the European horrors that helped occasion modern-day Israel in the first place!
You seem quite ignorant of the 1 million Jews living in Arab states who were also disappropriated of their homes and belongings in 1948 when Israel was created and forced to flee. They were allowed one suitcase each, all their possessions were seized by the arabs. These 1m did actually have ancestry in the Middle East for generations and theoretically have as equal rights to restitution as the Palestinians. Many migrated to Israel, others to the West.
Likewise many Palestinians who would have ended up in the new Israeli state would have been displaced in a similar manner. Most of those in Gaza are the descendants of those kicked out of what is now Israel so partition was never going to be a perfect exercise.
However I wasn’t referring to those people in my comment, I was referring to those with American/Soviet/European ancestry turning up on the West Bank and believing they have more right to the land than Palestinians who have been there for generations
Spot on.
That’s a rather silly comment.
So you’re Billy Bob Saxon?
Al Aqsa mosque should be dynamited.
It has no business being there and it is ridiculous that it is allowed to remain there.
It sends a very wrong message to the Arabs – they think we allow it to remain because we secretly think they are right.
Oh dear. It’s protected by the King of Jordan.
It started in 1948 when the Arabs were booted out by the colonizers hiding behind the traumatized Jews of WWII.
“the occupation army”
Three unchallenged words summing up the entirety of this article that would have been right at home on Al Jazeera.
To be fair, it’s a quote not opinion of the author
True, but the point is that the quote went unchallenged and unqualified by the author, merely repeated as though it were fact. That’s what shows where his loyalties lie.
It is an occupation Daniel. You get that right? That’s why Gaza and the West Bank are referred to as The Occupied Territories by ROW. Not because someone thought it was a catchy title.
The deluded Left thinks Palestine is waging a war of national liberation. But Palestine has and always will wage a war of extermination. Their tactics on Oct 7 plus the brutal group murder of two Israeli boys that accidentally crossed into Palestine territory and were attacked by a mob, stabbed and stoned before their blood was smeared on the walls of a cave demonstrate otherwise. This drive toward extermination of Jews was seen in the alliance of the Mufti of Jerusalem – Arafat’s uncle – with Hitler during WWII. If Rommel had crossed North Africa into the Middle East, gas chambers would have been set up. I have no sympathy for the Pelestinians whatsoever.
You are not human.
What always remains unsaid in articles about how hard Palestinians have it, is how their leaders are largely responsible for their citizens circumstances. After the assassination of Rabin, Arafat was given a second chance to renew the peace process in 1999 by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak and he refused. In the ensuing years terrorist attacks and Hamas rocket attacks pushed the Israeli public, fearing for their safety, into the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing who have squandered the good-will of many Americans and are destroying support for Israel in the rest of the world. Without the support of Joe Biden Israel would be completely isolated. I believe this is exactly what the Palestinian leadership wants. Their goal is the destruction of Israel, and no one is doing a better job of it then Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Palestinians like much of the Left today invites backlash because they don’t want compromise or democracy, they want civilizational collapse so it will be easier to impose their will on greater Israel and eliminate the Jews.
So you disagree that the Israelis should eliminate the Ummaites who gleefully flood the streets and ullulate for the death of all Jews? Churchill should have just given aid to Hitler too, I guess — it was so heartless and extreme of Churchill to fight them on the beaches, etc.
Were all members of the German army and every one of their supporters shot or imprisoned at the close of the World War?
I think only only those judged to be the worst and most guilty were, while others who wore the uniform and fed the Wehrmacht went back to work as bankers, teachers, butchers, bakers, factory workers, housewives, etc. Some willingness to start fresh, though unearned–not amounting among all to any quick forgetting or full forgiveness– was needed.
Nazism as a mass social movement evaporated with Hitler’s death. Unfortunately fascist Islam will not collapse. All you can do is clean out the latest iteration of its onward quest for world domination (I suggest you read the Koran if you don’t know). There’s nothing morally wrong about it. Islam is hardwired for totalitarianism and violence, and its followers welcome death as part of jihad. They will never stop. So, unless you want to be killed for Allah, it’s the jihadist Mohammedan who must be killed. Unfortunately this is the way of the world. Pampered woke Westerners, who can’t see the harshness of the choice, really are the world’s most naive people.
I have read substantial portions of the Koran. How much have you read? The wiring is not as hard as you suggest–not by any non-hyperextended stretch. I can cite language in the Judeo-Christian scriptures that is exceedingly militant or violent. How much of the Bible have you read? Please be honest.
