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I see that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has turned to Christianity from atheism and before that Islam. From the misconceived to the muddleheaded to the way, the truth and the life. Of the three, let me pick up on the truth. Truth and God are indivisible. And as part of giving mankind the best civilisation the world has seen or will ever see, Christianity gave and gives us an appreciation of the centrality of truth. The truth is always under attack by those with an agenda (leftists, Islamists, assorted barbarians) who wish to tear down our civilisation.
Where am I going with this morality tale about truth? To Gaza, actually, and to Penny Wong. “And we call on Israel to cease attacking hospitals,” she reportedly said. The archetypal lie by insinuation. Apropos, have you stopped beating your wife? Either through ignorance or commission, truth has taken a hike. She either has not studied the rules of war and, therefore, as Foreign Minister, is recklessly derelict, or she has read them and was being duplicitous in implying that Israel was in breach of them.
Any number of reports last week described fighting around Gaza’s largest hospital al-Shifa. Ms Wong should pay attention. Exactly who were Israeli forces fighting near to the hospital? Hardly unarmed doctors, nurses and patients. You don’t need to be a genius to work out that Hamas terrorists were stationed in, around and underneath the hospital in contravention of the rules of war.
Israel in conforming with the rules of war must be “proportionate.” While this civilising rule or principle is fraught with subjectivity in the heat of conflict, as I argue here, there is no circumstance which allows it to be deliberately flouted. (See, for example, Military Ethics by Stephen Coleman.) Unfortunately, most commentators, and I see that Teal MP Zoe Daniels has joined the misinformed throng, seem to have no idea what proportionality means. To be clear, it does not mean tit-for-tat. It does not proscribe Israel’s defence forces from attacking Hamas terrorists inside and near to a hospital, provided the military objective is adjudged important enough and provided that harm to doctors, nurses and patients is kept to an absolute minimum in achieving the military objective.
Another thing to be clear about. The primary responsibility for ensuring the safety of civilians inside Gaza hospitals rest with the controlling force, in this case Hamas terrorists. They should never have been anywhere near hospitals in the first place. They are war criminals. Their consequential responsibility is to flee far from hospitals and their surrounds (and without firing a shot) if they can, or otherwise surrender.
In putting the onus on Israel “to cease attacking hospitals,” Wong was operating in an empire of lies and we know who is the father of that empire. (John 8:44)
Israeli forces were and are not attacking hospitals, a ridiculous and defaming proposition; but, in fact, Hamas terrorists in and around hospitals. Strike One!
Under the rules of war Israel has a presumed right to engage the terrorists even when they are hiding behind civilians; otherwise no malignant force could ever be defeated. Strike Two!
Denying Israel the right to engage with its enemy in order to safeguard civilians is subtext for siding with Hamas terrorists; to wit, siding with evil. Strike Three!
In a better age, she would be sacked forthwith. Why is she still holding her position? I don’t know precisely. It is another sign of our societal and political dissolution. Undoubtedly, the press is playing a part. Tenaciously holding authority to account is becoming a faint echo of the past.
In the latest’s Weekend Australian I read about Ms Daniel’s comments. Wong’s, equally ill-informed comments, but in her case carrying the far-reaching authority of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, seem now to be out of sight and mind. Are they using the Biden defence? She didn’t know what she was saying?
Finally, even with my jaundiced view of the IQ of the Teals — my local member is Kylea Tink, for Pete’s sake — I was taken aback with this reported comment by former ABCer Daniel’s inelegant exercise in hypothetical conditionality: “If they’ve been targeting hospitals … if that’s what happened, it’s a war crime. Pure and simple.”
And, if I wantonly kicked an old lady on my way to coffee this morning I would be guilty of an illegal and despicable act of violence. But I didn’t. And, unless I’m wrong, that makes all the difference.
“Why is she still holding her position”?
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Hitting the trifecta – Female, Coloured, Homosexual – may have something, even lots, to do with it.
Perhaps if Australia and other Western nations would recognise Palestine as a sovereign nation, and arm them to parity with the state of Israel, which would include nuclear weapons if Israel has them, then we should expect the “rules of war” to be conformed with on both sides.
