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We did not think we would ever see such sights in Israel. Helpless Jews—women, children, the elderly—tormented, raped, torched alive, beheaded, and mutilated. There is much that has not yet been made public, and may only reach few, because the gore is not just incomprehensible, but actually traumatising. In some of the worst footage the victims are recognisable, and so they have to be kept away from the public eye lest the victims’ families witness their loved ones tortured and killed. We are faced with Nazi-scale atrocities—inhuman barbarism.
It goes without saying that any civilised person would be deeply shocked. But that does not even begin to describe how this horror played on the collective Israeli psyche, indeed the Jewish psyche in general.
This essay appears in November’s Quadrant.
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For two millennia, Jews have been helpless. When anti-Semitism swelled and rose around them, they could only try to flee or beg for mercy. They rarely had the chance or the means to organise and resist. Jewish history since the fall of the Second Temple reads like a string of expulsions and pogroms culminating with the Holocaust. The promise of Zionism, the promise of Israel, was therefore Never Again.
By Never Again, Zionism did not mean that Jews would be spared hate, or wars, or even violent death. Rather Zionism meant that we will defend ourselves or die trying. This is so deeply ingrained in the spirit of anyone who grew up under the influence of Zionism that it is an instinct, an existential orientation towards life and death, more than it is a thought or an ideology.
The late Hebrew University professor of history Zeev Sternhell was a child in a ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. From a hiding place, in a hole in the ground, he saw Jews hunted like animals in the streets, men and women fleeing and shot in the back, shot children falling from treetops where they tried to hide. He survived, migrated to Israel and later served in the Israel Defense Forces. In an interview he gave to journalist Ari Shavit in 2008 in Haaretz he said that when he saw friends and men under his command die in battle, he thought that:
at least they died like human beings. They didn’t die being hunted on the streets. For me the state of Israel is not a political affair. It is something far more fundamental. Far more basic. It is a return to being human. A return to living like a human being. Because there, in the ghetto, there was a loss … of your human identity. You ceased to be a person altogether.
Sternhell’s politics were on the far Left, and as a scholar and pundit he tended to see veiled fascism in every expression of nationalism and patriotism. He believed that Zionism betrayed its leftist promise, because it clung to its nationalism at the expense of its original socialist promise. Still, he insisted he was a Zionist. “I’m not just a Zionist,” he said in that interview, “I’m a super-Zionist. For me Zionism was and still is the right of Jews to control their destiny and future.” Politically it is difficult to make sense of Sternhell’s anti-national yet Zionist stance, since Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jews. Sternhell seemed to support the principle of self-determination for all peoples but reject its concrete realisation in nation-states, or at least he often come close to rejecting it.
But emotionally, his position was easily understood by any Zionist, including those who, like me, sharply disagreed with his politics: Never Again.
At the heart of Israel’s declaration of independence there is a single-sentence paragraph, the shortest one in the parchment. This is the heart of the text, the line that separates the section that talks about the past from the section that discusses the future. It says: “It is the natural right of the Jewish people, to be like all peoples, master of their own fate, in their own sovereign state.”
You can—indeed you should—read this statement politically. But you can also read it emotionally. And we all do. It means for Israeli Jews, and for many Jews outside Israel, that henceforth Jews will not be hunted in the streets, slaughtered while trying to hide in basements, or shot off treetops. They will die, if they must, on their feet, a weapon in their hand. Or, to use Sternhell’s harsher terms, they will not die like hunted animals but like human beings.
The horrors of October 7 reminded us that the existential condition of Zionism is not a given and cannot be taken for granted. It is something that we willed and carved out of history against all odds. It is something we must constantly protect and uphold, because it can be lost.
I think the Israeli public, emerging gradually from the initial shock, senses this already, though politics has not yet adjusted. It seems that our politicians have not yet realised that the ground has shifted under their feet and they still think in terms of yesterday, as if this is just another round in a continuing war. It is not. It is going to change Israel in fundamental ways, which we may not yet fully comprehend.
What Hamas has now done has not just buried the two-state solution and killed all hopes for peace in our lifetime, or in our children’s lifetime. It has also tripped the wire that triggers the deepest of Jewish fears, the fears that run so deep that they precede reflection or even verbalisation. That is why you hear from most of the Left what you would normally hear only from the Right: calls to see this all the way through to the complete destruction of Hamas as a functioning organisation.
Modern anti-Semitism has learned to hide in its moral opposite: the language of human rights. Old blood libels claimed Jews kill Christian children to use their blood for the baking of matzot, the Passover bread. Contemporary blood libels claim the IDF is uniquely murderous and deliberately kills Palestinian children to satisfy its bloodlust. The form is new, but the content is not.
The contemporary versions are peddled by organisations claiming to uphold human rights, while undermining the universality of that principle, which is its very essence. They do this by applying one standard to the Jewish state, and another to all others, especially those belonging to groups with a postmodern moral badge of official victimhood, which supposedly grants them a waiver from moral imperatives.
This corruption of morality relies on marginalising the evidence of the actual behaviour of such groups towards their own members (especially gays, women and non-believers), towards minorities in their midst (such as Jews and Christians) as well the outside world.
This application of double standards has caused Israel to voluntarily impose on its army a stricter code than any other army does, a task made all the more difficult by the increasing sophistication of its enemies in manipulating these very vulnerabilities. As Benjamin Netanyahu succinctly put it: we use rockets to protect our women and children. They use women and children to protect their rockets.
Israel should be done with this game. It is an immoral one, and it has enabled our murderous enemies to escape responsibility. It has led to the sacrifice of our own men to save the lives of those who would turn their own children into cannon fodder. Israel should insist that those who have tied together Jewish children with rope then burned them alive, will not manipulate us in the name of human rights. It should insist that only those who put their own children in harm’s way to protect the weapons they use against our innocent civilians, are responsible for their safety. It should insist that Hamas has committed crimes against humanity and we will not sustain its rule under the guise of “humanitarian aid”. International law prescribes that if the enemy does not separate civilians from combatants it alone bears responsibility for the lives of the innocent. Israel should insist on that rule and not flinch.
This is a chance to begin restoring moral clarity, and the gore from this attack, much of which was recorded by Hamas’s sadistic anti-Semitic terrorists, should serve to remind us of this.
Those who have not lost their conscience to the auto-immune disease of wokeism, to conformity and cowardice, would do well to leverage the horror that befell Israel to clean their own house too. It is, perhaps, not yet too late to save the Judeo-Christian tradition from the self-inflicted destruction of postmodern pseudo-morality.
Gadi Taub is an Israeli historian and political commentator. He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Communications at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Sadly moral clarity is no more and yes it should go without saying that any civilised person should be deeply shocked at the particularly heinous crimes on October 7.
Islamic countries have a foot in each camp, by on the one hand, condemning Israel’s response and on the other refusing people from gaza to cross their borders. They’re smart as it’s obvious they will not risk allowing terrorists in their midst as who can be sure, who from gaza is not a hamas terrorist. The populace voted hamas in.
I await the many comments here which will require immediate scrolling. I’ve learnt.
You won’t/didn’t wait long.
No. “Zionist conspiracy”. Groan.
Unfortunately it shows that the otherwise decent and intelligent people on this can still fall victim to propaganda.
Intelligent people can be stupid but these people supporting Hamas, no matter how carefully they word it, are certainly not decent, they are repugnant.
The Christian tradition from late Roman times, throughout the Middle Ages and deep into modernity was implacably opposed to Judaism, although not the Jewish people as such, who were potentially redeemed by conversion. The Judaeo-Christian tradition is an extremely new and unholy alliance which benefits one party far more than the other.
As for the morality of retribution, this calculus only holds if one ignores the long Zionist conspiracy to wrest the country from the prior inhabitants. The Palestinians have an unenforceable claim to their land. The Israelis have the land on the basis of superior storytelling, superior diplomacy and superior force. Fair play to them, since, in the real world, outisde the delusions of the liberal worldview, this is how territory is acquired and held.
Sorry David. I refute your statement that the Palestinians have a right to THEIR lands. It never was Their Land. They are the refugees from the 1967 war when Egypt ordered them out of Jordan so they had a staging post for their incursion into Israel. So much of the history of the Middle East is unknown to many. A bit of research would solve that problem.
@mags of queensland,
You say that the Palestinians appeared in 1967. Have you missed the research, also published by Israeli historians, citing that in 1947/48 around a million Palestinians were driven out with tens of thousands killed, by Zionist armies? And if they did not exist until 1967 how did the following happen:
1. In 47/48 Zionists wiped from the face of the earth (but not British Mandate maps) 530 Palestinian towns and villages.
2. In the 19th century the Palestinians exported Jaffa oranges to the world.
3. In 1930 Golda Meir addressed a postcard to a friend in Tel Aviv, Palestine.
4. Major battles were fought in Palestine in the First and Second World Wars and there were certainly Palestinians around then.
5. We have drawings, etchings, paintings, photographs of Palestine and the Palestinians across centuries and yet you say they only appeared in 1967.
6. The UN Partition Plan specifically divided the country into Zionist and Palestine and stated that the Palestinians should be treated fairly and justly and not be denied their rights.
And you are saying that they did not exist? I am afraid historical facts totally refute your claims.
@moQ
I am not in a position to refute your conention that the current Gazans are all (mostly?) descended from Palestinian refugess who had been sheltering in Jordan sixty years ago but it hardly makes a difference. Pardon me for quoting myself but what I wrote was: “The Palestinians have an unenforceable claim to their land. “; note the absences of upper case letters in the word ‘their.’ Where I wrote ‘Palestinians’ you read ‘Gazans’.Their (the Palestinians’) land did use to be Palestine, but it is now occupied, settled and controlled by Israel under the new name.