Nazism has not “evaporated”. Unless neo-Nazism bears no relationship to its dark ancestor. As a “mass social movement”? Sure, for now.
Islam is an invasive, oppressive,violent, backward,patriarchal religion that wants to conquer the world and force everyone to become Muslim. It gives me the creeps when I see a Western woman in a hijab. I think how could she wear something that is a sign of submission to male dominance.
There are such people as moderate and liberal Muslims, and most Muslims I’ve met I’ve quite liked, personally.
But it is also true that the Koran – which demands a totalizing worldview, and is highly venerated by most Muslims – contains about a dozen passages that any Jew would find alarming. Mohammed himself killed dozens of Jews who refused to convert.
It’s also true that Wahhabism/ Salafism/radical Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy. There is simply no middle ground between the individual human rights and liberties that are integral to western institutions, and Islamic theocracy.
Exactly. It’s truly terrifying.
I agree, Clare. In my opinion though, Islam is an ideology clad in a thin religious veneer.
They don’t want to eliminate Jews Ben (even Hamas removed this from their covenant May 1 2017). It has NOTHING to do with Jews. If little green men had stolen the land and booted the Arabs out, they’d be going after them.
Blame the international, Islamic and UN sponsored elevation of the “Palestinian” cause to Global Holy Cow for the suffering of these unfortunates who have co-opted a geographical term to call themselves Palestinians
No ability to self reflect, always putting the blame elsewhere, threats of violence by Intifada.
A reset back to the equivalent of a Year 0 might be the palestinians last chance. Worked for the germans and japanese.
Sometimes you have to pick a side. I side with Israel because I believe many people here in Canada and elsewhere are capable of trying to exterminate them – as they have shown in spades this fall. I have some sympathy for the Palestinians – but in case people have forgotten the 1930’s and 40’s were tough all around. We don’t ring our hands over the fact that we abandoned our allies like Poland – who fought with us in WW2 – to communist dictatorships. Nor are we all still obsessing over the millions of Japanese victims in Burma or Malaysia or China. We aren’t demanding that the various borderland peoples displaced in Europe after the war have their lands returned to them. So the never ending hand wringing for – and financial contributions to – Palestinians – a people who demonstrate time and again that they despise us, our values, and our society?
Good article. It’s very important for those of us who strongly support the destruction of Hamas to recognise that the settlers in the occupied territories (and their political supporters) are the other major impediment to peace in the Holy Land.
Israel is one of the two ‘hot’ states on the frontline of the free world, and neither they nor the rest of us can afford such a immoral burden in the long term.
The article notes (in passing mostly), that Hamas is all over West Bank. Israel is committed to wiping Hamas from the face of the earth (as they should be). So don’t expect the IDF to play nice nice to Arabs there.
The settlers may be a different story if they are taking vigilante criminal actions against innocent citizens. But Israelis have bent over backwards heretofore to find a peaceful solution, and a peaceful solution has NEVER been forthcoming from so-called Arab “Palestinians”.
Encouraging settlers is hardly bending over backwards to encourage peace. Read the UN report on how much Palestinian GDP is lost courtesy of the illegal annexation of Area C. Of course you won’t. As you have zero regard for the Palestinians – like the occupiers of Israel, you see them as mattering less.
Exactly.
Well said.
Wait … Patrikarakos writes, quoting an Israeli settler then commenting on the quote:
“”This is our birth right — we have a historical connection to the land.” This is the problem in a single sentence. Settlers are driven by an unshakable belief in God …”
So Patrikarakos reports the words of the settler, who invokes an historical connection to the land, then provides commentary that the settler actually wasn’t invoking history but God. Huh? Pretty weak stuff, Patrikarakos. You just made shit up because you didn’t actually have a quote that suited your narrative agenda. That’s not journalism, that’s propaganda. I don’t need an UnHerd subscription for that.
What do you disagree with here? Many settlers believe that they have more claim to land farmed by Palestinians for generations simply because of something written in the Bible.
Actually I think they were given the land by the UN. and then then conquest when they were attacked.
You’re turning a blind eye to the current goings on in the West Bank then?
The Palestinians could have had all the West Bank, but they kept on with “From the River to the Sea” for decades after the Israelis took it in ‘67. It wasn’t until the Palestinians lost ever more of the wars they started that they pretended the issue was the 1967 borders, after the first intifada.
By then tens of thousands of Israelis lived in the West Bank and no Israeli government will force them to leave. They did in Gaza, and were rewarded with Islamist rockets.
Thats what compromise has gotten the Israelis: Hamas.
I don’t think anyone here thinks the settlers are justified in taking land from Palestinians.
