Al Jazeera are leading their news with the execution of Palestinian civilians, including women and toddlers, inside the school in Jabalia where they were sheltering. They were all shot at point blank range, with no signs of a bomb or missile strike.
On the BBC, the Daily Politics show – which consists of discussion between senior British MPs – does not discuss Palestine at all, because the British political class supports the genocide, so for them there is nothing to discuss.
Also in Jabalia, the Israelis today destroyed the last remaining bakery.
It is worth stating why this is plainly a genocide in Gaza:
1) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure which supports the civilian population, including water treatment, electricity, sewerage systems, bakeries and fishing boats;
2) Deliberate destruction of almost all medical facilities;
3) Deliberate destruction of educational facilities, from universities to primary schools;
4) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of civil society, including Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministries and Council buildings and deliberate destruction of administrative records;
5) Deliberate blocking of food aid inducing mass starvation;
6) Massive and indiscriminate bombardment. In wars the general percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8%. In Ukraine it is 6%. In Gaza it is 42%. This is indiscriminate destruction of an ethnic group;
7) Mass executions of civilians;
8) Acts of dehumanisation of the Palestinians, including parading prisoners naked for public and media show and humiliation, beating and sexually abusing them;
9) Forced mass movement of population;
10) Deliberate targeting of religious and cultural heritage buildings;
11) Deliberate targeting of intellectual leadership, including journalists, doctors, poets, university lecturers and senior administrators;
12) Numerous declarations of open genocidal intent from the President and Prime Minister down through almost the entire fabric of both civilian and military establishment.
This is the official definition of Genocide in international law, from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Yesterday I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.
The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.
The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.
The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.
A genocide is the worst of crimes. Just how appalling this one is has been shown to the world like never before, through the power of social media.
But to the global 1% whose interests rule the world, no number of dead Palestinians makes any real difference to their interests. On the other hand, the ramifications for the international system of wealth concentration, if western political elites start to be held accountable for their crimes, are uncertain and therefore carry more risk. This is particularly the concern of ruling classes of both Western and Arab states.
It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.
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So, history starts yesterday, or maybe the day before that but don’t go beyond a few weeks and all the way back.
What do I mean?
I think that Governor DeSantis from Florida, U.S.A., has the answer. You simply can’t look at all of history over a long time span; such an exercise might seriously hurt people’s feelings and truly explain and expose the meaning of ‘historical context’. And, what does all this have to do with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict?
The things which I note, viewed through ‘legally honest’ eyes are:-
i) Did not Israel forcefully displace and dispossess over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948?
ii) Is it not, in the main, the displaced and dispossessed Palestinians who are the refugee occupants of Gaza and the West Bank today?
iii) Didn’t the International Community after the dispossession and 1967 war demarcated boundary with allocated East Jerusalem as the capital for the Palestinian state be the formula for resolution?
iv) Forgetting the history above but recalling only after 1967( for a moment) what gives Israel (even with the most generous legal spirit and historical forgetfullness) the right to extend beyond the 1967 boundary, build an Apartheid wall, capture even more Palestinian land, build settlements, dislodge Palestinians from their generational homes, pass discriminatory laws which allow the use of said laws against Jews claiming Palestinian homes but not in reverse at all allowing for Palestinians to claim generational homes against Jewish occupants, reserve certain senior positions for only Jewish members of the ‘Jewish state’, and ….and ….and…. do I need to say more about the Jewish state of Israel?
v) And , of course, Israel has all legal and full international legal rights to maintain military occupation of post 1967 acknowledged Palestinian lands.
vi) And, and not to forget the brilliant, fair and most honest Prime Minister of Israel ever, Benjamin Netanyahu, who did everything lawfully to ensure that the occupation policies would ensure that a viable Palestinian state would never be practically possible as an assured part of his life’s mission.
So, all in all, the democratic ‘Jewish state’ fully supported by the US and its President has every right to bomb and keep bombing all the ‘terrorists’ in Gaza and any neighbouring refugee to be found ( in refugee camps).
And finally, myself a lawyer, I am so proud and privileged to live in a just, honest and fair world ( of course, as exemplified by the Palestinian/Israeli conflict) – and indeed one must believe in the ‘rule of law’ and the democracy practised and fully demonstrated by the democratic state of Israel fully supported with all the US military and financial might.
A question:-
Did history just start on 7th October, 2023?
Yes, it did. Something happened on that day, which resulted in even the most intelligent and important people, having their memories erased of every event prior to that date.
It is almost the case, that the entire Western World has suffered from a bout of mass dementia.
andyoldlabour,
Western collective amnesia?
Courtenay,
I would say, more like Western selective amnesia.
The rule of law is a fig leaf illusion to be deployed or cited as suits the circumstance.
Could you imagine London being flattened through sustained bombing whilst power, fuel, water and medicine are cut off. Or Washington, or Berlin?
Sadly what goes around comes around. Negotiation, compromise, cooperation is the only solution. The Israeli action is Gaza will never ever deliver the promised land.
Anyway, the way things are headed as conflagration spreads into more and more theatres of conflict, we might find that cities around the world might be in for a similar if not worse experience than Gaza.
Humankind is in truth parasitical, and parasites, unless they can be inoculated, and or find a new host, ultimately destroy themselves.
A war to end all wars.
i) Did not Israel forcefully displace and dispossess over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948?
That would seem to blame the Palestinian Jews for every departure of Palestinian Arabs following the forceful invasion by the Arab League of nations.
And not mention the many Jews who departed their homes in that area and from Arab countries that turned more against them.
ii) Is it not, in the main, the displaced and dispossessed Palestinians who are the refugee occupants of Gaza and the West Bank today?
According to Ephraim Karsh, a professor at KCL who directs an Israeli think-tank albeit named after a peace initiative
“millions of Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and Greek “internal refugees” were not recognized as refugees by the 1951 convention.
There was, however, once again, one notable exception: the Palestinians. While 480,000 of the 600,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes during the 1948–49 war – or 80 percent – remained in what used to be the country of their nationality at the outbreak of hostilities, namely mandatory Palestine, they were, nevertheless, recognized as refugees.”
And he points out that
“both the IRO constitution and the 1951 convention unequivocally deny this status and its attendant benefits to any refugee who “has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.” In line with this ruling, in 1952–53, the High Commissioner for Refugees declined Ankara’s request to grant refugee status to the 154,000 persons of Turkish origin who had been expelled from Bulgaria on the grounds that they ceased to be refugees upon receiving Turkish citizenship. Yet this principle has never been applied to the Palestinians who have been granted Jordanian citizenship or their descendants – amounting to some 3 million “refugees” in today’s terms.”
“That would seem to blame the Palestinian Jews for every departure of Palestinian Arabs following the forceful invasion by the Arab League of nations.”
At least this commenter comes out as a genuine hasbara propagandist, ready to distort history for the sake of his narrative. There were very few Palestinian Jews in pre-independence Palestine. Most Jews were new immigrant Ashkenazim, ready to make the “Great Replacement” of the indigenous population. The plans and programme for the replacement are all documented by Israeli historians. The attempted invasion by the Arab states was a response to the illegal ethnic cleansing conducted by the Ashkenazi immigrants before the declaration of independence..
That’s the third and strongest personal accusation you’ve made of Jewish propaganda, despite my having told you I have zero connection to Israel or any Jewish cause.
I’m not sure how you expect people to refer to Jews living in Palestine then, given that it seemed partisan to refer to them as Israelis in the context of the invasion on the day that was declared.
Firstly Zionism is an Ideology; Judaism is a Religious identity.
Zionism, or Anti-Palestinian Racism to give it its proper name, is a genocidal ideology based on the writings of a European Terrorist group of service to the Imperial powers.
It’s based on denying rights, including the rights to life to a group based on the ethnicity and national origin, and it’s flagrantly racist in its conception and genocidal implementation.
Jews have opposed Zionism longer than anybody else include Palestinians. Balfour’s cabinet contained a single Jew, who wrote a blistering letter denouncing the racist idea of Zionism, and every word rings true today.
https://balfourproject.org/edwin-montagu-and-zionism-1917/
Palestinian Jews were not Zionists. There was a smaller population of Arabic Jews from other parts of the Ottoman Empire, and Jews of Eastern European Decent – these were Palestinian Jews – who had no sympathy with Zionism. They are exemplified by the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta – a member of whom was minister of Jewish Affairs in the Arafat Cabinet. These people came from wherever to live in Palestine as Palestinians, be they Jew or Muslim or Christian or what have you.
That’s the first nine Zionist State Terrorist Group ringleaders – all Eastern and Central European Terrorists intent on stealing a part of Western Asian and murdering the Inhabitants.
How do these people end up on a different continent imposing a fascist ideology on the population, having magically become Palestinian, given they deny Palestinians even exist?
• David Ben-Gurion – Polish
• Moshe Sharett – Russian
• Levi Eshkol – Ukraine
• Yigal Peikowitz – Belarus (born in Palestine)
• Golda Meir – Ukraine
• Yitzhak Rabin – Belarus / Ukraine (born in Palestine)
• Menachem Begin – Polish
• Yitzhak Shamir – Polish
• Shimon Peres – Polish
The Zionist State Terrorist Group who came from Eastern Europe and America with the Express purpose of carrying out a terrorist campaign leading to the murder of tens of thousands, and the violent expulsion of the Palestinian people.
