Israel does have the right of self-defence, but only in precisely the same way other countries do. In fact, the only unique factor about Israel here is that it is the only country to have been found by the International Court of Justice specifically to have abused and exceeded the concept of right of self-defence, in its treatment of the Palestinians.
In 2004 the International Court of Justice, in an advisory Opinion to the UN General Assembly, ruled illegal Israel’s construction of its great Wall, which is a fundamental part of the Israeli Apartheid system. The court considered Israel’s argument of self-defence and ruled that this did not justify the numerous breaches of international law represented by the Wall:
While Israel has the right, and indeed the duty to respond to the numerous and
deadly acts of violence directed against its civilian population, in order to protect the life of its
citizens, the measures taken are bound to remain in conformity with applicable international law.
Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the
wrongfulness of the construction of the wall. The Court accordingly finds that the construction of
the wall, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law.
It flows from this that Israel cannot use “self-defence” as a trump card to tear up international law in the current situation in Palestine. The use of collective punishment against a civilian population—including via starvation, thirst and deprivation of medicine, the carpet bombing, the use of white phosphorus, the attacks on medical facilities, the attacks on medical staff, the execution of prisoners, the clearly genocidal attempt—none of these war crimes is excusable as “self-defence”.
The military cooperation of the US, UK and Australian governments—in an attack which they know is engaged in committing egregious war crimes—also opens those responsible to war crimes charges for their active complicity and indeed conspiracy.
Furthermore, there is in fact a positive legal duty on states to be acting against Israel in view of Israel’s refusal to dismantle the Wall and the Apartheid system in the occupied territories—including the widespread criminal settling and stealing of land which that system embodies. This is the International Court of Justice judgment on the obligations of other states:
Given the character and the importance of the rights and obligations involved, the Court is of the view that all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end. In addition, all the States parties to the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 are under an obligation, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.
Read that paragraph very carefully. Israel has not undertaken any of the actions specified by the ICJ and has indeed built more settlements and imposed more restrictions. It is absolutely plain that the UK, US and European Union are not only not fulfilling their duty in international law as set out by the International Court of Justice,—
The US, UK and EU are acting directly opposite to their obligation in international law under the ICJ ruling.
The BDS movement is acting precisely in line with the obligations set out by the International Court of Justice, while the states attempting to ban the BDS movement are acting precisely against the obligations imposed on them by the International Court of Justice.
Finally, the ruling must imply the Palestinians do indeed have the right of self-defence. Because you cannot have the “right of self-determination”, which the court acknowledges, without the right of self-defence. Because it is impossible to exercise self-determination if somebody else can remove your bodily integrity at whim. That right of self-defence must perforce be exercised by whoever has de facto control of Palestinian territory at the time.
I am indebted to a number of staff and national delegates at the United Nations in Geneva for pointing out to me the importance of the 2004 ICJ ruling in the current context. I hope it helps you understand why the lies of Biden, von der Leyen, Sunak, Starmer, Macron etc. are indeed lies.
Subject to an “anti-terrorism investigation”, I do not view it as safe currently to return to the UK. Whether the investigation relates to my support for Wikileaks or to my support for Palestine, or to both, I do not know, as the police have not said why I am being investigated.
I honestly believe I am not fighting for me, but against encroaching fascism in Western societies. It is for freedom from an ever-encroaching police state and from a political class trying to enforce a monopoly of information to the public. The fight can only happen at all with financial support from the amazing readers of this blog. You have seen me through so much, and I am very grateful.
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Dear Craig,
I’ve just renewed my regular donation which I was originally sending you while you were in prison.i see you are under fire again!
On the subject of Terrorism of which you are undoubtedly innocent, the does not apply to the IDF, the Israeli government or the enablers of they government, amongst whom we can count the victims of Zionist indoctrination in the UK who have headed off to Palestine to help out as reservists in the IDF.
have a look at this thread I did recently. https://twitter.com/GeoRosenberg/status/1718680337381806385?t=INJ-hR8yJKl-iJSbWUYrsg&s=19
By the way the first time I wrote about this was many years ago when I pointed out that Blair’s self confessed regime change war on Iraq fitted the definition perfectly. Of course I know nothing will happen but it might comfort you to know that your accusers are a prime example of what they defined as terrorists
Kind regards
George
The British prosecutor state that 2 women; “Heba Alhayey, 29, and Pauline Ankunda, 26, have been charged with single counts of carrying or displaying an article, namely an image displaying a paraglider, to arouse reasonable suspicion that they are supporters of a proscribed organization, namely Hamas,”
Both women could face up to six months’ prison time for bringing the posters to the protest, which took place in central London last month.
Now, I am in some doubt over how much Hamas is helped by anyone displaying an image of a paraglider?
The ones who do love this, though, are ……….the Russians: https://www.rt.com/news/586596-uk-women-terrorism-hamas-paragliders/.
But why do the British prosecutor want to please the Russians?
Having read that story, I see no sign that their arrest “pleased” the Russians, or not any more than the BBC’s must have pleased our Government (especially since it repeats the distortion that all the deaths on October 7th were down to Hamas, already disproved by reports from within Israel itself of what actually happened).
‘ the distortion that all the deaths on October 7th were down to Hamas, already disproved by reports from within Israel itself of what actually happened)’
Very interesting – where can one find more on this?
With a view to today’s utterings from Suells Bravermann and our most probably nent Michael Gove to make it a duty for all of us to believe in their abysmal performances, COVID, failures and massive wastes of money (HS2), Total disregard for future generations(100+) new fossil fuel wells, to now.call people who want to change the system and change our environment towards a better future, protests in favor to have and uphold internationally agreed human rights legislations, extremist against the state that should be made to uphold the values and institutions of this country
.
So they all new about this important ICJ judgement, but voted for utter violence on to defenceless women children, international workers, hostages held under bombardment, whilst cutting off services food and water for 2 million people.
Our conniving politicians are all guilty and complicit in this planned genocide. Liars we should not be invited to vote for.
So expect these cowards to take the flight forward into war and stringent emergency laws, they are now Running Away from their multiple cufk ups
Thank you Craig for bringing clarity to this madness/angst of politicians, will donate what I can afford at present.look after yourself.
“I honestly believe I am not fighting for me, but against encroaching fascism in western societies”
No, you aren’t fighting fascism, it’s just good old fashioned tyranny. It is a difference WITH distinction, not two sides of the same coin.
The term ‘fascism’ is badly understood and much abused.
Pears Morgan provided a link which showed that thousands upon thousands of people have been ‘detained’ under the legislation. You could consider getting back in the saddle and taking this tyranny on, you do have some clout you know. Take a time out in Switzerland…_
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7a1575ed915d6d99f5d079/consultation-document.pdf
“The term ‘fascism’ is badly understood and much abused.”
Given that there is no concise agreed definition of fascism, an exact understanding or a correct use is impossible. The closest we get is from its inventor, Benito Mussolini.
“The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State – a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values – interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.
Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, and above all, a system of thought.”
However, in that same Wikipedia article it points out that, “What constitutes as a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars ever since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that “trying to define ‘fascism’ is like trying to nail jelly to the wall”.”
Fascism, like so many other -isms, is what you make it.
Bayard,
“Fascism, like so many other -isms, is what you make it.” …. and in most cases today it is just a throwaway insult. Tyrants hits the spot for me.
I take no offence being called a Marxist, a Communist, a Socialist or Working Class, but to define them?… where do you start, where do you end.
As to Craig’s worries, it is impossible to know if his fears are justified or alarmist. One things for sure, our state machine is very bizarre at the moment….. a pro Palestine demonstration planned for Remembrance Day being described as a hate crime that ‘desecrates’ the Cenotaph! Give me a break…_
“…. and in most cases today it is just a throwaway insult. Tyrants hits the spot for me.”
Agreed, like “Nazi”.
“. a pro Palestine demonstration planned for Remembrance Day being described as a hate crime that ‘desecrates’ the Cenotaph! ”
It’s worse than that, the demo is planned for the day before Remembrance Day, only Mr Toolargehat couldn’t be arsed to do his research properly.
Bayard,
“It’s worse than that, the demo is planned for the day before Remembrance Day, only Mr Toolargehat couldn’t be arsed to do his research properly”
I could have been more alert too. I don’t participate in the state-organised shindig of ‘remembrance sunday’. I usually visit a family member’s grave to place a remembrance. By choice we try for the 11th minute, of the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month. Not religious about it, but it is nice when we can make that time. The grave isn’t of somebody who died in service, just somebody who served.
Me and Mrs.D recognise the citizens day as Armistice Day; the state can shove it’s virtue-signalling sunday…_
DiggerUK
I saw very clearly what you are all about when the Israeli fascists targeted a hospital. What your natural instincts are.
Bayard, your description of Fascism is probably nearer to the truth than most, what Fascism constitutes has been hotly debated for many years, a good book on the subject is Walter Laqueur’s ‘Fascism a readers guide’. But it is such a broad term that almost any state institution that does not tolerate debate that transgresses particular boundaries could be described as such, particularly one that controls the media, legal and state professions as is the case in our disunited Kingdom. Craig may be safer in Switzerland than here in the dis-UK, given the repressive nature of the media control we have and the access the PTB have to other controls like the police. It is a highly unfortunate state of affairs, given that our choice of government seems now to be only available in two indistinguishable and unpleasant flavours.
On the contrary, the term fascism is well understood.
Academics have produced defining features of fascism, set out 20 years ago, and there is little need to update these definitions :
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html
These are the items – please find the full definitions in the link above.
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Supremacy of the Military
Rampant Sexism
Controlled Mass Media
Obsession with National Security
Religion and Government are Intertwined
Corporate Power is Protected
Labor Power is Suppressed
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fraudulent Elections
glenn_nl, I would add to this list, comprehensive as it is, top leadership running on mind-bending drugs, e.g. Hitler, with Morell’s methamphetamine concoctions. I need only mention Zelensky and his sniffles. Anthony Eden went through WW2 on a stash of coke, which layed out in one long line, would of reached La Paz or Bogota. Churchill with his monstrous booze habit claims in his writing to have started the day with a bottle of champagne, everyday of his life since young adulthood – spirits after one o’clock. War rules were in effect in Britain, so I think the two Brits valid. The “Feiglin” character in the film “Downfall” snorting coke in the ruins of Berlin, etc. etc.
If Churchill was still alive he’d be guzzling down the Dom Perignon with joy at what’s going on. In his words:
“I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians, in the same way I don’t apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians, or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one”
Of course Craig is right on the ICJ opinion in particular paragraph 139, see below. This is of fundamental importance and I hope I can indulge in repeating for the most part my comments at the end of the last article by Craig.
UNR 181 defines the borders of the Jewish State.
These are the only internationally recognized boundaries of Israel.
A claim [to self-defense] is being bandied about by Western leaders in relation to the attack on October 7th by Palestinian paramilitaries. Yet para. 139 of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on the legality of the wall, dated 2004, and in that paragraph, the court makes it clear that Israel does not enjoy a right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter in relation to attacks that emanate from within the occupied territory. This does not qualify as self-defense under International Law.
Ergo, Geneva convention signatories MUST bring prosecutions and indictments against israel, which they’re obliged to do by virtue of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
All high contracting parties – that is, 194 states – have obligations under the Geneva Conventions to prosecute or extradite those who order or commit grave breaches of the Convention, which include the war crimes that we’ve seen take place across Gaza and beyond. And to the extent they don’t, they’re not abiding by their international legal obligations.
supporting israel against gaza is violating the geneva convention.
