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There’s something surreal and nearly biblical about the terrorist invasion of Israel on the Shabbat of Simchat Torah on October 7, a date that will live in Jewish infamy. We’ve seen devastation in Israel before, but this is different.
This wasn’t an attack; it was a gang rape. Hundreds of rampaging Hamas terrorists managed to infiltrate Israel’s vaunted border defense. They marched through Israeli towns and massacred civilians and mutilated bodies. They took hostages. Israeli families screamed for help. For a few interminable hours, the invincible Israeli army became invisible. Shockingly, they were caught off guard.
For a nation that prides itself on putting security first, second and third, October 7 will go down as a stunning humiliation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man in charge, is trying to look tough by saying all the right things. But as someone who has always billed himself as Mr. Security, he knows he’s ultimately responsible for an epic security breakdown that will bring its own reckoning. With more than 800 Israelis murdered and over 2500 wounded and 130 held hostage in Gaza, when Netanyahu declares, “We will win,” he must know how empty that sounds. A terrorist group has shown it can terrorize Israel not just with long-range rockets but with short-range savagery right on Israeli streets and in Israeli homes. What is there to win?
Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration that “We are at war” feels similarly empty. With so many Israeli hostages in the hands of the enemy, presumably scattered in multiple locations, what kind of war can Israel fight? Yes, Israel can bomb Hamas back to the Stone Age and end all aid to Gaza and punish Hamas with unprecedented force. But smashing Hamas won’t be enough. Israel has already lost too much. The only way to regain the initiative is to crush Hamas’s soul.
How do you crush the soul of a bloodthirsty enemy? You ram down his throat what he hates the most, what he absolutely can’t stomach, and what Hamas can’t stomach, above all, is a world that admires Israel. In the cesspool of its terror doctrine, the Jewish state is an evil that is meant to be destroyed, not admired.
That’s why Jew-hating entities like Hamas and its terror sponsor, Iran, despise the Abraham Accords– they transform Israel from a demon into an angel, from evil Zionists into useful allies, from oppressors into partners. In recent months, talks were heating up to add Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s holiest sites, to the Abraham alliance. That is so monumental it would make Israel’s transformation from demon to useful partner irreversible. For Jew haters everywhere, that is a nightmare indeed.
No wonder Iran and Hamas had to act. With a deal with Saudi Arabia brewing, what better way to sabotage peace with Israel than to start a war with Israel?
In the throes of understandable rage, Israel must now be cold-blooded and strategic. It’s tempting to want to turn Gaza into rubble to satisfy a hunger for revenge. I share that sentiment. But that would be playing checkers, not chess. If turning Gaza into rubble turns a Saudi deal into rubble, that is not a victory for Israel. It’s a victory for Hamas and Iran.
It’s true that Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have made the obligatory statements in favor of Palestinians. But interests are interests. Let’s not forget that the Saudis have an enormous interest in a partnership with Israel and the United States as a bulwark against their number one foe, Iran. It has woken up to the multiple benefits of having Israel as an ally. President Joe Biden also has a significant interest in a deal with the Saudis, both to counteract China and as a feather in his cap in an election year. And Netanyahu? With his legacy in shambles, he’s probably the most motivated of the three partners.
The point is, the Abraham Accords are about building a future; Iran and Hamas are about destroying it. We shouldn’t let the destroyers win.
My revulsion at what happened on October 7 knows no bounds. I hope and pray that Israel finds a way to liberate the hostages and eradicate the evil leadership that drives Hamas. But war or no war, Gaza is a hornet’s nest, a magnet for disasters. Its future will remain uncertain for a long time.
An Abraham Accords that includes Saudi Arabia and the US is a bona fide game-changer for Israel and the region. As Israel gives Hamas the punishment it deserves, it should keep that long game in mind: Ultimately, the deepest way to punish Hamas and crush the soul of Jew haters is to elevate the status of the Jewish state throughout the Arab world.
None of this mitigates the nightmare of October 7. This will be a day that will leave an indelible mark in collective Jewish memory. On a day when we were supposed to dance and rejoice, our enemies reminded us that no matter how good things get, Jews can never feel totally safe. It’s a lesson we keep learning over and over again, whether on Yom Kippur or Simchat Torah.
Republished with permission of Jewish Journal
David Suissa is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Tribe Media Corp and Jewish Journal. He can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.
I regard to what’s going on in Israel, I’m quoting this well known Latin aphorism so that others don’t have to:
“Si vis pachem, para bellum”. Another, not too genuine ‘Latin’ phrase also comes to mind:
“Nulle Bastardo Carborundum”.
Your Latin aphorisms perfectly represent the point the Palestinians have reached.
I suspect this aphorism is at work in the Palestinian Resistance.
Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim
There can never be peace until the Palestinians have justice and freedom. Either in their own fully independent State with the same rights to defend itself as Israel, or in a one-state solution where the Israelis and Palestinians share the land democratically as equal citizens.
How can there be peace while Israel occupies all of Palestine, continues to colonise it and denies Palestinian Christians and Muslims human and civil rights? How can there be peace while Israel holds nearly 2 million Palestinians, half of them children, imprisoned in Gaza?|
Israel and its supporters may want to ignore and deny the realities of Israel’s bloody foundation and its ongoing abuse of the Palestinian people but they are not going to go away and the Palestinian Resistance will grow stronger not weaker. They have nothing to lose having lost their country, their homes, land, freedom and their rights. Why would they not fight to their death against their oppressors?
When will Israel and its supporters deal with the reality that their State was set up in Palestine, someone else’s country and there are still 6 million Palestinians crushed under military colonial rule since 1947?
If someone locks others up and tortures them for years and they finally break out and attack their oppressor, the court considers they have mitigating factors for their violence. We would not condemn an individual for such a reaction and neither can we condemn a people. The Palestinians have been remarkably patient and non-violent for 75 years, but, three generations of suffering, hopelessness and abuse will create more determination, not less. That is not to condone violence but it is the Israeli violence toward the Palestinians which has led to the horrors of this week.
One can and should have compassion for the Israelis who have been enabled to become what they are and to do what they do because the world at large has never held them to account. That is their tragedy and their curse.
Even if Israel wiped Gaza from the face of the earth and eradicated 2 million Palestinians it would solve nothing and would only debase Israelis more. There would still be nearly two million Palestinians who have become Israeli citizens, albeit second-class, another four million in the rest of Occupied Palestine and eight million in the Diaspora. The world will not continue to tolerate Israel’s treatment of the native people of the land it has colonised. And neither will Jews as their religion is tainted by association and the best of Judaism debased as well.
Wow, that’s telling ’em, rosross! When I started writing my comment to this article there were “0” comments, so I was afraid to express myself given the current anti-Palestinian tirade by the media. I’m not into violence myself, and I don’t think war advances the cause of peace, rather it generates new causes for future wars. As per the anti-war slogan in the 60s: “What if they held a war, and nobody came?”
I respect Quadrant for its ability to tolerate other views and I have no problem with anyone presenting their point of view, however biased it may be and fomenting with emotion as is Mr Suissa’s.
I hope to see the Palestinian point of view on Quadrant also, but, if not, at least the comment thread allows balance to be introduced. Full marks for that.