These were Zionist State a transnational group of recent immigrants from whichever country they came to invade from, formed into well armed group of terrorists backed by the leading imperial powers of the day to attack a defenceless civilian population. That has continued unabated since 1917 with such continuity that “well armed group of terrorists backed by leading imperial powers of the day attack a defenceless civilian population” could apply to 1948, 1967, 2000, 2014, 2022, 2023.
There was no invasion, a group of volunteer forces, greatly outnumbers by the Zionist State Terror group tried to ameliorate the slaughter of the defenceless Civilian population, which had ramped up under plan Dalet in 1947[1] – it was over six months and after tens of villages had been depopulated, many massacres and atrocities committed and the first half dead refugees had survived the death marches into the Egyptian/Jordanian desert.
[1] https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/Plan%20dalet.pdf
Ape
Why do you present the official Israeli view then? I criticise what is said, not the person. Hasbarists always deny their connection with Israel, it’s the policy. We can only judge by what you say. If you present the official Israeli version, then it’s likely you’re doing so for a reason, as there’s no connection with verifiable truth.
Cabbage
a new generation in the west is accessing the basic facts & history of zionism, circumventing the wall of establishment propaganda.
the consequences are predictable.
this week a Harvard-Harris poll found that a majority of Americans aged 18-24 believe the long-term answer to the conflict is for “Israel to be ended and given back to the Palestinians.”
https://nypost.com/2023/12/16/news/majority-of-americans-18-24-think-israel-should-be-ended-and-given-to-hamas/
“Majority of Americans 18–24 think Israel should ‘be ended and given to Hamas”
How our choice of words betrays our prejudices. Israel doesn’t have to be ended for some measure of justice to prevail. What needs to be ended is the apartheid state. South Africa wasn’t “ended”, what was ended was the partition between the ruling colonists and the indigenous people in their “homelands”. So it could be in Israel. The new state of Israel could stretch “from the river to the sea” with its capital in Jerusalem so long as it was inhabited by a mix of Jews and Muslims, each with the same rights under the law.
‘South Africa wasn’t “ended”…’
Maybe not, Bayard, but “Rhodesia” was ended. It was replaced by Zimbabwe. Similarly, perhaps “Israel” should be renamed “Palestine” – that would be a promising start.
I don’t see the 18–24 generation as being prejudiced, unless towards basic justice. they have successfully evaded infection with the core zionist prejudice, propagated for generations by western media, intellectuals & politicians: namely, that European & US Jews were justly awarded/ justly seized all the best Palestinian lands and should be allowed to keep them in perpetuity no matter what else happens. young people do not see the innate logic in that & see with clear eyes that this is not any kind of just solution for the Palestinians whose land it was for millennia.
“Maybe not, Bayard, but “Rhodesia” was ended. It was replaced by Zimbabwe. Similarly, perhaps “Israel” should be renamed “Palestine” – that would be a promising start.”
Well, no it wouldn’t. Talk about “ending” Israel is far too close linguistically to talk about “ending” Israelis, killing or expelling the Ashkenazim. Nobody talked about “ending” Rhodesia. they talked about ending white rule and once they had settled that, they talked about renaming the country Zimbabwe. The problem wasn’t Rhodesia or South Africa and it isn’t Israel. The problem is apartheid.
you can’t be zionist and anti-apartheid.
They have no decency.
Here you can see a US politician making jokes about Palestine:
“Cardin staff wildin’. Making porn at work and yelling “free Palestine” at a Jewish congressman?”
when commenting on gay porn filmed in – I kid you not – in the US senate!
Warning, gay porn naturally.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/15/staffer-caught-filming-sex-tape-senate-hearing-room/
The second part of the comment only expresses a regret about the fact that gays are illegal in Palestine:
“I have a question: how long would Cardin’s filmmaker last in a free Palestine?”
The media made a remark, they reviewed the chat where the video leaked and confirmed it was shared in a private group for gay men in politics.
So, they are much more interested in their personal sexual preferences, than in what is going on in Palestine today.
“Here you can see a US politician making jokes about Palestine”
Politicians tend to be a fairly low form of life, and US politicians tend towards the lowest form of politician.
That picture with the Capitol tied to the ass, I wonder what kind of scenario they were playing out? Storming the Capitol on January 6th? 🙂
I think it’s just a reference to where the, er actions were being carried out. It’s just a computer-generated blanking device to hide the scene of the action.
If so, then whoever edited the video has a great sense of humor. Okay, I’ll wait for the real fun, perhaps someone might say that this is Putin’s fault too. Like, well, these kind-hearted people gave everything they had to Ukraine, so had no money left for a motel room.
The Houthis are causing big problems for Israel, today, trying to take a share of the trillion in international trade seems like a pipe dream, because according to Port of Eilat CEO Gideon Golber, the Yemeni operations at Bab-el-Mandeb have reduced port traffic by 80-85 percent, just think what Hezbollah could do, it would be no problem to close Haifa and Ashkelon ports and Ben Gurion airport result vitually no imports or exports.
In last year’s yemeni military parade, a variety of naval missiles were unveiled, including Hatem, Falaq, Haider, Al-Bahr al-Ahmar, Meraj and Quds 3. This year, however, new models in the Yemeni arsenal were unveiled, such as naval missiles Rubij, Faleh, Mandab 1, Mandab 2, Asef, Sayyad and Sejjil. A New Quds Z-0 long-range cruise missile was also shown.
The Houthis don’t seem to give a hoot about being attacked by the West, they are shaming their Arab neighbours.
They could of couse us low tec simply by steering small boats loaded with explosives into offending ships.
The high-precision Sejjil cruise missile runs on solid fuel, carries a warhead weighing 100 kg, and has a 180 km range, therefore is capable of hitting any targets in the Red Sea.
“just think what Hezbollah could do, ”
and be bombarded by Israel in return? No thanks. The Houthis are a safe distance away and they know it.
The Israeli’s unrestrained hatred for Palestinian men woman and children together with their fever to slaughter became even more evident when yesterday IDF forces in their ongoing splurge of murder shot and killed three of the Israeli hostages.
The cold blooded turkey shoot of the IDF thus visited their own.
And Netanyahu thinks it was a terrible accident, that he is sorry, and that lessons would be learned.
If it wasn’t so dreadful you’d laugh the laugh of the insane. Putting their own up the lum is just insane.
But aside, there will never be a promised land. Israel cannot ever hope to survive. Their penchant for blood will ensure that.
And meanwhile I see a Royal Navy frigate is now engaged in action against Yemeni forces. The war racks up and it will be interesting to see how Great Britain, who also has a penchant for beautiful lovely lethal force gets on. We are at war, God Save the King.
Here is an absolutely fascinating thread about Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, based on videos (linked) of Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service, and commander-in-chief of the Navy. He says that Israel “enhanced and assisted Hamas, transferred money, etc.”, and compares Israel’s current strategy to that of “ISIS and Al Qaeda”:
https://nitter.net/RnaudBertrand/status/1735488060769677610#m
He’s actually calling upon the US to enforce a two-state solution, against the objections of Israel.
Thanks for that link to Bertrand, Clark. I was always puzzled why Israel provided hospital care and ambulant services, providing prosthesis help to ISIS and Al Nusra fighters on the Golan, when their rhetoric pointed the other way.
It’s positively amazing how enlightened and reasonable (and often truthful) soldiers and politicians become once they have retired.
Tom Welsh, indeed.
Apropos of your Dec 12, 19:14 comment, I’ve posted something that might interest you on the Shy Climate Denialists discussion forum thread.
Thanks, Clark. I have gradually given up arguing with AGW enthusiasts, and climate change pushers of any kind. Indeed, I am drifting away from arguing about anything except with people who seem amenable to reason. Life is too short.
Dr Swift hit the nail on the head: “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired”.
Tom Welsh, I am amenable to reason, so maybe it is you who is not. But so long as you shy from debate, others cannot judge for themselves.
Could that be your objective? You, DiggerUK, and Bayard; all behaving very similarly, on just this one specific issue; refusal to debate, claiming that all who challenge you are unreasonable. An interesting pattern that has persisted for a long time.
Your thread is called the “Shy Climate Denialists discussion forum thread.” The word “denialists” tells me all I need to know about the reception I would receive on that thread. That’s why I’m not going to waste my time on it.
Never judge a book by its cover? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it? Pah!
Bayard, well you open a forum thread then, and propose a title you are prepared to discuss under. Then everyone could see whether you live up to it. It’s long past time the lot of you either put up, or shut up with your nudges, hints and smears.
TW: “I have gradually given up arguing with AGW enthusiasts, and climate change pushers of any kind[…]”
In other words, you haven’t got any argument you can actually see through to its conclusion. Fair enough, we’ve seen plenty of your sort of denialist. Can’t say I can admire that much – I argue in favour of any number of things, and would positively welcome full debates about them, particularly when invited.