The situation is analogous in some ways to the unenforceable claim of ten million or so Germans who fled the eastern marches of the Reich in 1945, except that those people had no longer any prospect of assistance from their co-ethnics to reclaim the lost territories. They were essentially friendless. Now that there is virtually no sense of ethnic pride in Germany it’s hard to imagine a war to reclaim Prussia and Koenigsberg getting going. In contrast to the situation in the disputed area of the Levant there is also the problem of an absence of ongoing hatred between the Poles and the Germans although that might be remedied I suppose with suitable propaganda or intelligence mischief.
I would see the Judaeo-Christian tradition as a religious and cultural phenomenon with its roots in the ‘Old Testament’. Christ was a Jew. This is not a modern ‘alliance’. The historical opposition of the Christian nations of Europe to Jews at different times is, of course, undeniable. It is continued today by the Left throughout the once-Christian West, for different contingent reasons, but with the same morally-inspired repugnance. However it is also true that the more religious Jews naturally oppose Christianity, since it is incompatible with their understanding of their status and destiny with God. Christian evangelists in Israel today today are likely to be physically assaulted by the more zealous young Jewish men.
I got a warning from a public social media site for this type of comment (below), but Hamas cannot be understood (but not accepted or excused) without knowing the belief that drives it.
Here it is, a Muslim hadith:
“Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (….) as saying:
The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim 2922)
So basically your position is that genocide is acceptable if a religion contains extremists who commit violence?
Can you explain why that would not apply to all religions as a basic principle?
Surely it is wrong to condemn all for the actions of some? I thought that was something established at Nuremberg.
Ceres: is you finger ready on the scroll wheel? Massacres happen, but thankfully they are not happening near me, so I don’t dwell on them. My people of the Confederate States of America were invaded by those damn Yankees who killed so many of us and destroyed so many homes and infrastructure, so I am not completely unsympathetic to Gadi Taub’s plight.
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Where was the IDF on October 7? Why was it not defending Israel? The Zionist argument that Jews need a nation-state of their own for survival’s sake, doesn’t make sense, when considering that most Jews live outside of Israel and are doing quite well. When was the last pogrom against Jews in America or Australia? My Israeli sister once observed that the Jews flying out of the Soviet Union to freedom in their eternal homeland of Israel, were only there long enough to catch the next plane to New York!
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The “holocaust” has long been used as a stick to further Zionist aims; even today, 2023, in Australia, laws are being passed forbidding any insignia or gesture reminiscent of the German Third Reich to be seen in public. What next, should we ban the Volkswagen or forbid the display of the VW logo in public? After all, the VW was Hitler’s idea, and the Wehrmacht used the Kubelwagen as a “jeep”, and the SS had priority in the allocation of the 4WD amphibious Schwimmwagen, both being military variants based on the VW beetle. 10’s of Millions upon 10’s of millions of people died in WW2, and territories and cities lost forever; should WW2 be used as justification for more territorial conquest and ethnic cleansing? Surely enough is enough? Zionism is perceived by some as the problem, not the solution.
“The “holocaust” has long been used as a stick to further Zionist aims; even today, 2023, in Australia, laws are being passed forbidding any insignia or gesture reminiscent of the German Third Reich to be seen in public.”
One could spend some time unpicking that incoherent statement, and what follows, but I will merely note the scare quotes around the word “holocaust”. Was that another trick dreamed up by those sneaky Zionists?
Sindri: I’m sorry you found that particular statement in my comment “incoherent”, which would indeed make it hard to “unpick”. I comprehend your focus on my use of the word “holocaust”, and its placing within quotation marks, which you have defined as “scare quotes”. For the record, I was not trying to communicate a “Holocaust Denial” statement, or even suggest one, which I think you may have been implying. What I was intending to communicate was that “holocaust” (Greek for “whole burning”, referring to the type of sacrifice made in ancient times by the Hebrews) has no relevance for me, and that I am fed-up with the ever-increasing use of the word and concept to effect political and social actions in Australia and other Euro-centric countries. Endless and ever-increasing propaganda is being generated by the media about Nazis, shock-horror-gasp! The war ended 70 some years ago! Last time I checked it is still legal to deny the holocaust in Australia, but, the way things are going, that too will be considered “hate-speech” or “hate-thought”. I do not consider that I owe any debt or obligation to Jews, Hebrews, Israelis, or Australian Aboriginals for that matter. Nor am I “anti-Semitic” or “racist”.
I agree with your impatience with the constant references to the “holocaust” in current political discourse. The related decision to ban the public display of Nazi symbols in Australia is equally irritating. There have been other holocausts. One might recall the Armenian genocide. Our major trading partner is currently engaged in a genocidal program that our media and political leaders decline even to mention in public.
Meanwhile, World War II is over. We no longer hate the Japanese or even the Germans. Hopefully we no longer hate anyone. I note that Daniel Andrews very pointedly banned the display of Nazi symbols in Victoria, while riding rough-shod over the civil liberties of Victorians. He was actually threatening to exclude from society – and even from access to health care – people who were ‘unvaccinated’. And then of course there were the infamous rubber bullets fired into the backs of fleeing protesters, by the newly-militarised Victoria Police. Hmmm. Perhaps there is a parallel there after all…..
@Stephen Due,
You make salient points. The appropriation of holocaust by the Zionists for only followers of Judaism, means that it is denied and dismissed when it happens to others. This is very dangerous and evil in itself.
Unless we discuss, explore, know about all holocaust experiences, past and present, then we betray our own freedoms as we saw with Daniel Andrews and others during the Covid madness.
Either principles of justice, rule of law and common human decency apply to all or they apply to no-one.
We all know if Christians or Muslims were doing to Jews what Israel does to the Palestinians there would be outrage. And rightly so. But that must also go the other way. Unfortunately everyone, including Jews is in danger from the denial of the Palestinian holocaust.
@Sindri,
No-one disputes there was a Jewish experience of holocaust at the hands of the Germans. But Christians and Muslims also died in the tens of millions in their experience of holocaust. Romanies or Gypsies died at a far greater per capita rate and still remain persecuted and Stateless and no-one cares.
There is no doubt the Zionists made full use of the Jewish experience of holocaust and if you read the history had been warning about such a thing from the 1890’s. There are many advertisements from 1900 onwards calling for Jewish colonists in Palestine and warning of a holocaust in Europe. Perhaps they were psychic.
However, that terrible experience for many European Jews has been used for more than a century to wage a colonial war in Palestine. How can one ever justify inflicting shocking suffering on others in the name of those who suffered as followers of Judaism in WWII.
That is the problem. Suffering is not particular to Jews. All suffering is equal and we are all humans and should be respected as such.
The Germans committed the horrors that they did because they considered others to be subhuman. That is how we move from prejudice to genocide. That is why Palestinians are dying in their thousands and have done for nearly a century – because they are considered to be subhuman. I find that truly shocking and deeply troubling.
Just look at some of the things posted here in Quadrant, a site which was created to defend facts and civilized and conservative principles. This is how easily we humans become debased.
My suffering is not equal to yours. Mine is much worse. If I feel myself to be suffering enough I don’t care about yours at all.
The ‘holocaust’ narrative really only got going in the public mind in the 1970s. Dissident scholarship soon emerged to question the details of this narrative but fairly rapidly found its proponents being suppressed and demonised. Why? From the mid-1990s questioning details of this story has been progressively banned in most of Europe as well as Canada. Germany has imprisoned a ninety year old woman Ursula Haverbach for heaven’s sake. Why?
I don’t know for sure.
Perhaps Norman Finkelstein’s ‘The Holocaust Industry’ is a good place to understand part of the reason.
“Dissident scholarship”. Come off it. Your “dissident scholars” are, to a man, crackpot conspiracy theorists and Jew-baiters.
@Sindri
In general in this debate hysterical accusations and crackpot conspiracies like the (now discredited) lampshades made of human skin I ‘learnt’ about watching documentaries as a child, come from one side. As does constant villification of German people.
An account of events which is not testable by scholarly enquiry, due to social or legal sanction, is a religious belief and not history. You should read Finkelstein’s book as a starter.
Any censorship is wrong and a betrayal of our freedoms. Why should exploring the Jewish experience of holocaust in WWII be subjected to censorship if there is nothing to hide. Surely it would be a good thing to have historians and writers explore the topic intimately and categorically establish the facts?
Censorship is never acceptable, particularly if the facts are clear and verifiable. There is no doubt that the Jewish experience of holocaust at the hands of the Germans has been used to both create Israel and maintain its ongoing occupation and colonisation of Palestine. For that reason alone its proponents should be called to account. Not that the suffering of one group should or ever could justify the suffering and holocaust experience of another.
The belief that the suffering of followers of Judaism is greater than any other suffering for any other humans is not only ridiculous it is racist. All human suffering is equal. And to inflict terrible suffering on others in the name of not even your experience of suffering, but the experience of some followers of your religion is even worse.
Surely in a civilized world, never again, as indeed many Jews have said, should be for everyone. I refuse to countenance the inferiority of any human as a human, let alone seeing their suffering dismissed because they are considered to be animals. Although animals are actually treated far better than the Palestinians. Can you imagine the outrage if 2 million dogs, nearly half of them puppies, were being bombed in a prison.
@cbattle,
I think the Holocaust stick has worn very thin. Quite why anyone would think that because some followers of your religion suffered terribly you have the right to do the same things to others is totally irrational.
It is perhaps very depressing that a religion which should have learned so much from the suffering of many of its followers should have learned so little. This is why so many Jews are increasingly sickened by Israel and its atrocities for it debases Judaism and Jews.
As to protecting Israelis have you heard about Hannibal’s Code? It is something long used by the IDF where the deaths of their own are considered acceptable if it enables far greater deaths of the Palestinians. And I suspect after decades of targeting unarmed men, women and children, a fullscale assault from the Palestinian Resistance, people who could really fight, was a terrible shock to the IDF.
It seems most of the Israeli deaths were the result of IDF actions and targeted, not even something which could be called friendly fire. One of the Kibbutz survivors said exactly that.