139. Under the terms of Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
Article 51 of the Charter thus recognizes the existence of an inherent right of self-defence in the case of armed attack by one State against another State. However, Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign State.
The Court also notes that Israel exercises control in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and that, as Israel itself states, the threat which it regards as justifying the construction of the wall originates within, and not outside, that territory. The situation is thus different from that contemplated by Security Council resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001), and therefore Israel could not in any event invoke those resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self-defence.
Consequently, the Court concludes that Article 51 of the Charter has no relevance in this case.https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-178825/
It mut be remembered that Palestine is only an observer “state” with no voting rights.Therefore an entity still under Israeli occupation as decided by the International Criminal Court in its 2004 ruling.
Harry, I agree with one nuance. It is not clear to me whether the ICJ judgment means that Israel has no right of self-defence against attacks within the Occupied Territories (e.g. against illegal settlers and occupying troops), or from within the Occupied Territories. Which is to say, does Israel have a right of self-defence against attacks inside its pre-1967 borders but originating within the Occupied Territories?
I think the geographical distinction may be the only way to make sense of this within the same judgment.
“While Israel has the right, and indeed the duty to respond to the numerous and
deadly acts of violence directed against its civilian population, in order to protect the life of its
citizens”
Gaza’s status?
Israel and the United States – as well as many international legal, military, and foreign policy experts – argue that Israel ceded the effective control needed under the legal definition of occupation, therefore ending the occupation.
Virtually every other important international institution, organization and various bodies, disagree.
Ignoring the source there’s the legal background & rulings covered here : https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/gaza-israel-occupied-international-law/
Recent article as well. Oct 31
Did US President Joe Biden mess up when he cautioned Israel not to “reoccupy” Gaza?
As a member of the UN Israel does have the right to defend herself within all the territories it occupies and controls i,e The West Bank including Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Gaza strip. However the Isaelis are illegally occupying those places, [55 years] and since an occupation is only supposed to be temporary.the laws of war dealing with occupation are applicable.. Any attacks on occupation forces or administrative personel can only be defended against under the well documeted geneva conventions, inluding a trial and if found guity a prison sentence etc. In my opinion Israel has breached many rules of war and humanity, on the case in point paragraph 139 ICJ 2004 It is plain the Israelis are in breach of International law by resorting to collectve punishment as exibited when the Nazis surrounded the Czech town of Lidici and murdered many innocent people.
Finkelstein cited Lidice when speaking of the bombardment of Gaza City as well in his first interview with Chris Hedges shortly after Oct. 7th.
However is there not a qualitative difference when 170 males were rounded up by SS in a courtyard and then executed? Lets assume Gaza City was closed down and the IDF would bomb it knowing that there were civilians and they would still not allow them to leave – intentionally putting them on the spot.
This of course is all rather cynical since any sane person needs not ponder about the events.
But if I look into the many articles in German papers 90% claim Art. 51.
So an eventual clearification of this matter accepted by the intern. community would be important.
The German government could at least be measured against an internationally agreed standard.
Just like with its decision to support the supply of DU-ammo and Cluster-ammo to UKR.
Both of which are recognized as illegal.
It’s becoming a long list.
Various new breaches of international law may emerge as this operation progresses. The stated aim, to ‘eliminate’ Hamas is unattainable. Unless they plan for Srebrenica-type mass executions, mass graves? How will they process adult males, and, is the punishment really to be death for Hamas affiliation? Even for a local administrator or some such? There will be no one present with the authority to sign any instrument of surrender either, it’s not even a nation state. So how on earth can victory be declared?
‘In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that Serbia violated the Genocide Convention by not doing enough to prevent genocide in Srebrenica. The most high profile prosecutions include: Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian military leader, was transferred to the ICTY in 2001.’
It seems unlikely Benjamin Netanyahu will suffer a similar fate. Although, with Israeli polling showing him to be near universally despised and with most wanting his resignation. Add in the damage this obscene ‘vengeance’ mission is doing to Israel’s international reputation, anything seems possible.
The (completely forgotten) people of Western Sahara agree.
harry law
sry if I deviate from the current case: but was Afghanistan – 9/11 – in part – not a similiar dispute?
US invoking it´s right to self-defence against the non-state belligerent Al-Qaeda was based on the allegation that the government of Afghanistan was conspiring with Al-Quaeda and had taken part in the attacks on US soil. However this was in fact never proven by the Bush admin. in front of the UN.
And the US government could have never been able to prove it since, as CIA internally admitted, there was no proof for this as the government of Aghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. Therefore that war de facto was, as Noam Chomsky back then pointed out, illegal as well since Al-Quaede was no state.
It only was meaningless since the Security Council in a purely political decision granted the US the right to conduct a war. But that was actually not legal.
As per earlier comments (myself and others) if a case can be made for UK participation in war crimes on the basis of its active support for Israel in its current crusade then all that wish can submit such allegations to the ICC requesting their investigation (link below).
https://otplink.icc-cpi.int/
I fear we are sliding into a quite horrible and frightening time unless we all make a stand for peace and long overdue change in global affairs. I doubt humanity has ever been more challenged by existential threats – of its own making – to its very survival, than we are currently facing. For the UK and USA to act complicity with Israel in the persecution and extermination of Palestine – is unforgivable. Imagine being an olive farmer in Palestine who’s had his home and fields bulldozed by settlers and evacuated to a refugee camp in Gaza, to endure a few decades of hell in a shanty town with little hope of justice or even compensation. How would you feel? What hope for your family? The overwhelming majority know what is needed to bring peace to that region – and in Eastern Europe too – but the 1% will not take that road.
First they come for Julian Assange and take him away for showing the truth. Then they came for Craig Murray for telling the truth. There are many more like them. Unless you take a stand, one day there’ll be a knock at your door too.
Craig looked in fine fettle tonight when chatting with George Galloway. He enjoyed the joke about Lenin returning from Zurich to the Finland Station and himself returning to lead the revolution at Waverley Station.
Two men whose influence inside Scotland might have changed the political agenda- Tommy Sheridan and Alex Salmond- have both found themselves in court. A third, Craig Murray, has—like Sheridan—been jailed. Craig is now, understandably, in self-imposed exile in Switzerland. This is the state of our nation today. I would anticipate the repression and victimisation to increase as the foreign policy disasters in Ukraine and Palestine run their course. However the numbers on the streets this last month have obviously unsettled the political elite and that might stay their hand.
It was a good conversation. It’s a tragedy that men of Craig’s calibre and humanity no longer exist in the British Foreign office.
I have always thought the independence in Scotland could only be achieved by a powerful challenge to established power. I’d like to think something short of armed struggle, but certainly a civic struggle -civil disobedience and real activism. The British politics system is distancing itself from justice-with politicians such as Braverman attempting peremptory, arbitrary justice and withdrawal from ethical governance and judicial authority being undermined by (c)overt political activity as seen in the Craig Murray case, the Salmond case and most worryingly in the Assange case.
British politics has adopted a servile posture to the hegemonic powers of the US
Recently I have heard expressions of vitriolic contempt for Starmer.(as leader of the opposition he is the main target) He is no better than the Tories which seems to cause a greater reaction as more is expected of the opposition.
Blatant corruption in government circles is unchallenged. Lady Mone of the PPE is riding the waves in her yacht but surely there must be a day of reckoning. Maybe Craig could self id and share a cell in a woman’s prison alongside the Lady. ( please excuse -cant resist the joke but it has a hint of dante’s inferno about it)
Seems to me that the very essence of civil society-justice -is being thwarted, undermined by what passes for democracy in the UK.
The fact is that millions of people from around the world have had that happen throughout history. Both my own and wife’s grandparents lives were completely uprooted by WWII and had to remake lives and homes. There was no compensation.
It is the fact that this conflict has third parties with little knowledge of people or the area refuse to move on makes the problem intractable.
your final sentence needs explaining
Most people are considerably more unsettled than you by the mass murder of children. Unfortunately virtually our politicians take your view and are proud that Britain is aiding it.
It is the slaughter that I disapprove of more than people who want to continually hark back to historical grievances. There either has to be a compromise and reasonable settlement, or people to continually hark back to events of the 60s, the 40s or decades and centuries earlier. Either that or a complete genocide of one of the parties.
Netanyahu knows he is finished once the fighting stops. He will keep it going in the hope that things might improve for him. A tragedy for both Jews and Arabs. I suspect that Biden also realises that he has dug himself into a big hole, probably true for Sunak and Starmer too though it will never be admitted. Meanwhile the armaments industry make a killing. I am hoping at least for a change on the Ukraine/Russia front, maybe some negotiation at last.
Reported today that polls in US indicate a return of the Trump, so Biden IS indeed in a hole. the British political establishment are also in the bottom of a hole but they aren’t even digging at the moment. It seems as if they are covering their eyes with their hands and hoping it will all go away.
The return of Trump suggests to me a descent into barbarism,
Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
The West and its allies fall into the first group and everyone else falls into the second, as neatly demonstrated by the different Western reactions to the actions of Russia v Ukraine and Israel v Palestine. That’s the realpolitik.
Self-imposed exile in Switzerland – that’ll be that right to self-defence again
As Harry law pointed out, a military occupation is supposed to be temporarily and the occupying regime, Israel is this case, have the obligation to secure/protect the civilians living inside the occupied territory during that period of time.
Israel fail on both counts. The occupation is not meant to be temporary and civilians are most obviously not protected and their wellbeing are not secured by Israel.
Norman Finkelstein mentioned that the South African apartheid regime used the same approach as Israel now use:
“Whereas international law prohibits an occupying power from using force to suppress a struggle for self-determination, it does not debar a people struggling for self-determination from using force. Israel consequently has no legal mandate to use force against the Palestinian self-determination struggle. It might be argued that insofar as this self-determination struggle has been unfolding within the framework of a belligerent occupation, Israel has the legal right, as the occupying power, to enforce the occupation so long as it endures. But the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 1971 that since South Africa had refused to carry out good-faith negotiations to terminate its occupation of Namibia, the occupation had eventually become illegal. In light of the Namibia precedent, Israel’s failure to carry out good-faith negotiations based on international law has delegitimized its occupation as well. If Israel can lay title to any “right,” it is—in the exhortation of the United States at the time of the Namibia debate—“to withdraw its administration . . . immediately and thus put an end to its occupation.” Whereas it proclaims the right of self-defense against Hamas projectiles, Israel is in effect promulgating a right to use force to perpetuate the occupation.
Were Israel to cease its violent repression, the occupation would end and, ideally, the projectile attacks would also stop as Palestinians went about the business of consolidating their own independent state. The right to self-defense could justly be invoked by Israel only if the attacks continued regardless. On the one hand, Israel cannot pretend to a right of self-defense if the exercise of this right traces back to the wrong of an illegal occupation/denial of self-determination (ex injuria non oritur jus). On the other hand, Israel would not need to invoke the right if it ceased inflicting the wrong.”
— From his book Gaza: In inquest into it’s martyrdrom
One senses that all the above mentioned actors (Biden, von der Leyen, Sunak, Starmer, Macron etc. are indeed lies.) are about as concerned about international legalities as a donkey is about a shower of rain. Let me resort to the local patois- they couldnae gie a **ck.
Very sorry to hear of the arbitrary investigation. Another outrage by the UK but what can you expect from a Home secretary like Braverman who made that appalling utterance a few days ago about lifestyle choices including sleeping on the streets.