I disagree, I think too many on here don’t see it as an issue. They think because a book says that an area was given to the Jews that gives them the right to violently evict those that have farmed the land for centuries.
Most also seem to cheer Israel killing large numbers of civilians, but are appalled when a terrorist group does the same. I just find the hypocrisy baffling
Your comment is unfair. The sentence you object to continues: ‘…[God] the divine estate agent, parcelling out land to them personally.’ This refers to the fact that orthodox Jews believe that Palestine / Canaan is the land promised to them by God after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. History and God’s actions are inextricably linked.
Yes the sentence continues with more words the settler never said. It’s appalling that some readers here can’t distinguish between verbatim and imputation.
Many in Israel don’t have an historical connection to the land – this is the point. Khazarians/Ashkenazis, Sephardi were all from Europe. Zero ancient Hebrew DNA – unlike most Palestinians who never left.
To put it bluntly it’s an “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In other words if Hamas kills Jews in southern Israel, then settlers will kill Muslims on the west bank. Don’t expect the settlers to follow the rules of war any more than Hamas does. Don’t expect the Israeli government to rein in the settlers. Unfortunately this is a clash of civilizationis, it’s kill or be killed. This is not going to end well for either side. The Arabs don’t have the best armies, but they have a higher birth rate. If they can’t destroy Israel by terrorism, they plan to do it by demographics. It’s not at all clear how Israel can survive if this conflict drags out for a few more decades.
American demographics are also changing, with immigration from Asia and the evangelical bloc becoming less important over time Israel might not be able to count on its blind unconditional support in the future
Reading your comments, I’m intrigued to know if you think Israel should be allowed to continue existing. If no, how would you dismantle the state? If yes, how should Israel behave when attacked?
I think creating Israel where it is was a mistake, a Jewish homeland should have been created in Europe from the land of the defeated Axis powers after the war in my opinion.
However we can’t undo history so of course now Israel is where it is then it should stay there. It should also be free to defend itself from attacks from groups such as Hamas.
However where I’m critical is its methods of doing so. Keeping millions of Palestinians locked into what are essentially open prisons in Gaza and the West Bank (ever encroaching into the second place), and happily killing thousands of civilians in order to kill a few Hamas fighters is behaviour no better than that of terrorist groups in my opinion
Fair enough. Then we do agree at some level, although I don’t accept the open prison characterization or that the Israeli response is no better that that of terrorist groups.
If Israel can defend itself, in what exact way are they permitted to do so? What should be the response to Hamas digging tunnels, amassing an arsenal and firing rockets at Israel? Is Israel permitted to fire rockets back? To flood tunnels? to enter Gaza on anti-terrorist missions? Is it fair for Israel to tightly control the border with Gaza?
Likewise following 7th October, what is a suitable response? Fire a few rockets and be leave it at that? Rape and murder some civilians in proportion? Isn’t a disproportionate response the whole point in a war or military anti-terrorist operation? That’s how you win.
I never hear these practical questions clearly and unequivocally answered by critics of Israel. Personally, I question whether the current response is really in Israel’s best interests. If they succeed in destroying Hamas utterly they only create a new vacuum to be filled (no doubt by yet another manifestation of Islamic lunacy) and kill thousands of civilians in the process (I don’t call them ‘innocent civilians’ because many of them are not).
A ground offensive killing Hamas fighters and destroying the tunnels would have been fine in my opinion, a rather indiscriminate bombing campaign that’s flattened entire neighbourhoods and killed thousands of children isn’t. As I’ve said previously if the RAF had bombed residential addresses in Belfast in response to the IRA bombing campaign the Americans would have screamed blue murder, yet for some reason they defend the IDF doing the same thing
OK, that’s reasonable. The IRA analogy really doesn’t work given the obvious differences between NI/UK and Gaza/Israel.
I thought you guys were hyping that as a far extreme right conspiracy theory. Did the Guardian say it’s legit now?
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth would leave you both blind and feeding through a straw”
To paraphrase Gandhi, and to elaborate …
A metaphorical expression that highlights the futility of revenge and the importance of forgiveness. It is not meant to be taken literally.
Retaliation often leads to a never-ending cycle of violence and destruction, which ultimately harms everyone involved. However, I cannot see any rational solution to this intractable mutual hatred and intolerance that has come from this perpetual conflict. The only foreseeable outcome, failing an enforced external accord, is total war resulting in genocide or expulsion along ethnic lines, consequential to consolidating a single State, a monoculture. Nor can I see the Palestinians ever establishing a sovereign state that is acceptable to them while Israel exists. It does not bode well for any party concerned.
