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The horrors of the Holocaust, particularly those involving the mass murder process itself, are impossible to conceive. We may read documents, watch documentary films, listen to survivors, learn its history, and visit concentration camps and museums. But we cannot perceive them.
Certain films, though, allow us access to the closest kind of experience we could expect. They permit us, in a sense, to see from within. One of these films is Son of Saul (2015). There is another one, set during the Nazi Blitzkrieg on Byelorussia that left 25 per cent of the country’s population killed. This is a Soviet film, released in 1985 and directed by Elem Klimov. Its name is Come and See.
This essay appears in the latest Quadrant.
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This film, a true masterpiece, not only shows with excruciating detail the unbearable degree of Nazi destruction, but something more, something that is essential to the phenomenon of mass murder. In one scene, we follow Flyora (the main character, superbly interpreted by Aleksei Kravchenko) while he witnesses the extermination of an entire village. In that scene, we can see a hell that is difficult to put into words. The Einsatzgruppen and their collaborators sardonically laugh at the villagers, sadistically mock them and maniacally sneer at them, while they herd them to be burned inside a church. No one is spared, children, elderly, women. There is no escape, no logic, no reason. In an immortal scene, a group of Nazis take a picture with Flyora while one of them points a gun to his head. The surreal scene captures well that this event seems from another dimension, although it is placed on Earth.
So, what is it that the film portrays that is so special? It shows that, although this horror is performed by humans, it does not belong to humanity as such. That is, it consists of a fundamental intent of changing human nature—a departure from humanity. It is a systematic, premeditated intent to inflict the cruellest forms of sadistic destruction under the disguise of a rational system. In the film, this is implied by some of the phrases that are said through the speakers before the Nazi massacre occurs: “Germany is a cultured country.”
What happened on October 7, 2023, in Israel is an instance of this specific phenomenon. Of course, the Holocaust is an event of such scale and horror in history that cannot be compared. But the essential factor, the subversion of humanity mentioned above in conjunction with the most maniacal Jew-hatred, did take place.
According to what captured Hamas assassins themselves have confessed, they were told that they could do with Jews whatever they wanted. They could kill, rape, burn, destroy. Moreover, it was their duty to do just that.
And so, they did. They entered towns and streets, murdering anyone they could find. They broke into homes, tortured and killed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. Raped women and cut off body parts. Dismembered their victims and notified their relatives with their own cellphones. They transmitted their depredations through the social networks of the victims. They sardonically laughed. One assassin called his own parents with a victim’s phone to let them know of the good works he was doing in the mass murder process. They beheaded babies and burned entire families alive. A pregnant woman was stabbed, and a baby was put into an oven. They filmed the entire process with GoPros. Unlike the actions of the Einsatzgruppen, we don’t need to watch acted films to get a sense of the destruction. Hamas transmitted it live for the world to come and see.
Is it by chance that the same essential sadism and impulse for destruction occur? Not at all. The events of October 7 were inspired by the very same ethos that originated the Palestinian Arab National Movement, founded by Jerusalem’s Mufti Amin al-Husseini in the 1920s and 1930s. A great admirer and collaborator of Adolf Hitler, Amin al-Husseini also wanted to exterminate the Jews. In fact, that was his entire goal, and that of the Arab armies which invaded Israel with the intent of committing genocide after its birth in 1948. The Nazis believed in a master race, while the Mufti and his modern Hamas heirs believe in a master religion. The target is essentially the same: The Jew. The Hamas charter says so explicitly. Could it be that the lack of peace is not due to “settlements” but rather plain genocidal hatred? After all, no such occurrences took place before 1948. And, yet, there were pogroms galore before that time. Just come and see.
Students at elite institutions of higher learning such as Harvard and Columbia have full access to these videos and to the murderous declarations by Hamas leaders, as well as those by Hezbollah and Iran. These declarations explicitly call for genocide. But woke students prefer to stay asleep. Waking up would imply that they would have to change their views 180 degrees, and that they cannot do. No, Khamenei, Nasrallah and Haniyeh do not actually mean it, these students choose to think. (Or, if they do, then they are justified in supporting such atrocities.) Words can mean whatever they make them to mean, in the context of the “oppressed”. Kidnapped and raped women and orphaned children, now held in inhumane conditions in Gaza, are not perceived as innocent human beings, but as “occupiers”. It is better to tear down the posters, they think. Because what would the alternative be? What would it mean to recognise the nature of that which they are supporting? What would it mean to see Israelis as human beings? What would it say of them that a wrong pronoun or a “microaggression” deserves nothing short of eternal damnation, but the burning of babies is met with silence? Is not reality malleable? Is it not only about interpreting events rather than seeing them? No. They should come and see.
