One of the oldest public relations rules in the book is that you can’t have it both ways. Right now, Israel may be prevailing in its shooting war with Hamas, but it’s losing the propaganda war for exactly that reason.
There is another possibility and I'm not saying this is the case or not: The walls were closing in on Netanyahu, he figured as a wartime leader he would have a respite from punishment and so he was complicit in the Hamas attacks. It's just the kind of thing Trump would do and I wouldn't put it past BiBi.
I agree but it will be his downfall. If he doesn't step down, soon he will be removed. Israelis will not wait much longer. Like Bush, his hubris and criminal dereliction of duty should be severely punished. Bush is a war criminal too. That may be Bibi's problem as well.
And he is going overboard with the bombing in Gaza, killing civilians just to divert attention from his bungling. He knows his days are numbered and then it's a guilty verdict for him. Like P01135890, he knows he can't beat the rap unless he's in office. Reprehensible!
I have to dissent from one component of this: there's no evidence the civilians in Gaza are "targeted," it's horrific enough as it is, i.e., that Hamas's terrorist ethos has always been forthrightly fanatical enough, such that it explicitly encompasses using their own civilian population as human shields, siting massive terrorist weapons storage complexes directly underneath civilian infrastructure. Including hospitals, schools, you name it, Hamas has a complete, absolute, total disregard for the value of human life.
When the terrorist infrastructure IS targeted, any of the civilians who haven't left - after warnings from Israel going back over a decade, mind you - are in the war zone.
Again, horrible enough without imputing extra-malevolent motives to the responders from Israel, including the admittedly vile and odious Netanyahu, on behalf of their own thousands of dead and mutilated victims.
I am not sure why during The Vietnam War I had to read/listen to people say ‘those Vietnamese have no regard for the value of human life,’ as we bombed them back to the pre-touch tone days, and now on occasion I read the same re Hamas, as our allies (with our assist), kill 1000s upon 1000s of innocent civilians.
The only valid comparisons are that of identical twins.
Anything other than twins inevitably ends up as cherry picking a single attribute here and there while ignoring all the differences aka a square peg in a round hole.
SEA is not SWA. Geography determines everything including history and every element of culture. The two could not be more different no matter how many angles one comes at them.
Hamas proved themselves to be barbarians time and time again. By doing so they forfeited their humanness hence their lives. That includes those in safe havens in different lands. There are valid hunts of the 2-legged. This is one.
Gonna double down on the foolishness of Bibi and his government sitting on the vids of the barbaric acts while falsely thinking showing the compilation to a select few in the global mainstream media would somehow counter the 1000s of Hamas vids showing the destruction and death inside Gaza. At a minimum needed to be shown to a full-house at the UN, then released to the global public by his government.
Is plain many here haven't seen any Hamas snuff vids they posted on Telegram. Nor recall what Hamas did to anyone they suspected of collaborating w/Israel or what they did to members of the PLA after they were voted into power by the majority of Gazans. Have zero, nada empathy for those who still support Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside and outside of Gaza.
My heart breaks for those innocent civs who didn't since day one and those who don't now along with those not mentioned, the 4-legged, cats, dogs, and donkeys. Don't expect the innocent civs to rise up. Nothing is stopping them from using their cellphones to contact the IDF and tell them what they know. They must understand silence is tacit approval.
Exactly, in a far better world we wouldn't have any of this, of course that's just a tautology and "true by definition," but the point is it is TRUE, and we're stuck with this one. Where the Hamas monopoly of force led for one thing, to taking those opponents in the PA / Palestinian Authority and in some cases rousting them up to the top of tall buildings, beating them, then throwing them off while they were still alive and - that wasn't enough for these fiends - dragging them through the streets attached to their motorbikes, "pour encourager les autres," in the succinct French phrase.
Shadow I also ran across THIS* a few days ago, it derailed me into a very educational, always still relevant side-trip in history - in fact it only started because the "Garfinckle Caper" LKTIV recounted mentions US Route 50 heading W/NW out of DC area, and then across the country, well, to Goggle Maps I go, it ended up leading me to tiny towns on the Ohio River (Marietta, and even smaller Pomeroy) - where my grandfather on father's side was born - then to its role in US Civil War, then to "Morgan's Raid, "(we had an ancestor's Army Major surgeon's saber in house for years, Maj. John Rush Philson, was in West Virginia Unit involved in dealing with Morgan June-July 1963) then to FIRST GOP candidate, 1856, who I had never ever even studied in ANY depth at all, John C. Fremont, wow, what a %$#@!, even for that era, a real enthusiastic "Manifest Destiny" explicitly self-announced massacre fiend of Native Americans, absolutely grotesque stuff, and finally to The Whitman Massacre, background too complex to summarize beyond was related to feuding, even use of poisons involved, a squabbling RC Church contingent versus Evangelicals of the worst ilk out to destroy indigenous culture / religions to "save souls for Jesus & Eternity," ( lead figure wasMarcus Whitman) in what was then not even the USA / Oregon state of course, but disputed lands of Native peoples (Cayuse in particular), versus, Canadians, arriving US settlers, might take a look at this if you're not that familiar, as mentioned: very, very instructive. The branching articles on Wiki add much info.
As an aside glad there are so many passionate posts on the Hamas-Israel subject. War should inflame passions yet must remain in the boundaries of ethos and pathos.
Here on Turtle Island they were no shortage of unofficial and official attempts to annilhate and exterminate the ~indigenous~. All under some sort of pretext including fancy terms that masked the blood thirst. Killers of the Flower do capture one hard truth, a yt man would get in more trouble for kicking his dog than killing an "injun". In the 1920s no less. Am familiar with most of the slaughters, others were so complete entire clans were poofed leaving no one to tell their end story.
That was one reason was shocked any comparison to SEA was made. The Jews are the victims of Hamas's barbarism. Barbarism is a subject all on its own. Hamas and Islamic Jihad "fighters" came with written instructions on what to do to the Jews they encountered. Took years to plan due to the sheer volume of intel they gathered on mil garrisons and each kibbutz. . That is more than enough time for a hooman to say, this is not who I am nor want to be remembered as. Stains their family name for eternity.
OK, it's a plausible theory, but it's a coherent and meaningful theory if and only if you can clarify what semantic work "complicit" does in that formulation.
By no means would I be brash enough to "rule it out," I likely trust Netanyahu as little as you or a host, as in "tens or hundreds or several millions" of observers do, despise his far right politics, self-serving power grabs, the works - but "complicit" still needs some kind of defined scope, as to what does or doesn't count as giving it meaning, and even better, some credible evidence - that would stand up, or arguably should have a good shot at being verified in a (fair-minded) Israeli court, or some other court process we would recognize as fair and thorough.
My own intuition, and it's only that, is that Bibi Netanyahu was simply too damn smug about what he mistakenly thought were sufficient preparations to deal with an extremely unlikely major Hamas assault crossing the internationally recognized border, in large numbers, including terrorists on the ground with definite targets in mind, and too focused on, too distracted by, other contentious ongoing crises, most of them of his own making.
I'm so glad you decided to mention that "complicit." the use of the term confused me as well. in my case, I agree with YOU, Richard. I think it was the same dumb complacency that Bush et al demonstrated after 9/11.
It's difficult to say, but a demagogue's strategy is to create this kind of situation to "rally the troops around him"..It has been part of the global history of many of these MEN, who wage war, at the expense of many lives, in order to gain the confidence of his people, a confidence that, as you rightly say, was quickly eroding. My first thought, upon hearing about October 7th was to wonder how a country that I had upto then, consider among the best protected in the world, could allow this to happen? Thank you for your truthful reporting!
Excellent point, Lucian. I wonder if the Israeli press and public are asking these questions as well. Once again, it's columns like these that make my subscription worthwhile. Thank you.
Such a complex question the deeper you go isn’t it - this catastrophic lapse of attention. Was it hubris that made Netanyahu lose focus on what has - as far as I’ve known it to be - been the prime directive in protecting Israel: vigilance, that it always was is and must be - to be proactive in gathering intelligence, scanning for threats to Israel, intercepting bad actors to stop malign acts?
