I wonder what our “from the river to the sea” commenters here at UnHerd think about this. After all, in their eyes, the IDF, and therefore the whole idea of self-defense of Israel is illegitimate. I suppose they’ll be hoping the Islamists can break through and deal with the Jewish citizenry with their c*cks and knives, like they did in October.
Bernard Brothman
27 days ago
“I still think this is the safest place for Jews to be,” to me sums up the purpose and resolute of the State of Israel. Notice how no one, maybe except some liberal English speaking countries, wants Gazans. Imagine if “River to the Sea,” plays out, fewer countries would take the Israelis (who were not massacred or enslaved).
Israel is fighting an existential war. And it is the first battle in a war that could involve many of us in the West.
It’s been part of Israeli state ideology for decades to frame life in the diaspora as dangerous and of low value. They hand out money to the most violent Jewish fundamentalists from around the globe to move to Israel and execute their expansionist aims. Israel is not a normal country.
Wow, you need spend a bit less time on the Internet and get out more
Edwin Blake
27 days ago
The World Central Kitchen workers were not killed by accident. They left their warehouse under the, acknowledged, constant surveillance of drones. Then the one vehicle was targeted. The IDF waited until survivors were put into the next vehicle, while the people desperately contacted the IDF, then hit the second vehicle. Then the IDF again waited for those survivors to reach the third vehicle before blowing that up. Had make sure as many were killed as possible. This was in a cleared area on an approved route.
You lie.
Is this the Hamas Ministry of Truth version, or just the “Woke progressives for decolonisation of Palestine” version? Same thing, I suppose.
Meanwhile, the reality is that the aid worker killings are a disaster for Israel. The international condemnation over this incident has reached the White House. If Biden withdraws support for Israel then Hamas will be dancing and ullulating in the streets and firing AK47s in the air. Probably they already are.
Their whole strategy is to isolate Israel internationally, so they can lay siege to a weakened enemy. You have to have no head at all for strategy not to see how this is a disaster for Israel. The aid deaths have achieved in a day what Hamas feeding civilian “martyrs” into the line of fire has taken weeks to do: ramp up condemnation of Israel to breaking point. Would IDF commanders who completely understand the propaganda dimension of the conflict, have chosen to risk losing the war by intentionally lighting up some inconsequential Brit busybodies?
Bear in mind too, the Progressive-Hamas axis is invested in claiming that that implausible scenario is the only possible narrative. They do that because they are trying to defeat Israel by leveraging civilian deaths for maximum international condemnation and isolation.
Of course, some progressives are just stupid, and have no idea what’s going on. They just react emotionally and parrot Hamas, who knows how to manipulate them.
I seriously doubt you know the facts. How would you? You’re just relying on some Hamas narrative, probably filtered through a progressive NGO news feed. It’s called bluster.
Sources: Haaretz, José Andrés the head of WFK, in many statements said “systematically, car by car” quoted in many places including Reuters, Barak Ravid reported on this and so on.
The fact that many comments reach for slurs without any attempt at checking facts shows an absolute reliance on emotion.
Again, Edwin, read the BBC explanation of what actually happened. Jose Andres wasn’t there. The IDF is actually quite thorough when investigating and reporting this kind of thing.
“José Andrés the head of WFK”, who was then “quoted in many places”. Ah, ok, so that’s where this spread from. This is about as credible as the missile “attack” on the Al Ahli hospital last year. Leftist truthers still believe that one too.
Cui bono? mass starvation obviously. The piece itself preemptively justified this with the “but everyone does it” argument or did you not read it either?
No change then from The King David Hotel and the hanged sergeants in the olive grove?
And this to the chaps who had liberated Belsen! Ungrateful is hardly the word.
Israel spends its time regularly assassinating its neighbours scientists, generals and the like on those neighbouring countries home soil, they constantly build illegal settlements on land stolen from Palestinian farmers they’ve violently evicted or murdered in the West Bank, they pushed 2 million people to the brink of starvation and murdered 200 aid workers (not to mention well in excess of 10,000 women and children), then they have the cheek to label any criticism of their actions as being down to antisemitism
You may not have not have noticed but of the 28 comments posted yesterday on Mr Etan Nechin’s essay, 12 have been permanently removed! So much for UnHerd.
As to the ludicrous ‘crocodile tears’ currently being shed by the US, I don’t a believe a word of it. ‘Kosher Nostra’/ AICE is as strong as ever.