And what about Jews who rush to denounce Israel’s “evils” while the corpses of 1200 dead Jews are still warm? Those who feel the necessity to exceed their woke “allies” in their declarations and initiatives against the only state that would give them refuge if their Islamist friends came to power? In a sort of masochistic frenzy, they need to speak up and make it clear that no, not only do they not support Israel, but they especially hate it, because they are Jews. What would it mean for these Jews, who speak ill of the IDF, to recognise that October 7, 2023, is precisely that which occurs to Jews, that has occurred (and would certainly occur to them) if there were no IDF? The mere thought of it would make them chill. Better to tear down more posters. Otherwise, they would have to come and see.
In a Pavlovian reaction, the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza was taken instantaneously as Israel’s fault. They had to take Hamas’s word at face value because, who else could have been responsible? What would it imply if it wasn’t Israel? It had to be. Some 500 people murdered, Hamas said. Why not? Protestors and angry social network users need it to be. Reality is what they say it is. They were waiting for this. Is there evidence, and even phone conversations by Hamas operatives saying that it was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad that was accountable instead? Yes, but who is showing it? Israel, of course. Videos and analyses of the rocket barrage mean nothing. But they do, they need only to come and see.
Let us not fool ourselves. Not everyone supporting Hamas and rallying at the streets and university campuses across the West is naive. Some do see and agree. Some of those who parade and chant “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!” mean what they say, and like what they saw. It is not the “settlements”, the “occupation”, the “blockade”, or the like, it is rather Israel as such. The calls are for genocide. So, it is not only the naive, or simply social network and university snobs, who should come and see. It is also those who support Israel and Western civilisation that should see and see well.
If the civilised world does not denounce what these calls are really supporting and asking for, and at the same time does not allow Israel to finish the job of destroying Hamas, October 7 will only be a prelude of what’s coming for all of us. Universities, governments, societies, the West as a whole, needs to finally see, and come to its senses before it’s too late. Otherwise, we will not only see it on video, but really, existentially, perceive it, all too well.
Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block are the co-authors of The Classical Liberal Case for Israel (published by Springer in 2021, with commentary by Benjamin Netanyahu).
Haters of Jews, supporters of Hamas, are furious that the hospital wasn’t demolished by Israel. How dare Israel not be complicit. Those evil cunning Jews have side stepped it again.
That’s how they view it.
THE ISRAELI PALESTINIAN HAMAS CONFLICT UNRAVELLED
https://www.bitchute.com/video/9dx4qoKhpa1L/
SEXUAL VIOLENCE ASPECTS OF THE 7 OCT ATTACKS
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=sFFAPZCK7Dth-H6G&v=2l3EbRiDATE&feature=youtu.be
Thanks Mike. This is absolutely horrific even worse than I was already aware of.
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A Hamas terrorist according to testimony when asked why they took children answered to rape them.
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I won’t go on. Look at the second video in particular for yourselves. If you can stomach it.
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And I ask you to then think about the people who demonstrate in support of Hamas, especially people who spend a lot of time developing arguments to support Hamas in posts on social media. Those people especially would be well aware of all this. You know that by the time and effort they spend on supporting the Palestinians.
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Think about what that says about such people.
No amount of history or implied hatred arising from history justifies or explains away the absolutely inhuman atrocities which the second video link by Mike here details.
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To look at history to justify or explain this away is the thought process of a person who condones pure evil. I won’t debate with anyone who does that. And I wouldn’t believe anything anyone says who does that.
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These sickening inhuman atrocities are such unadulterated evil they can never be explained away nor justified by anything.
They can only be condemned along with those who seek to explain them away or justify them.
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Some more examples of what I’m talking about. Be warned they’re horrific.
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A terrorist was asked why did you take kids and babies? He answered to rape them.
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There’s testimony that a woman was gang raped one by one by these terrorists and shot in the head while she was being raped. One of her breasts was cut off and played with it on the street by the terrorists.
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These are only two examples from the second YouTube link. It’s absolutely horrific and evil.
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People who spend a lot of time researching what happened and post widely to support the Palestinians would have to be fully aware of these outrages. They probably rejoice in them.
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Some pro Palestinian supporters say one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The people who carried out these sickening inhuman atrocities aren’t freedom fighters they’re the personification of evil. And so are people who want to explain such evil away or justify such evil by history. Nothing explains away or justifies the above evil.