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My simple solution to the problem is that there be a United Nations Force to take possession and occupy the whole of the original dimensions of Palestine, in a Korean War type action, to restore the governance of the Palestinian Muslim Arab majority, where minority Jews and Christians used to live in peace alongside their neighbours.
While I don’t expect it to change your mind Mr Battle, this five-minute Prager U video may influence your views a little; if you choose to watch it of course.
https://www.prageru.com/video/why-isnt-there-a-palestinian-state
Did you watch that video yourself?
At the commencement the narrator says Israel has offered the “Palestinians” a state on no less than five occasions. Then he lists them. The trouble is the first two occurred before Israel even existed. The first according to him was proposed by Britain in the 1930’s. It is very hard to “learn” from a video so patently polemical and self contradictory. Sitting watching videos like these is not going to help you find the truth on this issue. For some one who already despises Islam and Muslims, watching these videos is merely going to reinforce your prejudices Peter. That is not a good thing for anyone who believes they can think rationally. By the way I agree with your article generally.
I have watched it and you’re being a bit picky Occidental. Sure he began incorrectly saying Israel but made it clear that the first two propositions offered to the Arabs and rejected were accepted by the Jews. Focus on the substance.
Listen to what they say and believe they mean it. They have often stated they won’t accept a state handed to them by Jews. The only state they will accept is one taken by force. Nothing Israel will ever do will be acceptable to them.
And yet the fact remains that the Arabs did reject those states because they reject any compromise and reject any form of Jewish sovereignty or rights. They are history’s most extreme antisemites and should be shunned by the civilised world.
Peter Smith: I did watch the video, and, no, as you expected, it did not change my mind. As far as my views being influenced a little by watching the video, yes I did find it influential, but in a reactive way. David Brog comes across as a slick tele-evangelist. I checked out his background and see he leads the “Maccabee Task Force”, and was the former head of “Christians United for Israel” The internet is full of videos of people promoting partisan versions of history and political ideology, etc. Just yesterday I watched a couple of videos of Jewish Rabbi’s of the Orthodox/Hassidic variety, speaking their anti-state of Israel truth. They said that the original European Zionist Ashkenazim were atheists, and therefore weren’t Jews at all!
I believe at least one proposed two state solution (whether by British, League of Nations or UN I don’t recall offhand) was rejected by Jews. But, why should the majority of people living there have to agree to any partitioning or creation of two-states? The latest iteration of two-state solution, if there be any, has all of Jerusalem as Israeli, as well as the settlements built on Palestinian land to the east. How could the Palestinians refuse an offer like that?
The vast Middle East was Ottoman territory prior to WW1. No states/countries. The League of Nations (France, UK) gave nearly 99% of the land to create multiple Arab states: Saudi, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan et al. A tiny bit (less than 1/4 of Tasmania) was for a Jewish homeland. Yes it seemed unfair to the local Arabs, but there are now over 1.5 million Arabs who are citizens of tiny Israel. Jews were chased out of the entire Arab world, although they had lived in many of these places since before Islam. Turkey and Greece had huge population swaps, as later did India and Pakistan. The Arabs have basically refused to cede an inch, a and they are a mighty big lobby.
As far as I understand it, it was in retaliation for having the state of Israel recognised by Western nations, that the Jews were expelled from Arab and middle eastern countries, not out of some nasty inherent evil of the Muslim countries. After all, Israel declared the “right of return”. Unfortunately, those exiles were treated as second-class citizens by the Ashkenazi Zionists who created the Israeli state.
So the Arabs pitched a hissy fit because the existence of Israel denied them control of the entire Middle East? Along the lines of, “Do it my way or I won’t play!”
And their refusal to accept it continues the conflict because there is no such thing as Palestinian land. There is no reason for you to believe in such a thing. Israel rightly controls it all except what it has agreed to give to the PA.
The UN has never been a solution to any problem. Au contraire, it has almost invariably exacerbated, if not the proximate cause of the most serious international problems since its creation.
Palestinians should have the same sovereign state they had before world war one.
Why stop at immediately before WW1? Why not go back to before the Greek invasion of Judea in 332BC?
That sovereign state did not, has not and never will exist
That’s right, and that’s exactly the state they should have again, none.
Before WW1 it was the Ottoman Empire and had been for some 400 years.
That’s a stupid idea.
Wrong again cbattle.