As does Max Blumenthal.
October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles
Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire?
Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen.
Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.
These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives.
Much of the shelling in Be’eri was carried out by Israeli tank crews. As a reporter for the Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored outlet i24 noted during a visit to Be’eri, “small and quaint homes [were] bombarded or destroyed,” and “well-maintained lawns [were] ripped up by the tracks of an armored vehicle, perhaps a tank.”
Apache attack helicopters also figured heavily in the Israeli military’s response on October 7. Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.
Yet the mounting evidence of friendly fire orders handed down by Israeli army commanders strongly suggests that at least some of the most jarring images of charred Israeli corpses, Israeli homes reduced to rubble and burned out hulks of vehicles presented to Western media were, in fact, the handiwork of tank crews and helicopter pilots blanketing Israeli territory with shells, cannon fire and Hellfire missiles.
Indeed, it appears that on October 7, Israel’s military resorted to the same tactics it has employed against civilians in Gaza, driving up the death toll of its own citizens with the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons.
“People who could really fight.” Oh, yes, it takes great courage to attack farmers in their beds, hunt down attenders of a festival, and kidnap and shoot–and worse–unarmed men, women, and children.
Being in the Wall Street Journal (8/10) does not make it a fact, but Iran’s abuses of Human Rights in their country and support for terrorist organizations is widely acknowledged.
*******.
Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.
Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.
*****
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25?st=7ljykda3ca3bmrt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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On Thursday Iran will assume the Chair of the U.N. Human Rights Council Social Forum.
This ‘surprise attack’ meme/narrative is still being put out by AlJazeera today.
Who says?
Consider another hypotheses.
They knew where everyone was.
They knew who were the leaders.
They knew about most of the tunnels and weapons beneath the hospital complexes.
It they attacked first as in the Arab Israeli war they would be seen as war mongers.
They were stuck being hit by rockets daily as Hamas armed.
Why not wait for the attack and put together a response in advance.
After a couple of weeks they would have killed the Hamas leadership and blocked all the tunnels.
They have done this.
Its always open to the allies of Hamas to open humanitarian corridors and move refugees to Palestine, Lebanon or Egypt.
The UN, that is so down on Israel, could have put in a peace keeping force.
But they have not.
So the people of Hamas remain human shields.
So why did hundreds of police and soldiers and paramedics and firefighters die? Did they all know?
2 entire army bases were taken over and senior officers captured. Did they all know?
And then why were all the US flat tops at sea when Pearl Harbour was attacked?
How come the US and Australians knew where the Japanese were in the Battle of Midway, but the Japanese thought they were safe and their Comms unbroken?
Were the Israelis to go first they would have lost the support of the West.
So by taking a hit they strategically lost.
But then their enemy seeks a ‘wider war’.
The old adage is
‘If you seek peace, prepare for war’
Or from the Jewish point of view
‘Peace is the interval between wars.’
Hamas gives them few choices.
Two of them are ‘Go or die’.
So Israel is playing the long game,they intend to survive Hamas.
That’s my testable hypotheses.
So lets see what happens to confirm or deny it.
Really Lewis? They knew that 1400 of their people were going to be raped, tortured and murdered but they let it happen to give them a pretext to go into Gaza? Forgive me, a suggestion that is not only absurd but spectacularly offensive.
Perhaps read Max Blumenthal on Grayzone. He makes a case most Israelis died because of indiscriminate bombing and shooting by the IDF. This is supported by the testimonies of survivors.
Perhaps more people should check out the recent podcast/interview by Bret Weinstein and Efrat Fenigson.
He; an evolutionary biologist and forensic deep-dive scientist into the Covid scam.
She; an Israeli journalist and former IDF military intelligence officer.
Implausible patterns of Anomalies
A disturbing report vis-a-vis IDF spectacular initial inaction…seemingly inexplicable.
A few interesting points but pretty much IDF/Zionist manual recited. She does not even address the reality of the occupation of Palestine. The proposition that Hamas was a tool of Israel is an effort to wipe the mud off Israel’s face from being gazumped by the Palestinian Resistance. But, she may well be onto something with her False Flag scenario. Others have suggested it.
All I do know that regardless of who did what, the maniacal genocidal response of Israel is the greatest war crime in modern history for a colonial military regime.
What do they think it will achieve? They cannot kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza. If they think such savagery will keep the Palestinian Resistance quiet in the rest of Occupied Palestine they are fools. It is hard to see how CIA involvement could be a factor given the part the US is playing in Ukraine and how hard it is working for a war with China.
Applying Occam’s Razor, all of this might just be a dish served from the Tel Aviv bunker to try to assuage the shame of the supposedly greatest military being outwitted by a Resistance militia.
The truth will come out. It always does and Israel and its supporters may have bitten off more than they can chew and the world is prepared to swallow with this genocide.
@Paul W,
You might read Max Blumenthal on Grayzone. While loathed by the Zionists and neocons it offers some facts and insights into the situation which provide balance.
While theories abound, it looks like the Palestinian Resistance mounted an unexpected and effective attack and took the IDF by surprise. I know that sounds odd given how much surveillance they have on the Gaza prison but it has also been said the Israelis increasingly relied on AI instead of human minds.
And they probably became complacent with too much trust in their own ability and the much touted superiority of the IDF.
Also, there have been violent pogroms against the Palestinians in recent months, by Jewish settlers and provocative ‘invasions’ into Al Aqsa mosque, supported by the Israeli Government and IDF forces were moved away from the Gaza prison.
The shock of the attack, by real fighters, given that the IDF has been dealing with civilians, men, women and children for decades, led to an onslaught approach where Israelis were killed knowingly in a bid to kill the Palestinian fighters.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
If the Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza by Israel are human shields then clearly the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were human shields for their fighters. Glad we have that clear.
I have to say that some comments make my blog run cold.
Actually – make my blood run cold . If I had a blog it would have a lot to say about Hamas and be very hot.
Yes, the support for extermination of 16 million Palestinian Christians and Muslims makes my blood run cold. There are 6 million in Occupied Palestine, 2 million as Israeli citizens and 8 million in the Diaspora and every last one would need to die to end Palestinian Resistance.
Everyone has their theory about Jews, yet none know anything about actual Jews, The word “Jew” brings out your theories that shows you’re idiots. You know nothing about Jews and even less about the depth and meaning of that ignorance although it defines you.
One of the most remarkable Nobel statistics is that 22 per cent of winners have been Jewish, despite their people comprising less than 0.2 per cent of the world’s population.
Most Nobel Prize winners have been Christian and indeed often German. Does that make Christians and Germans superior in some way?
Hamas in Gaza are citizens of Gaza, They’re not some sort of aliens flown in from somewhere else who should be considered separate from the Gaza population. They all celebrate slitting open a pregnant woman’s womb to behead her unborn child’s head while she is force to watch before her own life is shot through. Fuck them all. Get rid of them all, They’re a blight on humanity.
So, Katzenjammer, by your comments regarding the population of Gaza, am I correct in understanding that you are advocating for the extermination of the Gazans as a final solution to the Gazan problem? Such a solution would not be without precedence.
Oops, I should have used the word “precedent” rather than “precedence”!
@cbattle,
It is horrifying to listen to people support genocide because they consider a group to be inferior. Quite chilling. Clearly some have no knowledge of history or genocide. This is how it begins. Such hatred creates the push for a Final Solution.
I have no doubt those Jews who died during WWII must be spinning in their graves at the horrors Israel commits in their names. The sooner Judaism separates from the Zionist State the better for the religion and for Jews.
The real Katzenjammer finally reveals himself.
Similarly Benjamin Netanyahu says:
****
“This is a turning point for leaders and nations. It is a time for all of us to decide if we are willing to fight for a future of hope and promise or surrender to tyranny and terror.
Rest assured, Israel will fight. Since October 7, Israel has been at war. Israel didn’t start this war. Israel didn’t want this war. But Israel will win this war.
Hamas launched this war by perpetrating the worst savagery our people have seen since the Holocaust. Hamas murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. They burned people alive, raped women, beheaded men. They tortured Holocaust survivors and kidnapped babies. They committed the most horrific crimes imaginable.
*****
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=75f864ba-83f0-4134-ad88-aa2d543a4eea
As the whore said to the judge: Well he would say that wouldn’t he.
When people use hyperbolic and hysterical language to demonise others it is wise to apply scepticism to what is said, particularly when the words come from someone bent on destroying those they demonise.
Only the gullible fall for such hate speech.
Good piece Gadi and can come up with no comment from this far away other than that I like what you’ve written, and if I had to nail my colours to the mast on this they would be the Jewish colours of Israel.
I can add that I also like what Yoram Hazony has written.
My opinion is that Hamas and the Palestinans who put them there, lost the right to be considered human and the world would be better off without them. All of them. No matter how far back they go or what claim they think they had. No surprise even other Arabs don’t want them.
You do realise the less than human approach created the holocausts the Nazis inflicted on so many. Are you saying you support such an approach and thought the Germans had it right? Seriously? So, like the Slavs, tens of millions of whom died, the Palestinian Christians and Muslims are Untermensch?
The Nazis exterminated humans. Different altogether.
@bollux,
I have no idea who you are but you might need to ponder what you just said.
You are saying it is okay to classify some humans as non-humans and that gives licence to do anything you wish to them? Is that really the sort of world you want future generations to inherit?
Surely millions died in WWII fighting against such a world?
Observing all the vitriol in this “debate”, I am reminded of the words of a Galilean Rabbi and Prophet, who said, many years ago: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” That and many other wise sayings were not received very well by the Jewish Authorities of the time, and mostly ignored by people ever since.
Interestingly that maxim can be found in most religions so it would seem to be a very sensible and humane instinct in human beings. But yes, often ignored.
This is why I fight from a position of principles because without principles underpinning civilization we are doomed.