But I wouldn’t keep hinting at a massive superiority of knowledge on a subject and then run away, like you’re doing right now!
B: “The word “denialists” tells me all I need to know about the reception I would receive on that thread. That’s why I’m not going to waste my time on it.
Sorry, Bayard, didn’t realise your fifi’s were so delicate! If I said “Couchy-coo, our lovely climate change sceptics, we’d love to have you over for a lovely little chatty-watty”, would that have calmed your vapours down enough to for you to man up, and discuss the point _you_ keep making?
“Never judge a book by its cover? ”
That presupposes you want to read the book. You want me to engage with you, I am reluctant to engage with you. Telling me in the title of your forum that you think I am talking bollocks, for is that not what “denialist” means? is not the best way to persuade me to do so. You seem quite an intelligent person from your comments, so I am surprised that this aspect has not struck you before. I would welcome a discussion, but don’t want a lecture. Sadly, you give me no reason to believe I will get the former and not the latter. Nor is describing my stating what I believe to be the truth as “nudges, hints and smears” going to persuade me otherwise.
Tom Welsh and Bayard, by refusing to debate you are giving Al Gore, George Monbiot and their ilk the excuse they need for their support of censorship. Either we meet as equals and debate, presenting and comparing evidence to eliminate untruth, half truths and misinformation, in full view of the reading public, or authorities will claim to need to do it for us, on behalf of ‘democracy’.
And since the internet cannot be censored, this will result in journalists such as Craig being intimidated under “support for terrorism” laws etc.
(I knew this seeming diversion was on-topic somehow.)
Edit: Bayard, as I already stated, choose whatever description for yourselves that you wish. But refusing to debate by claiming that all who disagree with you are “unreasonable” is merely a smear. If it’s true, prove it, demonstrate it, in public view. Or you contribute to Craig’s predicament.
Nah, they’re not willing to follow through the subjects they pretend to know all about.
Any excuse will do, they don’t like the shape of the table, or whatever.
It’s one thing to bluster and bullshit about how all these climate-change doom-mongers are talking rubbish, and gish-gallop their way to sounding plausible in their denialism – but only if they are talking to people that don’t challenge them.
It’s quite another to take these points one at a time, examine them carefully, and see what the conclusions are – and all too many of these denialist bullshiiters are too cowardly to take up the challenge. Actually, all of them – 100% in fact.
Because if we did, these shy denialists couldn’t sneakily rotate back around to these same tiresome points time after time.
C’mon, you shy denialists – prove me wrong! (But only if you have the courage, of course. Which you do not. QED.)
From the Moderation Rules for commenters:
“I have been most disappointed by the degree of personal insult flying around the comments thread in recent weeks. In general, there is no need at all to address other commenters in your remarks. You can address their arguments, but that is different. Avoid referring to the person of other commenters, whether by name or by any other means of identification.
Address the argument, not the person. To do otherwise will be an immediate warning flag for deletion. Any reference to any commenter which is not courteous will lead to the comment being immediately deleted. This is an expansion of the way we will enforce the “fair play” rule below.
[ … ]
Fair Play. Play the ball, not the man. Address arguments, not people. Do not impugn the motives of others, including me. No taunting.”
Those rules will be enforced more strictly when there are complaints of personal abuse or insulting terminology interfering with debate.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/climate-the-science-politics-economics-and-anything-else/
I started the above thread a while ago. It kinda died out unfortunately.
“So, I’m going to try start a discussion thread about it. I hope to be directed to resources of which I am currently unaware and expand my knowledge. Undoubtedly, if there is any interest in this thread there will be people who agree with the IPCC’s assessment and those who vehemently disagree and many inbetween.”
“So, what do you think? All points of view welcome 😀”
I don’t think any of the above quotes from my opening post in that thread are aggressive or biased. Whilst I don’t agree with all of you all of the time on all topics I do agree with most of you a lot of the time.
So, at the risk of resuscitating a dead thread why not use that one instead.
(I’m much nicer than Clark or glenn_nl 😎.)
Kidding…….
“Tom Welsh and Bayard, by refusing to debate you are giving Al Gore, George Monbiot and their ilk the excuse they need for their support of censorship. ”
That’s got to be the weakest argument I have ever heard for submitting to be lectured, even if it was correct. Freedom of speech is freedom to debate if you choose to do so, not making debate compulsory. It does, however, mean the freedom to state one’s views and beliefs without being told that you have to justify them. Nor does any belif on anyone else’s part that what they believe is a) the truth and b) important, trump that.
You still haven’t put forward any reason why I should submit to a lecture from anyone on why my views on a subject are wrong in their eyes. A deep desire on their part to point this out, unfortunately, does not translate to a similar deep desire on my part to have it pointed out to me. They may want to convert me to their way of thinking, but, unless I have an equal desire to convert them to my way of thinking, I am not going to give them the opportunity and there should be nothing that says I must. Even if one is being arrested, one has the right to remain silent.
“I don’t think any of the above quotes from my opening post in that thread are aggressive or biased. Whilst I don’t agree with all of you all of the time on all topics I do agree with most of you a lot of the time.”
Thank you, ET, for showing how it can be done and should be done.
OK Bayard, discuss here then:
Anthropogenic Global Heating – Applying Scepticism
Or on ET’s thread. If you disapprove of influence campaigns, you should avoid acting like one.
Below quoting the Times of Israel describing the event that got 3 hostages killed. The last statement:
“The soldiers (…) did so against protocols, as did the second soldier who killed the third man, according to the officer. Still, the IDF said it understands what led the soldiers to do so.”
There is nothing that I could add.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/initial-idf-probe-hostages-were-shirtless-waving-white-flag-when-soldiers-opened-fire/
“(…)
All three were shirtless, with one of the figures carrying a stick with a makeshift white flag, according to the investigation.
The IDF provides new details of yesterday’s tragic incident in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, during which three Israeli hostages who managed to escape Hamas captivity were shot dead by troops.
According to a senior officer in the Southern Command, citing an initial probe, the incident began after one soldier stationed in a building identified three suspicious figures exiting a building several dozen meters away.
All three were shirtless, with one of the figures carrying a stick with a makeshift white flag, according to the investigation.
The soldier, who believed the men moving toward him was an attempt by Hamas to lure IDF soldiers into a trap, immediately opened fire and shouted “terrorists!” to the other forces.
According to the probe, that soldier killed two of the men, while the third, who was hit and wounded, fled back into the building from which he came.
At that stage, the commander of the battalion, who was also in the building where the soldier shot from, went outside and called on the forces to halt their fire.
Meanwhile, sounds of someone shouting “Help” in Hebrew were heard by the troops in the area.
Moments later, the third man came out of the building to which he fled, and another soldier opened fire at him, killing him.
The battalion commander then realized that the appearance of the third man was unusual, and it was revealed to be an Israeli hostage. All three bodies were collected and taken to Israel to be identified.
The soldier who immediately opened fire upon identifying the three men did so against protocols, as did the second soldier who killed the third man, according to the officer.
Still, the IDF said it understands what led the soldiers to do so.
(…)”.
Just shows what an undisciplined rabble the Israeli army is. The families of the so-called hostages must be terrified of their relatives being rescued by Israeli forces.
“Just shows what an undisciplined rabble the Israeli army is.”
You just have to look at how young their senior officers are in what is, effectively, a peacetime army.
they want to erase witnesses to what really happened on 10/7. they know western media & politicians can only keep justifying the genocide by promoting the official Netanyahu version.
This does look much more like a case of the soldiers following the age-old US tradition of shooting first and asking questions afterwards.
Some countries are calling for “steps” for a cease fire.
If any side is killing combatants and civilians holding a white flag then surely that is the FINAL step.
The protocol failure was not them treating a fellow Zionist State perpetrator as a Palestinian, and then summarily executing them.
They got caught, that’s the failure of the terrorists, same as all criminal perpetrators. Getting caught is their offence.
I’m sure the hug from the IOF spokes-creature will make everything better.
As Professor Finkelstein explains, the whole World wanted to see a two state solution based on the 1967 borders, with some minor adjustments, the US/Israel and a few small South sea Island states have opposed this for many years, the various Israeli Zionist governments reject this solution out of hand [see my earlier comment on the Likud programme of 1999] Because the US always fall into line behind all Israeli governments [of whatever composition] there can be no solution to the problem [the US veto], only capitulation to Zionist demands are acceptable to the Zionists – something along the lines of the Bantustans in South Africa or Reservations in North America, where the Native Indians could live and slowly fade away.
No sovereign rights for Palestinians will be tolerated. That being the case, resistance is the only and inevitable result.
Gandhi summed up his position on this with regard to India very clearly:
“I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence … I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.”
I think he had today’s Arab States leaders in mind, many of whom could be called cowards. If memory serves, he also said if the Arab leaders and millions of followers were so keen on liberating stolen Arab land, they could have just walked in.
“… or Reservations in North America, where the Native Indians could live and slowly fade away.”
It’s amazing how seldom that example of US apartheid is called out.
until gold or oil was discovered on that property anyway, then they had to move.
The native inhabitants once welcomed the Pilgrims – at the start of course.