I have noticed any comment vaguely critical of Israel seems to be reported rather quickly. Although I think it’s the readership rather than the site itself, it seems to be descending into somewhat of an echo chamber, with large numbers getting upset when an article doesn’t align with their predetermined opinions
I have it on fairly good authority* that unfortunately the IDF are little more than a bunch of near hysterical, indisciplined, gun toting ‘cowboys’, and not the disciplined fighting force they claim to be.
It may also help them (IDF) if they were to adopt the policy of using ‘aimed shots’ rather the totally indiscriminate ‘suppressing fire’ (US) doctrine.**
(* A former British Military Attaché to the IDF.)
(** Sadly the British Army now does the same.)
The British Army doesn’t have enough ammunition to use the tactic of indiscriminate suppressing fire, even if it was thought to be effective.
It’s no doubt true that the IDF is becoming more trigger-happy. That’s what happens in every conflict as the soldiers see their comrades killed while exercising caution and attempting to spare civilian lives.
Why be grateful to a country that 1) refused to let Jews in whilst the holocaust was ongoing and 2) refused to let them in and run their own affairs after the Holocaust.
Saying all that, I have no time for the irgun and stern gang murderers, but it’s just a realistic explanation why Jews should not have felt gratitude, especially as the then head of affairs in British mandate ofPalestine – Evelyn bubbles barker – was antisemitic and obviously pro arab
Edwin, you’re correct but fail to mention that they were mistaken to be gunmen in the middle of the night after a mix up with a group of actual Hamas gunmen at the depot. Even the BBC ran the explanation of this tragedy today, take a look.
p3rfunct0ry 4p4th3t1c
27 days ago
It’s news to me that Israel is fighting a war in the Occupied West Bank.
That’s no doubt true, those with eyes to see and all that. However any Google search will show constant attacks all the time. And behind that of course a renewal of unprecedented Israeli “approval” of new settlements there. The fact that they feel entitled enough to “approve” illegal settlement demonstrates the sea to river policy. The question is, is that river the Jordan or Euphrates?
And the other question is, is the ethnic cleansing you advocate considered to be genocide or not? It’s interesting when progressives add activism for ethnic cleansing and genocide to their elitist, totalitarian societal control agenda. Definitely something new emerging here on the Left.
If you had an argument you’d use it. But you don’t. You’re down to ad homs.
Richard Calhoun
27 days ago
Let us remember, in WW2 the allies had to lay waste to our enemies cities and industrial complexes before we could bring the war to an end.
Israel is in the same position, either they defeat Hamas in Gaza or the war will go on for more decades.
It’s vastly different in that the Allies were fighting a well matched army, with fortified defences and an industrial base churning out heavy weaponry. They couldn’t have shifted them without a bombing campaign to disrupt their factories and logistics.
Israel is an incredibly well equipped army fighting a rag tag bunch of fighters they vastly outgun and outnumber with no industrial base in an area in size similar to the Isle of Wight, who have no capacity to bring in fighters from elsewhere.
It’s akin to the RAF carpet bombing the Republican council estates in Belfast in retaliation to the IRAs bombing campaign
Why doesn’t it? Both the IRA and Hamas are paramilitaries rather than conventional armies, both had nothing in the way of tanks, heavy artillery, an Air Force or any air defence, both are facing a vastly bigger and better equipped opponent, both are based and hidden in civilian areas, both enjoyed local support.
The only difference is the British had some humanity and refrained from killing thousands of innocent civilians in order to take out the fighters, something the IDF clearly lack
You seem to know all about how to fight a war not of your choosing, against an enemy who states they exist to destroy you. I’m guessing you’re a general, or a retired general? Or are you just a random leftie punter with fashionable opinions, trying to undermine Israel’s right to defence, with armchair commentary how you’d do it better?
I’m a Field Marshal actually. It’s also quite nice to be labelled a leftie, what with my views being rather conservative it’s a certainly novel experience.
However you do seem to get rather upset whenever anybody is vaguely critical of Israel killing women and children in appalling numbers. Do you believe that they should have the right to kill as many civilians as they please in their retaliatory assault?
Would Britain have been justified in killing thousands of innocent civilians in order to wipe out a handful of IRA commanders?
Hamas are not republican separatists, they are a genocidal death cult. Were there 30-40k IRA members under Belfast hiding in 300 miles of tunnels using the rest of the Irish as human shields? Why are you so keen on blaming Israel for the civilian casualties? Comparative data from other urban wars clearly show IDF restraint given this unprecedented terrain.
There were tens of thousands of Provos holed up in the council estates of Northern Ireland yes. Whilst they didn’t have tunnels they were all hidden amongst the civilian population
Hamas does indeed have an industrial base, as exemplified by its tunnel infrastructure, constructed with money and materials supplied as aid. Neither are they rag tag fighters, as the events of 7 Oct should have made clear to you.