It’s hard not to think it’s not the result of a very long game. Where Trump and Putin and the Saudis dance with Netanyahu. Are we attributing too much to Putin’s long vision. (I realizing I’m descending into a Knives Out bomb crater here).
Perhaps the only thing unaccounted for has been Israel’s undeterred walk toward a vengeance that may at the end of the day be judged to have made sense. Or, conversely turn into the Armageddon our religious right is panting for.
He doesn’t believe he will ever have to account for any of this. Drop enough bombs, and you’ll eventually get most of the Hamas leaders. Or you can say you did. It’s not as I’d they’ll wave and contradict you from Austria. Bibi makes me want to spit up.
I wish you were a journalist asking these questions you brought up, Lucian. I have had the same floating in and around my head too.
Here’s what we do know: Hamas are murderers and rapists. They have committed unbelievable crimes against humanity. Netanyahu and his blubbering army of misfits were too busy to care about the information Israel’s intelligence was picking up. The ultra orthodox Jews pushed and pushed for territory in the West Bank, which was occupied by Palestinians. It is not all of the Israelis who wanted more and more, just the very selfish. Jews, including myself, are feeling less confident even in the US. It is men who start a fight. MEN!
LKTIV IS a journalist, one of the best IMO. Unlike the traditional ones you're thinking of, though, he isn't on anyone's payroll, leaving him free to explore exactly these kinds of questions without redaction. He may not reach a wide audience, but that doesn't make his work any less important. I like to think enough thoughtful people are listening that his points of view influence a broader audience. And those of us who feel his work deserves broader dissemination can help by sending gift subscriptions to everyone we know!
True, and I endorse the righteous moral outrage. Unfortunately we have all, at one time or another, likely found ourselves entangled against our will in some way in the consequences of it, that is, in the entirely senseless ramping up of disputes about either the most trivial matters imaginable, or about who has territorial rights and responsibilities with respect to large swaths of territory.
Thus finding ourselves having no realistic alternative to making choices about how best to cope. Irrespective of our gender at birth or any later eventualities.
Here's the most interesting philosophical (or "anti-philosophical"!) response to that kind of dilemma I have encountered in many decades, extremely accessible, at times sardonically humorous, from the late Lev Shestov:
{{A choice of formats for reading "Anything is Possible."}}
"When I give Shestov's books to anybody, they are usually delighted. There are two authors whom I make propaganda for: one is Herzen, the other is Shestov. They are both totally decent, open-minded, open-hearted human beings." - Isaiah Berlin *****
"Shestov was highly admired and honored by Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov in Russia, Jules de Gaultier, Georges Bataille, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Paul Celan, Gilles Deleuze, and Albert Camus in France, and D. H. Lawrence, Isaiah Berlin and John Middleton Murry in England. Among Jewish thinkers, he influenced Hillel Zeitlin." *******
Lev Isaakovich Shestov (Russian: Лев Исаакович Шестов; 31 January [O.S. 13 February][2] 1866 – 19 November 1938; born Yeguda Leib Shvartsman)[a] was a Russian existentialist and religious philosopher. He is best known for his critiques of both philosophic rationalism and positivism. His work advocated a movement beyond reason and metaphysics, arguing that these are incapable of conclusively establishing truth about ultimate problems, including the nature of God or existence.[3] Contemporary scholars have associated his work with the label "anti-philosophy."[4][5]
Netanyahu, the Saudi princeling and UAE along with trumps racism caused America to betray Iran and the agreement Obama initiated.
Today’s problems are directly caused by Trump and Netanyahu. Saudi can’t defeat tribesman but they help Russia while gouging America.
Netanyahu never wanted peace he wanted total victory.
The Arabs cannot stand against Iran so they need America to wage war on Iran.
2 billion to Jared is part of it.
It is worse, decent people like Representative Booker are being grifted with the Abraham accords. With in days of signing with the UAE Israel continued its destruction of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Broke the Abraham accords the next day. Nothing trump has ever done has been good so why is the betrayal of American interest by Trump on behalf of Saudi and Netanyahu never discussed.
Fact Israel left the Gaza Strip open because they were conducting military operations in the West Bank against other Palestinian.
30% of Israel like 30% of America are racist hate filled fascists.
Netanyahu is a criminal like Trump.
I support Israel right to live in peace but Israel must accept peace and stop trying for some final victory.
From what I hear, it's stressful to live in Israel too. He probably got fed up with Hamas two-faced dealings and reached a tipping point when they attacked. I sympathize with the Palestinians the same as I would a bullied child in kindergarten, but if bully seemed incorriagable I would remove him from the classroom. I can see why Netanyahu might be enraged, and especially now since the discovery of the spider web of secret tunnels Hamas created under Israel with cement that was donated by other nations to build housing in Gaza.
Good luck trying to pin people down on some of these tough issues, well, "inconveniently tough to explain away" might be more like it.
The 1200 deaths in one day from the Hamas terror attack would be, if the two populations of the United States and Israel are compared, as if the USA was hit by a terrorist attack that took around 48,000 lives - in ONE DAY.
Obviously enough, we would never, ever hear the end of it, and Israel is about the size of the state of New Jersey. When the Palestine Mandate's territory was divided, the Israelis got about 17%, the rest went to the Palestinians - but somehow 83% just wasn't enough, despite the fact Jews had a continuous, unbroken presence in what is now the territory of Israel, going back several thousand years before the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the late 1st Century A.D. Despite the fact Zionists organized and pooled funds and donations to purchase land from the time in the 1880s when it was owned by landlords in the Ottoman Empire, which finally formally collapsed in 1922, when Kemal Ataturk took power in Turkey, and began an ambitious program of secularization, including switching from the Arabic script then used for Turkish, to English, and far more rights for women, etc. It's just a smear and a lie that Zionist settlers "stole the land."
But that's never stopped Islamist and Palestinian propagandists from shrieking it, inciting mobs and pogroms with it, and it continues today, this minute.
Israel who? That's your caricature of who or what group of people, exactly, and deploying what non-tendentious definition of "ethnic cleansing"?
If Zionism advocates that the State of Israel, within borders recognized internationally - not necessarily those borders in flux, pending a negotiated settlement with whatever legitimate representative group is elected by the Palestinians - is an ideology that holds that State to be the national homeland of the Jewish people, back up your objections now, or forever admit, in effect, you just picked up a standard smear of the State of Israel in toto, as opposed to a fringe group with temporarily disproportionate influence (complete with implicit comparisons to the policies of Hitler, really?), comparable to the far right Trump cult here in the USA, in fact, a caricature, a smear, that fails to fairly and accurately even begin the capture the complex dynamics of about 150 recent and several thousand total years of history, history encompassing both the Middle East and Israel, and the Jewish diaspora throughout Europe and Russia, especially.
Best I can do on not even the beginning of my first cup of coffee, gotta wake up with something like this! And as a "retired ironworker" bro, dig that heavy metal, you can even learn or be reminded of a little pop music history too, rock and roll will never die! Yowza!
Steppenwolf was a highly-influential American hard rock band, based in Los Angeles, CA from 1968-1976. They have sold well over 25 million record sales worldwide, releasing eight gold albums and twelve Billboard Hot 100 singles of which six were Top 40 hits, including three Top 10
See also, as we all prepare for the onslaught of mass media and well-prepared caricatures from the usual suspects, alive and dead, Posner, Bugliosi, and Warren Commission diehard defenders - with the approach in less than three weeks of the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination - this:
I agree with you, James and Richard. Israel does appear to be in the process of ethnic cleansing. I don't think its a smear of the Palestinians, Richard. I think James is taking Israel to task here.