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People who try to justify or explain away atrocities of course also try to deny they ever happened. But the evidence is overwhelming. Much of it taken from the head cams of terrorists.
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But no matter how hard these apologists for evil try they can’t deny grandparents, babies and children have been held captive by these Palestinian’s in Gaza. This abomination has been very publicly exposed.
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A CNN YouTube clip reported on how a nine year old girl held hostage by these “freedom fighters” had just been realeased and how terrifying it had been for her. This little girl was held for 50 days by these evil “freedom fighters”.
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So I’m not going to listen to apologists for Hamas who try to explain away or justify these atrocities by history. These atrocities can’t be explained away by anything.Those people disgust me. It’s a waste of time trying to debate with them. They have to live with their own evil in this.
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But I urge people here to look at that second YouTube clip and think about the apologists for the Palestinians who’ve carried out this evil. Think about what it says about the apologists. They’d be fully aware of all this especially those who spend a lot of time on it.
Brilliant!
On October the 8th what should have happened was an announcement by the UN that an international coalition had been formed to join Israel in eradicating the barbarians from Gaza and any other terrorist rat hole. Iran, Hamas and their proxies should have been put on notice that their actions had triggered a war of retribution with Western civilisation. Over 40 countries responded to 9/11 and prosecuted a war against al Qaeda that same international stance is the only action that will silence the mounting pro terrorists sentiment staining western societies.
I wouldn’t waste my life, any of my family or just about an Australian life to go off and fight and die for the globalist UN. The War on Terror was a waste of resources and young lives for the West, and barely made any appreciable, lasting change in the ‘terrorists rat holes’. Lets not do it all over again. Israel should refer to how they approached their enemies in the Old Testament. The Promised Land was not achieved via proxy, nor by mediation.
Solo: When you propose as a solution that:
“Israel should refer to how they approached their enemies in the Old Testament. The Promised Land was not achieved via proxy, nor by mediation.”,
are you advocating that Israel should exterminate by massacre, all Arabs in the land that the Old Testament claims was given to them by God? Or, are you just being cynical? Of the number of massacres ordered by God, as Moses claimed, there was the interesting story, in one instance of massacre, of allowing the Israelite warriors to spare the lives of girls and virgin women, and keep them as slaves for themselves. Good old Moses!
Cynicism. The Arabs and the Jews will only stop fighting when there are either no Arabs, or Jews. By waging war or terrorist attacks, all they are doing is producing a new generation of hatred. Each group will solemnly vow to take revenge on those people that took my son/relative/father/mother etc and it’ll go on forever – as it has done for quite some time. I just don’t want to be a part of it, and I don’t want any part of it in Australia.
As I recall, the coalition of over 40 countries that prosecuted a war against al Qaeda, post 9/11, did not succeed in any of its objectives (other than killing lots of people), and in fact, the reaction to that prosecution by Western civilisation has created new groups of enemies, i.e., “Islamic State”, etc.
There are too many excuses made for pro Palestinian protesters here even by their critics. There are too many excuses made for the people of Gaza.
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A number of protesters here support the inhuman and depraved terrorist atrocities which occurred on October 7. You can be sure those who very publicly chanted ” gas the Jews” do. See below where I show how the timing of the Opera House protest where that occurred supports my contention that terrorism is being supported here.
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And so do a number of the people in Gaza support the inhuman terrorist atrocities.
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The protesters and the people of Gaza could not help but be aware of the inhuman terrorist acts.
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They were all so widely and graphically reported including with the help of the depraved murderers themselves – one boasting to his parents on the phone that he had just murdered Israeli citizens with his bare hands. He must have been aware of the support he had back home to make such a call.
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The people of Gaza witnessed the depraved treatment of the murdered and mutilated body of the Israeli woman in their streets. They cheered.
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We saw footage in the Australian recently of another innocent woman hostage who’d been brutalized in clear view of the public. Her fate now unknown. But we know about the group of terrorists she’d been captured by and we know what they had already done.
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The people of Gaza jeered the poor hostages when they passed them by in Gaza recently as they were released. Hostages who’d done nothing wrong who’d been kidnapped from their peaceful homes and taken into a nightmare in Gaza by vicious bloodthirsty terrorists who’d previously raped and tortured innocent people and murdered even a little baby in an oven. Yet people of Gaza jeer the hostages the terrorists had taken.
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Chris Mitchell reports in The Australian today that Hamas hostages were being held in the homes of UN teachers in Gaza. Hostage taking is a flagrant violation of the rules of war. Holding hostages for Hamas directly supports the terrorist organisation.