Israel has been dream and fantasy for a very long time and the Zionists were hard at work from the late 19th century with their plan to colonise Palestine. Indeed, the advertising they had at the time referred to colonists for Palestine. The chaotic aftermath of the Second World War, and as you have pointed out, tactical agendas of the big powers, saw Israel created in Palestine in 1947.
It began in terrorism and bloodshed both before and after 1947 as Jewish terrorists prepared the ground and the Zionist soldiers took the ground in 47/48. I do believe in those early years there were some noble ideas which quickly fell by the wayside, that the Palestinians would bow down to their colonial masters and work hard for them. And to be fair, in the times it was common in Europe for Arabs to be considered as inferior. The tragedy is that increasingly Israelis came to see them as subhuman and that was never going to end well.
I don’t think the policy of Israel right or wrong has served the State or its people well. Unconditional support for Israel no matter what it does has debased the culture and the society and led many Jews to distance themselves from the Zionist entity.
Humans are more reluctant to give up dreams than reality and so much of the Israeli enterprise has been a dream, a fantasy, an ideology which has not taken realities into account. Now that the dream has become nightmare, for the sake of Israelis, Judaism and Jews, as well as the long-suffering Palestinians, the realities must be addressed in a civilized and rational manner.
If violence and collective punishment worked the Palestinians would have given up decades ago. Only a fool continues to do the same thing expecting a different outcome.
I also respect (and subscribe to) Quadrant for its ability to tolerate other views. And commend rosross for the on-going erudite/well argued writings on this fraught topic and also the realistic commentary in relation to the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Professor Mearsheimer has presented via books/lectures and interviews a most persuasive account of the origins and consequences of this current disaster playing out in Ukraine.
His ruminations on the seemingly unsolvable Israel situation offer a powerful antidote to those excessively emotional responses to be seen on MSM.
His views deserve space in Quadrant also.
BTW…he will soon be in Australia via courtesy of Tom Switzer CIS.
There is much to explore in his Israel thesis…Just a taste;
“What are the alternatives to the two-state solution?
John J. Mearsheimer is a realist international theorist, and a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who co-authored the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Mearsheimer believes that “Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. […] Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a ‘Greater Israel,’ which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.[2]….”
Mearsheimer believes that a two-state solution would be the best outcome for both the Israelis and Palestinians, but fears that time is running out for a viable two-state resolution. Barring a two-state solution, Mearsheimer hypothesizes that there are only three possible alternatives:” …there is more.
Mearsheimer is of course now decried for his salient views on the Russia/Ukraine tragedy, many of them voiced a decade ago as warnings.
Unfortunately the Israel/Jewish/Zionist lobby is so powerful that nothing will change until more Jews take a stand and reject the Zionist State, as many are doing, particularly in the US, and/or until BDS crushes the Israeli economy and forces a one-state solution.
I actually feel sorrier for Israelis than Palestinians because the latter have time, right and numbers on their side and grow stronger in suffering, while the poison of being a brutal occupier and coloniser degrades and debases Israeli culture. The hatred so many Israelis feel toward Palestinians is because their very existence puts paid to the fantasies on which Israel was founded and continues to exist.
Israel cannot kill all of the Palestinians and with more slaughter it just degrades itself even more. As the blood runs from the Gaza prison and the bodies pile up outside the electric fence, there is no way Israel can hide the terrible truth of this ghastly collective punishment of a people who have been rendered homeless, landless and without rights by them for nearly a century.
What’s missing from your account are the plans of those who solely wish for Israel’s destruction. Dwelling only on the troubled past definitely aids their cause.
Please name one other brutally occupied and colonised country in history which did not desire the destruction of their oppressors. Just one will do.
Well I guess you’ll be voting “Yes'” on Saturday then .
It is with much apprehension that I dare to comment on Mr. Suissa’s piece. Hopefully, we still have free speech in this country? I remember the aftermath of 9/11, and George Bush declaring that “Those who are not with us are against us!”, as he launched a 20 year war against terror; what did that achieve? Personally, I feel all human problems come down to the fact that we are humans, which is why I prefer the company of dogs!
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Viewed from the distance of time and space, we can see that every action has a reaction; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, until we eventually become a world of the blind and toothless.
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If the international community gave as much aid and support to the Palestinians as is given to the Israelis, there would be no Hamas, and the two Abrahamic cousins would be able to communicate and work out solutions from positions of parity, perhaps even arriving at a “one-state” solution?
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It has long been a conventional wisdom that there are “two sides to every story”, but we are mainly only hearing one side, and that has been the situation for a long time. I remember growing up in America in the 1960s, when the TV and Movies promoted those stereotypes of Arabs being fanatics and thieves. Of course, there were few Palestinians or Arabs living in America in those days, and they had no influence or positive profile in the media. Much was the celebration of the Six-Day-War, Moshe Dayan and all that. The Arabs were always seen as the “other”, and sometimes as the “enemy”.
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Let us not be ignorant of the Balfour Declaration, a ploy by the British trying to get America to join their side in WW1, based on the belief that Jews had an influential role in shaping American political opinion. Was there any thought about, or consultation with, the Palestinians? Silly question. In the British Mandate of Palestine, after the War, Winston Churchill, as the Colonial Secretary, looked favourably on the policy of Jewish settlement, and later, called to an investigation into the violence in that British Mandate, he referred to the Palestinian Arabs as the “dog in the manger”, that by lying on the fodder, the dog was preventing the sheep and cattle from feeding! And so on it goes.
Eloquently put. I find the double standards disgraceful and the lack of balance in the mainstream media in regard to this colonial war. Yes, the Palestinian Resistance has used great violence but the use of great violence is generally ignored and the positive acts by the Palestinians also ignored.
No doubt there are forces at work which make it difficult if not dangerous to present the Palestinian view alongside of the Israeli view. Ironically, a degree of balance is more likely in Israeli media, particularly the still excellent newspaper, Haaretz, than it is to be found in Western media. Why that is so we may never know.
There are always two sides and generally the view is taken that the occupying entity carries responsibility for what happens to the occupied and is accountable as an occupying force. Israel has never been held accountable for its many war crimes and human rights atrocities committed against the Palestinians.
I do remain a bit confused as to why we defend the Ukrainians as they fight against occupiers, the Tibetans as they do the same and as we did for the East Timorese. The West Papuans, Chechens and Kashmiris do tend to be also ignored but the egregious bias toward Israel in terms of this colonial war ranks above all others.
And such bias harms Israelis more than it does Palestinians.
“..an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,”
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That’s not what Israel will do – they will not intentionally choose women and children to kidnap, rape, torture and murder as Hamas do. And that differentiates them from the Hamas terrorists.
Thanks lbloveday so bear with me whilst I toss the odd match into the flammable material. The Palestinians disagree with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and later on 1947/8 as it were so this is about land rights according to Hamas and yet these blokes above defending Hamas are all probably going to vote “NO” in the referendum this coming Saturday and I suppose that we must be thankful that none of our indigenous brethren are raping, murdering, and committing atrocities against old blokes like me, as are the good folk in Hamas who abide by the religion of peace. My suggestion to the above defenders of Hamas and Palestine, since I have had some experience of insurrections and retain a piece of shrapnel in my sternum to this day as a reminder, is to suggest to them –way you go chaps, fill yr boots, and for a cold six pack I will give you the recipe for napalm that will kill innocents wholesale– but always remember that in the dark watches the fact that you took human lives will torment you forever. So much for the religion of peace.
