Posts Tagged ‘Hamas’
The Israeli Psychosis. Its Biggest Threat is Itself.
Both Israelis and Palestinians are suffering extraordinary pain and trauma right now, yet one people’s suffering does not erase the suffering of another. Express horror at the Hamas atrocity and one is accused of defending Israel, a state that is undoubtedly engaged in war crimes. Or express horror at the Israeli massacre of more than 400 children every day in Gaza and one is accused of defending Hamas, a terrorist death cult.
Both Israeli and Palestinian civilians are equal and deserve justice. Similarly, both the Israeli state and Hamas are engaged in mass murder and both deserve the strongest condemnation. Both must be stopped.
But there can be no doubt that the Israeli response is disproportionate. It seems crass to keep score but it cannot be avoided. 1400 Israeli deaths fom the Hamas atrocity. 8,000 Palestinian deaths from the Israeli response. Prior to these events, since 2008, 251 Israeli deaths from the conflict, 5,590 Palestinian deaths. These disproportionate outcomes cannot be ignored.
But ignoring or denying them is a common response from people defending Israel’s position, probably because it is indefensible. But it goes further than that because it’s not just this time, it was the same in 2014 and 2009 and every time the Israeli state goes on a murderous rampage. It extends into every aspect of Israeli politics and is seriously delusional. For instance, a complete failure to accept that the activities of the ‘settlers’ in the West Bank are terrorism, exactly the same as Hamas.
I do wonder whether this is now a condition, a type of psychosis, that needs to be codified. I know there are many Israelis and Jewish people that do not suffer from it but there’s a hard core that is seriously affected and they are driven by the behaviour of Netanyahu and other zealots in the Knesset.
This continuing behaviour is incompatible with Israel continuing to be recognised as a functioning state. It has failed.
Israel was created by the Western powers after World War II as a homeland for the Jewish people after the Holocaust, the greatest ever crime against humanity. But the land for the new state was cleared in 1948 by the violent expulsion of at least 700,000 Palestinians who already lived there. There is no easy way to say this but that the British and Americans who were principally responsible, placed less value on the lives of Arabs than Jews. It is this racist crime that continues to echo strongly after 75 years and is why the UK and the USA keep compounding it by unconditional support for Israel. It’s like a murderer who thought they got away with the crime but new witnesses keep on turning up who also have to be murdered.
Israel’s ‘right to exist’ is the mantra that has dominated its conduct since 1948 and understandably because many Arab states are sworn to destroy it. But its greatest threat is itself and it is precious close to forfeiting its right to exist because it cannot comply with international law and reasonable standards of civilised behaviour, even in war.
Everything depends on how long Israel can sustain the support of the USA and even that must have its limits. I can see it withdrawing its supply of weapons and the time for that is now.
There have to be some standards in civilisation. We know that death cults such as Hamas and theocracies such as Iran have no respect for such ideas but if Israel want to continue to be part of the family of nations then it has to rein in its murderous revenge and abuse of power. It must stop the reckless killing of civilians.
The Terrible Error of Unequivocal Support for Israel
The slaughter, rape and capture of Israeli civilians by Hamas is a crime of dreadful proportions. It warrants unreserved condemnation and those responsible should be hunted down like rabid dogs.
Yet the rush by Western politicians to offer unconditional support to Israel is an awful mistake. The monster that is Hamas is the product of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. Though much Israeli blood was spilled over the weekend, it is a few drops compared to the gallons of Palestinian blood that Israel has been responsible for.
Already, Israel is enacting brutal, disproportionate revenge. Half of Gaza’s densely packed population is children and the IDF is raining down missiles, bombs, artillery shells on them, including banned phosporous munitions which cause agonising burns, even to internal organs.
Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron gave the go ahead for this. They and other Western leaders have encouraged it. The spectacle of Downing Street being lit up with the blood-drenched Israeli flag sickens me. These vile, self-serving, craven hypocrites are beneath contempt and they place themsleves in the same category as Netanyahu. As far as I am concerned they are war criminals and they should be taken to the Hague, locked up and put on trial.
This will never happen, although if he lives long enough, Netanyahu might be the exception. A few days from now these same politicians will be urging restraint on Israel but it will be too late. The beast has been unleashed and it will turn Gaza into an abbatoir.
Israel is the aggressor in this conflict. In 1948, the Western powers led, to our eternal shame, by Britain, forcibly expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their own land to create the state of Israel. From that moment on, Palestine has been acting in self-defence.
This forced explusion was an act of genocide, a war crime, yet the culprits stitched-it up into an international agreement to give it a fraudulent legitimacy. Ever since they have tacitly and sometimes explicitly supported Israel in its unlawful oppression of Palestine.