You mean you agree with James, not me, here's why:
I think the entire formulation he stated here is incoherent on multiple levels, and since it's a fringe element WITHIN the State of Israel advocating what would amount to "ethnic cleansing," if successfully implemented without legal responses from the government, but have themselves had their ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS BULLDOZED BY THE STATE OF ISRAEL, for example, and since Israel has previously withdrawn from territories they occupied as defensive measures against relentless terrorist attacks by Palestinians (GAZA), there's no reason whatsoever to think that won't happen in a possible future, a future within which the Palestinians finally accept the Israelis have a right to a homeland, as is recognized as such by the United Nations - that fundamental right being a form of universal human rights which cannot be taken away by anyone, any state, any gang of terrorists, any contract, any declaration, any expulsions by any conglomeration of states, by the Arab League, by some religion or all religions at once, whether Muslims or anyone else, thus (for these and more reasons I won't bother to enunciate now, as these are more than sufficient) the entire claim amounts au fond as a useless smear, not any kind of reasonable, fair, accurate, context-sensitive description of the real world - is that clear enough? See also:
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,449, February 16, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The consistent and enduring Palestinian rejection of any and all peace initiatives with Israel, most recently the “Deal of the Century,” calls into question the commitment of the Palestinian leadership not only to peace but to the very welfare and safety of the Palestinian people.
Taking into account all the peace initiatives proposed to end the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs over the last 83 years, we must consider the possibility that the Palestinians—or at least their leaders—do not want to establish their own state.
Their sight is currently set on the big prize—the entire state of Israel—and they are playing for time. In the meantime, they plan to continue to subsist on monies donated by the Arabs and the Europeans. Many of the Arab states have grown disenchanted with this enterprise, and their assistance, particularly from the Saudis, has been discontinued in recent years. *****
There follows a list of example after example of the Palestinians rejecting a possible "two state solution," widely satirized for many years as "Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
Excellent analysis. I suspect your questions would get very terse "no comment" responses or very embarrassed silence. I think only one thing is for sure - this isn't going to end well for anyone.
So many issues in one packet. Looking forward to the diverse takes by the readership.
-Going to avoid the internal politics due to my well-known bias against Bibi. full disclosure am an ardent supporter of J-Street as was my beloved late wife. The other reason is the government of Israel is quite different than the US as is the makeup of the population. Should be a lesson to those Americans who want more than 2 legacy political parties. Emphasis, should, yet won't.
-Israel lost the PR war where it matters most, on the global street even though they are the most technological advanced nation on the Blue Marble.
That is on Bibi and his government for forgetting how news is decimated in 2023. It is no longer major print publications or the vast array of local, national, and international teevee channels and stations, it's the internet and social media. All the aforementioned operate as if they were in the midst of the 20th-C and most of all as if they were still the only gatekeepers of what people should read, hear, and see.
Did Israel show the infamous 48min. vid of the barbaric acts in the UN? No, they showed it to a select number of the mainstream media. Juxtapose the words of a few journos with the Hamas approach of flooding the zone with cellphone vids from airstrikes w/dead bodies.
There was 1 attack on Israel on 7 October, since then >1000 airstrikes and 100s of artillery rounds landing inside Gaza. That is how Hamas is framing it. That is what they world sees while Israel sits on the 48 min. video. Ike didn't sit on the films of the Nazi death camps. Faces and bodies were not blurred or pixeled out. He instinctively knew if the world didn't see it, they wouldn't believe it. Ike didn't rely on famous war correspondents to tell of the horrors or some GI Joe to have a microphone in his face with the camera rolling to say, "it's so horrible I can't and won't tell you what I saw." (That's a dig at every journo-reporter covering 7 Oct. and the vid some saw.)
Seems it is Bibi and his government who needs a reminder of what ~never again~ means and the same to the lazy media personalities and the companies who employ them. War cannot be captured by words. War is sights, sounds, and smells.
The intentional barbarism and the crimes against humanity of 7October can't be allowed to stand. If we lived in a civilized world the people of goodwill inside Gaza would not only turn on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but they would also expel/exile every member in along with every supporter after seeing the 48 min. vid. They never were given that opportunity. All they see it what Hamas shows them or they witness with their own eyes. So, when Israel and the IDF says getdafuq out of northern Gaza, they paused followed by correctly asking what did we do? By the time the hospital strike occurred the global street had Israel's word v. 100s of hours of 1000s of vids from inside Gaza. The global street includes the West where the overwhelming majority of those under 25 get their news from social media. And since the "imminent incursion of 360,000" (tanx mainstream media) IDF storm troopers all they see is the destruction and carnage inside Gaza made worse by the mainstream media's attempt to be fair and balanced by talking about aid trucks and civilian casualties. It's a fuq'n war, people. It ain't a US football game with pom-pom waving cheerleaders and pre- and post-game tailgating parties.
-To this day have no idea how Hamas beat all the layers security at the Border and most of all the slow response time by Israel's security forces. That too is all on Bibi's government. Have reconsidered how all the arms and munitions flowed into Gaza, though. Still feel a great amount came from the tunnels in the Sinai however would like to know what kind of inspections were performed on each and every aid truck that came from Egypt.
-Do suspect IDF has a good feel for tunnel pathways inside Gaza. Some gleaned from captured Hamas barbarians over the years and from overhead views of where concrete trucks operated yet no building went up. And absolutely agree there are tunnels under and leading in and out of every Gaza hospital. Hamas and Islamic Jihad ain't stoopid. No way they would bring their wounded fighters in through the front or back door, then leave the same way. W/o a doubt the orgs that run those hospitals know it as well. Simply made a judgment call on their duty to tend to the injured no matter who or out of fear. And if people took note, the hospitals claimed they were thisclose to running out of fuel yet vids coming out of Gaza 1-2 weeks later show them lit up like Xmas trees. Israel is correct in holding back fuel and the same with limiting aid. It's a war. There is no international law against a siege aka encirclement of an enemy territory.
There is against taking hostages and against disallowing the International Red Cross from seeing hostages and POWs. There are laws against crimes against humanity and the intentional targeting of civs. It is Hamas and Islamic Jihad who brought war back with them from southern Israel and now like the cowards they are hide in holes and the ground knowing they are putting their own in harm's way. It is Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are not permitting dual citizens egress from Gaza.
-Can't comment on whether the IDF knows where arms and ord is stored in Gaza yet Israel's intel services missed the attack. Don't find them to be necessarily related w/o more info on each one. One would think certain tunnels or sections would be dedicated to storage of anything explosive including fuel. Suspect those are the deepest inside the network and serviced by a rail system. Tunnels w/o rails would seem to act more as people movers that marry up to the heavier weapons at a junction before reaching the surface.
-IDF has a dedicated tunnel unit as one would expect. They fall under their Core of Engineers (wish folk wld check up their heavy equipment) and are trained in advanced robotics along with close quarter combat. Have to say this again, the IDF is not anything like the US mil. For good reason. IDF isn't structured to fight across the globe. US has to be. IDF doesn't need to keep trying to learn a new enemy in a new location. That allows it to incorporate counter-measures from the get-go, not after the fact. (ret) US GOs pretend they know Israel's enemies better than they do and insist US mil doctrine would do just fine in Gaza. To a person they insisted IDF would simultaneously attack on 3 fronts and all said all signs say an invasion is imminent. Arrogant assholes. All. They too are 20th-C dinosaurs.
-IDF command can't be concerned with the impact of Hamas's claim of number of civs killed because they have no control over what number Hamas claims. They can only focus on the efficacy of the approval process for strikes and feedback from those on the ground regarding where civs are and are not. They have forces in harm's way. That has to be their number one concern. May suck to read that but that's war. War sucks for all.
-Finally. Now that mainstream media blew the "imminent incursion of 360000 troops they jumped to the conclusion of the war and bring on equally foolish people to discuss what would come next. That ain't their place. That is what Israel, and the Palestinian people will have to figure out and agree upon. Israel isn't going to sue for peace. They know 7October can't stand. They're obligated to destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad or else every death in Israel will have been for naught. And those deaths were not good ones. There more horrific than The Shoah. And they best show the world that.
Makes me yearn for the Hatfields and McCoys blood feud.
None longer and stronger than Arabs and Jews with the balance of power and claim to having the high road changing hands over and over throughout history. Long after we are both stardust there will be another event that kicks off another series of cascading ones between the two unless and until wimmin and 2spirit people take power away from the male idiots.