One particularly apt response on Twitter
“Suella Braverman WRONGLY claimed £25,000 in second home allowance while living RENT FREE with her parents
Now she’s cracking down on HOMELESS people sleeping in tents on the streets.”
At some point public consciousness may rise to the point that the word ‘braverman’ becomes handy shorthand for ‘legally and politically empowered idiocy, combined with inane braggadocio’.
Apropos the storm of dissent triggered by the Starmer performance re Palestine and his craven subservience to the US/UK posture/orthodoxy, I am unable to say how his abject performance has affected his electoral hopes but my intuition is that he may have lost the chance of a resounding annihilation of the Tory ranks he is hoping for.
I guess that he and his coterie of slavish seekers after ‘truth’ (oops, I mean ‘power’, with just one virtue – not being quite as bad as the Tories), will possibly have a slender, inconvenient and unemphatic majority. He has revealed himself as a pusillanimous and inept politician who has been unable to position himself in a way which preserves any sense of his integrity or ability to negotiate the difficult territory of international law, diplomacy, justice and a commitment to humanitarian values.
He has shown himself to be a man with few virtues and very limited skills. (A kind of Boris Johnston without the hair or the flair). He is a man with a hammer, and by god he has shown us he is not scared to use it. Starmer is the political Yorkshire ripper.
The point here is that Starmer’s failure opens up a political opportunity for Humza Yousaf (and possibly even opposition within the Labour party) and a chance for Humza to distance from the pathetic Starmer subservience to the cruel US orthodoxy, and to speak out in opposition to the genocidal psychopathy being expressed by the Israeli/US mobsters, who have simply descended to the level of unhinged murderous fundamentalists.
This is a difficult path to take as it risks a huge backlash from the established propaganda outlets. The Israeli grievance of 7th Oct would have to be acknowledged, but the wider context requires examination and needs to be considered in terms of the heinous actions of Israel in creating the illegal prison of Gaza and the flagrant construction of extreme oppressive measures, such as Israeli state-sanctioned and -supported (enforced) illegal settlements in the West Bank and the effective establishment of, in effect, a religious apartheid state in contravention of any established civil norms, as expressed through the UN.
It would take a lot of skill to find a way through this minefield, but it offers up the opportunity to take the cause of Independence forward by exposing the corrupt and decadent nature of the (mainly) English political establishment that opposes independence. Scotland should be making common cause with Wales and Northern Ireland to shed the poisonous influence of English politics.
The UK political establishment have walked away from using their influence to challenge these egregious abuses that have occurred in the Israeli-dominated region of the Middle East. This failure to act before the development of the critical position we now face, must be laid at the door of the US; and it seems likely that if the grievances and sensitivities had had a decent airing we might never have arrived at such an evil impasse.
The Israeli possession of nuclear weapons makes the position of Israel unchallengeable, as all actors in the area are inhibited from providing support for the helpless Palestinians.
I have a strong suspicion that the Israelis have already used the threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a challenge from (say) Iran, and this may be a factor in defining the actions of British politicians. Are they all so terrified of an uncontrolled Israeli response, that there is a general appeasement across the Western world? Even a limited nuclear use would have repercussions so devastating that they are unthinkable,. However, despite the suspicion that there are underlying conditions that make movement difficult, the quality of our politicians lies in finding a way through this monstrous imbroglio.
“descended to the level of unhinged murderous fundamentalists”
So both sides are evenly matched?
I can write what you wrote with marvelous economy: Nobody knows how to solve this war between two foes, each sworn to wipe the other from the Earth.
It’s only those who favour one side over the other who believe they have an answer.
Maybe it’s the decline in educational standards, or maybe it’s the ever-shortening attention spans stopping people from reading up on history, but every possible peaceful route to a lasting settlement has already been tried. And found wanting.
you say “So both sides are evenly matched?”
I am not saying that at all. What would ‘a rational response’ to Oct 7 be? Lets say we apply old testament values. Let’s negotiate a quid pro quo. What would satisfy/appease the Israelis? I’ll start the bidding at 20 Palestinians for 1 Israeli so lets say 1400×20 = 28,000 Gazans. (That’s the Israeli vengeance allowance.) At the current rate that’s another 10 days of bombing by the Israelis. (We’ll ignore the fact that the Gazans are already ‘in credit’ due to recent past actions.
Ok, let’s say it makes more sense to seek out the number of Palestinians required to satisfy honour and administer some kind of killing formula -let’s say a poison pill (orderly and neat) – avoiding all the destruction and damage, and that upsetting unsightly blood and gore, and inconvenience of dragging bodies out of rubble. The Palestinians appointed for death could then have the decency to walk to their grave and fall in and save further hassle.
So why does the clinical extermination of a particular section of an ethnic group seem so offensive? Well that’s because it harks back to the Nazi-inspired Holocaust. I am not the first to make a comparison between the Nazi holocaust (dispossession of land, property and mass murder) and the events that are occurring in Gaza.
So what would you choose? Would you choose being forced into a period of a few weeks’ of extreme deprivation, with your family members, followed by being herded into an enclosure from which there is no escape, for bombers to fly over, picking off the clumps of huddled people, or artillery/tanks to have free reign to fire at will, until all life has been extinguished? Or would you choose the poison pill? Is there a distinction? Yes, but the difference is the width of a fag paper.
I am taking the ‘reductio ad absurdum’ route here, purely for Illustrative purposes. The Israeli regime is enacting a holocaust on the Gazan population (admittedly smaller than that of the Nazis, but being carried out much faster); but this illustrates that the Israeli regime is as ‘psychologically boxed and emotionally confined’ as the Gazans are physically confined. An irony it is difficult to avoid.
There is a sense of entitlement because a holocaust was inflicted on the Jewish population of Europe in the ’40s and they are thus excused the normal expressions of human morality due to their exceptional suffering. This seems to be the line of reasoning applied here, especially by Americans. In fact there have been many holocausts throughout history. It is estimated that as many as 10 million Indians died as a result of the British empire administration measures at the time of the Indian mutiny. It took longer because the methods were different but the scales seem broadly equivalent. The elimination of Native Americans in 17th/18th/19th centuries was even greater than that of the Nazi holocaust.
The Israeli regime (I have to be careful to not say the Israeli people because I am fairly sure ordinary Israelis do not deal in blood), Netanyahu and the religious crackpots and hee-haws he has common political cause with, are deranged psychotics who think along the lines I sketched out so disgustingly.
It is a different flavour of despotism and tyranny for sure, but the poisonous essence is the same.
I suppose I am taking a Christian view that one, or a mass of connected people, must relinquish blood feud and vengeance, to set themselves free. It feels to me that Israel is bound by its self imposed chains, I am not an active Christian but I have lived my life in that context, and I have absorbed such ideas. I cannot see an alternative.
I am saying that both sides are evenly matched in unhinged, murderous fundamentalism.
I am saying that both sides contain extreme elements that want complete extermination of the other.
Finally, I am saying that a compromise solution to this war, accepted by both sides, but where both sides will get less than their desired goals, will eventually come about. But neither side is yet ready for that compromise.
You ask me what I would choose. There’s more than one hypothetical hellish choice on offer here. If I was being held in some dungeon, or if my daughter was there in the same place, I would very likely choose for my government to stop at nothing to set us free. Or kill us quick to end our suffering.
“I have a strong suspicion that the Israelis have already used the threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a challenge from (say) Iran, and this may be a factor in defining the actions of British politicians. ”
And not only the actions of British politicians.
“And not only the actions of British politicians”.
Of course, but my focus was on the British political stance. Portillo has made it plain that obeisance to the US is the only option, and any dissent will be punished. I was also struck by the remarkable unanimity (even to the point of using the same language ) to express support for Israel with the emphasis on self-defence. I can’t remember any expression of nuance or an alternative view across what is regarded as the ‘West’. It almost seemed organised by some central authority.
I also strongly suspect that the US carrier groups are nuclear armed. I’d bet my meagre fortune that there are nuclear-armed subs primed for use in the event of a wider outbreak of hostility. Pretty sure a UK Trident is not far away. I suspect these are around to provide cover for Israel so they don’t have to use their own nukes.
The posture of the West is remarkably distorted in favour of Israel with very little attempt at providing support to needier Islamic countries. I doubt if any informed observer of events can fail to note the incredible US ineptitude and murderous stance towards so many ME countries. The preferred option seems to be to reduce countries and cultures to rubble, and people to their graves or a lifetime in a wheelchair.
There was of course one ME country that almost became ‘Westernised’. I don’t want to get drawn into defending Saddam who was clearly the West’s pet tyrant/psychopath for many years. He had directed oil wealth towards setting up a modern civic society in the ME by buying in Western/British expertise to create a modern infrastructure, so all was hunky-dory while the petrodollars were flowing in a westerly direction. One doesn’t need George Galloway to point out the mercenary hyper-hypocrisy that formed the backbone of the Thatcher-era foreign policy. I know from direct experience that Iraq (at least their embassy operatives) were operating with impunity within the UK to commit murders of Iraqi dissenters who had taken refuge in the UK.
While the Iraq situation has been analysed almost relentlessly over the last 20 years, it seems to me that the actions towards Iraq were about neutralising the threat that a modern armed Arab country posed to Israel and the threat to the economic basis (Oil) of the West. I am sure there were other geopolitical factors, but the pivot towards Israel is unmistakable.
Douglas
I agree with virtually all you said.
“There was of course one ME country that almost became ‘Westernised’. I don’t want to get drawn into defending Saddam who was clearly the West’s pet tyrant/psychopath for many years. ”
Especially during the long war he waged against Iran.
Whoever said it’s dangerous to be America’s friend was right on the money…..
I remember many years ago the Israeli civil rights group B’Tselem saying the illegal settlers should be treated as civilians with the same protection as everybody else. After reflecting on this I came to the conclusion that this was probably correct, for these reasons,
1/ Most settlers are induced to go to the settlements because of governmental incentives like free housing free education etc with many in straitened circumstances, many others are violent whose objectives are purely ideological,. The driving force behind this is the Israeli government who daily breach article 49 paragraph 6 of the Geneva conventions and have been doing so for the last 55 years.
This article is plain, it is a grave war crime to transfer your own civilian population into occupied territory. The West has allowed this to happen with facile comments whenever Israel builds new settlements for instance ‘this is unhelpful’ then concluding new trade deals with Israel. The fault lies totally with the West, in particular the US.
Harry Law,
” Most settlers are induced to go to the settlements because of governmental incentives…”
So:-
Most burglars are induced to go into the house because of benefit/property incentives.
Thus – legal?
This English version of a German legal assessment does eventually quote the “Wall” verdict from 2004 as quoted above.
note: This is from Oct. 31st.
“Hamas’ Atrocities, Israel’s Response, and the Primacy of International Law to Protect Civilians”
https://verfassungsblog.de/protect-civilians/
However in its entirety it again proves that in German legal/political thinking there is no understandig/acknowledgement still of the (possibly) genocidal nature of Israeli politics by design, since and before Oct. 7th (see my other link to Finkelstein above). I am trying to be fair and cautious.
Anyone can observe that they choose the bias of the Israeli government. But if not for scholarship who then will pose the difficult questions?
The conclusio of this assessment is as follows, but to judge the particular minutes of the authors´ thinking I advise to read it all in English under the link above.
(the authors are more or less state affiliated. One without question as she is a Senior Fellow at the SWP in Berlin, I have mentioned SWP over the months in my comments.)