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The timing of the Opera House demonstration tells you a lot about our protesters here.
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It occurred just after the very well publicized inhuman terrorist atrocities and before Israel had responded. So they couldn’t be calling for a ceasefire or peace. Also people doing that don’t take part in demonstrations where people very publicly chant ” gas the Jews”. And at that stage the war hadn’t started.
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You can reasonably assume a number of them were supporting and celebrating the terrorist atrocities which had just occurred.
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We should be clear headed about the support here and in Gaza for terrorist atrocities perpetrated on October 7.
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Those apologists for Hamas who protest and post on social media often have worked hard on developing their arguments. They’ve spent time on it. They’d be very well aware of the inhuman terrorist atrocities of Hamas. They probably take great satisfaction in them. They often protest under the guise that they’re just for the innocent people of Gaza.
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The timing for example of that Opera House protest says otherwise. There had been no Israeli response when that Opera House demonstration occurred and when the first posts supporting the Palestinians occurred.
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That’s why such protesters disgust me and it’s why I refuse to debate with them. It’s a waste of time debating with people who support terrorism.
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We need to forthrightly call it as it is. Not doing so or equivocating plays into the hands of terrorists.
“We need to forthrightly call it as it is. Not doing so or equivocating plays into the hands of terrorists.”
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Yes.
So, you are saying that anyone who disagrees with you is a terrorist?
Australian born, Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun, shouts, “I am happy, I am elated, It is a day of courage, It is a day of pride . . . . “, to a crowd of Allah Akbar cheering Sydney, supporters – immediately following the Hamas atrocities – before any Israel response.
The Australian authorities response – crickets.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12610343/Sheikh-Ibrahim-Dadoun-Anthony-Albanese.html
Eisenhower insisted that the German death camps be filmed so as people never forget and more importantly they can can’t say it never happened. The same should apply now we need to see the bodies of headless babies; game, set, match. No more pussy footing around.
Yes. The denial’s already happening though, and has from October 6.
See the Occidental comments below where atrocities are picked and chosen for belief on the basis of whether a Google report is still to be found now or not (these reports are constantly disappeared, censored, or in the lefty parlance “taken down”, from view), so allowing “proportionate” outrage – and denial of whatever may be adjudged as especially egregious.
I did not question the claim on the basis that the video was no longer there. I questioned the allegation when I first
watched it. I was hoping to provide a link so that all could view what I would argue is a primary source of the allegation. Sources do matter.
He was less insistent on fliming his own death camps by the Rhine in which hundreds of thousands of disarmed German soldiers perished.
This article supports my thoughts that the only way for there to be peace in the world is by the extermination of ALL humans! Am I a misanthropist? No, I am pro-Gaia!
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Seriously, this article is a shocker! Surely the advice (or is it an admonition) to Come and See and Perceive can not apply to only one group of peoples, to the exclusion of others? Do not the Palestinians have a story to be heard, starting back in the days of the implementation of the Balfour/Zionist plan under the British Mandate? Are the Palestinians really the “dogs” that Winston Churchill referred to them as, in his submission to the Peel Commission? I would wager that the authors of this article have not spent any time to “Come and See and Perceive” what the Palestinian people have experienced.
It is sad, that during times like this Quadrant online becomes a refuge for haters who are putatively conservative, but in reality just ignorant and closed minded. I mean if there is an argument that Hamas and or Palestinians generally are sub human or incapable of normal human sensibility, then your starting point is to demolish their argument and their alleged justifications for violence (ie ongoing dispossession). But no contributor appears willing to even talk about it other than refer to the book of Genesis.
There is the rank hypocrite at play again.
Having penned and published an article that diminished Aboriginal Australians’ ‘story to be heard’ in this very journal, you are now out lecturing again, this time it would seem on behalf of Gaia. Wow the toads must be all singing from the cane fields in glorious harmony.
While it would seem you are a self-professed anti-humanist, you are not a self-proclaimed disciple of Gaia, you are just a moral and intellectual pygmy from all the evidence.
Citizen Kane: Presumably, I am the “rank hypocrite” and evidential “moral and intellectual pygmy” that you are referring to. These sort of ad hominem attacks do nothing to advance any sort of constructive debate or dialogue which might possibly assist to make the world a better place, if that be the intention of Quadrant.
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As far as the charge of being a “rank hypocrite” because of my stance regarding the Aboriginal “Voice” and the so-called “Truth-Telling” advocated by Leftist Aboriginal Activists, that accusation has no evidential foundation. Apples and Oranges are both fruits, but they are unmistakably different! You of course know that situation is very different between the people who identify as Palestinian, and the people in Australia who identify as Aboriginal, so it is not necessary for me to elaborate on the point.