Still hate war as much as I ever did. No more or no less.
Is that true about Arabs and Jews at each other's throats for all time? My sense is that it got bad after the Ottoman Empire collapsed for good and British and French started meddling big-time as Mandatory powers. Especially the British, with the Balfour Declaration. Then the Holocaust raised the stakes a few thousandfold. But before WWI the worst anti-Jewish pogroms were in eastern Europe and Russia. In the Middle East the various ruling Muslim powers generally considered Jews and Christians "people of the Book" -- as long as they paid the required taxes, of course.
Since recorded Bible time, yes. And they're cousins hence the Hatfield and McCoy reference.
Were there times of peaceful co-existence? Yes, when both were under the same thumb.
Lots of truth to what you cited made the friction go kinetic in relatively modern times. Most of all it's the dirt and who owns it. The answer is no person or no nation can own the land. The land came first and no person or nation can take it with them.
1. Yes, killing begets killing until one or both sides tire of it.
2. Trump killed JCPOA because it was O's and Kerry's. Please don't overestimate Trump's intellect or geopolitical pea brain.
3. The West Bank is separate and apart from Gaza both in location and in make up. Gaza did take advantage of Bibi's government obsession with the more biblical West Bank which they refer to by their biblical names.
4. Matrydumb is a thing. Many juice before seeking their 72Virgins. This is a distinction w/a difference between a "terrorist suicide bomber of any type of delivery" with a barbarian. Barbarians are cowards. That project their cowardly fear unto their victims.
5. Am ~indigenous~ aka a male merciless savage. Am also a steward of land. Know well if I move, I can't take the land with me. Nobody can. Israel ain't taking the land. They are expelling Arabs off it and not allowing them to take what is theirs with them. They bulldozer all of it. Including fig trees and citrus trees. Jews living in a kibbutz despise Bibi for being a bad steward of the land. They it one reason they tend to go out of their way to make peace with Gazans. And it was Gazans who they employed that betrayed them by bringing home money and intel.
Golda Meir, Prime Minister famously said of the Yom Kippur war in 1973: “We can forgive them for killing our children, we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
Netanyahu's 'let it happen on purpose war.' Any head of govt who'd kill thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians with bunker busters, wouldn't think twice about provoking it with intentional and purposeful disregard of critical info.
He has to go, the Israeli hard right conspiratorial insiders all have to go, and it will be one of their own who takes them out, I reckon.
Bibi is blinded by past persecution of those of his faith. While he should recognize that he is losing the PR battle worldwide, he is playing John Wayne with six-shooter blazing. His actions shortly following 10/7 may have been appropriate, his actions in the following weeks have eroded the support he had in the early days. Even Biden is pushing back on the inhumane bombing of innocent Palestinians. That support continues to erode. While it may be difficult to sort out the innocent Palestinians, it is possible. There is no hurry and what he is doing is with disregard for the hostages being held and the innocent children. Clearly, the older Israelis want total destruction of Hamas, but how realistic is that. What he is doing is inflaming newer generations of Palestinians who will seek revenge in the future. Bibi is a bright guy, but he has turned into DJT and that is very dangerous. I oppose any American boots on the ground unless it is a carefully executed special operations effort to free hostages. Releasing a great number of hostages by a special operations unit is difficult to imagine. The logistics would be too great. NO TROOPS SHOULD BE DEPLOYED TO ASSIST WITH THE CONTINUED WAR CRIMES BEING COMMITTED.
I appreciate all the comments by esteemed lawyers and military geniuses, but this is a matter of public opinion. The alleged expert more or less say, "here are the laws and rules, but no one gives a shit. We do what we want to do including the United States." As my old boss used to say, "don't make policy [laws] you can't or don't enforce." That is what we have here, Bibi is turning the world against the Israelis because of his and others persecution complex. He will not win the public relations battle. He is going to be pounded and forced to resign. It is no wonder Jews have never been accepted into any culture until they started buying American politicians. He seems to be softening, but as long as he targets hospitals and medical technicians, he can't win. Preach the law, but public opinion will prevail. I support Israel. I do not support their apartheid government. Come on, cut off electricity, water, food, limit travel, limit medical treatment? What more? Collective punishment is real. If I run a prison and a couple of inmates cause a problem, is it just to punish the entire dorm? The majority did nothing wrong. Lawyers can talk out their ass all the want, but wrong is wrong. Go talk to the jury. The are not listening to what you say.
Sure US intel would say that. I have no idea what they knew or told the admin.
But look.
NYT says US intel had reduced its effort in Gaza.
Logical question for US political leaders to ask its intel community is therefore: "So you knew more than the Israelis, with less effort, and only now are you making making noise about what you knew before it happened ?"
There are times one must simply tip their cap to one side or another. Too early to tell if that applies to 7October. The NYT and insight into US intel? Now, that makes me chuckle. Was it David Sanger? That be even funnier.
Yes! Here’s what I don’t get: Hamas must have known that if they killed and terrorized Israeli civilians, Israel would return the terror on Hamas and Gaza twenty-fold. Did they think it would be worth it? I suppose so, but it seems idiotic to me.
When your weapon of choice is suicide bombers I think we have to assume that Hamas was completely willing to sacrifice civilians to prove its desperation. The more civilians Israel kills the more sympathy the terrorist receive. It is idiotic.
That was specifically their plan.kill and kidnap as many Israelis as they could and get Israel to kill as many Gazans as THEY can. Hamas cares for its own population only a slightly more than the care for Israelis. And behind it all is the totally evil puppeteer, Iran -- a country with almost no regard for the lives of Jews or Arabs.
You do have a point. And Stalin in the Ukraine followed the US playbook re indigenous people. There seems to be a moment in some people's lives when they think they have made a made a deal with the devil where they can take on the role of God. The devil eventually makes a fool of them, but in the meantime innocents suffer.
My mom grew up with her on a farm on Anderson Island, next to a reservation and they were only other kids on the island, so she soaked up some of the culture by osmossis until she was 6 and went to School on the mainland,and there was a gentle love of all life in her that I've never seen in the rest of my culture. Some say it's not possible to pay back for crimes, but only to pay forward. So when I was given a small inheritance, I parlayed it into a scholarship for indigenous students. I chose not to have children, but studied early childhood education. It's hard to know what else to do.
Hamas' attack on October 7 cannot be condemned in strong enough terms. But Netanyahu bears the lion's share of the blame for it and all of the blame for what has come after. He left the Gaza border effectively unprotected in order to move forces to the West Bank to support the settler's push to drive all Palestinians out, actions that continue while the world is focused on Gaza. Bibi expected Hamas to strike, but not on the scale they did. Oh, as pointed out by multiple reports, his intelligence agencies and military leadership expected it, but he refused to listen. And now the response has become disproportionate. Just like Bush post-9/11, to save face he is in the process of indiscriminately wiping out the Palestinians in Gaza. How many children have to die before the US and the Europeans back away?
There is another possibility and I'm not saying this is the case or not: The walls were closing in on Netanyahu, he figured as a wartime leader he would have a respite from punishment and so he was complicit in the Hamas attacks. It's just the kind of thing Trump would do and I wouldn't put it past BiBi.
I agree but it will be his downfall. If he doesn't step down, soon he will be removed. Israelis will not wait much longer. Like Bush, his hubris and criminal dereliction of duty should be severely punished. Bush is a war criminal too. That may be Bibi's problem as well.
Right. If this is the case he either miscalculated or he was in such dire straights he had to try something.
Nitpicking but I do that too: it's "straits"!
Any excuse will do to post this song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ffIJ7ZO4U
0:01 / 4:26
Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing (Official Music Video)
Whoaaaaaa yeah baby! If you can either play this tremendously well engineered
classic rock song at least fairly loud, or listen through the best headphones you have, look out!
Loud!! Thanks!
And he is going overboard with the bombing in Gaza, killing civilians just to divert attention from his bungling. He knows his days are numbered and then it's a guilty verdict for him. Like P01135890, he knows he can't beat the rap unless he's in office. Reprehensible!