Netanyahu and his Israeli government have gone berserk in Gaza, deliberately killing 20,000 men women and children. Here is another reminder of the Zionist mindset…..
A Jewish Georgia teacher Benjamin Reese has been arrested for threatening to kill a Muslim middle school student who took offense at the Israel flag displayed in his classroom. He’s been charged with cruelty to children and making terroristic threats.
According to accounts collected from more than 20 witnesses – including other teachers – 7th-grade social studies teacher Benjamin Reese went into a rage on the afternoon of Dec. 7th at Warner Robins Middle School. Three students say they were walking down the hall after school when one noticed a flag of the State of Israel in Reese’s classroom and asked him why it was on display.
“You don’t make an antisemitic comment like that to a Jew!”
“You motherf..king piece of shit! I’ll kick your ass! I should cut your motherf..king head off!”
“She is a stupid motherf..ker, and I will drag her by the back of my car and cut her f..king head off for disrespecting my Jewish flag!”
“I’ll slit her f..king throat!”
One of the teachers told police that, as Reese went ballistic, she feared for her own safety. Security video captured Reese following the students. When the principal and a school security officer tried to question Reese about the incident, he became agitated and aggressively kicked a door-stopper before “invok[ing] his civil rights” and walking away. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jewish-teacher-charged-threatening-behead-muslim-girl-who-said-israel-flag-offensive
Glenn Greenwald says: “I’ve been skeptical of claims that Jewish college students are so “unsafe” that they need special protections, just as I’ve been skeptical of that narrative for other groups.
But here’s a student definitely justified in feeling unsafe due to a teacher’s statements on Israel.”
“Netanyahu and his Israeli government have gone berserk in Gaza, deliberately killing 20,000 men women and children.”
I don’t think Netanyahu has gone beserk at all. I think the dream scenario is as follows:
Israel slaughters the Palestinians in Gaza,
Hezbollah, supported by Iran, attacks Israel,
The US destroys Lebanon and Iran,
Israel gets Gaza’s gas and the US gets Iran’s oil.
So far, thanks to Hezbollah’s forbearance, we haven’t got past stage 1.
We don’t want WW3 but, I think you could be mistaken wrt “The US destroys Lebanon and Iran”.
Iran is not Iraq and the Iranians on the whole support their government. so, any conflict would be a very different scenario to that of, say, the Iraq ‘war’. Iran has been preparing for the coming attacks for years and is well armed, trained and motivated. Iran is also very unlikely to attack Israel, which is well on the path to sealing its own fate with its barbaric actions.
The thing is, IMO, both the USA and Israel have for decades relied on their reputation for having the greatest Militaries but the reality is that in virtually all recent conflicts they have been pitched up against vastly inferior forces, numerically and technically. Once these ‘mighty warriors’ actually come up against peoples who are motivated and/or equally matched with them then their true capabilities are exposed.
SB, all of what you say is true, but, alarmingly, the US military seems to prefer to believe their own propaganda. They appear to think they can take on Iran and win.
Thanks for exposing the obvious Craig, now becoming clearer to all of us as each day passes, and CNN and Aljazerra inform us … not the BBC establishment!
Demographics are considered a national security issue in Israel, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State. Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme? Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”? And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.
So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?
Why fewer Arabs, of course. Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state. As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population. Go figure? Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following:
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood. And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said:
“You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.” He concluded: “Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.” (1948) https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-war-in-gaza-its-not-about-hamas-its-about-demographics/
There we have it. The Palestinians in Israel proper and the West Bank and Gaza combined equal the number of Israeli citizens in the same area. Many millions of Palestinians live as refugees in neighbouring states of course, and have to be factored in. In other words, Israelis will form a distinct minority in a few years time, so something drastic had to be done. Hence Gaza.
Historical books on Palestine abound on Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org, several by western travellers or pilgrims to the Holy Land, whose journey often started at Beirut with a clear run to Jerusalem in what was of course Ottoman Empire territory; give and take possible encounters with odd highway bandits on the way. I found this quote from the American, Bayard Meynard’s “Land of the Saracens” (1863) particularly interesting in suggesting where some of the seeds of today’s Zionism might have been sown.
“Jerusalem, internally, gives no impression but that of filth, ruin, poverty, and degradation. There are two or three streets in the western or higher portion of the city which are tolerably clean, but all the others, to the very gates of the Holy Sepulchre, are channels of pestilence. The Jewish Quarter, which is the largest, so sickened and disgusted me, that I should rather go the whole round of the city walls than pass through it a second time. The bazaars are poor, compared with those of other Oriental cities of the same size, and the principal trade seems to be in rosaries, both Turkish and Christian, crosses, seals, amulets, and pieces of the Holy Sepulchre. The population, which may possibly reach 20,000, is apparently Jewish, for the most part; at least, I have been principally struck with the Hebrew face, in my walks. The number of Jews has increased considerably within a few years, and there is also quite a number who, having been converted to Protestantism, were brought hither at the expense of English missionary societies for the purpose of forming a Protestant community”.
Did you know that the UN have a special reporteur on genocide prevention? Me neither.
Why is the UN genocide office silent about Gaza?
Alice Wairimu Nderitu has one job that’s spelled out in her official title: She’s the UN secretary-general’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide.
Yet while human rights groups, independent UN experts and genocide scholars are ringing the alarm bells over Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza, Nderitu has remained silent.
Nderitu even suggests that Palestinians attack Israel not because they are under a brutal, decades-long occupation, but rather “on the basis of identity” – echoing Israel’s absurd and reprehensible propaganda that it is anti-Semitism that motivates Palestinian resistance.
She have since been criticised by some UN staff and multiple palestinian human rights organizations for keeping shut about israeli grand-scale killing.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-un-genocide-office-silent-about-gaza
Alice Wairimu Nderitu have according to Wikipedia worked at pro-israel anti-(allegedly)-genocide organization “Auswitz institute”: https://www.auschwitzinstitute.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Wairimu_Nderitu
And oh so cute, here she is posing with Mr Khan from the equally spineless ICC:
ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan QC and UN Special Adviser Alice Wairimu Nderitu meet to discuss priority areas for action in the prevention of international crimes and ensuring accountability for such acts
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-qc-and-un-special-adviser-alice-wairimu-nderitu-meet-discuss
Nderitu is Kenyan. The Kenyan government loyally follows the US line.
“In wars the general percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8%. In Ukraine it is 6%.”
I don’t believe for a moment that there have been 27000 deaths of children in the Ukraine intervention. The Kiev regime had killed only hundreds before February 2022; while they have intensified their bombardment of Donetsk since mid February 2022, it has not been by orders of magnitude, and that remains the main source of civilian deaths. So the proportion of child deaths must be much lower than 6%.
(Or is the 6% supposed to be 6% of civilian deaths only? — That is more believable.)
I just did a search re >nova music festival< and the following wikipedia entry entitled Re’im music festival massacre came up in the results, and one of the things it said is that there were three stages! If you read my previous posts in this thread, you’ll understand why I put an exclamation mark. But, that said, I would be very surprised if the stage with the great big Buddha on top of it wasn’t the main one.
Anyway, it also says the following in the entry:
“It took place in the western Negev desert,[8] approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) from the Gaza–Israel barrier, near kibbutz Re’im.[6][18] The line-up included artists well-known in the psytrance scene, such as Astral Projection and Man With No Name.[17] The organizers switched to the site only two days before, after the original location in southern Israel did not work out.[20]”
And this:
“The musical festival was one of the first targets of Hamas’ surprise attack against Israel in the early morning hours of 7 October 2023.[18] Israeli security services investigations have found it unlikely that Hamas had advanced knowledge of the festival, citing, among other evidence, that the festival had been planned to run until Friday, October 6 and was only extended to Saturday the prior Wednesday.”
I mean THAT is really astonishing – i.e. that not only was the location changed just two days beforehand, but also that it was being extended until the Saturday. And no doubt full of people who despised the likes of BN and his fascist crew, and detested everything they stood for. And THEY knew it (BN and Co, that is).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre#cite_note-34
NB What I don't understand though is that it says the festival was only planned to run until the Friday, implying that it started before the Friday. But it didn’t. It STARTED on the Friday.
…..there WERE three stages.
The Gremlins yet again!
—
[ Mod: Fixed. You’re welcome. ]
In a previous comment (in this thread) I said how I had been trying to determine how long it was between the initial figure of 280 killed at the music festival and the update that added about 90 more, and how I was unsuccessful in trying to do so, but that I was sure it was a week or two later. Turns out I was wrong. Very wrong! And it was weeks later. I just did a search in respect of the music festival and the following Times of Israel article dated November 18th came up, by chance, way down the list of results:
Death toll from Nova music festival massacre on Oct. 7 raised by 100 to over 360
https://www.timesofisrael.com/death-count-from-music-festival-massacre-on-oct-7-up-to-over-360/
And needless to say – and as I thought was the case – there is no explanation given for how there suddenly came to be an additional 80/90 people killed. Well, you could hardly say they were all burnt and charred beyond recognition and had to be identified by their DNA. Mind you, the first – and ONLY – commenter in the comments section has the answer, albeit totally ludicrous.