It is only ‘different’ because your moral relativism chooses it to be so. There is fundamentally no difference in the indigeneity ‘homeland’ argument of the Free Palestine Movement and the Aboriginal Sovereignty Movement. They are both built on the concept of colonisation, and occupied land grievances which is the underpinning mantra in both movements and why they are such good bedfellows at present. The only difference here is between that of a granny smith apple and a red-delicious apple. The fact that you wish to separate them so that you morally stand 180 degrees apart on the two issues is indicative of the postmodernist subjective-narrative prism through which you choose to view both issues. This leaves you in the inherent hypocritical position of Colonisation of Palestine = Bad, Colonisation of Australia = good. Palestinian sovereignty = good, Aboriginal sovereignty = bad. If you cannot see the hypocrisy of that position then you lack all credibility in my view.
Citizen Kane: Shall we explore the moral and ethical dilemmas that writhe within this proverbial can of worms? As you perceive it,
“There is fundamentally no difference in the indigeneity ‘homeland’ argument of the Free Palestine Movement and the Aboriginal Sovereignty Movement.”
In this and previous comments on QoL you have stated that to differentiate between the two issues is hypocrisy, and specifically here you point to the reason behind my hypocrisy, which you explain is my “moral relativism”, and my deliberate use of an optical device known as the “postmodernist subjective-narrative prism”, which presumably I ordered online from the Green’s website.
I perceive that labelling people as being moral relativists, hypocrites and/or moral and intellectual pygmies is a way for you to attack and discredit those who hold an opinion that differs from yours. If you are using the term “moral relativism” in a pejorative sense, then, surely the opposite term is that of moral absolutism, which also can be used pejoratively.
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Yes, I have previously set out in articles and comments my reasoning behind my rejection of the “Voice” and the concept of Aboriginal Sovereignty, but the colonial issue of Palestine vs Australia here is not a comparison between varieties of apples, nor is it a comparison between the closely related species of apples and pears, but, to continue the fruit analogy, the difference I cited was between apples and oranges, which, according to taxonomic classification, belong to different orders, that is to say that apples and oranges differ as species, genus, and families. Respectively, those taxonomic orders are Rosales and Sapindales. In other words, there is a big difference between the colonisation of Palestine and that of Australia, and the two cannot be conflated to use as an example of hypocrisy to discredit anyone that doesn’t conform to your views on the subject.
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Although I would love to expound on the fundamental differentiation between the two examples of colonisation, that would best be presented as an article or essay. Some of the differences today is that people identifying as Aboriginal are Australian Citizens, and have been since Federation, and before that were British Subjects, same as everyone else since 1788. In 1788, the year that the British settlement of Sydney was established, on the eastern edge of the continent known to Europeans as New Holland, there was, as viewed through a European lens of understanding, no nation of sovereign people that sent forward their leaders, under their flag or banner, to parley with the Brits, to explain or demonstrate their sovereign claims to the land. In fact, what the British encountered were naked people of old stone age culture (known in those days as “savages”), and that has to be acknowledged and understood if intending to perceive those people as Granny Smith apples in comparison to the Red Delicious apples representing the Palestinian people.
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At the beginning of settlement/colonisation, the British reflected the virtues of the “Enlightenment”, and positive efforts were made to communicate with the native peoples, and to learn their culture and language. From the extensive records of the day, it is significant that no leader of what today is imaginatively said to be the “Eora Nation”, ever came forward or was identified. Nor was there ever a tribal or clan leader distinguished. Bennelong, who most people today would have heard of, was simply someone that the British found necessary and expedient to capture in order to try and bridge the cultural gap between the two peoples. In his long and close relationship with the Brits, he never communicated any concept of nationality, sovereignty or representative leadership among his people.
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The situation of the Palestinian people, when the British took on the role of the mandatory power in Palestine, in comparison with the Aboriginal people of 1788 Australia, are different by orders of magnitude, as I’m sure you must agree. In WW1, some Palestinians fought with Allenby as part of what they perceived to be a Arab Nationalist cause to free themselves of Ottoman rule. Their sense of betrayal is understandable when they learned of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between the British and French to carve up Palestine, Syria and Iraq, and when they experienced the subsequent roll-out of the Balfour plan to create a Jewish homeland.