Ah— Those darned Israeli settlers causing all the trouble! Just like they caused all the strife in Gaza.
Luckily after Ariel Sharon had the IDF remove all the Jews from Gaza decades ago the Gaza Strip became a hotbed of peace. Of understanding between people. Building bridges. Kumbaya and drum circles.
lol just kidding the Palestinians elected an Islamist Death Cult fundamentally opposed to peace, who took over Gaza and have used it to launch war since.
So let’s get the Palestinian offer straight:
-Jews in the West Bank and no peace
-Jews removed from the West Bank and no peace
Good luck campaigning for the Knesset on the second option!
PS thank god we helped dispose of the Muslim Brother the Egyptians elected. Best coup since Pinochet, and possibly even more consequential. Don’t give Arabs democracy if you don’t want nutty Islamists winning…
“ Don’t give Arabs democracy if you don’t want nutty Islamists winning…”
That reminds me of an article I read many years ago in the Atlantic (when it was still readable): https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/democracys-future-in-the-middle-east-islamist-and-illiberal/361791/
We in the West frequently make the mistake of thinking that democracy and freedom are intrinsically linked. They are not.
Since the invention of the modern Arab state a century ago, every single prosperous, successful nation has had an absolute monarch in charge.
The trouble starts when the central authority can’t keep control: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and of course Palestine. All could use a King with an iron fist who will free them!
Actually there is far more violence directed towards Jews from Arabs than the other way around. The leftists who support the Arab point of view promote this idea but the real statics show otherwise.
One gets the feeling that even the Palestinians more accustomed to presenting things in a way westerners are more likely to respect would love the Jews to disappear even if that involves violence.
This report is patently biased: for example a Palestinian saying the solution is “from the river to the sea” is reported as reasonable, while an Israeli saying Israel is entitled to Judea is “nonsense”.
I suggest there will be no solution until (1) Palestinians renounce territorial claim to Israel, and Israel agrees to withdraw ‘settlements’; (2) A respected Palestinian leader forms a ‘government in waiting’ with an outline of a civil service and economic plan; (3) the UN & EU direct aid to relief of the Palestinian people rather than to Hamas and similar; (4) Saudi, Gulf States & USA guarantee a proposal, while (5) Iran is stopped from enabling terror; (6) the problem of a separated Gaza is solved. A list where each part is unrealistic at present.
In the meantime each side and its supporters blame and attack the other, with no end in sight,
Not to sound dismissive but how exactly is this different from the 20 year old “roadmap to peace” that was supposedly going to accomplish every goal you list?
In other words, who’s supposed to send their soldiers into Arab neighborhoods to kill the Islamists? The US? Burnt out on Arab problems. The rich Arabs who have never had a successful military campaign? The Europeans who couldn’t handle Libya?
That leaves Israel. And if Israel’s doing it, why the hell should they demand anything but unconditional surrender?
The IRA had a political goal, removing British rule over Northern Ireland. Killing every Englishman anywhere was not a goal. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have the admitted and brazenly stated goal of killing all Jews. Had IRA suicide bombings reached the intensity of the intifadas (before the wall was built) or fired hundreds of rockets into England over a protacted period of time, then the response might have been very different than the low intensity operations in Northern Ireland.
What a load of horse cacky. The entire article is UN propaganda. The Jews are all evil settlers and the “Palestinians”, a description invented in 1967, are just little school children scampering in their blue and white uniforms or they are “youth” battling Israeli “forces”. Honestly, what drivel !
Before 1967 they were all just Jews and Arabs. The Arabs are a migrant labor class from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, North Africa, … garden variety Arabs.
UnHerd dipped into the bottom of the barrel for this account, largely fictional, of life in Israel. There has never been a Palestine and probably never will be.
Yes, just give us another Intifada. even the global Intifada, and see how that works out. The world is sick of the whining.
The more I read about this conflict, the more convinced I am that we will see one of three outcomes. First and most likely, Israel will occupy and de facto annex all of the West Bank and Gaza firmly establishing control and setting up some puppet government for the Palestinian residents that is fully under Israel’s control. How much power this Palestinian ‘government’ is given and how much autonomy they have will be determined by how successful they are at preventing terrorism, arresting Hamas and other anti-Israel groups, and disavowing the ‘river to the sea’ narrative. Second, and less likely, international pressure will force Israel to back down and they will withdraw again from Gaza into the same uneasy truce as before while becoming far more aggressive in terms of backing the settlers and using coercion to push Palestinians out. The conflict will continue as it has but with a more diligent and punitive Israel building more defenses and bigger walls while sending in regular anti-terrorism raids into Gaza and the West Bank. Third and least likely, Israel will find some nation or nations (Russia perhaps) willing to accept massive numbers of refugees and deport much of the Arab population, thus completing the displacement of the Palestinians and resolving the conflict at the cost of Israel’s international reputation and the peaceful relations they had been pursuing with the rest of the Middle East.