“(…)
Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
Regardless of who initiated the armed conflict, the rules of international humanitarian law apply to all parties to the conflict. What is permissible under international law in the context of an armed conflict also does not depend on whether the respective party involved in the conflict is acting as an aggressor or as a defender. This is because it is exclusively aimed at protecting the civilian population and other protected persons and legal assets, such as medical personnel, journalists and cultural property. This protection is to be ensured, among other things, by prohibiting indiscriminate attacks (i.e., attacks that do not distinguish between civilians and combatants). This prohibition applies in all types of armed conflict and is codified in Art. 48 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (AP I); Art. 51(1) and (2) AP I; and Art. 13(1) of the Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (AP II). In this context, hospitals and medical personnel are under special protection and, in principle, may not be the target of military attacks if they are marked accordingly. A violation of this prohibition constitutes a war crime under Art. 8(2)(b)(xxiv) and (e)(ii) of the Rome Statute.
According to Art. 51(7) AP I, the civilian population may not be prevented from fleeing a combat zone in order to shield military targets from attack. At the same time, even a request to evacuate does not cause civilians who cannot or do not wish to evacuate to lose their protected status. What is more, due to ongoing hostilities and the closure of the border crossings (on the part of Israel and Egypt), it is not possible for the civilian population of the Gaza Strip to leave the area under siege (i.e., the Gaza Strip). Egypt allowed some Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip in the first days of the military operation but has since kept the border closed. Decisive factors include security concerns and the danger of a permanent displacement of Gaza’s population to Egyptian territory.
Although Israel has not ratified the AP I and AP II, the aforementioned provisions apply under customary international law1) and are thus binding on Israel as well.
Likewise, in all types of armed conflicts, the starvation of an enemy civilian population as a means of warfare (siege warfare) is expressly prohibited2) and is outlawed as a war crime under Art. 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. In practice, this means that a complete lockdown or siege may only be used against a legitimate military objective. Civilians may not be the target of the siege under any circumstances, and the supply of essential goods to the civilian population may not be prevented. Access to food must not be impeded even if it could also be provided to combatants.3)
A complete shutdown, which makes it impossible to supply Gaza’s civilian population with food, drinking water and medicines, is, unlike preventing the import of fuel or the supply of electricity, under no circumstances proportionate and permissible under international law. Not least, the blockade of supplies vital for life is a collective punishment4) in accordance with Art. 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and hence violates international humanitarian law.
German solidarity, German responsibility
The German government’s commitment to Israel’s security, its disgust at Hamas’s atrocities, and its overall consent to Israel’s goal of dismantling Hamas do not relieve Germany of its responsibility under international law. Rather, Germany, like other third countries, not only has an obligation to respect the rules of international law for the protection of civilians in armed conflicts. It also has a duty under international law to urge compliance with them under the common Art. 1 of the four Geneva Conventions. This was confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), among others, in its 2004 Advisory Opinion “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.5)
In this vein, the German government should now first and foremost make use of its close relations with Israel to influence the release of the hostages through negotiations; to effectively protect the population of Gaza through the establishment of protection zones; to refrain from the use of inadmissible methods of warfare; to ensure humanitarian access (and humanitarian cessations of violence) so that drinking water, food, medicines, and fuel for hospital generators can be delivered to all of Gaza; and to establish humanitarian corridors that allow the evacuation of urgent medical cases and foreign civilians. At the same time, it is equally crucial to exert pressure on Hamas via states with contacts to its leadership, such as Egypt and Qatar, in order to ensure the welfare of the hostages and to press for their release, to stop the indiscriminate firing of rockets at Israel, and not to prevent the escape of its own population from combat zones.
In the aftermath of the acute escalation, Germany should support the investigation by the International Criminal Court of presumed war crimes committed by all parties involved in the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories. For the continued failure to sanction serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law and to prosecute alleged war crimes invites the parties to continue to violate the law. These violations also push a political resolution to the conflict and durable peaceful coexistence into the more distant future.
References:
References ↑1 According to Art. 48(1) of the AP I see IHL Database, Commentary to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions 1977, p. 598, available here; According to Art. 54(1) of the AP I, see IHL Database, Commentary to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions 1977, p. 654, available here
↑2 This is a ius cogens rule according to Flavia Lattanzi and Clapham, Gaeta, Sassòli (ed.), The 1949 Geneva Conventions – a Commentary, Oxford 2018, chapter 12, para. 44.
↑3 Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict, 2nd edition, p. 218 ff.
↑4 Shane Darcy, in: Clapham, Gaeta, Sassòli (ed.), The 1949 Geneva Conventions – a Commentary, Oxford 2018, Chapter 56, para. 32f – there, the Israel-Palestine conflict is listed as an example.
↑5 IGH, Advisory Opinion: Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied, I.C.J. Reports 2004, p. 136, para. 157: ”With regard to international humanitarian law, the Court recalls that in its Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons it stated that “a great many rules of humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict are so fundamental to the respect of the human person and ‘elementary considerations of humanity’ . . .”, that they are “to be observed by all States whether or not they have ratified the conventions that contain them, because they constitute intransgressible principles of international customary law.” (I.C.J. Reports 1996 (I), p. 257, para. 79). In the Court’s view, these rules incorporate obligations which are essentially of an erga omnes character.”
(…)”
AG
The Springer press is unbelievable, absolutely vile.
As you’ll know, they’re running article after article claiming the protests and chants show Germany still has a problem.
But I draw quite the opposite conclusion. Nothing says to me Germany “still has a problem” more than the white political elite’s slavish devotion to Israel. With them acting as apologists for war crimes in the name of fighting terror. There is no excuse, given the now overwhelming evidence Israel is committing war crimes, including clear humanitarian breaches that are putting at risk hundreds of thousands of lives. And all this against a lightly armed, refugee camp resistance movement. Using first world armed forces: air force, land and sea bombardment.–>
Goose, frankly I do not know what Springer is putting out. I simply have no time for their shit and a cursory look into the non-Springer press (taz, SZ) is already enough to sense what lurks behind those walls of “left decency”.
I watched Robert Habeck’s address to the nation (where was Scholz?). It was cloyingly servile to Israel, in its tone and message.
The German Greens are a particularly obnoxious bunch. All their past principles shed, like a snake sheds its skin. In order to embrace neoliberalism and US hegemony – Neocon exceptionalism and warmongering. Ethno-religious state Israel is the nearest thing to a white supremacist state there is, in today’s world. Just what does Herr Habeck find so attractive about it?
I assume a look into Elizabethan theatre offers an answer – power with all its mechanisms of keeping and managing that power completely engulfs you. Your day is organized in 5 minute windows by your staff. The staff will tell you what makes you like the staff and ensure your own rise. It’s an ever self-serving system. Truth is only of interest as it concerns your status. And you most likely try to determine what “truth” in fact is. The last thing you want is information to jeopardize all that. In matter as in psychology. You cannot bear the pressure if you do not learn to deceive yourself and everyone around. And since these people came from idealistic and decent places (more or less) their deformation has hit them especially hard. That’s why left and idealists who turn “rogue” in state positions are so much worse at times when they betray themselves (Blair, Brown, Schröder, Scholz, Macaroni, Tsipras etc. to just name the heads).
p.s. that’s why politicians like in Israel or former French Resistance had so little difficulty with this. They were the products of war. They have no ideals only political survival.
Not every Jew is a Zionist, and many utterly reject even the right of existence of the state of Israel for theological reasons. Others, who are not religious, have an absolutely “not in my name” attitude based on a secular, human rights approach. For these reasons, it’s outrageous that the Zionists hide behind the mantra of protecting Jews, when many Jews don’t want their “protection”, and hold them responsible for the alleged rise in anti-Semitism. I say “alleged” because the concept of so-called “hate crime” has become an industry and is itself poisoning relations between peoples and making it impossible to gauge the true level of inter-communal conflict. Telling a Jew something he doesn’t want to hear — but maybe NEEDS to hear — is NOT anti-Semitism. Jewry is a broad church, and Zionism is only one strand of it. Unfortunately, it’s the public fact of world Jewry, the one that holds itself out as the platonic form, and it is a racially supremacist doctrine. People need to start calling it out fearlessly for what it is, and that includes other Jews, because it’s a poison, like every racist doctrine.
The polarisation is awful. The RW press are promoting the idea ‘Muslims only care about Muslims’. But that surely cuts both ways, and is equally true of Jews?
The Jewish community’s protest outside parliament and spokespeople have shown little beyond cursory sympathy for the 10,000 dead Gazans. Every Muslim leader or prominent Muslim politician is expected to condemn Hamas. But Jewish leaders or Israeli’s aren’t similarly asked to condemn the wholly disproportionate response being meted out by the IDF at the behest of Israel’s most RW, extremist govt in that country’s relatively brief history.
The US, UK and Germany, France et al may well have dual nationals operating in the IDF, in Gaza, now; directly involved in war crimes. Journalists should be more interested in what will be done about that? Do we want such people returning and walking the streets as if any of this is normal?
Why’s it outrageous that different Jewish people have different views about protecting Jews? Israel could obviously help in some ways but hinder in others.
There’s clips on YouTube where that bald Mitchell guy from EastEnders went to Gaza a few years ago. One clip he speaks to children at a psych clinic for trauma I think, who say it’s better to die as martyr for a better life in paradise. One speaks about his relatives being killed, and when asked who did it, he doesn’t say Israeli soldiers, he says The Jews. Then a girl says we don’t want peace with the Jews, they blew out my parents brains.
(Another clip about the tunnels he says three people die every WEEK buried alive in rubble while digging for 12 hour shifts for $25)
Then again isn’t Islam an expansionist supremacist ideology anyway? Was someone on Tiktok a few years ago saying one day the world will realise that us Muslims are serious that we’re bringing in a new level of being, like a global civilization covering everyone. I made some comment about would the fossil evidence of what you really are be destroyed and the only response was “sit down”
Well FYI. I’m a Caucasian male Westerner and I’m agnostic. And I’m beginning to detest the state of Israel, after watching years of Palestinian mistreatment. Cruel settler behaviour and of course this latest sickening, excessive bombing.
Do they not realise, that by living on the basis of ‘might is right’, the outrageous, illegal evacuation orders, may one day be dropped on them?
The internet is full of hotheads, the moronic and the totally deluded saying stupid things. Digging them up and putting them on here doesn’t prove a thing.
Was there really an episode of EastEnders where Phil Mitchell goes to Gaza and talks with Palestinians? You do realise that EastEnders is not real life?
“Was there really an episode of EastEnders where Phil Mitchell goes to Gaza and talks with Palestinians? You do realise that EastEnders is not real life?”
Phil Mitchell did a documentary series where he went around the world talking to various ‘extremist’ groups about their motivations. He didn’t talk to the Israelli government though.
“Phil Mitchell did a documentary series where he went around the world talking to various ‘extremist’ groups about their motivations.”
Was this an “EastEnders” offshoot or do you mean Steve Mc Fadden?
Sorry for any mixup, I meant the actor Ross Kemp who had played Grant Mitchell I think. His separate documentary clips seem reasonable but may have been biased – I see he was married to that redhead editor of The Sun and opposed Scottish independence. His dad was a detective in the Met.
Athanasius, that’s an extraordinarily accurate and insightful analysis. Thank you.