I have to dissent from one component of this: there's no evidence the civilians in Gaza are "targeted," it's horrific enough as it is, i.e., that Hamas's terrorist ethos has always been forthrightly fanatical enough, such that it explicitly encompasses using their own civilian population as human shields, siting massive terrorist weapons storage complexes directly underneath civilian infrastructure. Including hospitals, schools, you name it, Hamas has a complete, absolute, total disregard for the value of human life.
When the terrorist infrastructure IS targeted, any of the civilians who haven't left - after warnings from Israel going back over a decade, mind you - are in the war zone.
Again, horrible enough without imputing extra-malevolent motives to the responders from Israel, including the admittedly vile and odious Netanyahu, on behalf of their own thousands of dead and mutilated victims.
I am not sure why during The Vietnam War I had to read/listen to people say ‘those Vietnamese have no regard for the value of human life,’ as we bombed them back to the pre-touch tone days, and now on occasion I read the same re Hamas, as our allies (with our assist), kill 1000s upon 1000s of innocent civilians.
Dayanu!
The only valid comparisons are that of identical twins.
Anything other than twins inevitably ends up as cherry picking a single attribute here and there while ignoring all the differences aka a square peg in a round hole.
SEA is not SWA. Geography determines everything including history and every element of culture. The two could not be more different no matter how many angles one comes at them.
Hamas proved themselves to be barbarians time and time again. By doing so they forfeited their humanness hence their lives. That includes those in safe havens in different lands. There are valid hunts of the 2-legged. This is one.
Well-said.
Gonna double down on the foolishness of Bibi and his government sitting on the vids of the barbaric acts while falsely thinking showing the compilation to a select few in the global mainstream media would somehow counter the 1000s of Hamas vids showing the destruction and death inside Gaza. At a minimum needed to be shown to a full-house at the UN, then released to the global public by his government.
Is plain many here haven't seen any Hamas snuff vids they posted on Telegram. Nor recall what Hamas did to anyone they suspected of collaborating w/Israel or what they did to members of the PLA after they were voted into power by the majority of Gazans. Have zero, nada empathy for those who still support Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside and outside of Gaza.
My heart breaks for those innocent civs who didn't since day one and those who don't now along with those not mentioned, the 4-legged, cats, dogs, and donkeys. Don't expect the innocent civs to rise up. Nothing is stopping them from using their cellphones to contact the IDF and tell them what they know. They must understand silence is tacit approval.
Exactly, in a far better world we wouldn't have any of this, of course that's just a tautology and "true by definition," but the point is it is TRUE, and we're stuck with this one. Where the Hamas monopoly of force led for one thing, to taking those opponents in the PA / Palestinian Authority and in some cases rousting them up to the top of tall buildings, beating them, then throwing them off while they were still alive and - that wasn't enough for these fiends - dragging them through the streets attached to their motorbikes, "pour encourager les autres," in the succinct French phrase.
Shadow I also ran across THIS* a few days ago, it derailed me into a very educational, always still relevant side-trip in history - in fact it only started because the "Garfinckle Caper" LKTIV recounted mentions US Route 50 heading W/NW out of DC area, and then across the country, well, to Goggle Maps I go, it ended up leading me to tiny towns on the Ohio River (Marietta, and even smaller Pomeroy) - where my grandfather on father's side was born - then to its role in US Civil War, then to "Morgan's Raid, "(we had an ancestor's Army Major surgeon's saber in house for years, Maj. John Rush Philson, was in West Virginia Unit involved in dealing with Morgan June-July 1963) then to FIRST GOP candidate, 1856, who I had never ever even studied in ANY depth at all, John C. Fremont, wow, what a %$#@!, even for that era, a real enthusiastic "Manifest Destiny" explicitly self-announced massacre fiend of Native Americans, absolutely grotesque stuff, and finally to The Whitman Massacre, background too complex to summarize beyond was related to feuding, even use of poisons involved, a squabbling RC Church contingent versus Evangelicals of the worst ilk out to destroy indigenous culture / religions to "save souls for Jesus & Eternity," ( lead figure wasMarcus Whitman) in what was then not even the USA / Oregon state of course, but disputed lands of Native peoples (Cayuse in particular), versus, Canadians, arriving US settlers, might take a look at this if you're not that familiar, as mentioned: very, very instructive. The branching articles on Wiki add much info.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitman_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Whitman
As an aside glad there are so many passionate posts on the Hamas-Israel subject. War should inflame passions yet must remain in the boundaries of ethos and pathos.
Here on Turtle Island they were no shortage of unofficial and official attempts to annilhate and exterminate the ~indigenous~. All under some sort of pretext including fancy terms that masked the blood thirst. Killers of the Flower do capture one hard truth, a yt man would get in more trouble for kicking his dog than killing an "injun". In the 1920s no less. Am familiar with most of the slaughters, others were so complete entire clans were poofed leaving no one to tell their end story.
That was one reason was shocked any comparison to SEA was made. The Jews are the victims of Hamas's barbarism. Barbarism is a subject all on its own. Hamas and Islamic Jihad "fighters" came with written instructions on what to do to the Jews they encountered. Took years to plan due to the sheer volume of intel they gathered on mil garrisons and each kibbutz. . That is more than enough time for a hooman to say, this is not who I am nor want to be remembered as. Stains their family name for eternity.
Nothing to add to that, SC.
A day after the initial attack by Hamas a friend of mine said the very same thing. I was appalled at the thought.
Lucian is right...it just doesn't add up.
OK, it's a plausible theory, but it's a coherent and meaningful theory if and only if you can clarify what semantic work "complicit" does in that formulation.
By no means would I be brash enough to "rule it out," I likely trust Netanyahu as little as you or a host, as in "tens or hundreds or several millions" of observers do, despise his far right politics, self-serving power grabs, the works - but "complicit" still needs some kind of defined scope, as to what does or doesn't count as giving it meaning, and even better, some credible evidence - that would stand up, or arguably should have a good shot at being verified in a (fair-minded) Israeli court, or some other court process we would recognize as fair and thorough.
My own intuition, and it's only that, is that Bibi Netanyahu was simply too damn smug about what he mistakenly thought were sufficient preparations to deal with an extremely unlikely major Hamas assault crossing the internationally recognized border, in large numbers, including terrorists on the ground with definite targets in mind, and too focused on, too distracted by, other contentious ongoing crises, most of them of his own making.
Agree also. With a touch of arrogance.
I'm so glad you decided to mention that "complicit." the use of the term confused me as well. in my case, I agree with YOU, Richard. I think it was the same dumb complacency that Bush et al demonstrated after 9/11.
It's difficult to say, but a demagogue's strategy is to create this kind of situation to "rally the troops around him"..It has been part of the global history of many of these MEN, who wage war, at the expense of many lives, in order to gain the confidence of his people, a confidence that, as you rightly say, was quickly eroding. My first thought, upon hearing about October 7th was to wonder how a country that I had upto then, consider among the best protected in the world, could allow this to happen? Thank you for your truthful reporting!
Yep
That was the first thought I had when the attack was reported.
I was about to type more or less the same thing.
Agree.
Excellent point, Lucian. I wonder if the Israeli press and public are asking these questions as well. Once again, it's columns like these that make my subscription worthwhile. Thank you.
Such a complex question the deeper you go isn’t it - this catastrophic lapse of attention. Was it hubris that made Netanyahu lose focus on what has - as far as I’ve known it to be - been the prime directive in protecting Israel: vigilance, that it always was is and must be - to be proactive in gathering intelligence, scanning for threats to Israel, intercepting bad actors to stop malign acts?
It’s hard not to think it’s not the result of a very long game. Where Trump and Putin and the Saudis dance with Netanyahu. Are we attributing too much to Putin’s long vision. (I realizing I’m descending into a Knives Out bomb crater here).
Perhaps the only thing unaccounted for has been Israel’s undeterred walk toward a vengeance that may at the end of the day be judged to have made sense. Or, conversely turn into the Armageddon our religious right is panting for.
He’s a self absorbed narcissist.