The IDF is, as you say, well resourced and well trained. So, if the Israelis weren’t trying their best to reduce civilian casualties, there would be nothing living and nothing standing in Gaza by now.
Many civilians in Germany were killed by grenades, rifle fire, artillery and tank fire not just carpet bombing as Allied troops cleared towns, as you know. In order to save their own lives they grenaded basements etc as they fought bands of Nazi soldiers, (not a mechanised battalion) sometimes regrettably killing civilians. No clean wars. How many civilians killed in the Gulf wars by the Allies? – and could you really even differentiate? Don’t start a war if you don’t want your own civilians to die is the lesson. Israel even kills its own troops by accident let alone aid workers. The intense scrutiny of every action is merely to find a point of accusation.
If you are indeed a Field Marshall it’s quite concerning you view the IRA and Hamas attrocities and circumstances in equal measure. Perhaps one should revisit this narrative?
It’s not “retaliation”. Hamas must be destroy if the Israelis want to avoid doing the whole thing over again in twenty years.
The Palestinians are the only ones left in the world who think they can destroy the Israelis. They must be made to wake up from their fever dream and get on with their lives.
At the end of the war the allied war machine wastly outnumbered the german capacity. You mean the russians should have halted outside Berlin and called up Hitler in his bunker and offered a two-state solution so that no more of the Hitler Youth needed to be killed?
This is a serious question: how do you defeat an idea? Particularly when the current attempts to do so are generating more recruits to that idea? As far as I can see the only way Isreal will ever be safe is if it changes relationships with the states that surround it sufficiently to make the Hamas idea irrelevant or an anathema. And changes its behaviours and attitudes towards the Palestinians who have a right to live in the land where they were born. I love Isreal (and yes, I have lived there) and it breaks my heart how it has got the idea of nationhood so fundamentally wrong right from the outset.
The idea that is being defeated is that Israel is going away. It’s not. The other idea is that is dying is that Islamists can fight an asymmetrical war without huge losses. The other idea dying is that we in The West need to maintain our higher morality in warfare when the other side does not. As Trump alluded to correctly. The West could eliminate the Taliban in two weeks. Iran could be eliminated in about two hours.
Pat: “the current attempts to do so are generating more recruits”
In the same way, as the essay affirms, that the October 7th atrocities galvinised Israeli resistance to being murdered?
God knows what motivated the terrorists in the first place but the idea that the Islamists (Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Iran’s Ayatollahs etc.) are fighting for “freedom” is as wrong as its possible to be.
When the allies annihilated the Nazis by carpet bombing, and wiped out the Japanese elite by A-bombing, that didn’t create ‘more recruits’ for the axis powers, and it also smashed their ideologies. Sometimes (nearly always!) ‘total war’ is the only answer. Particularly if, unlike the Nazi when the invaded and occupied a country, the Islamist invaders then set out to slaughter with knives, shovels and AK47s every single man, woman, child and baby (yet born or otherwise).
What motivated Hamas was to draw Israeli into large scale conflict. They could then use the footage of Palestinian death and destruction in their propaganda war against Israel. The aim is to weaken Israel’s support in the West and harden attitudes among Israel’s regional enemies. If they can break Israel’s alliances and isolate them, Israel will be more vulnerable to long term siege tactics by its neighbors.
Tyler Durden
27 days ago
Only Netanyahu could get away with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The people who propped up murderous psychopaths for 15 years are reaping the consequences of actions last October that put human civilisation back many, many centuries.
The plan is for a radically reduced Gazan population to dribble away somewhere, amorphous though that sounds. The question then is what to do with the West Bank. Integration in an enlarged Israeli state would seem the best call but the cold reality is that the territory will doubtlessly end up with reservations for steel-eyed guerillas plotting their next attack.
Civilians killed in Gaza are fulfilling their own civilization’s—and the British left’s—highest aspiration for them.
Remember this chestnut from Hamas legislator Fathi Hamid? He said it on air on Al-Aqsa TV in 2008:
“[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.”
The death industry he spoke of wouldn’t have succeed without international partners, and the British left was the main partner in those early years after Israel left Gaza.
it’s interesting how people like Hamid say things like this while being far away from any danger themselves. It’s as if the only thing they prefer to a dead Jew is a dead Arab.
Wow. I had not come across that quote before. There’s a lot of evidence for that attitude among Palestinian jihadists, but here it’s summed up in a proud and defiant confession.
After Oct 7th Israel has grounds for removing the Arabs from Gaza. No nation need live by genocidal savages. To hell with international law if it sides with people who support Hamas.