Have a stab – is Sharri Markson talking about Palestinians or Israelis?
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‘There was no mercy shown as the elderly, the women, the children – the babies – were kidnapped, seized and carted off by jeering men – away from the safety of their homes, their loved ones and their life as they knew it.’
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The renowned journalist asked: ‘How can humans be this cruel?
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‘To laugh and celebrate as they torture terrified, young souls who had so much ahead of them in life, who were so hopeful for the future.’
How can you say Israel does not target women and children when the many bombings of Gaza does exactly that?
There were images of fathers holding disembowelled toddlers and decapitated babies following Israel’s bombing attacks. Don’t you think that would send people a bit crazy?
And it is a reality that Israel tests its weapons on the Gaza prison where people have nowhere to run. You can bet the Palestinians inside know that horrible reality.
“The Lab”, an Israeli award-winning documentary released in 2013, discussed in painful detail how Israel has turned millions of Palestinians into actual human laboratories for testing new weapons. Gaza, even before, but especially since then, has been the main testing ground for these weapons.
Although the stories about the Palestinian fighters grow more colourful by the day. The propaganda campaign is in full tilt. I expect soon to hear the Palestinians were lighting fires and grilling live babies before eating them. Such is the way of propaganda in war.
The facts are:
Israel occupies all of Palestine and refuses justice, freedom, human and civil rights to the Palestinians. Regardless of what one believes about the 1947 partition it is the source of all suffering and violence today.
Israel colonises all of Palestine and in recent times has again been throwing Christians and Muslims out of their homes so Jews can move in.
Israel has kept 2 million Palestinians, half of them children, imprisoned in Gaza for 15 years, allowing just enough in so they do not all die. Such a bad look.
Israel regularly bombs the Gaza prison and uses it to test its weapons. That is a fact easily validated.
Israel has in recent times become more right-wing and that has increased the level of Jewish radicals and fanatics which has seen Palestinians attacked by settlers in their homes, houses set on fire and children run down in the street by cars and motorcycles.
The violent response from the Palestinian Resistance cannot be assessed without context.
What does Israel expect from three generations of traumatised, abused, subjugated and dispossessed people?
Palestinian-American writer Amer Zahr put it on Twitter,
“75 years of ethnic cleansing. 15 years of blockade. Confiscation of Palestinian lands. Pogroms on Palestinian towns. Desecration of Palestinian sacred sites. Daily raids into Palestinian homes. Constant humiliation of a entire people.
Nothing about today is ‘unprovoked.’”
Good piece David. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Israel, especially of course the Jewish people.
It might be distressing for some but the Jews do shoot back when someone tries to kill them.
It might be distressing for some but Christian and Muslim Palestinians also shoot back when someone tries to kill them and permanently dispossess them from their land.
The mighty power of the American military could not defeat the Vietnamese fighting for their land and neither will Israeli power defeat the Palestinians doing the same.
You can kill people but you cannot kill ideas. It is simply impossible for Israel to kill all of the Palestinians or even drive them out. They might kill most in the Gaza prison but the world will know. They cannot kill the millions in the rest of Occupied Palestine without emptying the illegal Jewish settlements first in order not to kill any of the settlers in the process. Apart from the fact the settlers are fanatics and would not leave any attempt would give the game away.
It is one thing to cut off power, water, food, medicine, internet in the Gaza prison but they cannot do it in the rest of Occupied Palestine because there are around 500,000 illegal settlers who would suffer the same fate.
To repeat the words of Ariel Sharon and reflect that the actions of Israel in seeding Palestine with settlements also makes it impossible to attack the non-Jews who live there.
“We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” – Ariel Sharon, 1973 (who later became Israel’s Prime Minister).
Not only does Hamas stridently deny Israel’s right to exist, it insists that the sole solution to the problem is the obliteration of Israel by armed struggle. It’s all there in its original Charter, together with a dash of primitive jew-baiting that they believe is scripturally based – have a look at Article 7.
In the face of the endless PR disaster of the original Charter, the corrupt theocrats who run Hamas (who live in comfort in Qatar by the way – you couldn’t make it up) published a revised Charter a few years ago which omits some of the more bilious statements about jews, but which is replete with ambiguity, and doesn’t row back from any of their positions.
We can all agree with Rosross that “the realities must be addressed in a civilised and rational manner”. That will never happen while Hamas refuses to negotiate at all, denies Israel’s right to exist, and demands its destruction by force.
And by the way, if anyone thinks Hamas’ latest atrocity was not largely driven by the need to sabotage the evolution of the Abraham Accords, by which the Saudis were in a fair way to join Egypt, Jordan and the UAE in recognising Israel, they are naive indeed.
So, Sindri you are saying 75 years of dispossession, crushed under military colonial rule by Israel, with no reparation, compensation, justice, freedom or civil and human rights had nothing to do with the violence from the Palestinian Resistance?
That does rather counter historical and psychological realities but make a case.
What’s with the 75 years of oppression rosross ? The UN wanted to create 2 states in Palestine in 1948, one Jewish, one Arab. The world wanted Jews to have their own homeland. After centuries of pogroms culminating in the holocaust, it was mandatory. And you might recall the conspiracy between Arabs in palestine and Hitler during the 1930s and 40s. Nevertheless, Arabs were offered a state in Palestine. They would have nothing of it. Jews were to be swept into the sea. Immediately upon the formation of Israel in 1948 the Arab nations attacked. The Jews held on with the grimness and determination of being the survivors of millions massacred. From that moment the state of Israel has been in great, unremitting peril. The west bank was NOT occupied by Israel, but by Jordan. Jews were pushed out of their homes across the Arab nations. Many were killed. They all lost their property. Israel told them to come to Israel. Arab palestinians who had been displaced by the 1948 war caused by Arab attacks, were not welcomed by other Arab nations, but kept displaced and dispossessed. Jordan had them in its care because it occupied the west bank and claimed it was part of a greater Jordan. Later the King of Jordan expelled the Palestinian people fearing assination. Nasser of Egypt, with visions of a pan-Arab empire continued to promote anti-Jewish hatred and made Israel his focus to bring the Arab world under his command. It all led to 1967. Israel was again attacked by multiple states and again was heavily outnumbered. Again it held on by grim and heroic effort. It was again attacked by overwhelming numbers in 1973. When Sadat made peace with Israel, he was assassinated. In attempts to secure lasting peace, Israel gives independence to Gaza. All this does is lead to insane hatred by Hamas maniacs and rockets. Hamas are the natural inheritors of nazi insanity. Ditto Hezbollah and the mullahs of Iran. Have you seen the footage of the behaviour of Hamas. How can you have any sympathy with that ? Do you understand how awful are the mad leaders of Iran ? The Abraham Accords are working, or were. The Saudis were interested. Iran and the insane members of Hamas are prepared to commit any atrocity to thwart a peaceful co-existence with Jews. (And I jumped over the further attempt by Israel to bring about peace in the 1990s leading to the wave of suicide bus bombs targetting and killing women and children. People, at least the Brahmin Left, seem to object to Jews defending themselves with rigour rather than going quietly into the gas chamber).
You are right. The terrorism began before 1947 with Jewish terrorists like Irgun and Stern. So probably 80 plus years of violence.