Not the best qualification for a position of power and trust.
He doesn’t believe he will ever have to account for any of this. Drop enough bombs, and you’ll eventually get most of the Hamas leaders. Or you can say you did. It’s not as I’d they’ll wave and contradict you from Austria. Bibi makes me want to spit up.
Fascist prick.
I wish you were a journalist asking these questions you brought up, Lucian. I have had the same floating in and around my head too.
Here’s what we do know: Hamas are murderers and rapists. They have committed unbelievable crimes against humanity. Netanyahu and his blubbering army of misfits were too busy to care about the information Israel’s intelligence was picking up. The ultra orthodox Jews pushed and pushed for territory in the West Bank, which was occupied by Palestinians. It is not all of the Israelis who wanted more and more, just the very selfish. Jews, including myself, are feeling less confident even in the US. It is men who start a fight. MEN!
LKTIV IS a journalist, one of the best IMO. Unlike the traditional ones you're thinking of, though, he isn't on anyone's payroll, leaving him free to explore exactly these kinds of questions without redaction. He may not reach a wide audience, but that doesn't make his work any less important. I like to think enough thoughtful people are listening that his points of view influence a broader audience. And those of us who feel his work deserves broader dissemination can help by sending gift subscriptions to everyone we know!
True, and I endorse the righteous moral outrage. Unfortunately we have all, at one time or another, likely found ourselves entangled against our will in some way in the consequences of it, that is, in the entirely senseless ramping up of disputes about either the most trivial matters imaginable, or about who has territorial rights and responsibilities with respect to large swaths of territory.
Thus finding ourselves having no realistic alternative to making choices about how best to cope. Irrespective of our gender at birth or any later eventualities.
Here's the most interesting philosophical (or "anti-philosophical"!) response to that kind of dilemma I have encountered in many decades, extremely accessible, at times sardonically humorous, from the late Lev Shestov:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57369
{{A choice of formats for reading "Anything is Possible."}}
"When I give Shestov's books to anybody, they are usually delighted. There are two authors whom I make propaganda for: one is Herzen, the other is Shestov. They are both totally decent, open-minded, open-hearted human beings." - Isaiah Berlin *****
"Shestov was highly admired and honored by Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov in Russia, Jules de Gaultier, Georges Bataille, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Paul Celan, Gilles Deleuze, and Albert Camus in France, and D. H. Lawrence, Isaiah Berlin and John Middleton Murry in England. Among Jewish thinkers, he influenced Hillel Zeitlin." *******
Lev Isaakovich Shestov (Russian: Лев Исаакович Шестов; 31 January [O.S. 13 February][2] 1866 – 19 November 1938; born Yeguda Leib Shvartsman)[a] was a Russian existentialist and religious philosopher. He is best known for his critiques of both philosophic rationalism and positivism. His work advocated a movement beyond reason and metaphysics, arguing that these are incapable of conclusively establishing truth about ultimate problems, including the nature of God or existence.[3] Contemporary scholars have associated his work with the label "anti-philosophy."[4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Shestov
Isaiah Berlin[17]
Netanyahu, the Saudi princeling and UAE along with trumps racism caused America to betray Iran and the agreement Obama initiated.
Today’s problems are directly caused by Trump and Netanyahu. Saudi can’t defeat tribesman but they help Russia while gouging America.
Netanyahu never wanted peace he wanted total victory.
The Arabs cannot stand against Iran so they need America to wage war on Iran.
2 billion to Jared is part of it.
It is worse, decent people like Representative Booker are being grifted with the Abraham accords. With in days of signing with the UAE Israel continued its destruction of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Broke the Abraham accords the next day. Nothing trump has ever done has been good so why is the betrayal of American interest by Trump on behalf of Saudi and Netanyahu never discussed.
Fact Israel left the Gaza Strip open because they were conducting military operations in the West Bank against other Palestinian.
30% of Israel like 30% of America are racist hate filled fascists.
Netanyahu is a criminal like Trump.
I support Israel right to live in peace but Israel must accept peace and stop trying for some final victory.
Do you think Netanyahu should accept Hamas tunnels under Israel too?
This is on Netanyahu.
He wanted victory not peace.
He was to busy with illegal settlements to guard his people.
From what I hear, it's stressful to live in Israel too. He probably got fed up with Hamas two-faced dealings and reached a tipping point when they attacked. I sympathize with the Palestinians the same as I would a bullied child in kindergarten, but if bully seemed incorriagable I would remove him from the classroom. I can see why Netanyahu might be enraged, and especially now since the discovery of the spider web of secret tunnels Hamas created under Israel with cement that was donated by other nations to build housing in Gaza.
Good luck trying to pin people down on some of these tough issues, well, "inconveniently tough to explain away" might be more like it.
The 1200 deaths in one day from the Hamas terror attack would be, if the two populations of the United States and Israel are compared, as if the USA was hit by a terrorist attack that took around 48,000 lives - in ONE DAY.
Obviously enough, we would never, ever hear the end of it, and Israel is about the size of the state of New Jersey. When the Palestine Mandate's territory was divided, the Israelis got about 17%, the rest went to the Palestinians - but somehow 83% just wasn't enough, despite the fact Jews had a continuous, unbroken presence in what is now the territory of Israel, going back several thousand years before the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the late 1st Century A.D. Despite the fact Zionists organized and pooled funds and donations to purchase land from the time in the 1880s when it was owned by landlords in the Ottoman Empire, which finally formally collapsed in 1922, when Kemal Ataturk took power in Turkey, and began an ambitious program of secularization, including switching from the Arabic script then used for Turkish, to English, and far more rights for women, etc. It's just a smear and a lie that Zionist settlers "stole the land."
But that's never stopped Islamist and Palestinian propagandists from shrieking it, inciting mobs and pogroms with it, and it continues today, this minute.
Israel who? That's your caricature of who or what group of people, exactly, and deploying what non-tendentious definition of "ethnic cleansing"?
If Zionism advocates that the State of Israel, within borders recognized internationally - not necessarily those borders in flux, pending a negotiated settlement with whatever legitimate representative group is elected by the Palestinians - is an ideology that holds that State to be the national homeland of the Jewish people, back up your objections now, or forever admit, in effect, you just picked up a standard smear of the State of Israel in toto, as opposed to a fringe group with temporarily disproportionate influence (complete with implicit comparisons to the policies of Hitler, really?), comparable to the far right Trump cult here in the USA, in fact, a caricature, a smear, that fails to fairly and accurately even begin the capture the complex dynamics of about 150 recent and several thousand total years of history, history encompassing both the Middle East and Israel, and the Jewish diaspora throughout Europe and Russia, especially.
Best I can do on not even the beginning of my first cup of coffee, gotta wake up with something like this! And as a "retired ironworker" bro, dig that heavy metal, you can even learn or be reminded of a little pop music history too, rock and roll will never die! Yowza!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPE9a_epmWw
0:00 / 4:24
Steppenwolf - Magic Carpet Ride (Version 1969)
8,612,219 views Aug 10, 2012
Written - John Kay, Rushton Moreve
Steppenwolf was a highly-influential American hard rock band, based in Los Angeles, CA from 1968-1976. They have sold well over 25 million record sales worldwide, releasing eight gold albums and twelve Billboard Hot 100 singles of which six were Top 40 hits, including three Top 10
See also, as we all prepare for the onslaught of mass media and well-prepared caricatures from the usual suspects, alive and dead, Posner, Bugliosi, and Warren Commission diehard defenders - with the approach in less than three weeks of the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination - this:
https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/former-people-by-james-norwood
Thanks James and have a great day!
I agree with you, James and Richard. Israel does appear to be in the process of ethnic cleansing. I don't think its a smear of the Palestinians, Richard. I think James is taking Israel to task here.