Charles Stanhope
27 days ago
As Graeme Macdonald so appositely reminded us two days ago : – “Jews and the state of Israel are permanently exempt from criticism”. Until this lamentable state of affairs is rectified there will be NO peace in the Middle East.
Israel exempt from criticism? You’ve really gone through the looking glass! Have you not heard of the UK? Israel-bashing has long been the favorite pastime of Britain’s political class. They give themselves a special permission to lie when it comes to Israel, then act like it’s unfair when they’re criticized for their lies.
The British left took its cue from the infamous Soviet propaganda campaign of the 1980s. Just recently, we heard one lordly old Brit say in parliament that Israel is responsible for antisemitism—including, presumably, his own. Does that sound to you like a country where Israel is exempt from criticism?
This is the only comment of mine that’s currently visible, somebody has obviously reported all my other ones. Fair play, that’s commitment to trying to shut down opinions you don’t agree with!!
Most of the pseudo criticism from the US and others is really a master class in ‘crocodile tears’.
Our own Dave Cameron (UK) being a prime example.
Phil Re
27 days ago
It’s still hard to fathom the depraved reaction to October 7 that we’ve seen in much of the West. I knew England was a sick society long before that, but the depth of the moral rot is still shocking.
For many in England, self-righteousness toward Israel has become a substitute for looking in the mirror.
And what would they see in that mirror?
A society more concerned with cultural sensitivity around grooming gangs than with the safety of the victims trafficked by those gangs.
A society that howls with rage over the accidental killing of aid workers, but that shrugs off the abduction of civilians by UN personnel who took part in an unspeakable mass atrocity.
The US owes Hezbollah for more than 200 Marines, a CIA station chief and a lot more. The French owe them for more than 50 paratroopers. Those debts have been accumulating interest for more than 40 years.
mike otter
27 days ago
The “aid workers” story is just another swing in the propaganda war ensemble of both sides. You’ve got to laugh that these highly experienced and highly paid military operative “aid workers” look very much like mercenaries to the ordinary observer. Same goes for the IDF unable to direct fire against combatants deciding to hit anything that moves. It shows the desperation that comes with “total war”. The fact is both side are puppets in a more global game and the players in Russia, Iran and USA (inc UK) must realise that if they can’t put their fire out in ME&A it will ultimately flare up in their own territories?
Alex Lekas
27 days ago
Perhaps it’s just me but this line caught my eye: “Standing proudly on the greenest part of a mainly arid land, the orchards here are filled with avocado and banana trees.”
Why is it that the Jews have somehow managed to build a first-world society out of ‘mostly arid land while the bulk of Arabs live at subsistence levels? If not for the coincidental presence oil, the entirety of the Muslim nations would be no better off than sub-Saharan Africa.
Peter Stephenson
27 days ago
No doubt, Israel is the front line of an attack which is inching in our direction. Good luck to lefties siding with barbarians when they come in to their homes with guns and knives.
Arthur King
26 days ago
If Iran attacks Israel, The West will support Israel.
This is a regional dispute over territory that doesn’t affect the west in any way. I wouldn’t want to see a western soldier suffer as much as a stubbed toe by getting involved trying to keep apart these two groups of animals apart
Rod Lewis
26 days ago
Thank you for this article Nicole. I think I might be correct in thinking you have reflected the mood from Israel. The comment that caused me to comment was. “The feeling that someone always wants to kill you is not unfamiliar to me”
I have travelled to Israel from the other side of the world quite a few times since the mid 80’s, most recently in August, and I admit to not liking it much. Despite the material progress I have witnessed this feeling of impending threat always hangs in the air. I so hope you are wrong about a second war breaking out as I would like to return to a country I don’t like to visit people I do.
I wonder what our “from the river to the sea” commenters here at UnHerd think about this. After all, in their eyes, the IDF, and therefore the whole idea of self-defense of Israel is illegitimate. I suppose they’ll be hoping the Islamists can break through and deal with the Jewish citizenry with their c*cks and knives, like they did in October.
“I still think this is the safest place for Jews to be,” to me sums up the purpose and resolute of the State of Israel. Notice how no one, maybe except some liberal English speaking countries, wants Gazans. Imagine if “River to the Sea,” plays out, fewer countries would take the Israelis (who were not massacred or enslaved).
Israel is fighting an existential war. And it is the first battle in a war that could involve many of us in the West.
Israel says Sea to River, and they act on that in all of “Judea and Samaria”, what is the difference?
About 20 Arab Muslim countries actually. Quite the difference.