What you deny for another you deny for yourself. We all know if the Germans had invaded, occupied and colonised the UK and treated the British as Israel treats the Palestinians they would have been fighting violently against their oppressors from the start. The patience of the Palestinians has indeed been remarkable by comparison.
We also know if the Japanese had succeeded in occupying Australia and had then colonised it, treating us as Israel treats the Palestinians, we would also have resorted to no doubt even more violent resistance.
The double standards on this issue are appalling.
Maybe just exterminate the adults and bring the children up in Israel as human beings.
Oh No….this essay only published one day ago and already it has contracted the rosross virus.
Ad hominem attacks do not make a case. Refute the facts mate instead of resorting to abuse. Make a case. Tear apart anything I have said.
I just skip them, but my Q&D software indicates 45% of the words in the comments were courtesy of rosross.
I am perfectly happy to be skipped by anyone or everyone. However, your constant targeting of me is bullying in essence. A bad look. By all means don’t read my posts but why gang up and play schoolyard bully with snide comments? If you think I care, I do not. It reflects on you, not me.
Yep. Didn’t take long. Finger is tiring from scrolling.!
I suppose we can be grateful for the never-ending contributions from rosross because he has served to tease many of us into reinforcing and strengthening our rebuttals and vindications. The Quadrant comments’ sections are probably the longest I have read on this site. Well done everyone for your scholarly efforts; these are very dangerous times and thinking hard about the issues is of vital importance.
Once again I find the comments section of Quadrant more informative than the actual article. Thank you Quadrant for maintaining a true free speech platform in a world of illusion and propaganda.
I’m taking the opportunity now to pick among the rotting corpses of this Comment battlefield, and am trying to understand human behaviour from the perspective of a socio-biologist (Such as in “The Naked Ape” and “The Human Zoo” by Desmond Morris and “The Territorial Imperative” by Robert Ardrey.). The veneer of “humanity” and “civilisation” appears to be very thin, and how quickly we resort to our primal selves!
.
Regarding “holocausts” and “massacres”, it is instructive to read of the genocide waged by the “Children of Israel” under the leadership of Moses and Joshua, in order to take possession of their “Promised Land”, which, according to the Torah, was a command from no less than Jehovah God, the Creator of the Universe! Given that the Torah is the foundational document of Judaism, and states that the borders of Israel are to extend from the Nile to the Euphrates, Netanyahu and his later day army of Zealots have the ultimate mandate to exterminate anyone who stands in their way of taking full and exclusive possession of what God has given to them! In this light, the IDF can be seen as “Holy Warriors”!
There is no doubt that our human condition involves more than the material and that we are influenced by beliefs and actions across time. Religions in particular, because of their repetitive nature, tap into these energy fields across centuries.
But, psychological applications can also explain what is at work. Israel was founded in fear and violence in the name of those who suffered fear and violence. The fear created high levels of anger and rage which, in a victim society could never be healthily addressed and processed.
The colonists in Palestine arrived with the belief, not all, but most, that they were unique among humans in terms of their suffering and no other suffering could ever be equal. This is why it was so easy for them to ignore and deny the genocidal foundation of Israel and to appropriate the homes and possessions of those they had killed or driven out.
But, human nature being what it is, such knowledge while denied consciously will remain actively at unconscious and subconscious levels. In essence the ghosts of those whom they abused so terribly would haunt them. That creates more fear which in turn leads to more rage.
October 7 was a massive shock to the Israeli psyche because the Palestinian Resistance outwitted and outfought the IDF. For a culture sourced in fear believing that its military was the best in the world and could never be beaten, that was a psychic shock of immense proportions. All of which creates even more fear and more rage.
The frustration of the Palestinian question is that they exist when Israelis want to believe that they live in a land which has always belonged to them. Facts and reality are not just irritating they are enraging.
So, the Israelis are captives of their own propaganda and sadly, have been pawns in the hands of Zionism. As have Jews whose religion is tainted by association.
Where does that lead? Nowhere good for Israel. As some Israelis fully understand.
I am full of admiration for the truly brave Israelis who speak out for justice. This is from a Jewish American group, Mondoweiss.
As Israelis we demand an official commission into the events of October 7. Genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza in the name of Israeli victims and we still do not know who was killed, how they were killed, and who killed them. We demand answers and so should you.
BY OPEN LETTER OCTOBER 31, 2023 11
Editor’s Note: The following statement was written by a group of Israeli citizens who want to remain anonymous for their safety and out of fear of government reprisal.
מכתב פתוח מישראליות/ים לישראליות/ים – עברית להלן
To our fellow Israelis,
We call to you from the fog of genocide. We grieve and we fret for “our own”, as well as those most of you ignore or regard as “animals.”
When Israeli military officials began spreading rumors through English-speaking Israeli media about “beheaded babies,” we were immediately struck. We realized our government’s propaganda would not be the same as it was in previous murderous attacks on Gaza.
While Israel continues churning out images of supposed ‘Hamas buildings’ in the Gaza concentration camp (what isn’t, in Israeli eyes?), to excuse their bombing, Israel’s domestic and international rhetoric now contains something much more akin to Nazi extermination propaganda.
We know what the purpose of this propaganda is. More than 8,500 indigenous Palestinian children, women, and men have been exterminated – and the number rises as we write. Many are trapped under the rubble of their homes, dying slowly. Others are facing thirst, starvation, and infectious diseases. At the same time, senior Israeli figures, even our president, keep howling that there are ‘no innocent civilians’ in Gaza.
Make no mistake, what Israel is doing in Gaza now will haunt Israelis for decades. Now is the time to make sure all Israelis understand this. And this understanding should start with full disclosure about the events of October 7, 2023.
Here are a few demands that each Israeli should be making right now, even if they deny the ongoing Gaza genocide. The first one is a comprehensive list of all the Israeli victims who have been identified. There is no comprehensive list on an official government website. The list published by Ha’aretz is partial. Some names are waiting to be “cleared for publication,” and we would like to know what this means.
The lack of a comprehensive list, three weeks in, leads to the next demand Israeli citizens must make — the establishment of an official investigation commission. Massive failures on the part of intelligence and combat units, as well as the Israeli insistence on turning Gaza into an open-air prison in the preceding decades, should obviously be addressed by such a commission. We would like to know how these failures contributed to civilian fatalities on October 7 and the following days.
Furthermore, according to Hamas’s spokesperson, 50 Israeli captives have already been killed as a result of our government’s decision to carpet-bomb Gaza. You may or may not find the Hamas spokesperson to be a reliable source, but we know that Israeli captives, loved ones of many here, have been dispersed throughout the strip and Israel does not seem to know their precise location.
Israeli citizens should ask themselves whether they support indiscriminate bombing that threatens the lives of captives. An exchange deal is on the table. We know that Hamas has been offering this from day one. Israel’s blind genocidal revenge ignores the well-being of Israeli captives.
And while our military exterminates human beings in Gaza, Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) platforms are in overdrive, especially abroad. The charred remains of loved ones are paraded around, nameless, contextualized only by dehumanizing calls to eradicate the inmates of the Gaza concentration camp. Upon seeing these images, aimed at a Western audience and with complete disregard for survivors’ families, we note once more that all of us deserve precise information as to who these victims are and how they died.
Without an independent investigation, we can only hope to piece together sporadic articles and testimonies of survivors. Conspiracy theories will flourish. We’re already seeing attempts to deny the very fact of Israeli civilians being killed by Hamas fighters.
Moreover, we reject Israeli attempts to label its fallen soldiers and other security operatives as terror victims equivalent to civilian fatalities. If an Israeli soldier is just an Israeli civilian, an Israeli civilian is just a soldier. We reject this dangerous equation.
Lastly, the question of who killed some Israeli civilians haunts us. It emerges from several reports that some were killed by the Israeli military. Whether they were caught in the crossfire, or deliberately shot at with tanks or helicopters in order to eliminate Hamas fighters or prevent Hamas from taking more captives, we deserve an answer.
We demand answers because a genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza in the name of Israeli victims, even though bereaved families are strongly opposed to this vengeful atrocity. We demand answers and so should you.
Quadrant today has posted another excellent essay by Brian Wimborne “The Problem of Islam in a Multicultural Society”. The reference to Brian’s earlier 7th June 2014 essay “The Tactical Myth of Palestinian Identity” nails it.
Palestine maybe a generic name for a land area, with a history of various tribes and desires, but it is not a country, hence there are no such people as “Palestinians” nor a country called “Palestine”.
Unfortunately Israel still contains a sector of extremist remnants of the Ottoman Empire, namely Sunni Muslims, who have not the wisdom of Peace nor the appreciation of fellow man to consider their own future of survival may improve if they just give up this stupidity of jihad and moronic selfishness.
The Zionist delusion that there never was a Palestine or Palestinians has to be as silly as it gets.
The name of the country partitioned in 1947 was Palestine and its people were called Palestinians. There are thousands of years of references to Palestine and Palestinians that to make them magically disappear would be impossible.
But, fantasies aside, let us agree there are 6 million people who call themselves Palestinians living under Israeli occupation today. That is the issue, regardless of what one believes about the past.
The two-state solution was never perfect, but given the arising circumstances after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent fallout of World War II, what alternative do critics of Israel here suggest?
If modern Australia has the right to be a legitimate nation state going forward, despite its history of colonisation, so does a modern Israel. Accept it and focus on making it work – i.e the Abraham Accords , which is exactly what Iran is trying to derail here through its proxy in Hamas.
@rosross – given your very outspoken position on the delegitimizing of Australian Aboriginal claims to indigeneity and the moral imperative (aka Palestine for Palestinians, always was always will be, never ceded blah blah blah) that may go with that in the recent Voice debate, I find your comments here simply another example of moral relativism and rank hypocrisy, so prevalent in contemporary discourse. Oh, how your outrage for the Palestinian homeland legitimacy bristles as you raise your fist in solidarity while you punch down on Australian Aboriginals with the other hand. Why? because like all subjective relativists who fail to apply principled and reasoned thought consistently, one issue was perceived to affect you personally and the other is safe for morally sanctimonious grandstanding. I suggest you purchase a mirror. What is seen within it is not very pretty. Then I suggest a visit to Auschwitz and you re-read Mein Kampf, a text it seems you would be very comfortable with.