So it just occurred to me to check when the number of Israelis killed in the initial attack was reduced from 1,400 to 1,200, and the following was at the top of the page:
On 10 November, Israel revised its casualty count from 1,400 to 1,200 after concluding that many of the identified bodies were those of Hamas fighters.
So just a week before they revised the number UP for the music festival. Hmmm….?
Anyway, the following is from a Guardian article:
“The Supernova music festival, billed as “a journey of unity and love” with “mindblowing and breathtaking content”, began at around 10pm on Friday, just hours after the end of Israel’s week-long Sukkot religious festival.”
That is what I thought, and more-or-less what I read at the time, and of course doesn’t fit with what it said in my earlier post – ie that the festival had been planned to run until Friday, October 6 and was only extended to Saturday the prior Wednesday.
And I definitely read the following at the time – ie that they weren’t told the exact location until a few hours before it started.
“Thousands of young people signed up for the party in a place “stunning for its beauty” but were not told of the exact location until a few hours before. It was Kibbutz Re’im, 3 miles from the Gaza border.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/09/how-the-hamas-attack-on-the-supernova-festival-in-israel-unfolded
And I’m pretty sure it was supposed to last the whole weekend, and definitely read that somewhere just recently.. But I really can’t begin to fathom why the Israeli security services would say that “….the festival had been planned to run until Friday, October 6 and was only extended to Saturday the prior Wednesday.”, as quoted in the wikipedia entry, and as I mentioned in my 00.53 post.
Sorry, I should have read the whole article (I only got as far as the end of the second paragraph!), but towards the end of it, it says the following:
“Many family members of those attending the party headed to a missing persons centre at a police station near Ben Gurion airport on Sunday. Relatives were told to bring items, such as toothbrushes, that could contain DNA.”
That’s Sunday the 8th of October!
“Mind you, the first – and ONLY – commenter in the comments section has the answer, albeit totally ludicrous.”
From that comment: “Also, bodies of those killed at the festival continued to be found long after the attack, as has been the case at the kibbutzim. ”
It seems very unlikely that the Hamas fighters, who were either under time pressure or under fire, would go to the trouble of concealing the bodies of their victims. Indeed, with a festival in the desert, how would you do so, apart from bury them? It seems much more likely that the bodies were “hidden” amongst the ruins of the buildings destroyed by the IDF, making it also likely that they were killed in the destruction of those buildings.
Any bodies that were buried under the ruins of the buildings of the kibbutzim would have been recovered in a day or two, and as you say, Hamas fighters – even if they had HAD time – would hardly think to hide them or bury anyone they killed at the music festival. And the point I was making of course – and didn’t even bother to spell out – is that the comment was obviously posted to explain why it took so long for the update to be released, and to conceal the fact that so many were burnt beyond recognition. In other words, it was a Blind.
Highly unlikely given the time pressures, over seeing of hostages and seeking transit options that anyone would be interested in sexual activity.
Sexual crimes, like baby-killing, are fairly boilerplate propaganda.
It speaks volumes of what is termed British democracy that erstwhile JNF patron David Cameron is now calling for a ceasefire while the Labour Party is not.
This should not shock anybody who has observed the utterances of senior Labour politicians. The human rights lawyer who approves of starving and butchering children is not even the worst of them. Lest it be forgotten amid weeks of degeneracy, the Rt Hon David Lammy MP (Cameron’s opposite number) went beyond anybody on earth – even the Nazis in Netanyahu’s cabinet – in trying to justify the genocide.
https://x.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1713882472654455198?s=20
Apparently Labour are also now considering dropping the Palestine recognition commitment from their manifesto, at the height of a second Nakba.
Sir Keir reliably doing “What’s right..”
“Sir Keir reliably doing “What’s right..”
You mean trying to out-Herod Herod.
It is Starmer who is committed to Israel, not necessarily the Labour Party. The party is not free from blame, after the Corbyn anti-semitism scandal, but it could change. Starmer is committed for life, and won’t change. The leader and the party have to be distinguished.
By “the Corbyn anti-semitism scandal”, I presume you mean the scandalous way Corbyn was so widely and unjustly slurred with the AS label, despite there being an almost complete absence of anti-semitism in the Labour Party?
Of course.
You’ll have to name some names because I can’t think of anyone in that party who could have impressed you. Who or what exactly are you referring to?
There are some. You know it as well as I. I must have expressed myself badly.
But you won’t name even one. That’s interesting.
I can’t be bothered to do the work of listing them. Unlike you, I find the question well-known and uninteresting.
More riddles. You weren’t asked for a list. Just a single name that you think represents hope.
Greg Park, can you think of any Labour politician who gets your juices flowing? We can include dead ones and ostracised ones if you like.
Lammy doesn’t think about what he’s saying much of the time, Greg. Here he is aged around 40, near the peak of his mental powers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsR4Nx-ELgc
His answers to the questions ‘Which blue cheese traditionally accompanies port?’ and ‘Which king acceded the throne on the death of his father Henry VIII?’ could have come out of a Two Ronnies sketch. Mind you, at least he did better than Blunkett, so there is that.
Nevertheless, he is treated extremely seriously and respectfully by all in British politics and media. What does that say?
I very much doubt he is Greg. This is the man who accused the bbc of “racial innuendo” when it reported on the black and white smoke which is used in the vatican to announce a new pope. Most recently, he asserted that Israeli airstrikes on refugee camps can be legally justified. On a lighter note, he appeared on Celebrity Mastermind and scored a woeful 13 points, 8 on his specialist subject, boxer Muhammed Ali and just 5 points on general knowledge. His answers included – Marie Antoinette won the Nobel prize for Physics, Henry vii succeeded Henry viii and the 2003 Rose Revolution took place in Yugoslavia. He also thought that red Leicester cheese accompanied Port.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23893849.david-lammy-labour-figure-slammed-refugee-camp-bombing-comments/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21764636
He very much is, even after claiming that Palestinians rape babies in order to try and justify their genocide. What does that tell us?
Thanks for your reply, Greg. It says not to take politics coverage in the British MSM very seriously – but then you could have gathered that from watching their repeated failures in trying to stop Steve “Stop Brexit!” Bray from getting his point across, rather than just broadcasting from their warm, dry studios. Lammy was getting himself mixed up with the Israeli propanganda; I doubt he was trying to deliberately deceive the Sky viewers.
——-
I’ve linked to a clip of Lammy’s general knowledge round on Celeb Mastermind in my previous comment, Andy. When he was Home Secretary a decade earlier, Lord Blunkett of Brightside & Hillsborough did even worse, only getting 2 points in that round. He did better in the preceding round, having chosen the Harry Potter children’s books as his specialist subject.
No one in the world went as far as Lammy in trying dehumanize Palestinians and justify their extermination.
Greg Park he is close to the top of Disraeli’s “greasy pole” and will say anything to sooth and reassure his “fat controllers” and their concerns regarding the protection and enhancement of their extreme wealth – another politician whose only constituency is merciless oligarchs
The Us and their F16s are having another dog-fight Monday-murder training above our south Norfolk skies.
Weaving in front of the one behind, dropping down; into a curve or throttling the engines to let the faster one speed past so you can get them from underneath or from above is a clear; indication of dog-fighting training.
Who knows, these pilots might be Ukrainians being trained to fly F16s they haven’t received yet from the Biden gang.
To be ready for when their killing machines are delivered to Romania or Poland.
Should America go to war, elections are off, a dilemma for Hezbollah who does not want to see Biden re-elected.
Elections were held in the US during the Civil War (1864) and during World War 2 l1944).
If they ever take off from an airfield in Ukraine they will be shot down as soon as they reach 1,000 feet or whatever. They will never even see the Russians who launch against them. Dogfighting is fun for American moviegoers, but they are about as realistic today as the battle of Trafalgar.
Just came across the following posted on December 8th via a link in an Al Jazeera article;
U.S. President Joe Biden pleaded with Republicans on Wednesday for a fresh tranche of military aid for Ukraine, warning that a victory for Russia in Ukraine would strengthen Moscow to such an extent that it could then attack NATO allies and draw U.S. troops into a war.
Needless to say he was spouting garbage, and Republicans know it, and Biden KNOWS that they know it, and that it was for domestic and global consumption. In other words, he has no problem whatsoever in potentially causing worry and concern in millions, or tens of millions of people who have been duped by Biden and Co and Zelensky and Co in respect of Putin, and their demonisation of him.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/07/ukraine-war-live-updates-latest-news-on-russia-and-the-war-in-ukraine.html
And the same psychopaths have recently been disseminating the falsehood that Hamas are planning to carry out terrorist attacks across Europe, and I REALLY wouldn’t put it past them to do a false flag. To them, we are nothing – ordinary people that is – and they have absolutely no qualms about killing some of us if it suits their purposes. Just as they couldn’t care less about the tens of thousands being killed and maimed in Gaza, and Gaza being turned nto rubble and flattened.