It’s been part of Israeli state ideology for decades to frame life in the diaspora as dangerous and of low value. They hand out money to the most violent Jewish fundamentalists from around the globe to move to Israel and execute their expansionist aims. Israel is not a normal country.
Proof please. This is quite a bold statement.
Wow, you need spend a bit less time on the Internet and get out more
The World Central Kitchen workers were not killed by accident. They left their warehouse under the, acknowledged, constant surveillance of drones. Then the one vehicle was targeted. The IDF waited until survivors were put into the next vehicle, while the people desperately contacted the IDF, then hit the second vehicle. Then the IDF again waited for those survivors to reach the third vehicle before blowing that up. Had make sure as many were killed as possible. This was in a cleared area on an approved route.
You lie.
Is this the Hamas Ministry of Truth version, or just the “Woke progressives for decolonisation of Palestine” version? Same thing, I suppose.
Meanwhile, the reality is that the aid worker killings are a disaster for Israel. The international condemnation over this incident has reached the White House. If Biden withdraws support for Israel then Hamas will be dancing and ullulating in the streets and firing AK47s in the air. Probably they already are.
Their whole strategy is to isolate Israel internationally, so they can lay siege to a weakened enemy. You have to have no head at all for strategy not to see how this is a disaster for Israel. The aid deaths have achieved in a day what Hamas feeding civilian “martyrs” into the line of fire has taken weeks to do: ramp up condemnation of Israel to breaking point. Would IDF commanders who completely understand the propaganda dimension of the conflict, have chosen to risk losing the war by intentionally lighting up some inconsequential Brit busybodies?
Bear in mind too, the Progressive-Hamas axis is invested in claiming that that implausible scenario is the only possible narrative. They do that because they are trying to defeat Israel by leveraging civilian deaths for maximum international condemnation and isolation.
Of course, some progressives are just stupid, and have no idea what’s going on. They just react emotionally and parrot Hamas, who knows how to manipulate them.
Nope, just the facts. You know, the things that do not care about your (extensive) feelings.
I seriously doubt you know the facts. How would you? You’re just relying on some Hamas narrative, probably filtered through a progressive NGO news feed. It’s called bluster.
Sources: Haaretz, José Andrés the head of WFK, in many statements said “systematically, car by car” quoted in many places including Reuters, Barak Ravid reported on this and so on.
The fact that many comments reach for slurs without any attempt at checking facts shows an absolute reliance on emotion.
Again, Edwin, read the BBC explanation of what actually happened. Jose Andres wasn’t there. The IDF is actually quite thorough when investigating and reporting this kind of thing.
“José Andrés the head of WFK”, who was then “quoted in many places”. Ah, ok, so that’s where this spread from. This is about as credible as the missile “attack” on the Al Ahli hospital last year. Leftist truthers still believe that one too.
Cui bono? You’re delusional.
Please don’t feed the Islamist troll Edwin Blake – the dishonourable member for genocidal Hamas.
Cui bono? mass starvation obviously. The piece itself preemptively justified this with the “but everyone does it” argument or did you not read it either?
The IDF has allowed 15,000+ aid trucks into Gaza. But they deliberately killed these 7 aid workers to achieve “mass starvation”?
How do you categorically know this? No-one at this stage actually knows this to be true.
Edwin Blake is an anagram of Able Winked , as in Cain and Able. He’s a troll.
No change then from The King David Hotel and the hanged sergeants in the olive grove?
And this to the chaps who had liberated Belsen! Ungrateful is hardly the word.
Israel spends its time regularly assassinating its neighbours scientists, generals and the like on those neighbouring countries home soil, they constantly build illegal settlements on land stolen from Palestinian farmers they’ve violently evicted or murdered in the West Bank, they pushed 2 million people to the brink of starvation and murdered 200 aid workers (not to mention well in excess of 10,000 women and children), then they have the cheek to label any criticism of their actions as being down to antisemitism
You may not have not have noticed but of the 28 comments posted yesterday on Mr Etan Nechin’s essay, 12 have been permanently removed! So much for UnHerd.
As to the ludicrous ‘crocodile tears’ currently being shed by the US, I don’t a believe a word of it. ‘Kosher Nostra’/ AICE is as strong as ever.
I have noticed any comment vaguely critical of Israel seems to be reported rather quickly. Although I think it’s the readership rather than the site itself, it seems to be descending into somewhat of an echo chamber, with large numbers getting upset when an article doesn’t align with their predetermined opinions
I have it on fairly good authority* that unfortunately the IDF are little more than a bunch of near hysterical, indisciplined, gun toting ‘cowboys’, and not the disciplined fighting force they claim to be.