The UN had no right to partition Palestine against the will of its people.
Jews are a religion. Arabs a culture. Either talk about Europeans, the colonists, and Arabs, the native people, or talk about Jews, Christians and Muslims.
The world was not even involved in the creation of the Israeli State, which by 1947 had been underway for more than half a century. Most Jews do not, never did and never will live in Israel and no religion has rights to a homeland.
The Zionists were busy seeding Palestine with colonists long before WWII. The Jewish experience of holocaust certainly made it easier for them. Or rather increased their funding and power to make it happen.
It was never mandatory. And the Zionists were pretty much atheists anyway.
Name one other forcibly colonised people who welcomed their invaders with open arms? Just one will do.
I know the history of it. I also know that Israeli historians have gained access to records and stated that apart from the fight by the Palestinians and their allies to resist the invaders, every war was set up by Israel as part of a plan to take more of Palestine. Jerusalem of course being the greatest prize because that was not in the UN Mandate.
Regardless of what anyone believes about history, facts or fantasy, no-one has a right to treat the native people of the land they are colonising by force as Israel has treated the Palestinians for 75 years.
Rosross, as is your usual way you oversimplify with slogans. It’s not “US imperialism and its nato lackeys” this time, it’s statements like “They have no human or civil rights, are treated like animals, particularly in the Gaza prison and crushed under colonial military rule”, a rant worthy of some dismal Oppression Studies 101 course. Yes, I know, you’ve lived everywhere and you’ve read so much more than everyone else but you are doing exactly what you accuse others of with that sort of statement: seeing only one side of the issue. I agree that the Gazans “have no human or civil rights, [and] are treated like animals”. The proximate cause of that is the corrupt and brutal theocrats who rule Gaza (fact), and (just by way of example) store munitions and fire their rockets at sites adjacent to schools, hospitals and residential areas. You tell me to “make a case”. quite de haut en bas, yet you have not responded to the central point of my post, which did not attempt to summarise the whole of the problem, but rather to point out that Hamas uncompromisingly refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist, and insists that the only solution is the obliteration of Israel by force; and that Hamas has a history of jew-baiting that they claim is scripturally based.
You say that the creation of the state of Israel involved a grave injustice. You are entitled to that view and good for Quadrant, as you say, for allowing so much latitude. But that is a vast issue on which there is by no means universal assent, and you can berate others all you like for not agreeing, or at least holding much more nuanced views. But really, if you think, as you appear to do, that historical wrongs can only be righted by the abolition of the state of Israel as a jewish state, that is something that’s never going to happen. A two-state solution, it seems to me (and others), is the only long-term fix, but that is going to require security guarantees somehow, and it’s a non-starter while Hamas rules in Gaza.
“Yes, I know, you’ve lived everywhere and you’ve read so much more than everyone else…..”.
I stopped reading her comments after she categorically stated, without reference or explanation that what I said about IVF was wrong. What I had posted was told to me by the medical staff who created my daughter, backed up by my reading (and common sense), but Ms Ross iclaimed she knew better than the people who made the babies.
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I started again some time later, don’t know why, but again gave up on her, other than via others’ comments, when it was, to me, obvious that she claimed causation based on correlation, again without any reference or explanation, regarding death by dehydration.
“iclaimed”!!
Need to brush up on my proofreading.
The treatment of the Palestinians is well documented by Israeli and international human rights group. Not my statements mate, just the facts.
Non-Jewish Israelis are second-class citizens and the rest of the Palestinians are held under military colonial rule with no rights at all. Fact.
Israel is not a Jewish State. That would make it a theocracy like Saudi Arabia and Israel claims to be a Western democracy.
Most Jews do not live in UN Mandated Israel and none of them have a right to live in Occupied Palestine.
The Zionists were mostly atheists and therefore not Jews because Jews are followers of Judaism, a religion which requires belief in the Jewish God.
Many orthodox Jews totally reject Israel and so do many Jews in general because its behaviour as occupier and coloniser betrays their religion and them.
There is nothing to abolish since Israel is not a Jewish State. A quarter of its citizens, albeit second-class, are Muslims and Christians and many who call themselves Jews are atheist, which they call secular and therefore not Jews either.
Israel as an occupier and coloniser can and will be abolished for that is the only way to justice, both for Israelis and Palestinians.
Either two states with exactly the same rights to defend themselves or one state shared between the colonisers and the native people.
Hamas is the symptom of the disease, it is not the cause. Let us cure the disease, and the symptom will disappear.
“Let us cure the disease, and the symptom will disappear”
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In my opinion, the way to “cure the disease” is to exterminate the carriers, people who do this:
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As many as 40 babies and young children have been horrifically slaughtered, many of them beheaded, in a Hamas terrorist massacre unleashed on the kibbutz of Kfar Aza.
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Israel defence officials opened the kibbutz to international media on Wednesday, four days after the Hamas terrorists stormed the kibbutz close to the Gaza border, appearing to target and mutilate the most vulnerable: pregnant women and young babies.
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The brutal sights of beheaded young children were so disturbing, soldiers who were tasked with dismantling booby traps and recovering the bodies – after having secured the area – were seen crying and comforting each other.
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The atrocities from Kfar Aza, as well as Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Re’em shows that the Hamas militants were intent on brutalising their mass murder spree, to leave a deep psychological imprint on those left behind.
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In one harrowing image from Kfar Aza a baby cot, with a small dress on the top, is drenched in blood. i24News correspondent Nicole Zedek said soldiers had told her many babies were found next to their cots with their heads cut off.
Of course Hamas is a symptom. But there is the Hamas as presented by Israel, the occupier and Hamas in reality.
Israel was actually instrumental in creating Hamas to use as a foil against the PLO. But the worm turned. Hamas was elected by the Palestinians because unlike the PLO it was not corrupt and it was actually effective in helping them.
Most Hamas senior figures are in Israeli gaols and have been for years. Those in the Gaza prison are of course a part of the Palestinian Resistance but mostly they are prison support officers, where according to international human rights observers, they still do much good.
Resistance groups only exist where resistance is needed. Remove the need for resistance and Hamas becomes a political party again which may or may not be re-elected.
Now that they have broken through for a few days, we’ve seen clearly why Israel keeps those murderous Arabs behind closed borders. Put them back.
As American Paul Craig Roberts has said, there is something odd about it all. How did so many Palestinians get through to do what they did?
It is of course a great opportunity for Israel to get rid of more Palestinians and to formally expand its possession of Palestine, while still denying the native people any rights.
It is also a good opportunity to attack Lebanon and Syria to take more land. Well, Israel is attacking Syria as we speak but if it used this tragedy as justification it could do more. Time no doubt will tell.
As the ‘victim’ Israel could ask for help relocating all the Palestinian non-Jews to achieve its goal of ridding the land of them.
It is hard to see such a plan working but given how many countries, organisations and individuals appear to be in thrall to the Israeli State, who knows what is possible?
I don’t see where any of the commentors above have been defending Hamas. Having sympathy for Palestinians is not the same as supporting terrorists, nor is it being anti-semitic (Arabs are Semites too). Since the middle of the 1930s, the targeting of civilians seems to have become a universal practice of warfare; think of all those cities in smoldering ruins in the aftermath of WW2, and the 10s of millions of innocent non-combatants killed.