@Citizen Kane,
I have made it very clear that there is no comparison between the situation of Palestinian colonisation and the British colonisation of Australia. And that is because the British made aboriginal peoples citizens very quickly with rights in law. Those with aboriginal ancestry today have long had full rights, indeed greater rights in terms of mining royalties and land rights.
The Palestinians have been given nothing. They have been colonised for 75 years with all of their land now occupied and they have been denied all civil and human rights as well as freedom, justice and compensation.
My position is not outrage for a Palestinian homeland, it is a position demanding justice for a still occupied and brutally colonised people. I take the same position for West Papua although even the Indonesians do not treat them as badly as Israel treats the Palestinians.
I condemn colonisation in this modern age even though no doubt in centuries past it was a critical part of human evolution. I condemn occupation. I condemn violence and human rights atrocities and war crimes to maintain occupation and colonisation. Why would any civilized person not condemn such things.
I do not believe Israel has a right to commit the atrocities it does because so many European Jews suffered in WWII. That is patently ridiculous. Let us also remember that Israel was created in 1947 and its actions in the modern age are vastly more to be condemned than things done in centuries past. Context is critical.
As to Auschwitz and Mein Kampf, any deep study of the creation of Israel in Palestine and the actions of Israel ever since make it clear that they have recreated much akin to the horrors of Auschwitz and Mein Kampf, as even some Jewish activists have said.
“I have made it very clear that there is no comparison between the situation of Palestinian colonisation and the British colonisation of Australia. ”
It’s irrelevant what subjective relativistic argument you ‘make clear’ as you are not the arbiter of absolute Truth, other than to validate my criticism of you as a moral relativist with all your ‘contextual’ moralising.
When were Australian Aboriginals first granted voting rights in any Australian state jurisdiction again? was that not 1944 in WA, some 160 years after colonisation.
How long has Israel existed as a State?
Since when and what law prevents a Palestinian born resident not being able to become an Israeli citizen, akin to any citizenship process in Australia? About 19,000 residents, representing five percent of the East Jerusalem Palestinian population, held Israeli citizenship in 2022.
Your rhetoric is as fine an example of moral relativism that I have read here in Quadrant over many years and as such rings hollow especially in light of your ardent stance against Australian Aboriginals sovereignty claims.
Have you not noticed the cross over between Aboriginal Sovereignty Activism and support for Hamas controlled Gaza here in Australia. At least they apply a consistent (if not misguided) application of logic and morals. You on the other hand…?
One of the Ayatollahs ‘useful idiots’ perhaps!
I understand you must operate under a level of denial so let us keep this simple.
It is not about being an absolute arbiter of truth. It is about looking at the facts and assessing current realities.
The aboriginal experience under British colonisation bears no resemblance to the Palestinians experience under Israeli colonisation.
To pretend there is denies the facts. I presume you know until 1900 there were colonies not States and the Government was in London. The colonies and then the States became responsible for aboriginal peoples, until 1967 when it was put under Federal charge.
In South Australia, as an example, when women got the vote in 1894, among the first in the world to do so, then so did aboriginal women.
In fact when universal suffrage became a reality, aboriginal peoples got the vote even if some did not know it. There were glitches in Queensland and WA for a time, but, in general they had the right to vote. We have images of aborigines at a polling station in the 1890’s and their rights are well recorded.
So, you are wrong on that count. Also, aborigines were made British citizens shortly after arrival of the British.
Palestinians are not citizens, have no right to vote, remain under one of the most brutal military occupations in modern history and have no civil or human rights.
Aborigines as British citizens had civil and human rights from the start.
I suggest you read B’Tselem and international human rights groups to find out the second-class status of non-Jewish Israelis. They have separate and inferior education and medical services. They cannot work outside of Israel and return – their citizenship is revoked if they leave. They cannot bring spouses, parents or children to live with them. There are other special regulations for non-Jews which is a discrimination Australia has never had.
Calling people names does not make a case. There is no comparison between the British treatment of aborigines and the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The British were indeed enlightened for the late 18th century and the Israelis extremely backward for the mid 20th century.
If aboriginal radicals resorted to violence that would be condemned because they have full rights as citizens.
Palestinian radicals resorting to violence because they have no rights at all and are brutally abused constantly, are an entirely different matter.
If you cannot see that because your level of denial and prejudice is so great, then no reason or amount of facts will get through.
And no, I have not noticed a crossover between aboriginal activists and the Palestinian Resistance. I have noticed some idiots trying to make the point, as do you, that there are similarities when there are none. But there are always nutters out there on the radical fringes.
The Palestinians have just cause and a right to resist. Australians with aboriginal ancestry have no such just cause or such right.
Small collateral point Rosross. The government of the colonies before federation was not in London. The various colonies had been self-governing for some time, decades, prior to federation and legislative and administrative interference from London was constitutionally possible but very limited.
As to a two-state solution, Israel has always made it impossible and never offered anything valid as a State. The plan the Zionists had and still have is to take all of Palestine and somehow rid themselves of all non-Jews. Perhaps they did read Mein Kampf long ago.
Israel should have done long ago what other Western democracies founded through colonisation have done – one State shared equally by all. No doubt it would have done if the Zionists had not insisted Jews must be a majority and always in control. Palestinian Christians and Muslims will always be a majority and the most likely outcome now is a one-state solution.
Israelis deserve peace and to live in a democracy perhaps even more than do the Palestinians for their culture suffers terribly as brutal occupiers and colonisers and they deserve better. I presume you know young Israelis are leaving in droves and returning to the countries their colonist parents and grandparents left. One of the biggest communities is in Berlin which is a wonderful healing touch. They feel safer in Germany than Israel.
So, healing can happen and let us wish as much for Israelis and Palestinians.
Interesting you should appropriate the experience of Aboriginal Australians and speak on their behalf in seeking to reassure your own corrupted morality that in their case colonialism was ‘different’.
“the Government was in London” – more moral relativism.
It’s an irrelevance where the seat of governance for Australia’s colonies resided if you were a colonised Aboriginal at the time. Local decisions were made locally by Governors and these were the ones that ostensibly affected day to day lives including land acquisition and granting of freehold title.
Aboriginal Australians and British colonisers were engaged in violent conflict from time to time. unless your moral relativism seeks to whitewash this fact from history.
“I suggest you read B’Tselem and international human rights groups to find out the second-class status of non-Jewish Israelis. They have separate and inferior education and medical services. They cannot work outside of Israel and return – their citizenship is revoked if they leave. They cannot bring spouses, parents or children to live with them. ” This comes out of the ant-semitic propaganda machine. Israel has residency and citizenship laws for non-Jews that are equivalent to those in other liberal democracies and all religious and ethnic minorities are equal under Israeli law.
After the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, the Oslo Accords give the Palestinian Authority administrative authority in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians of Gaza live under the control of the The Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The Palestinian Authority is an authoritarian regime that has not held elections in over 15 years; it has been criticized for human rights abuses, including cracking down on journalists, human rights activists, and dissent against its rule. Hamas is a registered Terrorist organisation and as October 7 demonstrates, rightfully so. Perhaps your righteous crusade should be directed there. but alas your toxic moral relativism won’t allow for it.
So we didn’t see all those Aboriginal flags at the Palestinian protests across Australia recently – the TV just photo shopped them in did they?
Your responses here demonstrate you are nothing but an ignoramus – and a rank hypocrite to boot! But that usually follows when you apply subjective moral relativism.
@Citizen Kane,
When people resort to abuse and ad hominem attacks they are admitting they cannot mount a coherent rebuttal. We have that clear.
Israel is inflicting genocide on the Palestinians and it is doing it with the support of many who should be defending principles of justice and conservative values. Israel’s behaviour will go down in history as one of the greatest depravities in the modern age and those who have supported it can live with their conscience.
Sadly Israel will not survive because its poisonous racism is destroying the society and debasing Judaism and Jews. This is the Israeli tragedy thanks to all those cheering on its genocide. In the modern world nothing can be truly hidden.
From Patrick Lawrence, ScheerPost:
It features a number of scenes wherein Israelis record themselves sadistically ridiculing Palestinians in the most cravenly cruel manner. They imitate Palestinian children dying or starving. They apply racially offensive makeup. They laugh and dance while switching lights on and off and while ostentatiously drinking water from taps — this last to mock Gazans as Israel deprives them of power, potable water, food and much else.
And I am describing the children in these videos, ranging in age from, maybe, 6 or 7 to somewhere in their teens or early twenties. The mothers stand behind them, smiling with approval and delight. Here is the video as posted by Al Jazeera English last week. I have since seen several others like it.
@ rosross. People such as yourself who defend the terrorist atrocities of Hamas on October 7 and the aims of the Iranian Ayatollahs deserve nothing less than all the scorn that is poured upon you. A moron is a moron is a moron and I for one won’t shy away from saying so. You have made no sound rational argument for ‘Palestenian Genocide’ – its just typical postmodernist victimhood emotive claptrap – that fits with the same claims coming from Aboriginal Activists. In short your arguments are bogus and expose you for the rank hypocrite that you are. That mirror would reveal a very vile creature indeed. Your Homoeopathic diagnosis – Bufo rana.
@Citizen Kane,
You make wild leaps which you cannot substantiate.
Someone who defends human rights, democracy, rule of law, justice and common human decency is not automatically defending Iran or any group deemed to be a terrorist.
Hamas is called a terrorist by Israel but Israel’s terrorism is ignored. Israel was founded in terrorism, remember Irgun and Stern, and more than one Israeli PM was a former terrorist. The hypocrisy of your position is breathtaking.