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Surely one does not need the use of a “postmodernist subjective-narrative prism” to see the difference between the two subject issues. It is the Leftist activists of today that have created and conflated the issues into the “indigeneity ‘homeland’ argument of the Free Palestine Movement and the Aboriginal Sovereignty Movement”, and that is why they see no fundamental difference between the two issues. As an objective examination of the historical and anthropological facts of these matters will conclusively demonstrate (at least to a conservative), I am in no way being hypocritical for not supporting Israel’s position held by their right wing, that their sovereignty stretches, in effect, “from the river to the sea”, based on a Biblical history of Judea, Israel and Samaria.
Ah the delicious irony of your ongoing fruit analogy. A veritable ‘fruit loop’ should I say.
Where to start on the utterly flawed reasoning of the resident moral relativist
‘Some of the differences today is that people identifying as Aboriginal are Australian Citizens, and have been since Federation, and before that were British Subjects, same as everyone else since 1788.’ – this doesn’t make them British subjects or even Australian citizens by choice. It is the same for Palestinians of Gaza who were Israeli subjects prior to the 2005 Oslo accords, British Subjects prior to WWII and subjects of the Ottoman Empire prior to that.
‘In 1788, the year that the British settlement of Sydney was established, on the eastern edge of the continent known to Europeans as New Holland, there was, as viewed through a European lens of understanding, no nation of sovereign people that sent forward their leaders, under their flag or banner, to parley with the Brits, to explain or demonstrate their sovereign claims to the land. In fact, what the British encountered were naked people of old stone age culture (known in those days as “savages”), and that has to be acknowledged and understood if intending to perceive those people as Granny Smith apples in comparison to the Red Delicious apples representing the Palestinian people.’ – so your moral relativism here takes the form of arbitrary human rights based on what pre-existing political system was in place. Presumably because the Australian Aboriginals were dispersed Hunter Gatherers with no nation-state, in your view they have no human rights akin to Palestinians, who could be seen as an outpost of medieval theocracy by the westernized Israeli state when it was annexed and prior to that by the Bristish Colony. Yet only your arbitrary moral relativism would provide human rights to a medieval theocracy and not to an animist hunter-gatherer. Why?
‘At the beginning of settlement/colonisation, the British reflected the virtues of the “Enlightenment”, and positive efforts were made to communicate with the native peoples, and to learn their culture and language. ‘ (cursory attempts at best) – yet at the beginning of the contemporary Israeli state, the Israeli’s reflected the virtues of western liberal democracy whereby all races, religions and creeds can participate equally in Israeli society – so much so that Arabs and Muslims are part of the Israeli parliament. Of course, no Jew or Israeli can participate in Hamas’s political order. Your moral relativism is blind to the same virtue that the British supposedly hoisted upon Aboriginals that Israeli’s bring to a Medieval theocracy. Why?
‘The situation of the Palestinian people, when the British took on the role of the mandatory power in Palestine, in comparison with the Aboriginal people of 1788 Australia, are different by orders of magnitude, as I’m sure you must agree.’ – I don’t agree in the slightest. It is simply a subjective moral test of your own to placate your own hypocritical conscience. Australian Aboriginals also fought with the AIF in WW1 ironically in part to help free the middle east from Ottoman rule.
‘Their sense of betrayal is understandable when they learned of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between the British and French to carve up Palestine, Syria and Iraq, and when they experienced the subsequent roll-out of the Balfour plan to create a Jewish homeland.’ – what betrayal? The modern Israeli state is a historical homeland of Israelites and Hebrews and the subsequent Jewish nation. It was never exclusively Palestinian land. Your history is as flimsy as your morality and intellect.
You see, Christopher no matter how you seek to spin your moral relativism it only ever serves to see you bathing publicly in the faeces of your own hypocrisy. In a nutshell your arguments are motivated by an equal disregard and racial hatred of Jews / Israeli’s and Australian Aboriginals and all you do is hypocritically bend and twist your reasoning to accommodate those two fundamental motivations. I suggest you seek assistance with such ingrained racial prejudices.
If however, you applied a consistent a priori moral and intellectual code to both instances and rejected the claims of Aboriginal and Palestinian sovereignty as null and void on both a historical and political basis (Realpolitik) and what is in each regions best interests moving forward then you would not find yourself in such a hypocritical tailspin.
After this response, I will no longer read or respond to your comments, and that is because of your verbal attacks on my person. If we accept, in accordance with the principle of moral absolutism, that Australia in relation to the Aboriginals and Israel in relation to the Palestinians should be considered as analogous, I could accept that, but only if Australia was to restrict migration to Anglo-Celtic Christian people, and change the Constitution to reflect that this is a Christian country with an Anglophonic Anglo-Celtic majority and always will be. Then Australia and Israel could truly be seen as morally and ethically analogous.