Palestine is not a country nor a sovereign state. It never has been and can never be. ISIS and Hamas barbarians do not want a country, they just want death to any opposition to their satanism.
It is fools who fall for this sympathy for “Palestine” rubbish that are really the uneducated danger to any peaceful society.
OK, the simple solution of the UN Force will probably have no success, so I offer another simple solution: Reinstate the Ottoman Empire! Well, at least Turkish control of the middle east. The 2 world wars in the 20th century had the effect of destroying the former colonial and Imperial regimes, which were consistent with the history of civilisation; without the old order, we have a mercurial and chaotic disorder, somewhat like removing the apex predators from an eco-system, or removing the widespread use of the firestick in Australian forests.
Great idea. Reinstating the Austro-Hungarian Empire and partitioning Poland might deliver stability to Europe again. Silly concepts like Yugoslavia and The Ukraine generate too much conflct.
Katzenjammer: I heartily agree with the restoration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire! And restore East Prussia and other German lands back to the Reich. What happened to Konigsberg, Danzig and Breslau? The Soviets annexed East Prussia and then it became a Russian enclave, as it still is today. Our great ally, Stalin, incorporated the chunk of eastern Poland, grabbed in 1939, into the Ukrainian SSR, and then in 1945, compensated Poland by giving them a chunk of eastern Germany!
The Ottoman Empire was a trash Islamic terror network. How about we leave it in the hands of the only nation that’s ever had a homeland there? Oh, right, because the Muslims don’t like it.
Reinstate the Eastern Roman Empire at its greatest extent prior to the distastrous war with Persia in 602 AD, which made the even more disastous Arab expansion possible Make all of Asia minor and the Levant, Egypt, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania Christian again.
Great post. Philip. What do these other posters want- Islam from Morocco to Bangladesh? The only civilised and productive country in the Middle east to be obliterated? For what -a he said. she said land grab? To the victor go the spoils I say.
This is more or less to return to the situation of British Mandate Palestine, in which Britain was, after the First World War, designated under the League of Nations to govern the area. You now propose that a “United Nations Force” perform this role. However, such a force does not exist. One of the members of the UN, the most obvious being the United States of America, would have to take responsibility for security, policing, and overall governance under a UN mandate. The are a number of problems with this apart from any issues around Israel itself. Firstly, it is not clear than any such UN resolution would get up. Secondly, there is likely no member of the UN that would be willing and able to take the role, and which would be supported by the UN to do so. Iran might be willing, but it taking control would not be supported. Thirdly, it would be rescinding the existing mandates that instantiate Israel and the petition of Palestine into a Jewish state (Israel) and an Arab state.
@cbattle1 – UN ‘Peace’ Force.
Given past questionable UN appointments to its bodies, it’s likely to choose HAMAS to lead it.
What is rarely mentioned is that as a terrorist organization Hamas is an illegal organisation and has an obligation to surrender immediately.
Try explaining that to the Left and watch their heads explode.
Good piece Peter. I agree and have forwarded that excellent link of yours on the Palestinian state to friends both here and in England, even though of course I didn’t need it to convince me…..long long ago being familiar with most of the details.
There has been a lot of talk about the so called laws of war and war crimes by a lot of folk who display absolutely no familiarity with the subject.
This subject is largely covered by the UN Charter and the Geneva Convections. If you take the time to have a look you will find that Israel has not and I expect will not commit any war crimes as a matter of policy. This doesn’t mean that some IDF soldier wont transgress in the heat of the moment when bullets are wizzing around. If this happens the Israeli court will deal with it properly.
Another some what pedantic point is that the Geneva Convention is a treaty between states who are signed parties to the treaty. Hamas is not a signed party and is recognized in many juristictions as a criminal terrorist organization.
Im just dreading the moment that Albo breathlessly announces that Australia will be welcoming misplaced Palestinians to come and live here.
Fortunately the polls are showing that most Australians support Israel. Such a move would only weaken Albanese further. Only the far Left supports the Palestinians and would want them here.
The world is a better place for the contribution of Jewish people, starting at least 2000 years ago. Nobel prizewinners, musicians, composers, artists, writers have adorned our world. Those who would vilify them or deny them a state of their own must be ignorant of history, of philosophy, of beauty, otherwise why?