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I have Jewish relatives living in Israel, and I can definitely say I am not anti-semitic, nor, obviously, do I celebrate attacks on Israelis, in or out of uniform. They live on a Kibbutz, and they have always had good relations with the Palestinian village close by, where a lot of the labour for produce harvesting comes from. My brother-in-law once took me to the village to have a glass of tea in the home of his Arab friend.
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I agree with lbloveday that Israel “…will not intentionally choose women and children to kidnap, rape, torture and murder…”, no indeed, they will humanly blow the women and children to bits with their military superiority of land, sea and air forces, and the Palestinians would do the same if only we gave them the military capability. But why don’t we seek to demilitarise both sides of the conflict, and tear down the walls?
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I will be voting “NO” in the referendum, but conflating these two issues makes no sense… Aboriginal people are Australian citizens, and they are not living in refugee camps behind walls and razor wire, but are free to avail themselves of all benefits and opportunities like anyone else. I am only voting NO to the class of Aboriginal activists and their political agenda.
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Personally, I’ve been trying to avoid, as much as possible, the news reports of this middle eastern conflict, but then I don’t watch sporting events on TV either, because I don’t like conflict.
Looking in with dismay at the destruction and carnage unleased on ordinary people on both sides of this seemingly insoluble multi generational conflict it seems that extreme religious views have much to answer for .
The Ultra Orthodox Jews relentlessly building new settlements on land that they have dispossessed from Palestinians with the support of the Israeli government .
The Ultra conservative religious Muslims in Iran and leading Hamas that want to destroy Israel completely.
Where are the brave leaders that can solve this terrible situation and bring Peace to this land .
Brute force will never solve it .
Brute force will not but Israel demands a majority of Jews and total control of Palestine which makes justice and freedom hard to deliver for the Palestinians. It is strange that the Israelis in 75 years have not understood that violence begets violence and brute force will never destroy a people fighting for their land.
The Americans learned that in Vietnam. Or should have learned it. Even if Israel got rid of every non-Jew in Palestine and Israel there would still be millions in the Diaspora fighting for justice.
“Brute force will never solve it ”
May, or may not solve this issue, but it does solve many lesser problems.
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My daughter came home from school and asked “Dad, why can boys have a punch-up and 5 minutes later be playing football together, but girls have an argument and months later still hate each other?
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Because there was a winner in the brutal force contest, over, winner acknowledged, someone lying on his back knows he has lost. But there is often not an acknowledged winner in an argument, and the purported loser thinks she has won (Clinton vs Trump?).
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Way back my local pub had two “bouncers”, Big Gary Jones (older SA resident football followers may remember him – sportsmen were not so well paid in those days). 6’6″, 18 stone of muscle and Fletch, a 5’9″ martial arts type. When Gary strolled over, the problem disappeared, when Fletch did, there was always someone willing and eager to take him on.
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Personal reminiscing. Came out of the football club and a little football mate was being pushed around by a big guy, trying to provoke an uneven fight. “My brother may not always be right, but he is always my brother”, so I stepped between them, said not a word, the big guy stepped forward, I decked him with a single right cross (I was only average height). He staggered up and said “I think I’ll just go”. Still silence from me, “Thanks Loveday” from my little mate.
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So maybe brute force will “solve it”. I’ll back brute force against debating prowess.
Sure, brute force can achieve certain outcomes but a civilized human being can use their brain instead of brawn. The Romans destroyed Carthage and salted the earth. Is that the sort of world we want?
Israelis have a backward biblical view of things, made worse because they know they are illegitimate and their nation was set up in Palestine founded on fear and lies and that creates irrational hatred toward the Palestinians.
They could use brute force and eradicate 2 million in the Gaza prison but do you really think they could get away with killing the other 4 million? Such a bad look. And then they would have to deal with the 8 million Palestinians in the Diaspora. No, in this instance brute force is doomed and in fact Israel’s use of brute force for more than 75 years has doomed it anyway.
This was not, Heaven Forbid, a defence of the Hamas leaders, doers, followers or supporters.
I reply to a comment in The Australian that quoted verses from the Islam Quran, quoting from the Bible as below. REJECTED of course:
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As the Good Book says:
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Deuteronomy 20
13 And when the Lord your God lets you take the city, you must kill all the men in it.
14 But you may take for yourselves the women, the children, the cattle, and everything else in the city. You may use all these things. The Lord your God has given these things to you.
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1 Samuel 15
3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
I am curious about mainstream media’s total compliance with Israeli propaganda and the complete lack of balance in regard to the situation. I can only assume that it is about money and there is substantial funding and advertising from certain sources which require such bias and compliance.
I wonder if they understand how obvious it all is to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. It is like Sky News where every talking head presented the same views on the attack by the Palestinians over hours. No doubt to make sure people got it. Sharri Markson is not surprising of course, but Peta Credlin and Andrew Bolt, who can actually be intelligent, particularly Credlin, were singing exactly the same song and so was everyone they propped up to discuss it.
As indeed were most politicians and public figures. It would be impressive except it smacks so much of propaganda that one cannot help but think, just what is going on here? The history is easy enough to find. The hypocrisy in terms of the Palestinians so easy to see and yet, none of the facts or the realities are applied.
Then again, we also saw that with Covid and the war in Ukraine. It all works to make the media useless and potentially dangerous. Let us hope enough media outlets can hold to integrity and ethics.
Brendan O’Neill can speak for me:
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Consider the joint statement from 31 social-justice campaign groups at Harvard University, including Harvard’s Amnesty International affiliate. ‘We, the undersigned student organisations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for the unfolding violence’, it says. Entirely responsible – got that? Only Israel is at fault here, no one else. Not the men who gunned down unarmed festivalgoers, or bundled pensioners into trucks, or hacked up phlegm for the desecration of a woman’s body. No, just Israel. ‘The apartheid regime is the only one to blame’, say these Ivy League radicals.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 4: ‘You wanted hell, you will get hell,’ Israeli army chief says, calling Palestinians ‘human animals’
Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip entered its fourth day as the death toll inside Gaza surpassed 770, with more than 4,000 injuries as a result of airstrikes. Among the dead are at least 140 children….
Source Mondoweiss, a US Jewish organisation.
My question to those who support Israel is how do you see this working out?
Can Israel kill 2 million men, women and children in Gaza and get away with it?
Does Israel then need to rid itself of the other 4 million in Occupied Palestine. Could it get away with it?
What does Israel do to rid itself of 8 million Palestinians in the Diaspora?
The situation is impossible. Israel cannot eradicate every Palestinian on earth and that means the only solution is one state shared equally by the Israelis and the Palestinians. Other Western nations have done that with native peoples and colonists so why not Israel.
This article suggests that the priciple motivation behind the Hamas led attrocities are to interfere with diplomatic processes between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The author may be correct. He also suggests that the accords are a game changer throughout the region. The trouble with that idea is that it ignores the opinion of 400 million Islamic inhabitants in the middle east. Do they support the Abraham accords? And if not, how long will that game changer last? Moreover while some of the Gulf States are active donors to Gaza, and more so to the Fatah government in the West Bank, why would Hamas be particularly concerned about Saudi Arabia’s normalising of relations with Israel, when its principal donor is Iran, the sworn enemy of Saudi Arabia? The author nonetheless may be correct in assesing Hamas’s motivations, but in respect to his conclusion that the long game for Israel is elevating its status in the Middle East, I would suggest that it start with normalising its relationship with the 5-6 million inhabitants of the occupied territories, and the million or so arabs who live within recognised Israel.