Plain wrong again. People of all races, creeds and religions are Israeli citizens. Conversely, it is Hamas that is exclusively the sect of a particular religious creed, murderously so. Yet your moral relativism happily overlooks this fact yet again. Your arguments may have some weight if you could at least approximate the facts. There is no enlightenment to be gained from your contributions, so I am not fazed in the slightest by your ‘anaemic’ withdrawal.
A few points. The baby in the oven atrocity is on very shaky ground, I won’t go so far as to say it is total crap, but it puts into question some of the extreme claims. I have tried to provide a link to the video of the para-medic/ first responder who was the “witness”but I can no longer find the clip on YouTube or on the UK telegraph site where I first saw it.
Essentially he says that at a treatment center he open a bag which contained what appeared to be the remains of a burnt infant. He said that there appeared to be a heating (oven element) element stuck to the body. I mean really? That is not evidence that someone placed a baby in an oven and burnt it alive. Only the rednecks would accept that conclusion without scepticism.
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But the whole tone of the article is simply standard polemic. It states that in Palestine since the 1920’s and 30’s some Arabs started hating Jews. One could reasonably ask why then? I mean Arabs and Jews had been living together for nearly 2000 years in that region, presumably harmoniously. Surely the cause for change is something that should be discussed. But no we will just gloss over that.
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You could be forgiven for thinking that when hundreds maybe thousands of Hamas fighters/ murderers attack and brutally murder and torture approximately a thousand Israeli’s that some one would ask why, and attempt to tease out the threads of hatred and discontent, the underlying motives for the attack. But instead the authors, much like a resident Quadrant contributor simply imply this is just the nature of the beast. Just lazy boring writing.
Above, you said; ” if there is an argument that Hamas and or Palestinians generally are sub human or incapable of normal human sensibility”.
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There is no “argument”, Hamas and its supporters amongst the Palestinians have already established it as fact. Except that I would have to say that Hamas has proven that it is a great many orders of magnitude below sub human.
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I have sympathy for those Palestinians (if any exist) who do not support Hamas and its outrages. But how do we distinguish who they are? The unfortunate truth is that Hamas and its supporters have left no other option available other than what is now occuring.
“I mean Arabs and Jews had been living together for nearly 2000 years in that region, presumably harmoniously.” So you say.
FYI:
The historical story of Islam towards religious minorities, be they Jews, Christians, Yazidis or Zoroastrians is not one of peaceful co-existence. Historical pogroms in Safed, Jerusalem, Gaza, Hebron, across North African, in Toledo, Cordova, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus, and so on always began with hoards of young Muslim men rampaging through Jewish areas, murdering and raping. Almost 800,000 Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews were expelled and driven from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran during ongoing riots from about 1929.
And that’s just in the last 90 years or so. The historical evidence of this hatred of Jews is abundant. This was recognised in the League of Nations initial formation of a Jewish homeland and then ratified by the UN in 1947 (the LoN had fallen apart in WW2) when the extensive horror of the death camps was realised.
I’m not Jewish (I find their “traditional” religious culture as off-putting as any other religion, although they do not require that one joins), nor do I use the Old Testament for anything other than referenced myths, but there is no rational reason for 2000 years of progroms spreading over more than half the globe. Yet you insist this is all just “redneck” bias or something.
I do despise leftoid smugness though.
Safed, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Hebron are all in Palestine, so that fits squarely within my invitation. Dates and sources please. Are we talking 20th century , or 10th century AD. These “pogroms” are these against Jews, or against Knights Hospitaller. A little bit of detail is always helpful.
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Toledo and Cordova, are you serious. You are referring to cities the subject of warfare between occupying Moors and Christian Spain over a period of 500 years. Juxtapose that with the treatment by any occupying force of a local population anywhere. But you getting way outside my comment which was why for almost 2000 years the arabs (christian and muslim) coexisted in Palestine, relatively peacefully until the late 1920’s.
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We are all aware of inter communal violence in other areas of the middle east, mostly after the Nazis came to power in Germany, and then after the dispossession of Palestinians in 1948. Presumably you know all this and just wanted to “sound off”. Might I add in anticipation of no sources being provided, that it would be hard for a leftoid not to be smug when arguing with you.
No, Arabs and Jews had well-known and bitter rivalries as recorded by Josephus.
Paul W: Jews had bitter rivalries with just about everyone, as recorded by Josephus!