You defend Israeli State sanctioned violence, which to many is simply terrorism and condemn violence by the Palestinian Resistance, as terrorism when to many they are freedom fighters.
Let us not be hypocrites. I am prepared to condemn all violence, Israeli and Palestinian. Are you?
The fact you launch into person abuse indicates your frustration at not being able to refute what I have said.
It is very clear when it comes to Palestine some conservative values are dismissed by many writing for and posting on Quadrant. Nothing wrong with that of course because freedom of speech is vital and all should be free to speak. But what we need is balance.
Many conservatives seem not to respect the following:
Individual Freedom.
The Rule of Law. …
Human Dignity.
Mendacious idiocy is not a balancing force, it is idiocy pure and simple. Hypocrisy is not a value, it is hypocrisy. End of story.
Correct hypocrisy is not a value. You would know that. And abusing others does not make a case or achieve anything but weaken if not destroy your position.
Are you aware the Israeli police are attacking orthodox Jews because they are anti-Zionist and defend rights for Palestine? I can really see that winning hearts and minds.
Quote: Today, during a police raid to take down Palestinian flags in the anti-Zionist Jewish neighborhood, Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, the Israeli policemen were recorded attacking residents and knocking residents down on the road, hitting, and punching them in the face.
Police violence against ultra-Orthodox Jews continues constantly, Zionists constantly attack Jews, this must stop.
The only crime of these Jews is that they stand with the Palestinian people and are against Zionism.
Nothing can weaken or destroy my position as you have shown yourself for who you are and that is an immutable fact. Your moral relativism cannot argue away the existence of the sun just it cannot dismiss your intellectual and moral failings. It is there for all to see.
Of course nothing can weaken your position because you will not allow facts and reason to play any part in what you believe. Such exchanges are not about convincing others of anything, but simply offering balance, other information and a different perspective.
I make no moral relativism. You do that. I condemn all violence and you do not. You dismiss more than 75 years of terrible violence from the Zionists/Israelis to firstly set up their State in Palestine and then to creater full occupation and continued colonisation and I hold everyone to account.
I also apply rule of law where an occupier, particularly one so massively armed, is held more accountable because they have all of the power.
You have not refuted anything I have said, only dished up insults. It is there for all to see.
That is quite possibly the most laughable contribution of yours so far.
Your moral relativism happily dismisses the ‘rule of law’ Palestinians displayed in their barbaric butchering of infants, women and the elderly unarmed Israeli civilians after the unlawful incursion across the border on October 7.
Your moral relativism happily overlooks that Palestinians are governed by an unelected dictatorial regime known for international crimes against humanity along with their terrorist brothers in arms.
You falsely ascribe Israeli occupation of Gaza and repression of Palestinians by Israel when Gaza is under Palestinian Authority control.
You cheerfully overlook that the hospital bombing in Gaza was a Palestinian ruse targeting the car park and buy into the propaganda.
You turn a blind eye to the fact that Hamas and the so called Palestinian cause is a proxy for Iranian Antisemitism and broader geopolitical goals.
You bemoan Jewish focus on the holocaust as ‘ancient history’ and overblown yet personally crusade behind the centuries old enmity that Arabs and Palestinians hold towards Jews.
You moralise on Israeli colonialism and so called occupation while simultaneously punching down on Australian Aboriginals who claim the same injustice.
You then have the hide to claim some kind of moral authority as a colonialist and occupier yourself here in Australia under your own twisted rubric of injustice.
Frankly, People like you who seek to justify evil with your specious and mendacious arguments are more morally bankrupt than the evil doers themselves,
I will leave you with the reality of the Occupation of Palestine in the words of an American scholar:
Quote: . Blindness to the existence of the Palestinians; deafness to their claims. On my many visits to Israel/Palestine, it has struck me how little Israelis know about the Palestinians who live among them or
………under their military occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. …….
When one asks about “those people,” roughly a quarter of the population of Greater Israel, a frequent response is that they do not see them, and they wish they would just be quiet and leave us alone. We just want peace. Why do they have to make trouble?
W. J. T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and Senior Editor of Critical Inquiry. He is the author of numerous books on media, culture, and politics.
The violence Israel has committed against the Palestinians beginning with terrorism before 1947 is to maintain occupation, colonisation and apartheid.
The violence to which the Palestinians have resorted on rare occasions over 75 years is to fight for freedom and justice.
The Palestinians have the right to resist occupation under international law and the Israelis have no right to fight to prevent them. An occupier has no right to self defense.
Quite how you ignore those realities is the question.
Gaza is a prison and even a UK Prime Minister used the term, ‘the world’s largest open-air prison.’Prisons are not governed by the prisoners. Most Hamas officials are in Israeli gaols and have been for years. There are Hamas members in the Gaza prison working as prisoner support officials and according to aid agencies, doing a good job in the horrors Israel inflicts on them. Yes, Hamas is a part of the Palestinian Resistance.
If Gaza were under PA control do you seriously not think the people would leave, particularly when Israel bombs them to test its weapons? I mean, why would they stay if they were free to leave? And how could Israel shoot unarmed protesters in the past, including doctors, nurses, aid workers, journalists etc., if it were not a prison and the people were prevented from leaving?
And back you go to the fantasy that the situation for aborigines in Australia was akin to that of the Palestinians when history clearly records that it was not.
You resort still to personal attacks and do not make any sort of case. You present no facts and ignore the facts. I suppose you must. Prejudice demands high levels of denial.
You cheerfully overlook the facts that the beheaded babies story was canned; the Kibbutz survivors and released hostages said the Palestinians treated them well; the supposedly raped German woman was instead found in a hospital where the Palestinian fighters had taken her although Israel has been so busy bombing hospitals she is probably dead by now; that most of the deaths of Israelis were caused by the IDF sending missiles into their homes and incinerating everyone and shooting fighters and hostages alike.
Let us agree to disagree and I shall leave you to your disinformation and misinformation. Never let facts get in the way of propaganda is a hill that reason and logic can never climb. Thanks for your time.
The holocaust was still occurring in 1945 yet somehow, by your reckoning, morality only commences just 2 years later in 1947. And you think you aren’t morally fraudulent relativist!
I don’t need to hide behind the words of a leftist Palestinian propagandist scholar to compensate for a fraudulent intellect.
If the Palestinian Authority is not the governing authority in Gaza (along with Hamas e.g Hamas Health Ministry) who do you think is? Why is there a border? If, as you suggest, you honestly think Isreal has governance over Gaza you have drunk the Kool Aid (if only you had been in Jonestown) and everything you have stated as ‘fact’ has zero credibility.
You continue to obfuscate and turn a blind eye to the PA and Hamas own atrocities on their own people.
You refuse to address the role of Iran in Hamas.
History refresher for you. Australia was not terra nullius. Aboriginals were clearly very long term inhabitants – far longer that Palestinians in Gaza. British colonists arrived, took control without Aboriginal consent to do so. What is the difference? Oh thats right morality only commenced in 1947.
Palestinians were signatories to the two state solution.
The fact that you believe any of what you claim in relation to the decapitated babies and the German backpacker etc etc just demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that you really are a cretin- Bufo. Go crawl back into the hole from which you emerged.
The European Jewish experience of holocaust at the hands of the Nazis in WWII was a great tragedy but it did not and does not justify inflicting a holocaust experience on others, i.e. the Palestinians.
There was nothing moral about using Jewish suffering to colonise and occupy Palestine with extreme violence and dispossession. What is morally fraudulent is thinking that there could be.
I think you will find the scholar is neither pro-Palestinian or a propagandist, just up with the facts and coming from a position of reason.
You also ignore the fact, that word again, that the Zionists began planning their State and their colonisation of Palestine in the 1890’s, nearly half a century before a Jewish experience of holocaust in Europe. The atrocities committed by the Germans certainly fuelled the Zionist plan but it never created it.
Israel as the occupier has power over all Palestinians and responsibility for their welfare. There is no border on a prison. It is an electric fence built by Israel with naval capacity guarding the sea.
If as you suggest the Palestinians have control over Gaza why do they not leave? Why is there an electric fence and cameras surround them? Why do they stay there when Israel bombs them? The reality makes the claim that Gaza is independent a joke. Gaza is a prison in occupied Palestine.
And Israel has never declared its borders so they remain the UN Mandate. Israel also made two states impossible. More facts.
I have not denied the Palestinian Resistance has resorted to violence and neither have I denied that Iran supports the Palestinians. I simply fail to see the difference between the US supporting Israel, except it is the occupier, and the Iranians supporting Palestine, which is the victim. Why the double standards?
Of course Australia was not Terra Nullius. The invention that it was really only came into being in the 1970’s. It was certainly never mooted by the British. The First Fleet set sail with orders to befriend, learn from and assist the peoples living here. They made them citizens. They could not have done that without knowing and accepting their existence.
Zionist armies invaded with orders to drive out or kill as many Palestinians as they could. Very different. Israel was founded in genocide and Australia was not.
It is not what I believe, it is the facts. That word again.
Quote: CNN reporter apologizes for defending Israeli claims that Hamas beheaded babies
‘I needed to be more careful with my words and I am sorry,’ says Sara Sidner
From CNN:
Israeli official says government cannot confirm babies were beheaded in Hamas attack
Bufo- you previously bid me adieu but here you are again because nothing you say has any credibility and you have no personal integrity. Quoting CNN and other leftist legacy media is a sure recipe for misinformation and Palestinian propaganda. There you were just a few short months ago rubbishing them through COVID for their role in perpetuating lies, now all of a sudden they are the unequivocal source of truth. More rank hypocrisy and moral relativism whenever it suits your depraved morality. By you own rubric you an evil colonial occupier of Aboriginal land, and if they come looking for your head I won’t loose a wink of sleep. Back in your hole Bufo.