You mean you agree with James, not me, here's why:
I think the entire formulation he stated here is incoherent on multiple levels, and since it's a fringe element WITHIN the State of Israel advocating what would amount to "ethnic cleansing," if successfully implemented without legal responses from the government, but have themselves had their ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS BULLDOZED BY THE STATE OF ISRAEL, for example, and since Israel has previously withdrawn from territories they occupied as defensive measures against relentless terrorist attacks by Palestinians (GAZA), there's no reason whatsoever to think that won't happen in a possible future, a future within which the Palestinians finally accept the Israelis have a right to a homeland, as is recognized as such by the United Nations - that fundamental right being a form of universal human rights which cannot be taken away by anyone, any state, any gang of terrorists, any contract, any declaration, any expulsions by any conglomeration of states, by the Arab League, by some religion or all religions at once, whether Muslims or anyone else, thus (for these and more reasons I won't bother to enunciate now, as these are more than sufficient) the entire claim amounts au fond as a useless smear, not any kind of reasonable, fair, accurate, context-sensitive description of the real world - is that clear enough? See also:
https://besacenter.org/palestinian-rejectionism/
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,449, February 16, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The consistent and enduring Palestinian rejection of any and all peace initiatives with Israel, most recently the “Deal of the Century,” calls into question the commitment of the Palestinian leadership not only to peace but to the very welfare and safety of the Palestinian people.
Taking into account all the peace initiatives proposed to end the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs over the last 83 years, we must consider the possibility that the Palestinians—or at least their leaders—do not want to establish their own state.
Their sight is currently set on the big prize—the entire state of Israel—and they are playing for time. In the meantime, they plan to continue to subsist on monies donated by the Arabs and the Europeans. Many of the Arab states have grown disenchanted with this enterprise, and their assistance, particularly from the Saudis, has been discontinued in recent years. *****
There follows a list of example after example of the Palestinians rejecting a possible "two state solution," widely satirized for many years as "Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
Excellent analysis. I suspect your questions would get very terse "no comment" responses or very embarrassed silence. I think only one thing is for sure - this isn't going to end well for anyone.
So many issues in one packet. Looking forward to the diverse takes by the readership.
-Going to avoid the internal politics due to my well-known bias against Bibi. full disclosure am an ardent supporter of J-Street as was my beloved late wife. The other reason is the government of Israel is quite different than the US as is the makeup of the population. Should be a lesson to those Americans who want more than 2 legacy political parties. Emphasis, should, yet won't.
-Israel lost the PR war where it matters most, on the global street even though they are the most technological advanced nation on the Blue Marble.
That is on Bibi and his government for forgetting how news is decimated in 2023. It is no longer major print publications or the vast array of local, national, and international teevee channels and stations, it's the internet and social media. All the aforementioned operate as if they were in the midst of the 20th-C and most of all as if they were still the only gatekeepers of what people should read, hear, and see.
Did Israel show the infamous 48min. vid of the barbaric acts in the UN? No, they showed it to a select number of the mainstream media. Juxtapose the words of a few journos with the Hamas approach of flooding the zone with cellphone vids from airstrikes w/dead bodies.
There was 1 attack on Israel on 7 October, since then >1000 airstrikes and 100s of artillery rounds landing inside Gaza. That is how Hamas is framing it. That is what they world sees while Israel sits on the 48 min. video. Ike didn't sit on the films of the Nazi death camps. Faces and bodies were not blurred or pixeled out. He instinctively knew if the world didn't see it, they wouldn't believe it. Ike didn't rely on famous war correspondents to tell of the horrors or some GI Joe to have a microphone in his face with the camera rolling to say, "it's so horrible I can't and won't tell you what I saw." (That's a dig at every journo-reporter covering 7 Oct. and the vid some saw.)
Seems it is Bibi and his government who needs a reminder of what ~never again~ means and the same to the lazy media personalities and the companies who employ them. War cannot be captured by words. War is sights, sounds, and smells.
The intentional barbarism and the crimes against humanity of 7October can't be allowed to stand. If we lived in a civilized world the people of goodwill inside Gaza would not only turn on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but they would also expel/exile every member in along with every supporter after seeing the 48 min. vid. They never were given that opportunity. All they see it what Hamas shows them or they witness with their own eyes. So, when Israel and the IDF says getdafuq out of northern Gaza, they paused followed by correctly asking what did we do? By the time the hospital strike occurred the global street had Israel's word v. 100s of hours of 1000s of vids from inside Gaza. The global street includes the West where the overwhelming majority of those under 25 get their news from social media. And since the "imminent incursion of 360,000" (tanx mainstream media) IDF storm troopers all they see is the destruction and carnage inside Gaza made worse by the mainstream media's attempt to be fair and balanced by talking about aid trucks and civilian casualties. It's a fuq'n war, people. It ain't a US football game with pom-pom waving cheerleaders and pre- and post-game tailgating parties.
-To this day have no idea how Hamas beat all the layers security at the Border and most of all the slow response time by Israel's security forces. That too is all on Bibi's government. Have reconsidered how all the arms and munitions flowed into Gaza, though. Still feel a great amount came from the tunnels in the Sinai however would like to know what kind of inspections were performed on each and every aid truck that came from Egypt.
-Do suspect IDF has a good feel for tunnel pathways inside Gaza. Some gleaned from captured Hamas barbarians over the years and from overhead views of where concrete trucks operated yet no building went up. And absolutely agree there are tunnels under and leading in and out of every Gaza hospital. Hamas and Islamic Jihad ain't stoopid. No way they would bring their wounded fighters in through the front or back door, then leave the same way. W/o a doubt the orgs that run those hospitals know it as well. Simply made a judgment call on their duty to tend to the injured no matter who or out of fear. And if people took note, the hospitals claimed they were thisclose to running out of fuel yet vids coming out of Gaza 1-2 weeks later show them lit up like Xmas trees. Israel is correct in holding back fuel and the same with limiting aid. It's a war. There is no international law against a siege aka encirclement of an enemy territory.
There is against taking hostages and against disallowing the International Red Cross from seeing hostages and POWs. There are laws against crimes against humanity and the intentional targeting of civs. It is Hamas and Islamic Jihad who brought war back with them from southern Israel and now like the cowards they are hide in holes and the ground knowing they are putting their own in harm's way. It is Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are not permitting dual citizens egress from Gaza.
-Can't comment on whether the IDF knows where arms and ord is stored in Gaza yet Israel's intel services missed the attack. Don't find them to be necessarily related w/o more info on each one. One would think certain tunnels or sections would be dedicated to storage of anything explosive including fuel. Suspect those are the deepest inside the network and serviced by a rail system. Tunnels w/o rails would seem to act more as people movers that marry up to the heavier weapons at a junction before reaching the surface.
-IDF has a dedicated tunnel unit as one would expect. They fall under their Core of Engineers (wish folk wld check up their heavy equipment) and are trained in advanced robotics along with close quarter combat. Have to say this again, the IDF is not anything like the US mil. For good reason. IDF isn't structured to fight across the globe. US has to be. IDF doesn't need to keep trying to learn a new enemy in a new location. That allows it to incorporate counter-measures from the get-go, not after the fact. (ret) US GOs pretend they know Israel's enemies better than they do and insist US mil doctrine would do just fine in Gaza. To a person they insisted IDF would simultaneously attack on 3 fronts and all said all signs say an invasion is imminent. Arrogant assholes. All. They too are 20th-C dinosaurs.
-IDF command can't be concerned with the impact of Hamas's claim of number of civs killed because they have no control over what number Hamas claims. They can only focus on the efficacy of the approval process for strikes and feedback from those on the ground regarding where civs are and are not. They have forces in harm's way. That has to be their number one concern. May suck to read that but that's war. War sucks for all.
-Finally. Now that mainstream media blew the "imminent incursion of 360000 troops they jumped to the conclusion of the war and bring on equally foolish people to discuss what would come next. That ain't their place. That is what Israel, and the Palestinian people will have to figure out and agree upon. Israel isn't going to sue for peace. They know 7October can't stand. They're obligated to destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad or else every death in Israel will have been for naught. And those deaths were not good ones. There more horrific than The Shoah. And they best show the world that.
I knew you had this shit down, but jeez...
Makes me yearn for the Hatfields and McCoys blood feud.