If the world treated the Israeli Zionist faction like the murderous racial supremacists they really are, they’d become as politically toxic as the KKK or Daesh. Anybody who voiced support for Zionism would be cancelled. Their international backers would soon desert them, and they’d be exposed as a fanatical resource-greedy death cult. When their MIC armament supply chain dried up they’d be left defenceless against their furious newly-liberated neighbours who desperately want their land and buildings back. The Zionists would have to ship out and colonise somewhere else. (I hear there’s plenty of vacant real estate on the moon.)
If you want to know more about the theological reasons which make some (perhaps many?) Orthodox Jews oppose the very existence of an Israeli state, you could start by going onto YouTube and looking at a few of the interviews given to various parties by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss.
How many actual Zionists died in the Holocaust?
Very few, if any. They were too busy behind British lines in Palestine to care about what was happening in Europe. The general public are quite ignorant (and deliberately kept ignorant by the Zionist press) of the fact that Zionism long predates WWII; the creation of Israel was not a reaction to it, despite the general assumptions. I wonder how many people know, for instance, that the Stern Gang approached the German embassy in Ankara during the war and asked them for weapons to kill British soldiers with in Palestine? Or that the survivors of the Holocaust who eventually arrived in Israel in the early 1950s were treated despicably by the sabras because they were considered an embarrassment to the image of the noble Jewish warrior? Or that Israel only appointed itself the moral heir to the victims of the camps when they realised they’d squirrelled billions away in Switzerland before Hitler managed to grab it all?
“Very few, if any.”
As I suspected, but handy for them that six million other Jews did, isn’t it? Martyrdom is so handy when it’s someone else having the painful death.
Most of the Jews killed in Poland during the war were poor devils living in relative poverty whether in large towns, small towns or the countryside. Orthodox Jews but certainly not Zionists.
Most of the Polish Zionists were of the more educated classes and got out of Poland long before the war started. Many helped, let it be known, by the Polish government, who supplied them with military training and small arms and facilitated their emigration to Mandate Palestine. The intention was not to support Zionism per se but to encourage Jewish emigration out of Poland.
One of the reasons that the UK, French, German and various other governments are tightening the screws on those advocating for the rights of Palestinians and denouncing the violently aggressive Israeli state is that they realise that the long period during which the Israeli narrative prevailed in the public sphere is coming to an end. Governments continue to spout the Israeli line, but more and more people aren’t buying into it any longer.
The reason that more and more people aren’t buying into it any longer is quite simple: propaganda must be subtle but the bully, puffed up with hubris, invariably ends up over-reaching. It is the same phenomenon which causes empires to decay and hegemons to be replaced by others.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”
Israel still control the narrative in the West
The idea anyone who opposes Israel in the region is a terrorist is fairly ingrained. The fact the Palestinians aren’t allowed to defend themselves doesn’t seem to register among many in the US and UK, even politicians. An Israeli settler shoots five Palestinians, in the West Bank, and it’s reported as “more violence”. A Palestinian picks up a gun a shoots a settler, it’s reported as terrorism.
President Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by an ultra-nationalist Israeli Zionist freak back in 1998. I’ve only ever heard the assassin referred to as ‘a gunman’ on official sources such as the BBC.
More on it here, glenn_nl.
“Israeli Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995 as part of a conspiracy by a unit inside the Israeli General Security Services (aka the Shabak), the Israeli equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service in charge of protecting the Prime Minister. The architect of the Assassination was Eli Barak, which he planned at the behest of Shabak Chief Carmi Gillon whose aim was to thwart the Oslo Accords. This was done with the advice (and tacit acceptance) of the CIA and the Likud.”
https://www.wikispooks.com/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin/Assassination
Aguirre.
But is it coming to an end? I see no end in sight, for nigh on eighty years Israel has oppressed the Palestinian/Bedouin people. The only difference I can see this time around is that the Israeli Zionists are killing Palestinians in a more open and brazen fashion than before, and they really don’t care what the International community thinks about that.
They quote the Dresden bombings and Napalm in Vietnam as atrocities against civilian populations, and the equation is that other nations are guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide, so don’t finger point at us when we do it.
The US/UK/AUS/EU governments are backing the Israeli Zionists. The UN is pretty toothless, and I don’t see the ICC actually taking any concrete action against Israel; US sanctions on its personnel (as has happened in the past) will stop that.
No, no matter how many protests around the globe take place, the Zionists will continue with their ghastly plan, knowing that the Western governments/news agencies have their backs covered.
In my opinion only two things can change the future for the Palestinian people (for the better) an agreement by the global community to place widespread sanctions and boycotts on Israel and its goods, or a regional war. The latter though would bring far more death and destruction, but I believe it would eventually force Israel around a negotiating table to thrash out a two-state solution.
Or a neutral third party could negotiate release of the hostages, dead or alive, possibly even including release of prisoners in Israeli custody, in exchange for a ceasefire and UN peacekeepers on the ground.
But that’s a compromise in which neither side gets extermination of the other, so I’m guessing that won’t be apocalyptic enough for Hamas, or the Israeli government, even although it will stop the killing of innocent Palestinians and Israelis.
There will be no hostage exchange for there is no ceasefire, and there is no ceasefire because Israel and its backers US/UK/EU back Israel’s no ceasefire approach. If I recall correctly Netanyahu said that a ceasefire benefits no one but Hamas, so the slaughter and war crimes of the “Human Animals” as the Zionists described the oppressed Palestinian people will continue.
Those countries that DON’T back Israel MUST place widespread sanctions on Israel and Israeli goods for however long it takes to achieve a two-state solution.
“and there is no ceasefire because Israel and its backers US/UK/EU back Israel’s no ceasefire approach.”
To be fair, Hamas has not asked for a ceasefire.
“I’m guessing that won’t be apocalyptic enough for Hamas, ”
I’m guessing that Hamas know that the Israelis would simply carry on the “killing of innocent Palestinians” as soon as Hamas were disarmed. It’s not as if they weren’t doing it before, even with no hostages held by Hamas.
See also AG’s comment at 21:10 for what happened last time. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”
“causes empires to decay and hegemons to be replaced by others”
Amen to that. The history books don’t lie.
Slight wrinkle though. I haven’t yet found a new hegemon I prefer to the current one.
Maybes you can help me out? What’s your preferred new hegemon(s)? Back up your choice by numerating the countless millions of desperate migrants fighting to get into it.
John Main.
Highest UN death toll of any conflict – after just 30 days, with 88 UN staffers murdered by the Israeli Zionists.
I foresee this genocide by the Zionists breaking all kinds of gruesome records before it’s over.
“Amen” is not a terms Zionists use, they spit on Christians and despise even their own Jewry. If you are a black Ethiopian Jew, stand aside for the remnants of the Warsaw ghetto Jews who adopted Zionism as their racial equal to the Arian race. OMG, Zionism über alles – we are the chosen ones!
Is that John Main’s mantra?
“What’s your preferred new hegemon(s)? ”
History also shows us that the fall of a hegemon is usually followed by an imperial vacuum, with many less powerful states instead of the former singe imperial state. If the US falls, I doubt it will be replaced in our lifetimes.
@John Main
I should be delighted to help you out, but I’m afraid I must disappoint you. Not only have I not found one, not would I presume to claim I possessed either the gift of insight or the gift of prophecy which would enable me to point you in the right direction.
You see, I was merely pointing to a historical phenomenon (as you yourself recognised when you wrote “the history books don’t lie”).
PS – Good try, though!
After the 2009 ” Operation Cast Lead” invasion of Gaza the UN Mission report that came out after the war came to this conclusion:
Finally, the mission concluded that ‘the expected impact” and what it believes was the primary purpose of the blockade “was to bring about a situation in which the civilian population would find life so intolerable that they would leave (if it were possible) or turn Hamas out of office, as well as to collectively punish the civilian population.” The mission saw Operation Cast Lead as a continuation of the policy of punishing the population of Gaza as a whole, intended to increase their level of suffering. The deliberate targeting of the food and sanitation infrastructure, along with the targeting of the UNRWA compound, which destroyed much of Gaza’s humanitarian aid, makes this assertion difficult to refute.
http://www.miftah.org/display.cfm?DocId=21407&CategoryId=21
Thus the claim that the blockade is legitimate fall flat, the blockade is not meant to “hinder” rockets from Gaza as Israel and MSM claim, the blockade was deliberately set up to torment the whole of the Gaza population = collective punishment.
At least 88 aid workers for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have been killed – making the Israel-Gaza war the highest number of United Nations fatalities ever recorded in a single conflict.
This figure shames the Western media and those politicians questioning the figures being produced in Hamas controlled Gaza. The real numbers of civilian casualties are probably far, far higher than those released. Many buildings are simply inaccessible, due to continued bombing and/or lack of heavy equipment, such as cranes and excavators.
The bombing of Al -Azhar university (link below) is absolutely senseless, completely ridiculous. They are causing hundreds and hundreds of billions in damage to new buildings, for what purpose?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSmCTqRvTrA
This wanton destruction speaks of a victory with no consequences – nobody to answer to and nothing to be ashamed of.
Goose, it’s that moment in “Lord of the Flies” where the all the children chant “Kill the pig!” – a new moral reality is formed
“This wanton destruction speaks of a victory with no consequences – nobody to answer to and nothing to be ashamed of.”
It remains to be seen who is to be victorious.
Jack
thx
and if I just may add this quotation from Finkelstein´s comment on Bernie Sanders (which I have linked to in the Forum), because it directly preceded the events you quote – the prelude to “Cast Lead” – so you have a complete chain of logic and reasoning from the side of the Israeli government, which without exception elude the media completely (premeditated attacks are evil Arab deeds always):
“So in June 2008 there was a ceasefire arranged between Israel and Hamas. That evil Hamas, oh my goodness gracious, as Cornel Dr. West would say, my goodness gracious, that evil perfidious Hamas, it negotiated a ceasefire. And then what happened? The ceasefire held, it held in June, it held in July, it held in August, it held in September, it held in October, and it held the first four days in November. And then November 4th came along. When those people whose memories are short, that was election day. when everybody’s attention was riveted on the presidential election and the first black president being elected in our country’s history. And Israel used that moment — when all the cameras were diverted from it — it used that moment to attack Hamas in Gaza and broke the ceasefire. Not evil, perfidious Hamas, but beautiful, wonderful Israel.”
“In fact, even the official Israeli publications which I cite in my book, state the ceasefire held until Israel broke it. And then Israel proceeded to do what it does best. It proceeded to commit a high-tech massacre in Gaza, killed about 1,400 people. Of those 1,400, 350 were children. It systematically devastated the infrastructure of Gaza, and it was guilty of, according to the Goldstone Report, multiple war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.”
AG
Israel conducted so-called targeted raids and strikes against ‘senior’ Hamas figures throughout these quieter periods. They barely get reported though. Maybe there’ll be a late news item that lasts a few seconds.
These assassinations typically culminate in a salvo of rockets being fired from Gaza. At which point western media have something to report; excitedly telling viewers – in a top news item – that Hamas terrorists have ‘again’ attacked Israel. Israel are masters of this PR game. It’s very effective narrative control too, as some in the UK & North America believe Israel does nothing to provoke any of this strife.
Anyone from the UK will recognise this characterisation of reporting from the region.
yes and it’s horrific that you must take a deep dive into the historic record the way we do now here to learn about this.
no “normal” person will ever do that.
I am used to that kind of scrutiny in my work when doing historic research. But this now is actual daily news.
And despite all the media and channels instead of getting better it has gotten worse.