@Citizen Kane,
You raise an interesting and salient point and that is, all media sources get some things right and some things wrong.
I have long believed it is sensible to read information wherever it appears and reach an informed conclusion. The fact is, what you call leftwing media is biased on some issues and not on others and that applies to what is generally called rightwing media. This is why all sources must be used.
Some are foolish enough to dismiss a media source because they do not like its bias on a certain issue, but that just makes for more ignorance.
The reality is most people are left on some issues and right on others and often in the middle. That is human nature.
This is why applying civilized principles is so important. You should try it.
Take principles of justice, human rights, rule of law, democracy and common human decency and you will understand. Such principles applied to the Covid situation revealed egregious bias toward the running narrative in most media. The same applies to Israel’s colonial war in Palestine and it applied to the voice.
This is why I find principles as cited make it much easier to find a place of just reason and considered compassion on any issue.
Citizen Kane: The notion that the Israelis would grant citizenship to the Palestinians, should they simply apply, is an interesting one, and if that were realistically possible, it would solve all the problems. But, I can’t see the current hard-line Israeli government allowing that to happen. Imagine the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora taking up Israeli citizenship, and then becoming the majority population of the state! It ain’t gona happen!
.
I am somewhat shocked to learn of “moral relativism” and that people who are moral relativists are to be considered as being no better than Toads. If I’ve got this right, any one who is perceived to be criticising Israel, and/or supporting Palestinians is guilty of moral relativism, and they should crawl back into their holes.
@cbattle1,
That is exactly the view of the not so goodly Citizen Kane. His comments indicate he believes in censorship and the dictatorial approach.
Not what I want for my Australia. Indeed, looking at the Voice outcome, not what most Australians want either.
It is salient that Citizen Kane was a brilliant movie about a violent, damaged man and it ended badly for him as he rampaged through his life seeking to control his fears and his wounds, but hurting others and himself.
Yep, If Palestinians accept Israeli law and civil institutions then they are welcome into Israel, as many thousands have. If not, accept the two state solution and the Abraham Accords if one truly desires peace and coexistence. Just like Australian Aboriginals had to accept British colonial rule and law. It’s not as if they had a choice. – no two state solutions for them, no Oslo accords for them. By your own stated standards for International injustice it was worse for Australian Aboriginals than Palestinians who still have all those political possibilities before them if they do choose. Currently Palestinians live in Palestine controlled by the PA And Hamas in Gaza and PA and Hezbollah elsewhere. That’s why there are borders and Palestinians in Gaza are caught between the Israeli border and the Egyptian Border. Of course there is no criticism of Egypt in your rants, who prevent the mass flow of Palestinian residents out of Gaza into Eygpt to escape the tyranny of the PA and Hamas which only serves to further illustrate how selective your moral outrage really is. Myopically targeted at Israel like a true dyed in the wool antisemite.
If on the other hand, one accepts modern Australia and Israel’s equally valid right to exist, like I do, then there is no moral conflict, no twisted and deranged moral relativism and no rank hypocrisy.
The one thing you did get right was the likes of yourself who seek to justify and ‘contextualise’ the atrocities of October7 are the essence of Bufo manifest and you should crawl back into the hole from whence you came. You cannot and will not convince me of anything else – EVER. You will always be Bufo to me forevermore!
Citizen Kane: Were you responding to me or rosross in your last comment?
I think Bufo is his nickname for me. 🙂
Yes, a Toad of the genus Bufo, living in a hole. But surely the nickname was meant as a term of endearment?
@cbattle1,
I took it to be delivered with a level of fondness, albeit perhaps unconscious, from the Citizen.
True toads are mainly terrestrial and nocturnal. They frequently remain in fairly small areas, feeding on whatever insects or small animals they can catch with their sticky tongues. Most remain in their burrows in winter and during drought.
@cbattle1,
It looks like even some Israelis are calling it what it is. It is important to remember that Israel also has citizens of conscience.
Raz Segal, an Israeli expert in modern genocide, calls Israel’s assault on Gaza a textbook case of “intent to commit genocide” and its rationalization of its violence a “shameful use” of the lessons of the Holocaust. Israeli state exceptionalism and comparisons of its Palestinians victims to “Nazis” are used to “justify, rationalize, deny, distort, disavow mass violence against Palestinians,” says Segal.
I think that, indeed, what we’re seeing now in Gaza is a case of genocide. We have to understand that the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948 requires that we see special intent for genocide to happen. And to quote the convention, intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since 7th of October. We heard Israel’s president. It’s well-known what the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9th of October declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “We’re fighting human animals,” and we will react “accordingly.” He also said that “We will eliminate everything.”
We know that Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, “The emphasis on damage and not on accuracy.” So we’re seeing the special intent on full display. And really, I have to say, if this is not special intent to commit genocide, I really don’t know what is.
So, when we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three — that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, “a death sentence.” So, we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.
Textbook case of a deranged moral relativism more like it. What feature of the Hamas barbaric attack on unarmed civilians, women, children and elderly in the name of your Palestinian freedom fight actually constitutes a lawful and justified maiming and murder in your twisted moral rubric? Of course your free Palestine rallying catch cry of from the river to the sea is a call to genocide pure and simple. In an interview with the Lebanese television channel LBC, Ghazi Hamad vowed that given the chance, his group would repeat the October 7 massacre until Israel ceased to exist.
‘Israel rules all of Palestine and the native people have no rights, human or civil. They have no vote. They have no freedom and they continue to be dispossessed.’ This just a bald face lie (not surprising for a Bufo). If Israel Ruled all of Palestine as you claim how could they be simultaneously invading it? How could there be a border fir Israeli forces to cross? What was the Oslo accords in 2005 about? Palestinians have no vote in Gaza because the Palestinian Authority which rules it is a dictatorship. Baseless claims that non-Jewish residents of Israel are somehow second-class citizens is typical Marxist rhetoric straight out of the Leftist playbook.
Your arguments here, ironically and hypocritically is the same moral rubric that has you as a violent occupier of Aboriginal land committing ongoing violence and genocide upon them. If Aboriginals were citizens of equal legal recognition under law immediately upon British colonisation, pray tell, why was the 1967 referendum necessary? It is increasingly clear to me that while your vile antisemitism is manifest in your unbridled support of Hamas your concurrent hatred of Australian Aboriginals because they don’t belong to your Aryian view of the world has you the closest thing to a Nazi sympathiser I have ever had the misfortune of engaging. Roslyn Ross the quack Homeopath, I now know who you really are -Bufo the evil coloniser and occupier who then in a classic case of projection psychology transmits that through their vile antisemitism onto Israel
Deep breath. Not my words but Raz Segal, an Israeli expert in modern genocide, Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide.
Keep holding that breath. They are Ghazi Hamas’ s words – A Palestinian Hamas leader.
The British colonisation of Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) began in 1803. There was an estimated 6,000 Aborigines (Palawa) living on the island with a history dating back over 40,000 years. By 1835, there were just over 100 Palawa living in forced exile on one of Tasmania’s smaller offshore islands. Only two residents remained when the government closed the Aboriginal Settlement in 1871. This chapter traces the history of Tasmania’s colonisation from 1803 to 1871 and finds that the British committed acts against the Palawa that meet the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: killings, child removals, and creating conditions unconducive to sustaining life. Tasmania has been cited as one the ‘classical’ cases of genocide
When lawyer Raphael Lemkin formulated the idea of “genocide” after the second world war, he included Tasmania as a case study in his history of the concept.
Hypocrite!!!
The hypocrisy is you citing material out of context and pretending it is relevant.
Did the British arrive with an army and a policy of genocide?
No, they did not. The Zionists did.
Did the settlers in Tasmania work to exterminate the aborigines?
No, they did not.
I have the guts to use my real name and you hide behind a fake name.
As to being anti-semitic, that would involve a hatred of Jews and Judaism and nothing I have ever said equates with that. Criticism of Zionist Israel is not anti-semitic. Defending principles of justice, human rights, rule of law, democracy and common human decency can never be anti-semitic because most of those principles are a part of Judaism. I defend Judaism and Jews ans seek to make it clear that they are not to be blamed for the taint of Zionist Israel.
Did the British give aborigines citizenship very quickly?
Yes they did.
Do Australians with aboriginal ancestry have full rights as citizens? Yes they do.
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens have inferior and second-class rights and those living under occupation have no rights at all.
There is no comparison.
1. The British arrived as a Military run penal colony.
2. The Zionists did not have a policy of Genocide – just another absolute bald face lie.
3. On 7 October 1830 more than 2,200 settlers, military, police and convicts, reported to seven prearranged locations across the settled districts of Tasmania to form the ‘black line’. The largest force ever mobilised against Aboriginal people anywhere in Australia at that time, the line represented about ten per cent of the European Tasmanian population. The costs associated with this operation were huge, amounting to more than £30,000,
The small population of about 200 Tasmanian Aborigines who remained in the settled districts after the line were gradually removed to Wybalenna, a settlement on Flinders Island in Bass Strait run by Robinson.
Confined to poor accommodation, exiled from their homes, suffering physical trauma, plagued by disease and severely malnourished, most of those at the settlement died within a few years.
By 1847 only 40 people still survived at Wybalenna. Considered the ‘last remaining’ Tasmanian Aborigines, this small group was relocated to the Tasmanian mainland at Oyster Cove. By 1876 all but one of them had passed away.
4. Any Race, Creed or Religion can and do become full Israeli citizens with universal rights under Israeli law. Suggesting otherwise is another bald face lie always unsubstantiated.
5. ‘Defending principles of justice, human rights, rule of law, democracy and common human decency can never be anti-semitic because most of those principles are a part of Judaism.’ – the most laughable self-delusion of all. The only thing you have defended is the slaughter of 1400 citizens on October 7 as part of a ‘rightful resistance’ as a hypocritical ‘evil occupier and coloniser’ yourself under your own moral rubric while you punch down on Jews and Aboriginals alike with a Nazi-esque type zeal.