From an Australian point of view the important thing would seem to be to ensure that we are not forced to accept refugees from either side of the conflict. Beyond this what is our actual interest in the outcome? The Palestinians have been consistently outplayed by the Israelis. The penalty for this in the real world, as opposed to the UN world of the new rules of war forbidding territorial gains, is dispacement or death. The Israels are not at real existential risk from Hamas. They must decide how many innocent lives they can waste in Gaza before the Muslim and wider worlds react. If they were temperate people they would have desisted already but Bibi at least has likened this enemy to Amalek, whom the Torah exhorts the chosen people to destroy utterly. There’s a lot of that sort of tough talk in the Torah.
“The Palestinians have been consistently outplayed by the Israelis. The penalty for this in the real world, as opposed to the UN world of the new rules of war forbidding territorial gains, is dispacement or death.”
Exhibit A for that proposition is your hero Hitler’s “out-playing” of the Jews. The penalty there was certainly “displacement or death”.
Though it seems those scheming Jews, not to mention the sub-human slavs, ultimately out-played Hitler. That the master race could have been outplayed by the untermensch!
“Beyond this what is our actual interest in the outcome?”
You’ve posed that question before. Our interest, as a civilised and democratic nation, is in the survival of the only democracy in the middle east, whose Arab citizens enjoy rights, freedoms and opportunities available nowhere else in the region, and certainly not in the Palestinian territories, and in the defeat of Hamas, a brutal, corrupt theocracy that has a loathing of jews that it believes is scripturally based, and which wants to exterminate jews – read article 7 of the original Hamas charter.
It is in the highest degree improbable that there will be any “refugees” from Israel seeking asylum in Australia. But do tell us, why would we not want jews here? On second thoughts, no, don’t bother.
And please stop calling yourself “David Isaac”. It’s not funny and, given your views about Jews, contemptible.
I would take them, the more the merrier. Jews are over achievers, and their contribution to this country on a raw basis has been significant. On a per capita basis it has been phenomenal.
Yes, but one of the effects of having Jews in this country is that we appear to be somehow bound to support Israel, as if we are inextricably linked, and that doesn’t seem to apply to any other minority in this country, or at least nothing is coming to mind at the moment.
Sindri: You have said: “Our interest, as a civilised and democratic nation, is in the survival of the only democracy in the middle east …” Well, if Netanyahu and his Zionist allies have their way, there would be a return to the Biblical theocratic state, ruled by a king. But, why is it in our interest that there be a democracy in the middle east?
“Netanyahu and his Zionist allies have their way, there would be a return to the Biblical theocratic state, ruled by a king”
Rubbish.
“But, why is it in our interest that there be a democracy in the middle east?”
Cbattle, If you can’t see why, I doubt I could explain it to you.
Sindri: Asking why it is in our interest that there be a democracy in the Middle East, was a rhetorical question. I can only think that the democracy in question has long been the cause of wars and strife, and there is no end of it in sight.
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Regarding Netanyahu and his Zionist allies, it only takes a suitable crisis to scupper a democracy, such as if a Palestinian was accused of burning down the Knesset, we might see a repeat of the “Reichstag Fire” scenario, being a trigger for martial law. With their referencing of ancient Hebrew scripture to legitimise their actions, Netanyahu & allies reveal the direction they want Israel to go, such as their opposition to any sovereign Palestinian state, and their stated aim of reclaiming the Biblical Judea and Samaria, which is located where the “West Bank” of the Palestinians now exists.
Anyone who hates is helped by Satan to commit atrocity. So easy for one evil influencer to whip up mob frenzy.
What about the western holocaust of the child in its mother’s womb? Approved of, defended and promoted, increasingly aggressively?
The silent mass destruction of the most innocent …
You want to argue about a heating element on a burned baby? You are insane and inhuman.
I think it is horrific enough that there is a burned baby that was alive on the morning of Oct 7th.
Who did that? Some twisted Arab imbued with stories of putting Jews in ovens, even throwing baby Jew in to an oven alive? Sounds fairly likely to me that some degenerate Arab went overboard, given the heating element imprint – to say nothing of the eyewitness account.
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S’ok though if the baby was just ‘burned’? Case dismissed etc? Burning babies (and piles of children) any old how is just part of normal reaction of an oppressed set of Arabs who build tunnels with aid money, send their leaders in billionaire luxury to Doha, use their own people as human shields, fire rockets constantly over Israel and are hell bent on genocide of every Jew alive? / sarc off
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This Israeli satire is an excellent skewering of this sort of disgusting self-serving Hamas behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUMl58i4m0w