The only progress we have is from the Global South and from the fact that once the wall of silent censorship of the legacy media has been breached, the news can spread like a wildfire. But that’s not because of the journalists and their training, but in spite of it.
” Israel are masters of this PR game”
Goose.
On the PR game here Australia and the BBC re-write history.
This was a ‘re-enactment’ of the Battle of Beersheba on its 100yr anniversary.
“This’s Australia re-writing history in favour of Israel. Australia’s allies were the Palestinians, Israel didn’t even exist, let alone have a flag.”
https://nitter.net/gailymalone/status/1721317624058167665#m
Bizarre and jarring – the horses and flags photo divides the viewers into two groups, the knowing and the unknowing.
It not only brainwashes the unknowing but also creates a dissonance in general society and a source of strife based on knowledge distribution, easily harvested. Inhuman cnuts can’t resist a two-for-the-price-of one-offer in the propaganda stakes, Goebbels post-Stalingrad spin is an exemplar of this two-for-one approach.
Yes Will, one wonder just how many times history has been re-written to suit an agenda, probably many times.
RoS, one thing the Ukraine war and now the Gaza horror has done for me is to make me realise how likely it is that much of what we learned as “history” at school had been written by the elite of the times to reflect their world view. Richard III is a famous case, but what was done to him could easily have been done to any famous person who ended up on the losing side, or indeed anyone who the literati (a small group back then) disapproved of.
Bayard
sry if this is OT but since you mention Richard III. and as I just watched the historic motion picture “Anonymous” (created mainly by Germans in fact) – how exactly was that Richard III. case – fiction vs. historic record?
In Germany what you learn about GB is almost entirely “narrative” from Macbeth to Richard to Tudors to Victoria to Windsor, which is the pinnacle of all this fabrication, up to Churchill. Then along with the loss of imperial might came the loss of influence on historic distortion. Which eventually enables us to see through the lies of British elites a little.
(A major contribution of British filmmakers who ought to be the pillars of manufacturing consent.)
Also, since this problem is mentioned here regarding Australia on the next page.
AG, I think it is fairly well proven that Richard III wasn’t as bad as he was made out to be. Nor was Macbeth, for that matter.
Goose.
Here Netanyahu gives us an insight as to the fate of Gaza once they’ve slaughter the desired amount of Palestinians.
“Israel will have “overall security responsibility” for Gaza for “an indefinite period” after this war with Hamas ends, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. ”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna123954
““Israel will have “overall security responsibility” for Gaza for “an indefinite period” after this war with Hamas ends, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. ””
Assuming they win it.
“Many Brits now sense we’ve arrived at a ‘civilisational moment’, a time when their national community, identity, history, and values appear to be under threat from an array of forces -mass immigration, radical Islamism, woke ideology, broken multiculturalism, and a ruling elite which is seemingly indifferent if not openly dismissive of these concerns.”
— Matt Goodwin
Douglas Murray tweets similar racially charged, antagonistic nonsense.
A few protests and the forces of the right become such insecure, whiny little bitches, don’t they?
For the last 10 years they’ve had everything their way: Brexit, uninterrupted Tory rule; a RW press/media campaign that destroyed a popular leftist leader, using bogus antisemitism claims. Replacing him with a plant from the right. A man the genuine left can’t stand.
And yet… they say things are falling apart in the UK, and somehow it’s all the fault of immigrants and the disempowered, disenfranchised left.
Subject to an “anti-terrorism investigation”, I do not view it as safe currently to return to the UK. Whether the investigation relates to my support for Wikileaks or to my support for Palestine, or to both, I do not know, as the police have not said why I am being investigated.
Shocking.
Never a truer observation made, Craig Murray.
Western nations are now overtly fascist in act and deed. Censorship, the application of the police and security services to suffocate free speech, the jailing of people considered politically unacceptable. Surveillance and more surveillance. The hollowing-out of political parties.
The West as it declines is now at war with the rest of the world. Like the 1930s in Germany the fascists are now on the march. But the march ended in disaster. And it will end in disaster for the West too. Indeed, the slaughter in Gaza – a slaughter fully supported by the USA with its two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and attendant task forces – is galvanising the world against Biden the Slaughterer. Every bit of a child blown to bits and cleaned up by bare hands is a travesty, an inhumanity, and the world knows it. And they know who the fascist barbarians are.
It is so sad but for a country that thought it was so badly done by Sept 11th, and it was dreadfully done on that date, it beggars belief that the USA can support a similar policy in Gaza impacting millions. Genocide for the USA is part of their make-up now, and the world knows it.
Maybe the Middle East will boil. And maybe the USA will get pulled right in. The USA might think it has the kit, but it hasn’t prevailed in Ukraine in its proxy war against Russia. Maybe this is the USA’s Vietnam, Afghanistan, Ukraine, all rolled into one, and then some.
Peace should be the objective. You get more with honey than you get with vinegar. Negotiation, true negotiation, is the only way forward. The USA and Israel and wider may be about to belatedly realise that. This could be the war to end all wars, as someone once said. And yes, if the USA think they’ve got nukes, and of course Israel thinks they’ve got nukes they could use on Gaza, the world might find out that others might have more nukes. And then we are cooking. World cooking in fact.
Maybe we should all reflect on 1 Samuel chapter 15, verse 3, as Premier Netanyahu is fond to reinforce.
I see Norman Finkelstein has had some pretty harsh words to say about Bernie Sanders and his Damascene conversion to Zionism. The Professor has long been a good, articulate contributor to the debate on the ongoing conflict, but he’s highlighted just how deep the ignorance goes within the entire American political class, even among the leftist media’s darlings like Sanders.
” leftist media’s darlings like Sanders.”
Maybe he’s being blackmailed.
Chris
The problem with the US is its insularity. We forget that the US is a Continent not a country. People in the South don’t know anything about the North – the east do not know much about the west. Of course if like Sanders you have been brought up on the idea that America really is a Democracy and not only a democracy but the best democracy on earth, then you are gong to be under the illusion that what you say is the ultimate solution or truth.
Ironically Israel thinks it is special too and they learnt this speciality from their parents (the US and the UK).
What all three countries don’t understand is that in the past 30 years a lot of things are not as they were say in 1993.
The deluded Starmer thinks he can do a Blair – Biden and Trump think they can shove China and Russia around (they can’t, and will have to learn the hard way) and the EU has dropped itself so far in the crap that there is no way they can get out of the US iron grip.
It’s like an old past-it local hardnut thinking he’s still got it as a younger bloke floors him. He later sits on a bar stool with his broken nose and declares to all who will listen (read the MSM) that despite him being pasted, he actually won the fight. The era of Colonialism reminds me of that bloke.
The emptiest vessels make the most noise, and the West and its fake Democracy is wailing and shouting to the world that they have still got IT.
They have lost IT because democracy has to be affordable and because the rich have taken the vast majority of GDP growth over the past 30 years then the affordability to bribe the Middle Classes and the Upper working class can no longer be carried out.
This is why the right of the Tory Party are calling homelessness a “lifestyle choice”, and the proposals for cracking down on dissent and protest are being resisted; it’s because they know that there will be trouble as the affordability of democracy becomes limited.
Braverman (being as dim as a dark night) doesn’t understand that, and the vast majority of the Conservatives don’t know it either but they think it might save their seats.
Starmer doesn’t know anything anyway – not even that if he becomes PM it will be his Patriotic Duty to carry out the legacy of what the Tories leave him once they get kicked out.
Always remember: the West is ruled by cowards and they like being told what to do by the US and the US’s protection (like a Gangster protecting a New York Restaurant for money) their ‘interests’ collide, and as far as the Palestinians are concerned they have nothing that the West can use use or exploit, so: sod ’em.
That’s the tale here.
Cowardice and common interests.
Citing the ICC, one of the most biased clubs on Earth. Desperation.
What Europe needs is much more Green from Islam end Eco and much less blue from Judaism and police on the streets.
/S
When the dust settles, acts such as these must be put into perspective, those bombs will be dropped on innocent civilians as the death toll of Palestinian children passes the 4,000 mark.
I have said and so have you that the ICC will not prosecute Biden or Sunak or even Ursula von der Leyen for backing the war on Gaza which includes war crimes, such as bombing civilians, hospitals, cutting off, water food and energy in which the above failed to call for an immediate ceasefire.
“The Biden administration will transfer $320 million of precision bombs to Israel”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/11/06/us-transferring-320-million-worth-of-weapons-to-israel-reports-say/
Antonyl
This is especially useful for you to look at and digest as to why what is happening is genocide.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/11/the-right-of-self-defence/comment-page-1/#comment-1049500
The law has been clear and in favour for the palestinians ever since 1948/Nakba. The problem has been to enforce the law and that is where we are now or rather have ever been since the Nakba. We have not moved one step.
There needs to be a collective effort by the arab leaders to stop treat Israel/west with impunity because the israel/west will not change unless there is a response from the “other” side, if the arab leaders just going to sit still doing nothing then of course the US/Israeli slaughter will continue until there are no more palestinians.
This is the type of action that is needed, start a movement and influence, lobby the ICC and call them out to start a case against israel:
Algeria calls on ICC to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231107-algeria-calls-on-icc-to-hold-israel-accountable-for-its-crimes-in-gaza/
Also, unfortunately there is still a prevalent classic colonial discourse in the western MSM and amongst politicians, from left to right.
We have the (alleged) irrational, hateful, “moslem” arab brutes, we have the noble civilized settler/westerner/jew that just want to live in peace and prosperity. The brutes have of course no rights and should be treated with no respect.
Another problem is the constant framing of two equal parties, take UNRWA latest comment:
For 1 month, people across📍#GazaStrip have been denied aid, killed & bombed out of their homes.
Daily struggles to find bread & water. Blackouts cut people off from loved ones & the rest of the world.
This is forced displacement & humanitarian tragedy of colossal proportions.
https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1721802988841226333?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This type of bulletin is typical whether they are from a UN organisation or a western human rights organisation like Amnesty: palestinians are killed, bombed, ethnically cleansed, hundreds of thousands of their houses are destroyed etc but Israel are never mentioned as the culprit. It is like the israeli lobby have infiltrated every organisation!
And it is not a “tragedy” as UNRWA claim, it is a genocide, it is an inhumane wanton and human slaughter by 1 strong party against the another party that lack even basic necessities like water and fuel! It is war crimes galore!
These sobering, muted statements must stop! The silence, of what is really going on, is complicity!
Another example is when HRW today declare that nations that provide arms to Israel or Palestinians could be complicit in warcrimes. Could? They are complicit and most obviously the west are complicit, US just today announced another arms deal with Israel. West know that these weapons are used for human rights atrocities. US even break their own law by exporting weapons to Israel!
And of course, no mention by HRW that an occupied people like palestinians have the right to defend itself and no mention that an occupying power like Israel do not have the right to strengthen such a occupation.
Again, the framing is everything.
I’d agree Jack that they are complicit. They are stoking the flames of destruction, a destruction that is mainly falling on the heads of innocent civilians. In saying that the Zionists are bombing the innocent civilians using the pretext that they (civilians) are aiding and abetting Hamas, which doesn’t hold water in the most part – how can a baby or a child aid them? – the IDF are killing indiscriminately.
Meanwhile I think a fog of madness has descended on these doctors, who are sworn to uphold the Hippocratic Oath.
“About 90 Israeli doctors have signed a letter calling for the bombing of hospitals in Gaza.