@Citizen Kane,
You ignore the fact that Israel requires a Jewish factor for someone to become a citizen and the 20% of Israelis who do not have that but are Christians and Muslims are second-class citizens.
If Israel was prepared to accept the Palestinians as citizens of one state it would have happened long ago. Israel rules all of Palestine and the native people have no rights, human or civil. They have no vote. They have no freedom and they continue to be dispossessed.
That is not the case in Australia and indeed, with aborigines made citizens by the British very quickly with rights in law, it was never the case.
Sorry to have to break to you, but the Bufo genus to which you belong is not a nickname but an accurate biological descriptor based on standard nomenclature criteria. Of course if either of you crusading toads had an ounce of courage you would make haste to Palestinian controlled Gaza to fight the good fight with your Hamas brethren but because you are slimy, warty and poisonous cold blooded invasive species you will just sit here oozing your toxic bile for true native species to have to avoid.
When people resort to personal abuse, ad hominem attacks on the messenger not the message, they are admitting they cannot mount a coherent rebuttal. We have that clear. When people become increasingly abusive and hysterical it is an admission, albeit unconscious, that they are unable to use rational ability, i.e. critical thinking to address an issue. We have that clear.
We can agree to disagree or you might go pop. Thanks for the chat.
Clear and concise rebuttals throughout none of which you have specifically addressed. Rather you just continue to spurt your mendacious Hamas propaganda including that Israel is in political control of all of Palestine. A blatant lie. When someone uses mendacious arguments in order to promulgate their vile antisemitic propaganda and their Nazi like race hatred then as I clearly stated early in the thread, I for one will call it out in the strongest possible terms. It’s not a case of being abusive, it’s simply a case as Tolstoy encouraged, to call things by their real name. To identify things for what they truly are. You Roslyn are an Anti- Semite and I will remind you of that fact every single time.
I never said Israel was in political control of all of Palestine. I said Israel as the military colonial occupier has power over Palestine and all Palestinians. Physical, military power even if they cannot yet control their thoughts, i.e. political views.
As the occupier Israel has total responsibility for all Palestinians so, if they are subject to war crimes, human rights atrocities and murderous attacks from illegal settlers, that is on the shoulders of the Israeli colonial regime.
You do misquote frequently. You would love Bruce Pascoe. Plenty of tips.
I can understand why comments are not enabled for Peter O’Brien’s article above about the so-called ‘safe space’ for Jews, given the nature of the debate here. But I can’t forbear to observe – sorry, Roger – the sheer vileness of what Peter has exposed. You couldn’t, as they say, make it up.
Not enabling comments is a choice. However, it achieves nothing but silence. I have abused no-one but others have certainly resorted to abuse.
The actual words used are an irrelevance it is what is said that counts. You have abused every Jew and Israeli globally while you defend the vile atrocities of Hamas as a ‘rightful resistance’ and with your naked Anti-semitism.
Everything I have said has been said by many Jews around the world who have taken to the streets in protest and it has even been said by some Israelis. To try to pretend it is anti-semitic is ridiculous. I will not ask you to make a case because you never do.
I don’t need to as you make it for yourself for all to see. Anti-semite.
A question for those who would choose to censor and silence dissent and questioning of the running narrative on this or any issue.
If you are correct then surely that truth will ultimately be demonstrated and those who have challenged it will be proven to be wrong. How can that be a bad thing?
And when has humanity benefited from any kind of censorship? What is wrong with differences of opinion in a world where no-one is ever completely right and no-one is ever completely wrong?
Surely if we value freedom and a society which thinks for itself, we must promote the maxim:
I defend to my death your right to say what you think even though I disagree with you utterly.
No one has censored a single word you have said, its just been called out for its rank hypocrisy, callous Anti-semitism, it’s reliance on a twisted moral equivalence and relativistic arguments underpinned by mendacious lies purported as facts and selective quotes from irrelevant sources.
The same free speech card you hold to push your Anti-semetic propaganda is the same card that allows me to label you the moron that you are based on the above. Simple application of a consistent moral code right there – you never know you might even learn something by the end of all of this.
I never said they had. Not on Quadrant anyway. However, there have been high levels of bullying and insults, including yourself, which is a playground attempt to silence and censor.
What I said was:
A question for those who would choose to censor and silence dissent …..
As to abuse being your modus operandi, because I support freedom of speech regardless, I accept your approach. I also know it reflects on you not me.
Having said they, you seem to have taken a ‘stalking’approach which you might want to ponder. Thanks for taking the time to communicate.
The third time you have bid me adieu on this thread, yet each time you are back in a flash and you accuse me of stalking.
I am proud of every word I have said to you and if given the opportunity to say it all again I wouldn’t change it one iota. You see, as distasteful as you find the words, I find your Antisemitic sentiments, rank hypocrisy and mendacious lies immeasurably more offensive.
Perhaps if more people confronted people like yourself in the 1930’s the holocaust may never have happened. Rather than stalking, I make a solemn promise to call you out whereever you poke your highly undesirable head, to spout your vile Anti- semitism, rank hypocrisy and mendacious lies. Until next time ….
Oh I don’t mean here. You pop up all over the place because I have the courage to use my real name and you hide behind a fake one. The tragic irony of 1930’s Germany is that Zionist Israel is reliving it in the name of those Jews. That is why so many Jews are marching around the world saying, Never again means everyone. I am full of admiration for them and even more so for the few Israelis who take a stand.
So the name on your passport is rosross is it? Strange, I Can’t find any listings for that name in the white pages!
‘So many Jews marching around the World’ -in support of Hamas and the Free Palestinian movements goal of River to the Sea? You really do live perpetually in a self-deluded fantasy.
Jews marching for justice and freedom for Palestine, absolutely. Many now realise that the Israeli State does not represent them or their religion.
‘Not in our name’: American Jewish activists lead march to White House over Israel’s ‘genocide’
Do you call that a citation? Its just more of your hollow words.
And just to lower your workload. I am cancelling my subscription to The Spectator. You have been working so hard to silence me there you must be exhausted. I can tolerate media bias but I will not tolerate censorship. I suspect I am not alone given The Speccie’s new promotion of free for a month and then $2 a week. There are enough sensible people in the world who want open debate and diverse information. All media now seems to exhibit high levels of bias on certain topics. The public just gets sick of it. I look forward to a renewal in journalism and emerging altmedia which can provide balance and intelligently processed information on any issue. Otherwise we just have to read everyone and dump the worst of the tunnel vision media.
Good riddance. The Spectator will be all the better for the absence of your Anti-Semetic, Moral equivalence and rank hypocrisy.
And the final delicious irony being that if as you are suggesting I have had anything to do with any ‘alleged’ censorship at that Magazine, you are once again unequivocally wrong. But that is your forte.
For you to ponder and for all those who value civilized principles to hold :
In the dichotomy of oppression and liberation there has never been a case throughout history where a colonizer or an occupier prevailed, and a national movement was eradicated by brutality or targeting civilians who are mostly women and children.
I pondered it for the split second it deserves (its lucky to get that long) and then I thought, Geez Australia is facing a grim future then!
Strange, I don’t recall the Aztecs or the Mayans or the Inca prevailing over the Spanish. You think your comments are profound when they are just plain ignorant.
That does explain your confusion.
It is wrong to retrofit modern values to the past or seek to apply the values of one century to another.
The Spanish colonised the Americas from the late 15th century. That is three centuries before the British got to Australia and times were different. Humans do evolve, albeit slowly, but the world of 1788 was very different to the world of 1492.
And the world of 1947 was radically different to 1788 and 1492, because there had been continued enlightenment and evolution over those 200-600 years. So, trying to compare the situation for the Palestinians with the Mayans and Aztecs is saying that the Israelis were lagging behind in terms of evolution in 1947 and remain backward as colonising entities today. So on that basis your comparison of circumstance is valid. We can agree on that.
For clarities sake you did just state above ; ‘In the dichotomy of oppression and liberation there has NEVER been a case THROUGHOUT HISTORY where a colonizer or an occupier prevailed,’
But like the good moral relativist that you are, you just instantly change the goalposts once more.
So based on that moral relativist analysis it can only be concluded that 1947 is very different to 2023. We have moved on evolutionarily and accepted that the ancient land of the Israelites in now rightfully Israel. 1947 is ancient history. In 1945 Japanese were torturing Australian POW’s in Burma, now we accept each other without the ancient enmity of almost 80 years ago. However the final nail in the coffin of your perpetual ignorance is that modern day Israel was the home of the ancient Hebrews and Israelites which makes a mockery of your always hypocritical First Nations argument for Palestinians while you commit ongoing occupational and colonising violence against Australian Aboriginals as you punch down on their very existence just because it suits your twisted moral relativistic argument.
What number of years is the threshold for your moral relativism? 100, 200? Give me a number. Let me guess what ever suits your morally corrupted argument. We agree can now agree on that!
“In 1945 Japanese were torturing Australian POW’s in Burma, now we accept each other without the ancient enmity of almost 80 years ago”
.
Reminds me of a mate (RIP) who ran the Mail Room at a University. About 40 years ago a female staff member who identified as Japanese complained to the powers that be that he was unfriendly (and more, I forget the exact accusation) . He was called before a hearing and said he provided her with the required service but would not engage in chat – she asked “How are things” and the like but he did not respond. He told the hearing it was none of her business but refrained for telling her so. He added that the Japanese killed his beloved uncle in Burma, that he hated Japanese and would have no dealings with the woman outside strictly Mail business.
Case Dismissed! I doubt that would be the decision today.
From another post from @rosross – ‘But the world has changed, as it does, and what could be tolerated in 1947 cannot be tolerated today.’ ergo the world is a different place to 1492 and 1788 – just as 1947 wrongs need to be righted so do 1788 ones and 1492 ones on that logic.