I didn’t pay too much attention: confess, sorry, sorry. But it sounds to me like right off the bat you’re claiming Hamas = the Devil, Israel = Saints.
In fact Hamas is not the devil and nowhere near as devilish in action in all as Israel has been over the last decades.
In fact, ironically perhaps ? Hamas was created by Israel as part of their devilry towards Palestinians.
And right now, getting back to what really matters, only a totally pusillanimous, depraved, brain dead, amoral lunatic monster would choose to strike out in blind fury at every innocent man, woman and child in Gaza to make them scapegoats for his own total lack of any redeeming qualities whatever.
It, he, is sickening. Vile and sickening. So filthy and vile and anti-life, anti-reason, anti-sense you’d almost think he was American. In fact he shares a quality with them the awful fact that we, the people, have let them into those places of power and have left them there.
Ultimately the faults are all ours.
Now cast your eye across the Western world and its ‘leader’ and bow your head in shame as we all should.
What a pathetic and awful collection of total human rubbish.
And the horror doesn’t stop there either.
For between them and us lie strata of ‘political commentators’, ‘gurus’, ‘celebrities’, ‘experts’ and the common MSM hack ALL busy feeding us an atrocious and lethal pap of lies and misdirection.
We need to clean the stables, top to bottom and never let it happen again.
In the 21st C with internet and smartphone we can know, communicate, act; we can control our own nations first hand and by god we should.
“In fact he shares a quality with them the awful fact that we, the people, have let them into those places of power and have left them there.”
Who are “them”, that we have let into positions of power? Do tell.
The point I was making was that we have a pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli bias in the West, or at least in the Anglophonic countries, because of our Jewish populations, and the historic absence of Arab or Muslim populations, and this has played a significant role in creating the situation we now have. In later years, the Christian Church (generally), moving on from the days of Martin Luther and his tirades against Jews, has redeemed Judaism and came to see the establishment of the State of Israel as a fulfilment of Biblical prophesy and step closer to the return of Jesus Christ (or at least among American evangelicals). Hollywood did its part with “The Ten Commandments”, and later with the film version of Leon Uris’s “Exodus” and its theme song playing on the radio with lyrics such as: “…this land, is mine, God gave this land to me….” How many “Nakba” museums do we have in the West?
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My point is that we need to always examine our biases, and question as to whether God really is on our side?
Forget about history and religion etc. Just pay close attention to those who behead children and rape women and those that support them, and excuse them, need to be expunged from civil society with no debate. There isn’t now and never was an excuse for this barbarism no matter how tough you think life is. Gutless cowards.
Access Breaking the Silence and read the reports of traumatised and disaffected IDF soldiers for some perspective.
I would be interested in the view of the above correspondents on Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay.
In my opinion, they were instrumental in, or at least had bearing on, bringing to an end wars that their countries did not start.
Excuse me, wasn’t it Britain and France that declared war on Germany in 1939, when, after Polish refusals to give back German land (given to Poland by the big Treaty of Versailles carve-up), the Germans just pro-actively took it back? (maybe with a bit extra as interest) There are always at least two sides to every story, and why is it that the Victor always tells the true story? (Is God always on their side?)
Just imagine how much worse things would be if the Palestinians were given their own state where they’d be less hindered to wage these atrocities from.
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Look what’s happened now after they were able to elect HAMAS as their government.
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They have shown what evil they are prepared to perpetrate against Israel after they’ve had a degree of autonomy : the deliberate murder of babies, toddlers and grandmothers in their own homes; and the kidnapping of babies, toddlers and grandmothers from their own homes with the threat to execute them one by one as they deem that necessary.
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If it’s within the power of Western governments to prevent terrorists being given statehood they should do it. There should be no weakening of resolve.
Catching up time.
The Washington Post newspaper reported that White House has backtracked on remarks made by US President Joe Biden about seeing images of alleged atrocities committing by Palestinian Resistance fighters in Israeli settlements surrounding Gaza.
The newspaper quoted a White House spokesman as saying neither Biden nor any official who saw photos or verified reports of terrorists beheading children, pointing out that Biden’s statements on alleged atrocities were based on Israeli media reports.
Israeli officials and media made unsubstantiated remarks about beheading of babies, rape and other allegations.
There should be no room in Australia for the views of people who support the murder of babies, toddlers and grandmothers in their own homes; and the kidnapping of babies, toddlers and grandmothers from their own homes with the promise that they will be executed one by one as hostages as that’s deemed necessary.
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There is no point debating with such people. I certainly will not.
You might like to read up on the tactics used by Irgun and the Stern Gang prior to 1947. Some Israeli historians have published much on their activities. Also spend some time reading the reports of disaffected and traumatised former IDF soldiers through the site, Breaking the Silence.
Western governments should cancel all Western aid to the Palestinians. If the HAMAS government the Palestinians elected can afford to fire 5000 rockets to deliberately target and murder innocent civilians in Israel they don’t need or deserve any aid.
We’ve had terrorist atrocities and murders on our own soil committed by the supporters of the Palestinians.
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If the Palestinians are granted statehood they will be in a much better position to sponsor terrorism in the West including countries like Australia.
The terrorists in GAZA have more than one key aim. Statehood is only one of their aims. They also want to destroy Israel. Giving them statehood won’t change any of their terrorist ways.
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It will actually encourage them. It will prove to them terrorism works.
One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. If Israel had done what Australia did and given the native people of the land citizenship and equal rights and they reacted with violence you could call them terrorists.
That did not happen. They have no human or civil rights, are treated like animals, particularly in the Gaza prison and crushed under colonial military rule. And they have been now for three generations.
If the Germans had succeeded in occupying Britain and then colonised it and the British were doing today what the Palestinians are doing, because the Germans were doing what the Israelis are doing, whose side would you be on?
The one that wasn’t killing babies and raping women, just like all normal decent people would.
It has already been established the killing babies lie came from a radical settlers and there is no proof. Israel wants to eliminate as many Palestinians as it can so expect the stories to become even more horrifying. I suspect Palestinians eating Jewish babies while they are still alive, starting with the fingers will be next.
Source for the dismissal of this story is Mondoweiss, a US group set up and run by Jews seeking justice for Palestine.
As to raping women I suggest you read the testimonies of disaffected IDF soldiers in Breaking the Silence. Let us not be hypocrites. Have compassion for all involved. The trauma of those soldiers, mostly young, being forced to commit atrocities against the people of the land they hold under occupation must be enormous. Which is why so many have walked away and told their stories to Breaking the Silence.
Truth is always the first casualty of war!
History is all about causes and effects; but there are surely effects that are indeed brutally barbaric and in a class of their own!
Dear BalancedObservation, I don’t think anyone in Australia, if they calmly think about it in reflection, would condone the sort of things that are being broadcast to us by the media (though I refuse to listen or watch). Of course there are those among us with different cultural backgrounds and family histories that would spontaneously celebrate a breakout from the “internment camp” of Gaza, but I doubt many, if any, are actually celebrating the sort of things you mention.