The letter states, in no uncertain terms, that due to suspicion of “terrorist activity,” the hospitals are “a legitimate target for annihilation.” They claim that “ambulances that are evacuating patients to the south in order to be treated elsewhere are at their disposal.” It does not mention that these ambulances, too, are being bombed by Israel, or that the south is also being mercilessly pummeled.”
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/israeli-doctors-urge-the-bombing-of-gaza-hospitals/
A lot of zionist/Jewish doctors will not treat gentiles, it’s part of their belief system. It’s not their fault, they are just fascists.
A Jewish doctor’s plot.
How history repeats.
I’m afraid that the UN and its organisations have, for years, been bought and sold. The usual suspects provide a large proportion of the UN funding (USA, Gates, etc.). And with that funding comes corruption of the UN ideals. Unless the UN can be cleansed of this corruption then it is part of the problem.
So long as the UN is in the US, it is the US.
https://odysee.com/@TheGrayzone:c/un-official-resigns-over-'prima-facie:b
This is a must for those who can see the unfolding genocide but those who like to deny that a genocide is under way. The rather passive voice of the UN in this dispute is outlined in detail.
—
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A concerted effort of boycotts and sanctions against Israel and its goods, could work if the below is anything to go by. Those countries that don’t back the slaughter in Gaza, must get together and arrange strict sanctions and boycotts of all things Israeli.
The FT reports.
“Israel’s war against Hamas has sent shockwaves through its $488bn economy, disrupting thousands of businesses, straining public finances and plunging whole sectors into crisis.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to create an “economy under arms”, promising vast transfers of cash to endangered companies and regions on a scale last seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“My guidance is clear: we are opening the taps, pumping money to everyone who needs it,” he said on Thursday. “Over the past decade we built a very strong economy and whatever economic price this war exacts on us, we will pay it without hesitation.””
https://archive.ph/20231106052908/https://www.ft.com/content/77d7ff6b-85f7-40ba-babe-ed82a3e8208f#selection-2207.0-2215.249
I have been a supporter of BDS for years. In Scotland we say when we see a product with the Union flag- “if it’s got a Jack put it back”. BARCODE 729 = Made in Israel. The same tactic should apply. We call the Union flag “The Butchers Apron” Well, it looks like the Israeli flag is competing for the same name.
Just as an aside,
I lived and worked in Manhattan for 8 years, until relatively recently. I was always intrigued, amazed and mightily impressed by a very public, weekly protest against Israel.
Every Wednesday afternoon on 1st Avenue, directly across from that main UN building, 2 Hasidic Jews – in their black attire, hats and beards – would wave a bl00dy big Palestinian flag and hold up assorted banners supporting Palestine, and denouncing Israel. And these 2 guys did this every week, in all weather, AND in the heart of New York City!
Just wish I had talked to them and shook their hands.
One of those rabbis might be rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss. There are lots of videos featuring him on YouTube
as an aside as well:
In an October portrait about Hollywood screenwriter Eli Roth, who had originally written the movie “Munich” about the aftermath of the murders of the Israeli Olympics team 1972 there is this phrase:
“Spielberg brought in playwright Tony Kushner to work on Roth’s script for “Munich”, a morality play about Israeli assassins targeting Palestinian militants.”
I find it remarkable that the text says “militant” not “terrorist”.
(albeit “Munich” was deeply racist of course and a scandal while nobody in the West understood that.)
Which tells you something about the nature of academia and the separation of spheres. You might get more truth about human rights violations in Palestine in an article about economics than a text about intern. law and more truth about historic records in a discussion about writing fiction.
p.s. in Germany two soccer-players with Arab background were suspended after arguing in favour of Palestinians´ rights. One “stood with Palestine”. He was not willing to renounce and has left his club. The other one apologized after posting “God, help our oppressed brothers in Palestine to achieve victory. May God grant mercy to the dead, may God heal their wounded.” I am not sure who knows more about politics here, the players or club management. They were almost the only people of popular fame in their realms who spoke out with this honesty. Both were immediately silenced. May be they should join Craig in Geneva.
Not quite as bad in the UK. London has a Muslim mayor, he’s less sympathetic to protest bans. There are double standards though…
Lost count of the number expressing hatred for Russia over their military actions. Expressing hatred for Russia and Putin has been encouraged by the UK establishment.
Someone expresses hatred for Israel, Netanyahu, puts it on placard, marches with it…and it’s suddenly unacceptable hate.
it makes me think how does Premier League handle this issue?
I would assume in essence its all about money.
Player #2 in my above example after all is member of team FC Bayern München, which would be the equivalent to ManCity right now. Both clubs will look very closely how their monetary values might suffer.
So the fact that there might not be comparable news stories in GB´s soccer leagues means not that those are not internal issues with the clubs.
Actually most likely they are, especially since soccer players with Muslim family roots will come from poorer background knowing more about realities there. Soccer is still working-class.
And then there are the investors and club-owners who almost exclusively come from oil-rich Arab nations. Ha-Ha.
p.s. Speaking of double standard:
Jeremy Corbyn´s appearance at the Rosa-Luxemburg summit about visions for Europe this week, taking place at Berlin´s most important theatre, Volksbühne, just a few hours ago was cancelled.
Cause was apparently the German version of this Jacobin text by Corbyn:
“Jeremy Corbyn: “We Should Condemn the Targeting of Civilians, No Matter Who Does It””
https://jacobin.com/2023/10/jeremy-corbyn-israel-palestine-gaza-occupation-starmer-civilians
The decision was not made by the THE LEFT PARTY but by the theatre administration (which might have to do with state funding?) Who knows. But this is a nightmare and shows how little clout the Left has left and how twisted those culture morons are.
The historian Vincent Bevins is one of many who rejects the official storyline that Germans are Good People constrained by great “guilt” over the Holocaust:
“I am always unconvinced by the assertion that Germany’s unconditional support for Israel is some kind of over-correction to the Holocaust. They didn’t stop in the middle of the Holocaust because of guilt or a sudden appreciation for humanity. They got caught, stopped and publicly shamed.”
It says everything about the depths Britain has plumbed that you do not feel safe to return. The liberal wing of the establishment and its admirers like to attribute that descent to moral degenerates like Suella Braverman. What they will never do is interrogate the responsibility of the figures they revere. For example the man they like to represent as the nation’s moral conscience and one of the world’s foremost moral voices – Gordon Brown. Gordon recently reappeared in public life specifically to demand that Vladimir Putin be tried as a war criminal at The Hague, so intolerable and unprecedented was Russia’s unprovoked, illegal invasion of its neighbour. It had so outraged Gordon’s deep morality that he felt compelled to speak.
So what has the great man had to say about the somewhat more genocidal words and actions of Binyamin Netanyahu?
Three weeks into the slaughter in Gaza the great man spoke:
“The sight of defenceless children in distress should evoke global outrage and galvanise us to act. And that is why Hamas terrorists, who in their rampage maimed, killed and kidnapped innocent children, should now be subject to arrest and prosecution by the international criminal court for war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/27/children-victims-war-hamas-israel
Check out his byline picture.
Gordon Brown that Israeli firster wants to drag Hamas resisters to the ICC, yet not one word of criticism about Israel and the Genocidal policies it has put in place and implementing now. G Brown is the genocidal evil face of the UK/US state bureaucracy. I hope he pays a heavy price.
He is a longstanding patron of the Jewish National Fund, an ethnic cleansing organisation that helps build illegal settlements and prevents Arabs from buying land and living in certain areas. Also provides money for IDF recruitment programs.
https://www.stopthejnf.org/stop-the-jewish-national-fund-jnf-help-dismantle-a-colonial-pillar-of-the-israeli-apartheid-regime/
4000 children killed in Gaza are in distress. I don’t think so!
What an arsehole!
Half of a million children in distress is nothing to compare to 1400!
Asking for Armistice (ceasefire) on the Armistice Day is offensive to some. War is Peace etc.
“For example the man they like to represent as the nation’s moral conscience and one of the world’s foremost moral voices – Gordon Brown.”
Perhaps its because I don’t read the Guardian but I can’t recall anybody saying anything like this about Gordon Brown.
I specified who represents him that way. They’ve done so for decades and will keep the myth going long after he’s gone. The only person who runs him close in their eyes is Obama.
Come back to the UK, Craig. We want to talk to you. We will afford you a safe passage, do not worry.
I would have thought that Craig’s place this weekend would be speaking to protesters in Trafalgar Square, but his safety is important. it is noteworthy that the home office has managed to keep him away from the UK and issues at hand by means of harassment.
Did they anticipated this?
Hmmm, it has occurred to me that you might end up next door to Julian Assange if you return. I applaud your decision to stay away and will chip in what I can.
Cod, I don’t know where to start! So I just went out to get a few things at the local supermarket, and had a quick look at the newspaper headlines on the way out, and the front-page headline of the Daily Express was POLICE: CALL OFF PROTESTS ON ARMSITICE WEEKEND TO AVOID VIOLENCE. So the MSM have been pushing the ‘fear of the Cenotaph being vandalised’ manufactured smear to the nth degree during the past three weeks or so since a stage/platform mysteriously appeared next to the Cenotaph on Sunday the 15th of October, the day after the first big demo in London, and ESPECIALLY in the past week, during which it has just been relentless.
Anyway, the Mail had sold out, so when I got back just now I checked out today’s front pages, and would you believe it – like manna from heaven for the Establishment and its propaganda machine, the front-page headline of the Daily Mail is POPPY SELLER, 78, ‘PUNCHED BY PROTESTERS’. And I’ve barely got started yet! Here’s just a few of the headlines to articles/stories in the Mail today:
Well I have now been waiting for nineteen….. make that twenty minutes for one tab to open, having saved six DM articles into New Tabs, so that I could then copy and paste each of the headlines into this comment, And it’s STILL loading after 24 minutes! And believe me, my online activity is continually monitored AND my laptop(s) are slowed right down and/or frozen every time I use one or the other. So it looks like it’s finally finished loading after 31 minutes, so it’ll just be the one headline!
EXCLUSIVE: Football hooligans are planning to ‘team up’ and ‘protect’ the Cenotaph from pro-Palestine protestors… with police fearing more than a thousand will come to London where a rally against war in Gaza is set to take place
So I tried the next tab, and it only took about three minutes to come up, so here it is:
Ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn confirms he will attend controversial Armistice Day Gaza march in London despite fears of violence and damage to the Cenotaph – as successor Keir Starmer tries to calm backbench revolt with warning to Israel
Two minutes!
Ministers hold emergency COBRA meeting ahead of Remembrance Sunday amid fears pro-Palestine march will clash with Armistice events – and as far-right groups vow to descend on London
over 15 minutes!
I call upon all decent human beings to object’: Israel president Isaac Herzog condemns planned pro Palestine march on Armistice Day as ‘atrocious’ – while Met Police asks organisers to ‘urgently reconsider’ protests in the capital
I’ve got to give up, but there’s one about protesters killing a guy at an ‘Israel/Palestine rally in California
There’s lots of evidence the poppy seller was punched.
Come on, it was a protest in a railway station – filmed from every conceivable angle. It’s not plausible to make out it’s a lie.
There’s a certain way of thinking about protesters for peace. If they’re not peaceful themselves, they lose the support of the undecided. It’s a shame, but what can you do.
Ex-parachute regiment veteran from Northern Ireland punched in face when selling poppies at Waverley Station.
There’s a whiff of Lee Harvey Oswald being arrested for distributing ‘Hands Off Cuba’ leaflets about this story.
A regiment best known for the mass murder of Irish civilians in Derry and Ballymurphy, Belfast. (Patron King Charles 3rd.)