None longer and stronger than Arabs and Jews with the balance of power and claim to having the high road changing hands over and over throughout history. Long after we are both stardust there will be another event that kicks off another series of cascading ones between the two unless and until wimmin and 2spirit people take power away from the male idiots.
Still hate war as much as I ever did. No more or no less.
Is that true about Arabs and Jews at each other's throats for all time? My sense is that it got bad after the Ottoman Empire collapsed for good and British and French started meddling big-time as Mandatory powers. Especially the British, with the Balfour Declaration. Then the Holocaust raised the stakes a few thousandfold. But before WWI the worst anti-Jewish pogroms were in eastern Europe and Russia. In the Middle East the various ruling Muslim powers generally considered Jews and Christians "people of the Book" -- as long as they paid the required taxes, of course.
Since recorded Bible time, yes. And they're cousins hence the Hatfield and McCoy reference.
Were there times of peaceful co-existence? Yes, when both were under the same thumb.
Lots of truth to what you cited made the friction go kinetic in relatively modern times. Most of all it's the dirt and who owns it. The answer is no person or no nation can own the land. The land came first and no person or nation can take it with them.
In order and w/respect:
1. Yes, killing begets killing until one or both sides tire of it.
2. Trump killed JCPOA because it was O's and Kerry's. Please don't overestimate Trump's intellect or geopolitical pea brain.
3. The West Bank is separate and apart from Gaza both in location and in make up. Gaza did take advantage of Bibi's government obsession with the more biblical West Bank which they refer to by their biblical names.
4. Matrydumb is a thing. Many juice before seeking their 72Virgins. This is a distinction w/a difference between a "terrorist suicide bomber of any type of delivery" with a barbarian. Barbarians are cowards. That project their cowardly fear unto their victims.
5. Am ~indigenous~ aka a male merciless savage. Am also a steward of land. Know well if I move, I can't take the land with me. Nobody can. Israel ain't taking the land. They are expelling Arabs off it and not allowing them to take what is theirs with them. They bulldozer all of it. Including fig trees and citrus trees. Jews living in a kibbutz despise Bibi for being a bad steward of the land. They it one reason they tend to go out of their way to make peace with Gazans. And it was Gazans who they employed that betrayed them by bringing home money and intel.
Am grateful
So the Palestinians don’t want to spend 8 generations on a reservation, glad you see their point.
Is it cowardly to prefer wounded knee to pine ridge.
Be careful when you assume you can talk about ~people~ and events you have little to no knowledge. Am silent to you now.
Golda Meir, Prime Minister famously said of the Yom Kippur war in 1973: “We can forgive them for killing our children, we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
word
They weren’t forced to kill others children .
They made the Palestinians pay for Europes crimes.
Netanyahu's 'let it happen on purpose war.' Any head of govt who'd kill thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians with bunker busters, wouldn't think twice about provoking it with intentional and purposeful disregard of critical info.
He has to go, the Israeli hard right conspiratorial insiders all have to go, and it will be one of their own who takes them out, I reckon.
He’ll win and be convicted of crimes against humanity. Couldn’t happen to a more worthy narcissist. He alone can fix it.
Bibi is blinded by past persecution of those of his faith. While he should recognize that he is losing the PR battle worldwide, he is playing John Wayne with six-shooter blazing. His actions shortly following 10/7 may have been appropriate, his actions in the following weeks have eroded the support he had in the early days. Even Biden is pushing back on the inhumane bombing of innocent Palestinians. That support continues to erode. While it may be difficult to sort out the innocent Palestinians, it is possible. There is no hurry and what he is doing is with disregard for the hostages being held and the innocent children. Clearly, the older Israelis want total destruction of Hamas, but how realistic is that. What he is doing is inflaming newer generations of Palestinians who will seek revenge in the future. Bibi is a bright guy, but he has turned into DJT and that is very dangerous. I oppose any American boots on the ground unless it is a carefully executed special operations effort to free hostages. Releasing a great number of hostages by a special operations unit is difficult to imagine. The logistics would be too great. NO TROOPS SHOULD BE DEPLOYED TO ASSIST WITH THE CONTINUED WAR CRIMES BEING COMMITTED.
I appreciate all the comments by esteemed lawyers and military geniuses, but this is a matter of public opinion. The alleged expert more or less say, "here are the laws and rules, but no one gives a shit. We do what we want to do including the United States." As my old boss used to say, "don't make policy [laws] you can't or don't enforce." That is what we have here, Bibi is turning the world against the Israelis because of his and others persecution complex. He will not win the public relations battle. He is going to be pounded and forced to resign. It is no wonder Jews have never been accepted into any culture until they started buying American politicians. He seems to be softening, but as long as he targets hospitals and medical technicians, he can't win. Preach the law, but public opinion will prevail. I support Israel. I do not support their apartheid government. Come on, cut off electricity, water, food, limit travel, limit medical treatment? What more? Collective punishment is real. If I run a prison and a couple of inmates cause a problem, is it just to punish the entire dorm? The majority did nothing wrong. Lawyers can talk out their ass all the want, but wrong is wrong. Go talk to the jury. The are not listening to what you say.
Speaking of intelligence failures, why didnt the US warn Israel ?
They did.
Sure US intel would say that. I have no idea what they knew or told the admin.
But look.
NYT says US intel had reduced its effort in Gaza.
Logical question for US political leaders to ask its intel community is therefore: "So you knew more than the Israelis, with less effort, and only now are you making making noise about what you knew before it happened ?"
There are times one must simply tip their cap to one side or another. Too early to tell if that applies to 7October. The NYT and insight into US intel? Now, that makes me chuckle. Was it David Sanger? That be even funnier.
Israel's long-standing policy is that it will not be out-terrorized.
Yes! Here’s what I don’t get: Hamas must have known that if they killed and terrorized Israeli civilians, Israel would return the terror on Hamas and Gaza twenty-fold. Did they think it would be worth it? I suppose so, but it seems idiotic to me.
When your weapon of choice is suicide bombers I think we have to assume that Hamas was completely willing to sacrifice civilians to prove its desperation. The more civilians Israel kills the more sympathy the terrorist receive. It is idiotic.
That was specifically their plan.kill and kidnap as many Israelis as they could and get Israel to kill as many Gazans as THEY can. Hamas cares for its own population only a slightly more than the care for Israelis. And behind it all is the totally evil puppeteer, Iran -- a country with almost no regard for the lives of Jews or Arabs.
Why is Iran the evil puppeteer when trump broke the agreement with them.
That makes America the bad guy. Please stop lying.
Raising children to believe they will go to heaven if they kill Jews is idiotic.
You forget how many Israelis believe that too from their side.
What would you tell your children after generations of living in a refugee camp.
Well you are ok with Indian reservation for generations arnt you.
You do have a point. And Stalin in the Ukraine followed the US playbook re indigenous people. There seems to be a moment in some people's lives when they think they have made a made a deal with the devil where they can take on the role of God. The devil eventually makes a fool of them, but in the meantime innocents suffer.
My mom grew up with her on a farm on Anderson Island, next to a reservation and they were only other kids on the island, so she soaked up some of the culture by osmossis until she was 6 and went to School on the mainland,and there was a gentle love of all life in her that I've never seen in the rest of my culture. Some say it's not possible to pay back for crimes, but only to pay forward. So when I was given a small inheritance, I parlayed it into a scholarship for indigenous students. I chose not to have children, but studied early childhood education. It's hard to know what else to do.
Hamas' attack on October 7 cannot be condemned in strong enough terms. But Netanyahu bears the lion's share of the blame for it and all of the blame for what has come after. He left the Gaza border effectively unprotected in order to move forces to the West Bank to support the settler's push to drive all Palestinians out, actions that continue while the world is focused on Gaza. Bibi expected Hamas to strike, but not on the scale they did. Oh, as pointed out by multiple reports, his intelligence agencies and military leadership expected it, but he refused to listen. And now the response has become disproportionate. Just like Bush post-9/11, to save face he is in the process of indiscriminately wiping out the Palestinians in Gaza. How many children have to die before the US and the Europeans back away?