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Now Netanyahu seems to be promising the sort of God-sanctioned revenge that we read in Numbers 31 where the the cities of the Midianites (somewhere east of the Jordan river) were completely destroyed, and all Men slaughtered. When the army of Israel returned to camp, Moses was furious to see that they had brought back as captives all the women and children! So he says in verses 17 and 18:
(17) “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and every woman that has known man by lying with him.
(18) But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
cbattle1
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Thanks for your comment.
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I can fully understand why you’d “refuse to listen or watch” media reports. What has been perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorists is so evil and horrific
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However because you “refuse to listen or watch” media reports you are probably not fully aware of what has been going on in all it’s evil detail.
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I can also understand your comment that it’s hard to imagine anyone in Australia condoning such evil.
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It’s also hard to imagine innocent people right here in Australia being brutally murdered as a protest by supporters of the Palestinians. But sadly it’s happened on our streets in the past.
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The firing of 5000 rockets into civilian areas and killing over 900 Israelis is not simply : ” the breakout of the ‘internment camp’ which is Gaza”.
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Neither is entering small villages and murdering innocent people while they sleep: men, women, babies, toddlers and grand mothers. Neither is murdering a young woman and dragging her body through the streets and spitting on her tortured and disfigured corpse and laughing.
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Neither is taking a holocaust survivor in a wheelchair hostage. Neither is taking toddlers, grandmothers and children hostage into Gaza.
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Taking these innocent people including babies and toddlers into Gaza to be held captive to be murdered one by one as required is not simply “the breakout of the “internment camp’ which which is Gaza”.
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These acts are abominably evil in any civilized human beings mind just as the murder of innocent Australians on our streets in the same cause is abominably evil. From those murders on our soil we know there are likely to be people in Australia who support the atrocities.
Agreed until the last sentence. “likely” my a***, “100% certain”.
You are aware the Palestinians have been crushed under brutal occupation for 75 years. That is three generations. As Israel continues to dispossess them and colonise their land.
The regular horrors inflicted on the Gaza prison are human rights atrocities and war crimes which rank among the worst in modern history.
And yet the Palestinians fighting for freedom are evil? Does that mean you believe the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were evil for fighting back? How about the French and Polish Resistance?
I am at a loss to discern the principles you are applying.
Agreed until the last sentence. “likely” my a***, “100% certain”.
An intelligence breakdown, give me a break. Anniversaries of significant events always triggers the security services to alert governments of the day: the modern Hebrew Calander was a significant Flag flying. I observed Hamas terrorists of African origin: await a demographic breakdown of casualties. Telling, an assumption, should realise us threatened to. The Islamic World has exerted influence, based on current demonstrations into western society by its blatant approval of slaughtering innocents, maybe Christians are next? As to the next level of absurdity those illegal immigrants queuing into Europe are now extolling the actions of Hamas: the resurgence of Islam with its dysfunctional emergence. Meanwhile, in Australia we aspire to times ago, that protein was provided by your neighbour.
Peta Credlin writes:
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It’s extraordinary how many people (and media types) accept at face value Hamas’s claim that the Palestinians are somehow the victims of Israeli oppression.
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In truth, they’re the victims of Hamas itself, a terrorist regime that perpetuates and exploits their poverty to maintain the rage against Israel that fuels the atrocities we’ve just seen and the rapturous response to them (even here) from people fed a diet of race hate.
Yes, Credlin and everyone at Sky News sings from the Israeli propaganda handbook.
Better to read the history of Palestine and the partition horrors inflicted by the Zionists. There are many Israeli historians who have detailed it and Israeli human rights groups are a good source of information to understand the atrocities Israel commits against the Palestinians and has done for 75 years.
Israel blames Hamas to pretend that they are the enemy and it is not targeting Palestinians when of course it is. The ignorance on this topic is immense.
There are many Jews working for justice for Palestine and seeking to remove themselves from the taint of the Israeli State. Good on them. Perhaps instead of Credlin read Ilan Pappe and sources like Mondoweiss. Better still, read both and find balance.
@lbloveday,
Can you provide information on any occupied and brutally colonised people in history who did not hate their oppressors?
Can you also provide information on any occupier in history who was not considered the oppressor of the people they occupied but was deemed to be the victim?
There is no denying Palestinian suffering and trauma. It is well recorded and generally ignored.
We know Gaza is a prison and Israel controls what goes in and out. In fact, they just stated they will prevent power, water, food, medicine, anything and everything from access to Gazans. A UK Prime Minister like many others called Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison. We know there are nearly 2 million Palestinians, half of them children imprisoned in Gaza. We also know that Israel tests weapons on the prisoners in Gaza regularly and kills many and traumatises all. Mowing the Lawn the IDF calls it. Such things would by others be considered to be war crimes.
I am at a bit of a loss to understand the double standards. We applauded the French and Polish Resistance and many applaud Ukrainian Resistance while even more support Tibetan Resistance. And yet many condemn the Palestinians for their Resistance. Why is that so?
Most are aware of the maxim that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. The Germans considered the French Resistance to be terrorists, as they would, and others saw them as Freedom Fighters.
It cannot be denied that in 1947 Israel was set up in Palestine against the will of its people or that since that time Israel has occupied all of Palestine and continued to colonise it. The reality of Palestinian occupation and colonisation is clear and established. The only questions really are around the validity of the UN Mandate and Israel’s right to hold land, like Jerusalem, taken in war. But there is no doubt Palestine is occupied and its people denied freedom, justice, reparation, right of return and human and civil rights.
Are you truly unaware that as the Israeli Government has become more right wing the radical Jewish settlers, long known for rampages against Palestinians, have begun to carry out pogroms which are highly destructive and often deadly?
Are you truly unaware that in recent months Israel has increased its campaign of demolition of Palestinian settlements and throwing Palestinians out of their homes in Jerusalem and handing them over to Jewish settlers?
How well would any of us do living under such torment and trauma?
Can you explain to me why the Palestinians should not resist when all other humans did and would?
US President Joe Biden has confirmed photos of terrorists beheading children in Israel,
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Anyone who comes out to support the Palestinians immediately after this happens disgusts me.
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Under no circumstances will I debate with people who come out immediately after this happens to support the Palestinians .
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Anyone who does that disgusts me. I do not care what debating points they come up with they totally disgust me.
The Palestinians will never get statehood after these absolute inhuman atrocities.
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Wouldn’t matter what twisted arguments their supporters come up with now.
@Balanced observation,
Not aptly named. Please name one other people and country who resisted occupation and colonisation and were denied Statehood because of it. Just one will do.
By your criteria, the Israeli State should never have been founded given that it was created in bloodshed, massacres, genocide and atrocities. Or do you have different standards for some?
The Washington Post newspaper reported that White House has backtracked on remarks made by US President Joe Biden about seeing images of alleged atrocities committing by Palestinian Resistance fighters in Israeli settlements surrounding Gaza.
The newspaper quoted a White House spokesman as saying neither Biden nor any official who saw photos or verified reports of terrorists beheading children, pointing out that Biden’s statements on alleged atrocities were based on Israeli media reports.
Israeli officials and media made unsubstantiated remarks about beheading of babies, rape and other allegations.
You couldn’t believe anything from anyone who comes out to support the Palestinians immediately after all these atrocities have happened.