In any event, this is no longer a conflict that is amenable to a negotiated peace. The Israelis clear goal is to utterly break the will of the Palestinians at this point. The only sensible thing to do is leave them to it and prevent others from interfering so long as possible, and force Israel to back down if and only if it is the only way to avoid a wider war in the Middle East. Ugly outcomes for an ugly world.
The only way Israel can eliminate Hamas is by depopulating Palestine of |Palestinians and replacing them with Israelis, i.e. etheric cleansing and it is becoming more and more plausible to suspect that at least one fiction of the Israeli Government has as its objective.
Etheric cleansing sounds like a good strategy. Something out of His Dark Materials. Bearing in mind that the Apostle Paul, himself intensely proud of his Hebrew heritage, declared that the enemy is not flesh and blood.
Appalling censorship on this essay, as is to be expected unfortunately.
Vale!
“We have tried wars, they achieved nothing. Neither side can solve this matter by throwing each other into the sea.”
“I cannot tell you what will happen tomorrow,” he replies. “Wars are never endless, but they are senseless. Once they start, they can go in any direction.”
The only sensible words in this article.
“Driving from Israel to the West Bank is like stepping through the looking glass..”
Sentence one; factual error one.
The ‘West Bank’, properly called Judea & Samaria is *in* Israel. Yes, there are Arab squatters in it – but their home is across the river in Jordan. Per agreement.
More and more outlets are starting to tell the truth. Keep it up, and thanks Unheard
This is not reporting but agenda journalism that is not worthy of Unherd. Patrikarakos quotes a “moderate,” Mustafa Barghouti and later notes that this “moderate” who “appears sincerely to want peace,” later claimed “no Israeli civilians were killed on October 7.” Yet Patrikarakos considers Barghouti a credible commentator.
“God the divine estate agent” funny how people’s self interests and greed so often align with the Almighty.
What is this ridiculous anti-Semitic propaganda doing in Unherd?
See the discussion above, it’s not antisemitic to criticise the policies of a country. By your theory any criticism of Hamas would be Islamophobic would it not?
What?! I don’t see that.
desperate people do desperate things, the more desperate they are the more desperate things they will do….
I just don’t comprehend how secular atheists can base their whole nation and land base claims on a God they dont believe in and claim that a Sacred Text that is Bronze Age literature is Title Deeds.
Because the Bible is Gospel and every word written in there is the word of God and should be adhered to. Apart from the bits that portray Jewish elders in a bad light in relation to Jesus of course, that but is all made up to appease the Romans
If you are talking about the Torah: that is only the first five books of the Bible. The Bible is the Christian Holy Book.
So many things that “progressive” leftists don’t understand. That’s ok, order another soy latte and keep on reading the Guardian — latte-sipping Guardian readers always know best.
Anyway, Jews aren’t secular atheists, if you were referring to Israel — or what does the Guardian say?
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2023-12-15/media-israel-7-october/
Still not full clarity about Oct 7. Israeli is master of propaganda. They have deliberately killed around 100 journalists in Gaza so the truth does not get out on the atrocities, the murders, in particular of women and children, health workers, civilians, using starvation as a weapon of war. Israel is committing war crimes at an unprecedented level in a modern conflict.
Oppression of Palestinians has been ongoing for decades; netanyahu made a point of strengthening hamas in order to scupper the two state solution.
Stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank is illegal. But israel appears to enjoy complete impunity, and anyhow needs ‘lebensraum’ and will get it by military means in total disregard of international law.
Your source is a raving anti-semite.
His source is an English born jew who lived in Nazareth.
As usual the antisemitism trope gets used to stifle debate.
The article referenced appears to be well-documented, quoting multiple sources including the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Netanyahu’s official spokesman.
Why would you dismiss it as ‘antisemitic’ while apparently accepting at face value highly dubious Israeli accounts of what happened that day?
You mention October 7, but somehow manage to blame the Jews for it, as if no atrocities occurred that day.
Sounds like you’re a big fan of left wing conspiracy theories. Don’t forget, Netanyahu is mind-controlled by a global cabal of Jewish oil tycoons with demonic grins and large aquiline noses. They’re at the bottom of it all.