In actual fact, they are probably enjoying it all and highly amused by what BN and Co are doing. We know that they knew in advance that Hamas was planning and training for an attack – and I have little doubt that they even knew the date once it had been decided on by Hamas – and they deliberately let it happen. What I find incredibly suspicious is that a music festival should be planned for that weekend AND that it should be in the location that it was. Was there ever one in that location before, or one that was just a few kilometers from the Gaza border. I don’t know of course, but it would be very interesting to find out. The only thing I do know is that it was the first Nova, or Supernove, dance festival in Israel.
“To them, we are nothing – ordinary people that is – and they have absolutely no qualms about killing some of us if it suits their purposes.”
As evidenced by the “terrorist atrocity” that reliably happens in the West before major elections. I wonder what we have in store for next year. It won’t be a bunch of kids getting blown up at a concert , that’s been done, as has terrorists running amok with knives and MPs being murdered..
Quite telling how quick the western leaders are in their condemnations….when their nationals are killed in Gaza.
France condemns killing of its worker in Israeli strike in Gaza’s Rafah
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Sunday pressed for an “immediate and durable” truce in the Gaza war, adding Paris is “deeply concerned” over the situation in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/17/france-condemns-death-of-its-agent-in-gaza-residential-house-bombing
So 1 western national killed = West condemn it and urge call for a ceasefire.
20000+ palestinians killed = West just shrug.
Or to put it more bluntly = 1 westerner are higher valued than 20k palestinians.
The west still see the palestinians as vermin. The dehumanization is getting worse by each day, each day this sub-human-framing of the palestinians people get more and more general and normalized in the western mind that seems to be infatuated in an endless univerified stream of alleged horror-like crimes by evil Palestinians on the 7th of october. Latest rumor from the mill claim that palestinians mutilated israelis.
Other reports circulated of Belgian women, often nuns, who had their breasts cut off by the Germans.[28] A story about German corpse factories, where bodies of German soldiers were supposedly turned into glycerine for weapons, or food for hogs and poultry, was published in a Times article on April 17, 1917.[29] In the postwar years, investigations in Britain and France revealed that these stories were false.[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda
All these stories are made up to justify a continued slaughter. Like 20000 murdered humans would not be enough.
By every day that goes by, it is getting obvious how similar Nazism and Zionism is ideologically.
You have the master race/designated victim, you have the racism, you have the ethnic cleansing, you have the systamtic murdering, the extensive propaganda machine, you have the idea that you have the right to the soil etc.
It would seem a lot of conflicts could be compared to Nazism at that level of generality. It’s part of Arab/Muslim propaganda though isn’t it.
I had heard of Ken Livingstone’s point about a period of zionists collaborating with Nazi policy to send German Jews to Palestine. But I’d never heard that a leading Arab Muslim, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, moved to Germany to work with the Nazis, spreading antisemitic propaganda over the airwaves globally.
Your point about vermin seems onesided because
https://www.memri.org/reports/based-koranic-verses-interpretations-and-traditions-muslim-clerics-state-jews-are#_edn10
“Associating Jews with apes, pigs, and other animals, which is widespread in the Arab and Muslim world among both Shi’ites and Sunnis, is firmly grounded in the most important Islamic religious sources, and also has roots in the folklore of other, ancient peoples. This idea has been used not only in religious writings but also in prose and fiction, both in the past and today”.
I do note that research assistant apparently was in the IDF, but it’s a sourced article. Though I have seen a Muslim site saying that the Qur’an doesn’t actually say Jews are pigs and apes, just that god turned some of them that way as a punishment. Though an idea seems to be that today’s Jews are the descendants of those.
Ironically humans are actually a type of Great Ape but apparently that itself could be Jewish propaganda
“In Falastin Al-Muslima, Ibrahim Al-‘Ali presents “scientific” proof for the claim that Jews were punished in this way by Allah. He states that Jews invented the theory of evolution in order to rid themselves of the shame of the ancient punishment:
“… Since Jews felt disgrace and shame because of this special punishment, that changed them into the brothers of apes and pigs, they attempted to dispel this accusation from themselves, with the help of the satanic thought that guided them in despising the entire human race by saying that [man’s] origin was in animals, and that it developed over time from an ape to human form, by means of the theory… of the Jewish ape Darwin.”[57]”
For the avoidance of doubt about that last claim:
https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/darwin-jewish-theology-and-the-holocaust/2016/07/07/2/
“In Israel, state schools traditionally taught only the biblical account of the creation of man, with the theory of evolution reserved for advanced study in high school for students matriculating in biology. In 2014, however, evolution by natural selection began to be taught at the middle-school level in the secular state and state-religious schools but, primarily to deflect hostile challenges from religious leaders and the haredi sector, the alleged descent of man from animals is still not part of the curriculum.
Though the Turkish government in 2012 issued a series of books for schoolchildren describing Darwin as a hook-nosed Jew who kept “company” with monkeys, Darwin was baptized a Christian and became an Anglican clergyman who accepted whole the literal truth of the Bible. Nonetheless, he sought explanations in the laws of nature rather than in miracles; he ultimately concluded that natural selection was antithetical to the doctrine of intentional design and that science countenances no room for the existence of a creator. Origin of Species explains the existence of life without any reference to a deity or creator.”
A crude, laughable attempt to deflect from the issue with a litany of zionist propaganda and hasbara that even they, apart from the most fanatical, like Netanyahu and the fascist stooges he has brought into government, have largely given up using. Memri is an Israeli military ‘intelligence’ outfit based in Washington. I would advise reading Hannah Arendt and Einstein’s 1948 warning about Israeli fascism, a prescient and very accurate forecast, but of course you wouldn’t be interested. Not when you just regurgitate trash from the zionist propaganda machine, without having a clue what you are talking about.
Ian, this is a good article about Einstein, he was a truly good man.
https://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/Einstein.htm
You don’t seem to be taking Arabic-Islamic dehumanising of Israelis/Jews as serious or relevant, why not?
You’re stereotyping my beliefs and intentions.
No, you’re doing that all by yourself, lol. Just block copy and pasting your zionist bookmarks is not an argument, or proof of anything, As for dehumanising, what do you think 75 years of Israeli lies and fake news about Palestinians are doing, especially now? The language used by Israelis is the worst kind of racist and apartheid mentality. Playing the victim while you are the aggressors, land thieves and murderers doesn’t let you off the hook.
Your subsequent reply that I can’t reply to, is another false accusation of Zionist propaganda (‘bookmarked’).
[ Mod: You can’t reply to Ian’s comment because the blog has a limit of threaded (nested) comments 5 levels deep. Standard practice is to reply to the last comment with a ‘Reply’ button directly above it in the thread – i.e. your own comment timestamped December 20, 2023 @ 11:38. The conversation can then proceed without interruption in a linear sequence. ]
The prior accusation relating to Einstein was also false of course, because I was replying to a point made about zionism in general. Einstein on balance long supported a Jewish homeland in palestine but wasn’t a nationalist or militarist.
Likewise Arendt was reportedly an “ardent admirer of Zionist accomplishments—economic, political, intellectual, and social—in Palestine and, later, in Israel, though she also expressed disgust at actually-existing Zionism. She opposed the partition of Palestine and became a critic of Israel after the state was founded, though she unambiguously supported Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. In short, her attitudes toward Zionism oscillated”
I was interested to read that her ‘banality of evil’ comment may have been specifically aimed at people she saw as dull, bureaucrats, unimaginative therefore lacking empathy. A theory she’d developed before assessing Eichmann (perhaps linked to her friendship with the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers?), who in fact seems to have had a very sharp personal antisemitic ideology.
Who elected the Grand Mufti?
The Grand Mufti was not an elected figure, but more like a judge. But in any case Ape is quite wrong. The Mufti was an important member of the Palestinian elite, but far from a figure of unique power, as Ape is trying to paint him (standard hasbara explanation). Much like all those Zionists who dealt with Hitler….
I just said “leading”; you keep misrepresenting me.
The Wiki article on him cited this paper by a philosophy prof in USA
https://jcpa.org/article/parallels-between-nazi-and-islamist-anti-semitism/
Quote
The first half of the 20th century witnessed the emergence of two distinct strains of especially virulent hatred for Jews, the “scientific,” pseudo-Darwinian racism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and the theological anti-Semitism of the nascent Islamic revival, represented by such groups as the Muslim Brotherhood. These two groups had much in common ideologically and made natural allies during the Second World War.
——
al-Husseini…by far the most respected and powerful leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s through the 1940s. Indeed, in the words of one of his biographers, he was “the founder of the Palestinian national movement.”17
——
In November 1943, when the Holocaust was in full swing, al-Husseini informed his audience that the Germans had “decided to find a definitive solution to the Jewish danger,” and he urged all Arabs and Muslims to join the Germans in this “common battle against the Jewish danger.”
——
As German political scientist Matthias Küntzel has pointed out, Hamas is the true ideological heir to Hajj Amin al-Husseini in the Palestinian community.