It may also help them (IDF) if they were to adopt the policy of using ‘aimed shots’ rather the totally indiscriminate ‘suppressing fire’ (US) doctrine.**
(* A former British Military Attaché to the IDF.)
(** Sadly the British Army now does the same.)
The British Army doesn’t have enough ammunition to use the tactic of indiscriminate suppressing fire, even if it was thought to be effective.
It’s no doubt true that the IDF is becoming more trigger-happy. That’s what happens in every conflict as the soldiers see their comrades killed while exercising caution and attempting to spare civilian lives.
1 Para managed to fire seven million rounds on a seven month ‘tour’ of Afghanistan a few years ago.
I doubt if many were ‘aimed shots’.
Why be grateful to a country that 1) refused to let Jews in whilst the holocaust was ongoing and 2) refused to let them in and run their own affairs after the Holocaust.
Saying all that, I have no time for the irgun and stern gang murderers, but it’s just a realistic explanation why Jews should not have felt gratitude, especially as the then head of affairs in British mandate ofPalestine – Evelyn bubbles barker – was antisemitic and obviously pro arab
“Why be grateful to a country”?
Because of the Balfour Declaration off course!
What would the IDF have to gain with such an attack. Nothing.
Edwin, you’re correct but fail to mention that they were mistaken to be gunmen in the middle of the night after a mix up with a group of actual Hamas gunmen at the depot. Even the BBC ran the explanation of this tragedy today, take a look.
It’s news to me that Israel is fighting a war in the Occupied West Bank.
That’s no doubt true, those with eyes to see and all that. However any Google search will show constant attacks all the time. And behind that of course a renewal of unprecedented Israeli “approval” of new settlements there. The fact that they feel entitled enough to “approve” illegal settlement demonstrates the sea to river policy. The question is, is that river the Jordan or Euphrates?
And the other question is, is the ethnic cleansing you advocate considered to be genocide or not? It’s interesting when progressives add activism for ethnic cleansing and genocide to their elitist, totalitarian societal control agenda. Definitely something new emerging here on the Left.
Confession by projection, I assume?
If you had an argument you’d use it. But you don’t. You’re down to ad homs.
Let us remember, in WW2 the allies had to lay waste to our enemies cities and industrial complexes before we could bring the war to an end.
Israel is in the same position, either they defeat Hamas in Gaza or the war will go on for more decades.
It’s vastly different in that the Allies were fighting a well matched army, with fortified defences and an industrial base churning out heavy weaponry. They couldn’t have shifted them without a bombing campaign to disrupt their factories and logistics.
Israel is an incredibly well equipped army fighting a rag tag bunch of fighters they vastly outgun and outnumber with no industrial base in an area in size similar to the Isle of Wight, who have no capacity to bring in fighters from elsewhere.
It’s akin to the RAF carpet bombing the Republican council estates in Belfast in retaliation to the IRAs bombing campaign
Israel are fighting Iran and their proxies across the Middle East.
It bears no relation whatsoever to the IRA terrorist campaign
Why doesn’t it? Both the IRA and Hamas are paramilitaries rather than conventional armies, both had nothing in the way of tanks, heavy artillery, an Air Force or any air defence, both are facing a vastly bigger and better equipped opponent, both are based and hidden in civilian areas, both enjoyed local support.
The only difference is the British had some humanity and refrained from killing thousands of innocent civilians in order to take out the fighters, something the IDF clearly lack
You are talking rubbish.
You seem to know all about how to fight a war not of your choosing, against an enemy who states they exist to destroy you. I’m guessing you’re a general, or a retired general? Or are you just a random leftie punter with fashionable opinions, trying to undermine Israel’s right to defence, with armchair commentary how you’d do it better?
I’m a Field Marshal actually. It’s also quite nice to be labelled a leftie, what with my views being rather conservative it’s a certainly novel experience.
However you do seem to get rather upset whenever anybody is vaguely critical of Israel killing women and children in appalling numbers. Do you believe that they should have the right to kill as many civilians as they please in their retaliatory assault?
Would Britain have been justified in killing thousands of innocent civilians in order to wipe out a handful of IRA commanders?
It’s nonsense to conflate the IRA with Iran and it’s proxies determined to annihilate Israel from the map … get a grip Billy, engage brain?
Hamas are not republican separatists, they are a genocidal death cult. Were there 30-40k IRA members under Belfast hiding in 300 miles of tunnels using the rest of the Irish as human shields? Why are you so keen on blaming Israel for the civilian casualties? Comparative data from other urban wars clearly show IDF restraint given this unprecedented terrain.