“There’s lots of evidence the poppy seller was punched.”
Who did the punching and who took the pictures?
“There’s lots of evidence the poppy seller was punched. Come on, it was a protest in a railway station – filmed from every conceivable angle. It’s not plausible to make out it’s a lie.”
However, given that it was “filmed from every conceivable angle”, it’s extremely plausible to make out it was staged.
And what I meant to say AND forgot to say at the end of my first paragraph was….. and NOW it’s violence. And re the Poppy Seller being punched John, and filmed from every conceivable angle, is there any footage of it in the MSM – ie on one or more MSM websites that you’ve seen? If so, could you post a link to it, save me looking just now. Thanks
Anyway, re the football hooligans story – apart from sounding totally implausible of course – how on earth would the DM have found out about it? Oh, I know, one of them phoned the DM and said: ‘Hello there, I’m a football hooligan, and there’s a whole bunch of football hooligans who have teamed up and are coming down to London on Saturday to protect the Cenotaph from pro-Palestine protestors, and there will probably be about a thousand of us. Or maybe phoned the police just to let them know.
So I just this minute did a search to ascertain how widely this story is being reported in the MSM, and came across this Sun article, which at one point says the following, and seems to imply that the story originated in the DM:
One source told the Daily Mail: “The protest alone is tricky enough but they think gangs of hooligans are going to team up and protect the Cenotaph.
And here are some more passages from the Sun article:
ON ALERT Fears far-Right thugs will descend on London to ‘protect’ capital’s landmarks against pro-Palestine protests
An emergency Cobra meeting was called on Tuesday over the UK’s terror threat level ahead of Armistice weekend .
METROPOLITAN Police are under pressure to cancel pro-Palestine protests this weekend amid fears of an outbreak of violence with far-Right thugs planning on ‘protecting’ London’s landmarks.
Gangs of football hooligans are reportedly planning to “protect” the Capital’s landmark memorials from protestors this weekend during planned remembrance services. [protect not just the Cenotaph then, but also other landmark memorials as well]
Senior officers in the force are worried about breakaway groups intent on crime and disorder during the memorial events.
Met cops said they were “constantly examining the intelligence ahead of the weekend and would respond “appropriately”.
One group, named “Football Lads Against Extremism”, is reportedly planning to meet up with “other firms coming in” before attending the National Service at Whitehall – also attended by the Royals and Prime Minister.
Since October 7, more than 160 people [160??!] have been arrested in the UK for a range of offences, including racially motivated public offences, violence and assaulting police officers.
There has been an escalation in violence and disorder linked to protests, often perpetrated by breakaway groups who have no interest in demonstration causes.
The Cenotaph war memorial in Manchester is currently being guarded by Police with patrols and CCTV after two incidents this week at the site.[well there’s plenty of other war memorials all over the country for us protesters to vandalise!
Investigations are ongoing.
Home Secretary backed the Met’s earlier statement urging demonstrators to reconsider, adding: “I welcome this statement from the Met Police.
“The hate marchers need to understand that decent British people have had enough of these displays of thuggish intimidation and extremism.”
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said: “The risk of violence and disorder linked to breakaway groups is growing.[I wonder who these ‘breakaway groups’ are, and how the Deputy Assistant Commissioner knows that the risk of violence and disorder by them is growing?]
“This is of concern ahead of a significant and busy weekend in the capital.
“Our message to organisers is clear: Please, we ask you to urgently reconsider. It is not appropriate to hold any protests in London this weekend.”
“The Prime Minister himself does not think it’s right for these sorts of protests to be scheduled on Armistice Day,” the spokesman said.
“He believes that is provocative and disrespectful.” [so it’s not just the fear of the Cenotaph and other landmark memorials being vandalised (peace protesters are well known for doing so of course) but the protest itself will be provocative, but to who exactly, he omits to say]
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24664782/fears-far-right-thugs-descend-london-palestine-protests/
Right, so THAT is what the Cobra meeting was called for……. to concoct and fabricate all of this! Tere really are no limits to what these people are capable of. The way it appears to me is that the Met asked the organisers to cancel the demo, and when they declined to do so, the PTB had all this stuff ready and prepared to release to the MSM shortly afterwards. Or could it be just coincidence that on the day the organisers are asked to reconsider and, as such, decline, the Met suddenly learn that an army of football hooligans are coming down to London on Saturday. I’m tempted to say ‘you really couldn’t make it up’, but *they* DID!
NB You see if the police cancel the demo, then there’s no need for the ‘football hooligans’ to turn up, and Jo/Joe Public will be none the wiser!
Afterthought: I suppose they couldn’t very well call the group Football Hooligans Against Extremism!!
Yes it could well be an attempt to recruit football supporters over to the State cause – Hooligans turned defenders of the righteous, bad guys to good guys. Football supporters as a group (to the extent they are) do not seem in agreement with the pro Israel position
They go by the name of the Democratic Football Lads Association (DFLA).
The far right did turn out to confront BLM and protect the statues of Churchill etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/10/far-right-protesters-plan-defence-of-statues-such-as-churchills
There’s a certain irony to the traditionally anti-Semitic far right turning out to oppose an anti-Israel protest.
No Pears, if it was them the Sun would have said as much, and got the name right, and not conveniently got it wrong and called them Football Lads Against Extremism. And the DFLA don’t remotely sound like football hooligans to me.
The Sun; getting things right…
A first time for everything.
The following is from a statement Stop the War posted on its website yesterday (and which they emailed to all their members and subscribers early yesterday afternoon, which is where I first read it):
We met earlier today with the Police to finalise the route details of the planned march on Saturday going from Marble Arch to The US Embassy – well away from the centre of London and Whitehall. At that meeting the Police made clear, as reaffirmed in their statement, that the marches we had organised had been overwhelmingly peaceful with low levels of arrest.
They asked us to consider not marching this Saturday and postponing for a week because of the sensitivity of this weekend. It is categorically untrue that the Police told us that it was not appropriate to protest this weekend. They raised a concern about the possibility of breakaway groups leaving the march but were not able to provide any evidence as to why this risk would be increased on Saturday 11 November.
It was this bit in particular I had in mind – ie At that meeting the Police made clear, as reaffirmed in their statement, that the marches we had organised had been overwhelmingly peaceful with low levels of arrest.
And also this bit, given what it said in the Sun article -ie They raised a concern about the possibility of breakaway groups leaving the march but were not able to provide any evidence as to why this risk would be increased on Saturday 11 November.
And I should just point out that the Mail (which I’m pretty certain ‘broke’ the story), posted the article on their website at 15.35 yesterday (the Sun posted theirs at 21.40), and as for the rest of the timeline, well all I know is that the organisers of the demo – five groups in all, including Stop the War – met with the Metropolitan Police yesterday morning, and sent out their email just after 1.00pm, if I remember correctly, and I’m pretty sure that Cobra (allegedly) met at No 10 yesterday morning (Tuesday) as well. The only thing that DOESN’T fit is the Daily Express, which I saw in the supermarket, and that was around 5.45pm. I didn’t read the whole article, but I definitely read that the organisers had rejected the Met’s suggestion that they postpone the demo, and the only possible explanation is that the Express put out a second edition (which they no doubt had ready to print….. the story, that is, as soon as they got word the organisers had declined to cancel the demo). I say the ONLY thing, but then it’s highly unlikely that Cobra – once they got word – had time to dream up all the football hooligans stuff ( and then, having passed it on to the Mail, for the Mail to put it all together, and then post it on their website. I very much doubt Cobra met at all, and that was just to have Jo/Joe Public thinking and believing that the situation is mega dire and serious, and the reality is that it was all planned days in advance.- including the meeting with the Met whoever on the Tuesday morning – and senior black propagandists at MI5 or wherever, concocted and contrived all the football hooligans tripe ready for when the organisers declined to cancel, as they knew they would. There was absolutely no reason why they should of course, and the Met whoever knew it, because of course HE knew that all the Cenotaph stuff was manufactured and was complete and utter B/S. And he/they knew that apart from everything else, dozens and dozens of coaches had already been booked with thousands of people coming from all over the country, so the organisers obviously weren’t gonna agree to cancel for that reason alone.
Anyway, given that the political establishment are rapidly sinking in their own sea of sh%t, thanks to their mate Bibi, and it’s all backfiring on them ultra big-time, and waking millions up to just who and what they are, then they had no choice but to concoct and contrive a massive smear campaign against the marchers for peace, because Attack is the Best Form of Defence. And Psychopaths have no problem whatsoever with smearing Empaths, as we have witnessed and experienced over the past eight years.
PS It only occurred to me today that I’ve not come across anything regards the Green Party, and then quickly realised why. Because they are on the same side as us of course, and so the MSM is keeping quiet about them. They’ve made a number of statements, this one on October the 13th:
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2023/10/13/green-party-calls-on-international-community-to-urge-restraint-in-israel-palestine-conflict/
Apologies for all the posts, but I was just re-reading my 00.30 post and specifically the passages from the Sun article, and as soon as I got to this bit: ‘The Cenotaph war memorial in Manchester is currently being guarded by Police with patrols and CCTV after two incidents this week’, I did a quick search (as I’m about to hit the sack), and the only thing I found was an article posted in the early hours of this morning regards a war memorial having been spray-painted with FREE PALESTINE last night. Such good timing. Hmm…….
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24666076/pro-palestinian-war-israel-hamas-memorial-manchester-police/
Oh, and get the third picture down in the article! I wonder where that’s from?!
Really sorry, but one more thing just occurred to me. In their statement, Stop the War said the following: They (the police) raised a concern about the possibility of breakaway groups leaving the march but were not able to provide any evidence as to why this risk would be increased on Saturday 11 November.
Now if Stop the War thought to ask the police this, then you would have thought that the folks at the Mail and the Sun (and any other newspaper that reported the story) would have thought to ask the same question. They ARE professionals after all. But then we all know why they didn’t! Because they knew it was B/S of course. B/S the police were giving them to dupe and deceive their millions of readers for the purpose of creating anger and hostility in them towards the organisers for not postponing the march/demo..
NB I wonder what the police DID say when StW asked them why they thought – and what reason they had to believe – that there was a risk of breakaway groups leaving the march [and causing trouble]. They must have said something! An awkward moment for them no doubt!
Allan Howard.
“The Cenotaph war memorial in Manchester”
The above has all the making of what I call establishment work to fool the masses, a similar thing happened on Orkney, when it was the Scottish elections when graves were spray painted with SNP logo’s the voters saw red and voted for the Lib/Dems instead this was before the SNP became a party of grifters and careerists, or before we knew it had become one.
The media will run and run with the vandalism of the monument till Saturday, and possibly longer hoping it leads to the banning of Pro-Palestinian/ Stop the Slaughter marches altogether.
Why has the question of protest vandalism and violence even arisen? These protests have been going on for weeks without major incident.
Reminiscent of how pro-Corbyn movement Momentum were rebranded as thugs, by a media desperate for some angle to smear the then fastest growing, largest party in Europe with. Labour had some 580,000 members c.2017-2018.
I’ve no idea if the rumours are true, but there is talk of the far right turning up to pick a fight with protesters – to artificially create trouble where there otherwise would be none. If the State has to use its far right assets and undercover officers, as Brown shirt agents of provocation, what sort of country are we? And in that scenario who are the bad guys, really?
Isn’t it interesting how Israel have been courting the British far right. Tommy Robinson is a big fan apparently.