——
Writing in 1985, Robert Wistrich noted the flourishing of an extreme form of Jew-hatred in the Muslim world with strong affinities to the Nazi version. He wrote: “The evidence I have been able to marshal concerning the continuity of a radical and murderous antisemitism into the post-war era…”
The same prof (who is this guy
https://www.anselm.edu/about/campus-directory/joseph-spoerl )
gives another example in
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44289822
“at a rally commemorating the anniversary of the founding of Fatah, held in January 2012, the current Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein, the highest Muslim religious official in the Palestinian Authority, appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was introduced with these words: “Our war with the descendants of apes and pigs is a war of religion and faith.””
So there is a unelected moslem in 2012 who used the same lexicon as the elected Israeli government, in 2023 with their “human animals” and their “subhumans”
If they are as bad as each other – the next question is who started this fight? Once this question is answered, the aggressor can be identified and the problem solved.
The evidence I have been able to marshal concerns the continuity of a radical and murderous anti-Arab racism in the post-war era….
Rishi Sunak earlier today:
“It’s clear that too many civilian lives have been lost. And that’s why we’ve been consistent…in calling for a sustainable ceasefire, whereby hostages are released, rockets stop being fired into Israel by Hamas and we continue to get more aid in.”
It would be interesting to ask him when it was he first thought that – ie what was the number of Palestinians who had been killed when he concluded that too many had been lost. Or, to phrase it another way, how many had been lost prior to him reaching the point where he felt that, And note that he says ‘lost’, and not killed.
Anyway, I think I’m right in saying that ‘they’ seem to have toned down the vilification and demonisation of the pro-Palestinian marches/marchers recently, generally speaking, that is, although I have little doubt that Talk TV and GB News are still at it. I just did a search to see how widely the last big London demo was reported by the MSM (I know that a poster on here said at the time that the BBC didn’t cover it), and the first one I clicked on in the list of results was the Guardian, and here’s the headline and sub-headline:
Thousands call for Gaza ceasefire on central London march
Police say 13 protesters arrested during march from Bank Junction to Parliament Square
Well at least they didn’t have it as the headline!. Hmm….
The article begins more-or-less by saying the following:
The protesters marched from Bank Junction to Westminster, with many holding signs with the words “Free Palestine” and “End the siege”. Some protesters chanted: “One, two, three, four, occupation no more, five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terrorist state.”
They also chanted the controversial slogan: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Needless to say, the Guardian knows damn well what they mean when they chant the slogan, and know damn well that there is nothing controversial about it.
So it just this moment occurred to me to chech out the CAAs website, and I made the mistake of putting pro-palestinian march in their search engine, and of course nothing in respect of the most recent march (or any others over the past nine/ten weeks) came up in the results! Anyway, I then just did the obvious and clicked on Latest News, and the last article they posted was about the demo the Saturday before last. Here’s the headline and some of the same old bollocks they spout – ie their hate and fear-mongering, that is:
‘Are these peace marches? We want to hear from you’
This past week, all eyes were on the Home Affairs Select Committee, where the organisers of the weekly anti-Israel marches were grilled by MPs and antisemitism experts gave evidence before parliamentarians [I’d not heard about that…. must check it out].
Notwithstanding the evidence gathered week after week by our Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit, the organisers of the marches, including leaders of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop The War Coalition, insisted that these were peace marches, and that they not only “tolerate” the genocidal “From the River to the Sea” chant but actively chant it.
After the organisers had their say, antisemitism experts had their turn answering the Committee’s questions.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Chief Executive, Gideon Falter, pointed out that there is no freedom to intimidate others, glorify terrorism or commit acts of hatred, and contrasted how police at the March Against Antisemitism were there to protect marchers from criminality, whereas at the anti-Israel marches they are there to protect the public from the criminals among the marchers.
And so it goes on!
https://antisemitism.org/are-these-peace-marches-we-want-to-hear-from-you/
And in respect of another demo at the beginning of November:
‘It is time for a ban, before the intifada comes here’
Another weekend in which central London was turned into a no-go zone for Jews, with marchers happy to tell our Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit that they support Hamas and with calls for a violent intifada ringing throughout the capital.
Past intifadas were campaigns of violence, including suicide bombings. We do not want one in London.
As we approach Remembrance weekend, where we remember the heroes who defended our freedoms and fought against antisemitic hatred, we must honour their memory by banning demonstrations that abuse those freedoms to call for violence against Jews……
More than 20,000 people have signed our petition calling on the police to reclaim our streets. You can join them by signing here: Sir Mark Rowley, give London back to Londoners.
https://antisemitism.org/it-is-time-for-a-ban-before-the-intifada-comes-here/
I wonder if we’ll ever get to a time when everyone on the planet sees through all these totally evil manipulating psychopathic warmongering hatemongering fearmongering fascist propagandists, and we forever leave them behind in their dark malignant and malevolent world.
.
I heard it on the news yesterday (Monday) that the UN vote had been postponed until today (Tuesday), but they didn’t say why it had been postponed. Anyway, I just put BBC News 24 on, and they mentioned it again, and yet again didn’t mention why, so I did a search, and this Guardian article came up:
“UN delays vote calling for Gaza ceasefire as US objects to resolution wording
US says it cannot support a reference to a ‘cessation of hostilities’, but might accept a call for a ‘suspension of hostilities’”
So that’ll be another couple of hundred or more Palestinians killed in the meantime, including dozens and dozens of children and toddlers and babies, and no doubt a few pregnant women – ie unborn babies. Anyway, it says the following:
“The United Nations security council has postponed a vote calling for a sustainable cessation of hostilities in Gaza to give more time for diplomats to meet US objections to the wording of the draft resolution.
The vote had been due on Monday in New York but the US said it could not support a reference to a “cessation of hostilities”, but might accept a call for a “suspension of hostilities”.
The Arab countries negotiating the text said they had been encouraged to see that the White House was apparently trying to find wording that it could support…..”
Yep, a wording that means Israel can then resume its mass murder of Palestinians and its destruction of Gaza. It seemed highly unlikely to me that Biden and Co and his European buddies could let the daily carnage continue through Christmas, and that looks like what will happen..
Anyway, I wrote the following post earlier (yesterday afternoon), but wanted to give it some more thought before I posted it on here. I was looking for holes in my scenario, but I can’t get my head round it, so here it is anyway…..
I recently came across an article that listed the names of many of the Israeli civilians who were killed on October 7th, and which also included the age of about half of them, and posted it on here, and as I said in my post, I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t have put the age of all of them. It didn’t make sense, as surely if they identified who they were, they would of course be able to ascertain their age from their families or relatives. But something just occured to me as to why they didn’t include the age of so many of them, and that is that if they wanted to exagerrate the number of civilians killed – which I wouldn’t put past them at all – then they could add a whole bunch of names to the list withOUT their age, and no-one except them would know any different.
That’s it, but I just came across the following on the Jewish Virtual Library website for the present conflict on a page entitled ‘Comprehensive Listing of Terrorism Victims in Israel (September 1993 – Present):
More than 1,000 Israeli civilians were killed in a massacre perpetrated by Hamas. There are too many names to list here. Some bodies were so severely burned or dismembered that they could not be identified.
Well I’ve not heard that before – i.e. that there were some that couldn’t be identified. And note the ‘terrorism victims’ bit. Anyhow, here’s the list I posted before. They haven’t updated their introduction, and still have the number of people killed in the attack as 1,400, which is odd. But on quickly going through the list again to see if anything noticeable had changed, I noticed that they mention that so-and-so was killed at the music festival, which I didn’t spot when I initially looked through the list, but perhaps I just missed it. Strange though that they’ve only got the one person listed as having been killed at the festival.
The names of 729 of the hundreds of civilians killed by Hamas – the names released so far
https://aoav.org.uk/2023/the-names-of-729-of-the-hundreds-of-civilians-killed-by-hamas-the-names-released-so-far/
You would have thought they’d all been released by now, some ten weeks later.
If we are to revisit the numbers, I must report a severe case of polyandry in the Negev. I suspect the introduction of Nepalese workers has brought this form of marriage to the desert.
When there were reportedly 763 ‘civilians’ killed, I could only see just over 200 that were female (picture and name recognition), suggesting a 5:2 ratio men to women amongst the ‘civilians’.
This suggests Hamas kills 80% males amongst its civilian victims, only 20% women and children.
Whereas IDF are managing 61% women and children killed.
It’s hard to find a form of words that the US government will accept. The resolution is meant to call for fewer people to be killed, while US government policy is for more to be killed.
Some very clever wordsmithing is clearly called for. Send for more Israeli propagandists!
“You would have thought they’d all been released by now, some ten weeks later.”
Near me is a memorial to a mine disaster, where 40 miners were killed when the colliery they worked in was flooded. There is a contemporary memorial to the victims. Most are given their christian names, but some are referred to as “Miner” and their surname. These were women, which, at that date, it was illegal for the colliery owners to employ underground. I suspect the names of the other people killed on October 7th have not been released either because the victims are not Israelis or they never existed in the first place.
“…in calling for a sustainable ceasefire, whereby hostages are released, rockets stop being fired into Israel by Hamas and we continue to get more aid in.”
Nothing, of course about the ceasefire meaning that the Israelis stop killing Palestinians. I am forcibly reminded of Tom Lehrer’s “Send the Marines”
Members of the corps,
All hate the thought of war,
They’d rather kill them off by peaceful means…”
in case you didn´t read, EU is opening a case against TWITTER. The official reason is a joke.