There were tens of thousands of Provos holed up in the council estates of Northern Ireland yes. Whilst they didn’t have tunnels they were all hidden amongst the civilian population
Hamas does indeed have an industrial base, as exemplified by its tunnel infrastructure, constructed with money and materials supplied as aid. Neither are they rag tag fighters, as the events of 7 Oct should have made clear to you.
The IDF is, as you say, well resourced and well trained. So, if the Israelis weren’t trying their best to reduce civilian casualties, there would be nothing living and nothing standing in Gaza by now.
Tunnels aren’t an industrial base. Hamas have no abilities to make their own weapons, everything has to be smuggled in from abroad.
Many civilians in Germany were killed by grenades, rifle fire, artillery and tank fire not just carpet bombing as Allied troops cleared towns, as you know. In order to save their own lives they grenaded basements etc as they fought bands of Nazi soldiers, (not a mechanised battalion) sometimes regrettably killing civilians. No clean wars. How many civilians killed in the Gulf wars by the Allies? – and could you really even differentiate? Don’t start a war if you don’t want your own civilians to die is the lesson. Israel even kills its own troops by accident let alone aid workers. The intense scrutiny of every action is merely to find a point of accusation.
If you are indeed a Field Marshall it’s quite concerning you view the IRA and Hamas attrocities and circumstances in equal measure. Perhaps one should revisit this narrative?
drivel
So the Gazans should surrender turn over Hamas and release the hostages. They got the war they started.
It’s not “retaliation”. Hamas must be destroy if the Israelis want to avoid doing the whole thing over again in twenty years.
The Palestinians are the only ones left in the world who think they can destroy the Israelis. They must be made to wake up from their fever dream and get on with their lives.
At the end of the war the allied war machine wastly outnumbered the german capacity. You mean the russians should have halted outside Berlin and called up Hitler in his bunker and offered a two-state solution so that no more of the Hitler Youth needed to be killed?
New war. Same enemy.
This is a serious question: how do you defeat an idea? Particularly when the current attempts to do so are generating more recruits to that idea? As far as I can see the only way Isreal will ever be safe is if it changes relationships with the states that surround it sufficiently to make the Hamas idea irrelevant or an anathema. And changes its behaviours and attitudes towards the Palestinians who have a right to live in the land where they were born. I love Isreal (and yes, I have lived there) and it breaks my heart how it has got the idea of nationhood so fundamentally wrong right from the outset.
If you’ve previously lived in Israel, one would assume you would know how to spell it’s name.
The idea that is being defeated is that Israel is going away. It’s not. The other idea is that is dying is that Islamists can fight an asymmetrical war without huge losses. The other idea dying is that we in The West need to maintain our higher morality in warfare when the other side does not. As Trump alluded to correctly. The West could eliminate the Taliban in two weeks. Iran could be eliminated in about two hours.
Pat: “the current attempts to do so are generating more recruits”
In the same way, as the essay affirms, that the October 7th atrocities galvinised Israeli resistance to being murdered?
God knows what motivated the terrorists in the first place but the idea that the Islamists (Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Iran’s Ayatollahs etc.) are fighting for “freedom” is as wrong as its possible to be.
When the allies annihilated the Nazis by carpet bombing, and wiped out the Japanese elite by A-bombing, that didn’t create ‘more recruits’ for the axis powers, and it also smashed their ideologies. Sometimes (nearly always!) ‘total war’ is the only answer. Particularly if, unlike the Nazi when the invaded and occupied a country, the Islamist invaders then set out to slaughter with knives, shovels and AK47s every single man, woman, child and baby (yet born or otherwise).
What motivated Hamas was to draw Israeli into large scale conflict. They could then use the footage of Palestinian death and destruction in their propaganda war against Israel. The aim is to weaken Israel’s support in the West and harden attitudes among Israel’s regional enemies. If they can break Israel’s alliances and isolate them, Israel will be more vulnerable to long term siege tactics by its neighbors.
Only Netanyahu could get away with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The people who propped up murderous psychopaths for 15 years are reaping the consequences of actions last October that put human civilisation back many, many centuries.
The plan is for a radically reduced Gazan population to dribble away somewhere, amorphous though that sounds. The question then is what to do with the West Bank. Integration in an enlarged Israeli state would seem the best call but the cold reality is that the territory will doubtlessly end up with reservations for steel-eyed guerillas plotting their next attack.
Civilians killed in Gaza are fulfilling their own civilization’s—and the British left’s—highest aspiration for them.
Remember this chestnut from Hamas legislator Fathi Hamid? He said it on air on Al-Aqsa TV in 2008:
“[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.”