I suppose the hope was that eventually Palestinians and Israelis would live together peacefully and most do. For decades the ‘two-state solution’ seemed to be the conclusion that would bring conflict to an end. It is primarily extremist Israelis who have sabotaged this, the religious extremist Zionists who believe God gave them the land. In recent years, when most reasonable people were expecting the situation to improve, they have made it worse. Under Netanyahu, an apartheid system now exists where Palestinians are the lowest of the low. Through all this the West has sat on its hands. Much blame lies with Republicans in the US Congress but Britain and the EU cannot escape responsibility.
Where this goes now I cannot predict. Too many devious actors are at play but it is going to get much, much worse before, if ever, it gets any better. The mix of Iran, Russia, the Ukraine war and now this could lead to a final conflagration.
Within my world, those who I was entitled to rely on for prudent statesmanship, British politicians, have disgraced themselves yet again. There are no great leaders anymore. There are no leaders of any worth. They are small, contemptible rats in the failing experiment of humanity.
Gavin Williamson Shouldn’t Resign, He Must be SACKED. #AndImATory
The disgusting abuse of Jeremy Corbyn by the immature young man who has been give the grave responsibility of running Britain’s defence is beyond redemption.
I am a Tory. I’m no longer a member of the Conservative Party and after 40 years of voting for it I shall never do so again until it turns away from its authoritarian and illiberal path. But I am a true Tory instead of the fake that inhabits 10, Downing Street and her sycophants and hangers on.
Similar smears about Corbyn’s efforts in talking to the IRA and Hamas by other Conservative politicians are also beneath contempt. If our senior politicians aren’t doing all they can to reach out to such organisations in peaceful dialogue then they are irresponsible. However, that the Defence Secretary demeans himself and his office with such puerile conduct requires firm action. It is horrifying that this idiot has our armed forces under his control. It would be like giving his allies in defaming Corbyn: Murdoch, Dacre and the Barclay Brothers, access to our weaponry.
Williamson is totally unsuitable for his role and he was well before these events. He should be a junior assistant at some obscure party branch where he can make his childish mistakes and clumsy errors without causing real harm. The combination of youthful arrogance, incompetence, poor judgement and a flappy mouth should now destroy his political career for good. Perhaps his chums in the Fleet Street Mafia can find something for him to do publishing more poison and abuse?
Before that he should be dragged through the courts and bankrupted. There is no defence of fair comment or honest opinion for his behaviour, not even against the leader of a political party. Indeed, Williamson’s behaviour is an argument for bringing such serious slander back into the criminal courts.
“Nazi stormtroopers had identified our house as the home of a Jewish family…”. Now Israel Does The Same In Gaza.
Originally published in the Guardian.
“One night, when I was 13, I was woken by the sound of a door being broken down. Boots stumbled up the stairs, there was loud shouting, and a terrifying series of crashes. Nazi stormtroopers had identified our house as the home of a Jewish family, and this was the night of 9 November 1938, when the Kristallnacht pogrom raged across Germany. Our entire home was destroyed before our eyes, with axes and sledgehammers.
I have a vivid recollection of my father, after the monsters had gone, sitting on the one chair that remained and weeping. I had never seen him weep before. I now realise that, but for the presence of myself and my younger sister, my parents might not have survived the raid. It was a brutal demonstration of our situation. My sister and I left Germany on the last Kindertransport from Düsseldorf in May 1939. We have never had a full account of our parents’ fate.
Even now, I sometimes start up in bed, reliving that night. But in recent weeks, it is more often images of devastation in Gaza – of homes and families destroyed in Israeli targetings of such “military objectives” as the homes of officials in the democratically elected Hamas government – that have recalled the terror of the Kristallnacht. For I can hardly believe that a Jewish government is doing these things. How can Jewish people, aware of their own history, undertake a campaign of collective punishment that kills a higher multiple of the casualties cited as justification, than did the Nazi reprisals for resistance in occupied Europe?
Surely we have reached the point where every government not composed of utter humbugs must join in insisting that an Israeli renunciation of ambitions for expansion beyond the 1947 boundaries is a prerequisite for progress towards reconciliation and peace within a two-state solution. The very doubtful prospect of a unified, multinational, secular state in Palestine appears to be the only alternative.”
Karola Regent
Newport-on-Tay, Fife
NO! Mr Cameron, The Root Cause Of the Massacre In Gaza Is Not Hamas Rockets, It Is The Illegal Occupation!
If I lived in Gaza under the oppression of the outlaw Israeli state, I would regard it as my moral obligation to fight back against the occupying power with any and all weapons that I could find.
Hamas may be a vile, brutal organisation but it is the product of Israel’s own conduct. The rockets are fully justified as self defence and Israel has only itself to blame.
Peter Reynolds 