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We now learn from the US President that children have been beheaded.
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No statehood ever for these people.
Sorry and you think dozy Joe is a good source of information on any issue but particularly this one?
All Americans Presidents say what Israel/Jewish/Zionist lobbies want them to say.
Did Biden show the photos and who took them? In this age it is very easy to fabricate images so absolute proof is required. That proof does not exist.
And, remember the images of the naked young woman in the hands of the Palestinian Resistance? There was a story yesterday with her mother saying she was not dead but in a Gaza hospital. Well, she might be dead now because Israel is bombing the hospitals as well. Let us hope not.
It is wise with war to remain open-minded, sceptical and cautious about what you choose to believe. Israel needs to demonise the Palestinians as much as it can in order to justify its slaughter in the Gaza prison, 47% of whom are children.
However, regardless of atrocities on either side the fact remains that Israel occupies all of Palestine and denies justice, freedom and human and civil rights to the millions who live under its colonial rule and that cannot last.
There is no proof Palestinian fighters ‘beheaded’ babies. The only source is a radical settler.
U.S. and international media outlets are repeating unsubstantiated claims that Palestinian fighters “beheaded” babies. These unverified assertions aren’t just sloppy journalism — they are being used to justify a massacre.
BY DAVE REED OCTOBER 11, 2023
One story has been dominating the U.S. and international media cycle for the past 24 hours. It has been repeated by pro-Israel activists, Israeli government officials, reporters, and anchors throughout the U.S. media and even alluded to by the President. The thing is — this story has not been confirmed in any way. It appears to come from a single source with a history of espousing calls for genocidal violence against Palestinians.
You have probably heard the story that Hamas fighters beheaded 40 Israeli children in the Kfar Aza community near Gaza. This story can be traced back to an article by Bel Trew, a reporter for The Independent. Trew entered Kfar Aza on October 10, soon after the Israeli army, and reported on Twitter that gunfire erupted just as they arrived. She is told by a member of the Israeli military that children were beheaded, but the article notes, “The Independent did not see evidence of this.”
The military source of this claim is Major David Ben Zion. According to his Twitter bio, he is the Deputy Head of the settler leadership organization, the Samaria Regional Council, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Fund for Israel, a quasi-governmental agency used to acquire land in Palestine that is then made available exclusively for use by the Israeli state.
Source: Mondoweiss, a Jewish-American site.
You can do a search yourself but this is a reminder that all claims must be checked or held as possible until proven to be true. How did she get to a Gaza hospital? The Palestinians took her there.
Shani Louk, the 22-year-old German-Israeli woman who was present at the Tribe of Nova party in the northern Negev in Israel on October 7, Saturday, is believed to be alive, her mother said in a new video.
A video of Hamas militants, parading what was initially believed to be Louk’s naked corpse in the back of a pickup truck, had earlier gone viral.
Shani Louk’s mother, in the new video, said that her daughter is alive but in a critical condition in a hospital in Gaza. Louk’s mother has called on the German government to help get her daughter back home safely.
Although the material conditions of life no doubt play a role in the conflict seeing this as the basis of the conflict is a projection of the individualist and materialistic western mind on the tribal mindset of those in the ME. One has to believe there is something to the reports of Hamas attributing the attack to the demonstrations on Temple Mount by the radical right wing of Jewish political life currently of influence in the Netanyahu government. There is a strong element pushing for the Temple to be rebuilt on Temple Mount and Hamas knows this means the destruction of the al-Asqa mosque, an Islamic sacred sight. The Temple and its rituals and sacrifices is a representation of Heaven on Earth to Jews and to Muslims the mosque is where Mohammed ascended into Heaven or the destination of his night ride or somesuch mythology. I posit that this is the fundamental clash and as such justifies in the mind of Muslims the deployment of jihadic methods sanctioned to create fear as the end, not the means.
Are some people forgetting that the Hamas charter includes the elimination or subjugation of all infidels throughout the world, so not just Jews or Israel.
Hamas is little more than a prisoner support group in Gaza. Yes, it is part of the Palestinian Resistance but if you think Hamas has any power to threaten the world you have not put enough time into researching the Palestinian issue, Islam globally or the miniscule reality of Hamas.
Regarding resistance fighters, I am reminded of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, where innocent British colonists were hacked to death in their farmhouses….. but one of the leaders, Jomo Kenyatta, became Kenya’s first Prime Minister, and much later, a son of a Kenyan became the President of the USA!
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The media thrives on sensation, and they are loving this opportunity!
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Regarding propaganda, the Brits went to town in 1914, casting the German soldiers as sub-human monsters, raping nuns in Belgium, etc. There was even a poster in Australia that showed German soldiers bayoneting to death a family at their home on an outback station!
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Given the vitriolic anti-Palestinian backlash rhetoric coming from some quarters, it is almost sounding like there is support for a solution to the problem that would be, well, umm, let’s just say not in a good way for Palestinians! What monstrous irony that would be, but all humans are capable of doing anything, depending only upon the circumstances. God save us from ourselves!
I am heartened at the number of Jewish Americans standing up to speak the truth about Israel’s terrible provocation over 75 years. There have been increasing numbers of groups set up by Jewish Americans to fight for justice for the Palestinians in recent years.
If Americans Knew and Mondoweiss are two important sites.
So let us hold to the fact that there are many who can tell the difference between lies and propaganda and who defend justice, rule of law, democracy, human rights and common human decency in regard to this conflict which began even before Israel was invented in 1947, with the violence of the Jewish terrorist groups like Irgun and the Stern Gang.
Just a small sample of recorded Japanese actions in Nanking,:
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Historians estimate that 20,000 (and sometimes up to 80,000) women from as young as seven to the elderly were raped.
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Witnesses recall Japanese soldiers throwing babies into the air and catching them with their bayonets. Pregnant women were often the target of murder, as they would often be bayoneted in the belly, sometimes after rape.
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The site of some of the most gruesome atrocities committed during the ordeal was the Nanking hospital. Bandages were torn from the flesh of the wounded, casts were smashed with clubs, and nurses were repeatedly raped.
Japanese atrocities like many made in war were as much imagined as real. It could have happened but the more colourful the story the less likely it is true. The imagination becomes childish when hatred demands greater levels of propaganda.
Many stories about the Germans were told in both the First and Second World Wars, most not true.
It is best not to subscribe to atrocity stories of any kind.
Ros, you’re repeating yourself literally ad nauseam. Your latest brainstorm about alleged Japanese atrocities in World War II really exceeds all the thousands of words of one-eyed “history” of Israel’s treatment of the
“Palestinians” that you’ve been spouting in here for ever. Just for openers, the Rape of Nanking is a thoroughly documented historical reality the accounts of which scarcely do justice to the bestiality that actually occurred. My father spent the last 12 months of his wartime RAAF service repatriating Australian prisoners of war from prison camps in the Phillipines, Borneo and other islands to the north of Australia. One of those ex-POWs lived with us off and on for years while working on our farm. He did not speak often about his experiences in Changi and on the Burma-Siam railway, but he was a wreckage of a man suffering from extreme PTSD.
Say what you like about the Israel-Palestinian situation where we will grant that you may have some expertise, but on the subject of Japanese atrocities in World War II, your ignorance is only exceeded by your stupidity.