The death industry he spoke of wouldn’t have succeed without international partners, and the British left was the main partner in those early years after Israel left Gaza.
it’s interesting how people like Hamid say things like this while being far away from any danger themselves. It’s as if the only thing they prefer to a dead Jew is a dead Arab.
Wow. I had not come across that quote before. There’s a lot of evidence for that attitude among Palestinian jihadists, but here it’s summed up in a proud and defiant confession.
After Oct 7th Israel has grounds for removing the Arabs from Gaza. No nation need live by genocidal savages. To hell with international law if it sides with people who support Hamas.
As Graeme Macdonald so appositely reminded us two days ago : – “Jews and the state of Israel are permanently exempt from criticism”. Until this lamentable state of affairs is rectified there will be NO peace in the Middle East.
Only Israel is all the time criticised. Peace will come when the Palestinians will be willing to tolerate a Jewish state.
Israel exempt from criticism? You’ve really gone through the looking glass! Have you not heard of the UK? Israel-bashing has long been the favorite pastime of Britain’s political class. They give themselves a special permission to lie when it comes to Israel, then act like it’s unfair when they’re criticized for their lies.
The British left took its cue from the infamous Soviet propaganda campaign of the 1980s. Just recently, we heard one lordly old Brit say in parliament that Israel is responsible for antisemitism—including, presumably, his own. Does that sound to you like a country where Israel is exempt from criticism?
But for the British Balfour Declaration of 1917 there wouldn’t be a State of Israel.
WHO seriously denies this?
A horrible mistake on our part in hindsight
We were ‘bankrupt’ at the time and had NO other choice, sadly.
This is the only comment of mine that’s currently visible, somebody has obviously reported all my other ones. Fair play, that’s commitment to trying to shut down opinions you don’t agree with!!
Yes it is getting rather tedious I must say.
Most of the pseudo criticism from the US and others is really a master class in ‘crocodile tears’.
Our own Dave Cameron (UK) being a prime example.
It’s still hard to fathom the depraved reaction to October 7 that we’ve seen in much of the West. I knew England was a sick society long before that, but the depth of the moral rot is still shocking.
For many in England, self-righteousness toward Israel has become a substitute for looking in the mirror.
And what would they see in that mirror?
A society more concerned with cultural sensitivity around grooming gangs than with the safety of the victims trafficked by those gangs.
A society that howls with rage over the accidental killing of aid workers, but that shrugs off the abduction of civilians by UN personnel who took part in an unspeakable mass atrocity.
Whilst I understand your point here, I would not agree that this is representative of English society, rather a minority but vocal element of it.
I take your point.
The US owes Hezbollah for more than 200 Marines, a CIA station chief and a lot more. The French owe them for more than 50 paratroopers. Those debts have been accumulating interest for more than 40 years.
The “aid workers” story is just another swing in the propaganda war ensemble of both sides. You’ve got to laugh that these highly experienced and highly paid military operative “aid workers” look very much like mercenaries to the ordinary observer. Same goes for the IDF unable to direct fire against combatants deciding to hit anything that moves. It shows the desperation that comes with “total war”. The fact is both side are puppets in a more global game and the players in Russia, Iran and USA (inc UK) must realise that if they can’t put their fire out in ME&A it will ultimately flare up in their own territories?
Perhaps it’s just me but this line caught my eye: “Standing proudly on the greenest part of a mainly arid land, the orchards here are filled with avocado and banana trees.”
Why is it that the Jews have somehow managed to build a first-world society out of ‘mostly arid land while the bulk of Arabs live at subsistence levels? If not for the coincidental presence oil, the entirety of the Muslim nations would be no better off than sub-Saharan Africa.
No doubt, Israel is the front line of an attack which is inching in our direction. Good luck to lefties siding with barbarians when they come in to their homes with guns and knives.
If Iran attacks Israel, The West will support Israel.
I won’t. I want nothing to do with a regional conflict between two warmongering nations in the Middle East
Then with the greatest of respect, you’re a fool. That battle is coming to the West within 5 years. You’ll need to pick a side.
This is a regional dispute over territory that doesn’t affect the west in any way. I wouldn’t want to see a western soldier suffer as much as a stubbed toe by getting involved trying to keep apart these two groups of animals apart
Thank you for this article Nicole. I think I might be correct in thinking you have reflected the mood from Israel. The comment that caused me to comment was. “The feeling that someone always wants to kill you is not unfamiliar to me”
I have travelled to Israel from the other side of the world quite a few times since the mid 80’s, most recently in August, and I admit to not liking it much. Despite the material progress I have witnessed this feeling of impending threat always hangs in the air. I so hope you are wrong about a second war breaking out as I would like to return to a country I don’t like to visit people I do.