In truth it´s a threatening attempt to curtail Gaza news flow.
The indie blog on Europe “Lost in Europe” is reporting:
(google transl. doesn´t want this, so here the short item)
“For the first time, the EU Commission has opened proceedings under the new Digital Services Act (DSA). As threatened, it concerns “X”. As feared, it concerns the war in Gaza.
The EU Commission had already warned a few weeks ago that some Hamas videos and various tweets about the war in Gaza could violate the new rules on fake news and hate speech.
Now it is getting serious: it is to investigate whether Twitter (X) has violated EU rules on risk management and content moderation, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.
According to the new DSA, this could result in high fines and, in extreme cases, even the suspension of the service.
The procedure sounds objective and “rule-based”. In reality, however, the main aim is probably to eliminate unpopular information on the Israeli war in Gaza. This is how EU Commissioner Breton justified his actions.
Twitter (X) is one of the few independent sources from which people in the EU can still find out about the Gaza war, Hamas terror and Israel’s bombardments in real time.
Most of the German media now only present a softened version of the facts, almost always from the Israeli-German perspective …”
https://lostineu.eu/fake-news-bruessel-eroeffnet-verfahren-gegen-twitter-x/#more-171559
Italien philosopher/activist Antonio Negri died on Saturday.
I am mentioning him here quickly because some of the contradictions within the left movement which we have repeatedly criticized here, were also in part due to conceptual demands developed and propagated by Negri. I haven´t read his latest publications on the problems of the Left. So I don´t know if he reflected on that part of his own work or not.
UK media doing archetypal UK media things, analysis finds.
UK media are suppressing mentions of Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza
https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-media-are-suppressing-mentions-of-israels-genocide-in-gaza/
Analysis of British media reporting shows they are barely covering allegations by UN officials and others that Israel is promoting genocide against Palestinians. This is in complete contrast to their reporting of Russia in Ukraine.
In Craig’s latest tweet he expresses a view on how happy he is to enter a country and not be interrogated by police on his ‘opinion’ on a subject. If he expresses a wrong opinion he can potentially be put in jail for 14 years – see Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 –
but what if he does not express an opinion, and he just thinks it. Should the police torture Mr Murray or use functional MRI (fMRI), a newly developed brain-computer interface which can read a person’s thoughts and translate them into full sentences according to new reports in Nature Neuroscience. Only then can the truth be determined, then Mr Murray can spend 14 years in a UK jail [he would be near 80 on release or probably not since he has a dodgy ticker] or he could be transported to the US, probably on the same plane as Julian Assange and either be executed, or suffer life imprisonment in solitary confinement, such is the price truth-tellers pay if they criticise the Israeli or US governments.
The United Nations Security Council has just begun discussion of the latest draft conflict cessation/suspension/pause resolution, the vote will be later in the day.
The discussions and vote were postponed yesterday to seek wording that would be acceptable to the US. This, plus comments by Israeli President Herzog that they would be prepared to consider “another foreign-mediated Gaza truce”, suggests that this resolution may be successful.
Watch live: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k10/k10qkill7q
Thank you, Peter
Most welcome Tatyana, as was the forthright, plain speaking contribution to the discussions by your country’s representative Mr Nebenzya.
If you missed any of the discussion you can use the above link to scroll back.
Thanks again. Long video. Still no one seems to have said that Netanyahu is an excellent wartime leader, or that the October 7 attack was not justified because Hamas was in a strong diplomatic position due to all those ‘resolutions’.
There’s hope, I hope.
Latest news I heard was that UAE did not even call for a ceasefire, no, they just called on Israel not to bomb Gaza so intensive.
I mean, the arab leaders are obviously lacking a heart, but they are obviously lacking a spine too.
They cannot even 90 days into full on massacre cut any ties whatsoever! They cannot even publicly announce that all talks about the ongoing Israeli/Arab normalization is to be suspended!
How do these imbecile arab leaders not realizing that Israel is on their way to shuffle the palestinian issue onto the arab world? Are they deaf, dumb and blind?
Netanyahu publicly time and time again proclaim there will never be a palestinian state. Where do the arab leaders think all the palestinian refugees will go if not to the arab world?!
“I’m proud that I prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state because today everybody understands what that Palestine state could have been, now that we’ve seen the little Palestinian state in Gaza.” Benjamin Netanyahu
https://twitter.com/NaheedMustafa/status/1736220102310142122
Here is a fresh photo from the aftermath of an israeli attack today in Gaza:
https://i.imgur.com/9WWlkw2.png
Was the horse a Hamas member perhaps, well obviously the horse was an antisemite, perhaps Hamas had built a tunnel inside of that horse belly, right? Sigh.
These corrupt arab leaders should be sent to ICC too for being complicit in this senseless carnage. A palestinian toddler’s pinky finger have more spine than these leaders combined.
Jack,
” Latest news I heard was that UAE did not even call for a ceasefire, no, they just called on Israel not to bomb Gaza so intensive.”
Just like the US. In effect – do bomb but – oh so gently – please.
Right?
Courtenay Francis Raymond Barnett
“Just like the US. In effect – do bomb but – oh so gently – please.”
I reminded of the West using the phrase of Western backed proxy fighters in Syria called “moderate fighters”, HTF can you moderately kill someone?
ROS,
“moderate fighters”, HTF can you moderately kill someone?
Easy – kill – take a day off – then go back and do it the day following the day off.
Moderately – of course.
“These corrupt arab leaders should be sent to ICC too for being complicit in this senseless carnage”
Why are they any more complicit in it than the leaders of any other country? They are considerably less complicit that the governments of the UK, the US, every country that voted against the last UN resolution and any country in the EU, just for starters. Why should those countries who have the misfortune to border Israel also have the added burden of being more responsible for Israel’s actions than every other country in the world?
Bayard
Usually the neighbouring states to an ongoing war are usually the most concerned especially when the group of people of your own ethnic and religious group are the ones being slaughtered right in front of them, but the arab leaders obviously could not care less. Behind the doors they obviously support this carnage, for reasons that problably stems from horrible moral, economic, corruption.
“Usually the neighbouring states to an ongoing war are usually the most concerned especially when the group of people of your own ethnic and religious group are the ones being slaughtered right in front of them,”
Usually the state that is most concerned is the USA, either because it, or one of its allies is doing the slaughtering, or because one of its enemies is doing the slaughtering and it sees an opportunity to seize the moral high ground and sell weapons..
“Behind the doors they obviously support this carnage, for reasons that problably stems from horrible moral, economic, corruption.”
Not at all obviously. It probably stems from a deep desire not to end up like Libya.
Jack,
“Latest news I heard was that UAE did not even call for a ceasefire, no, they just called on Israel not to bomb Gaza so intensive.”
If you’re referring to today’s UN resolution, as I understand it, they’re still discussing the final wording of the resolution – it is around some kind of ceasefire/pause – and they are due to vote at about 10pm GMT.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144937
Update.
The vote has been pushed to tomorrow. They are still trying to negotiate a form of words that the US can/will vote for.
From the Guardian’s Live Blog at 20:45 –
“Under discussion is the language of the resolution sponsored by the United Arab Emirates. Its first draft called for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities,” but on Tuesday new language circulated calling “for the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.”
The US is believed to be working to bring an end to the slaughter (fearing electoral blowback next year) but Netanyahu is believed to be fiercely resisting. That the UNSC has chosen to keep talking until tomorrow gives cause for hope (no guarantee) that they will find a form of words that the US won’t veto and will pave the way for a new pause that the international community will then endeavour to turn into a cessation.
This is interesting – to say the least.
“President Weah steps in to reverse Liberia UN vote against Gaza ceasefire”
“Liberia was the only African State and one of only ten countries of the 193-member UN General Assembly to reject the United Nation’s 12 December call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Palestine that was backed by 153 countries.
“The Ministry said the Liberian diplomats responsible for voting did so without the backing of Weah who, as President, has the final say over Liberia’s foreign policy”.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231219-president-weah-steps-in-to-reverse-liberia-un-vote-against-gaza-ceasefire/
Unless you read RT, you probably have not seen that President Weah alluded publicly to “one wicked person” in the Liberian embassy in New York. The President stated definitely that one person had voted against the wishes of the Liberian government – although he did not say whether this was due to bribery, threats, both, or something else. It has long been known that UN delegates in New York are vulnerable to US “influence” of all kinds. I was reminded of this:
‘“We Know Where Your Kids Live”: How John Bolton Once Threatened an International Official’
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/john-bolton-trump-bush-bustani-kids-opcw/
‘“Cheney wants you out,” Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. “We can’t accept your management style.”
‘Bolton continued, according to Bustani’s recollections: “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.”
‘There was a pause.
‘“We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.”
‘Bustani told me he was taken aback but refused to back down. “My family is aware of the situation, and we are prepared to live with the consequences of my decision,” he replied’.
O/T.
“Imprisoned publisher Julian Assange will face two High Court judges over two days on Feb. 20-21, 2024 in London in what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/19/assange-appeal-hearing-set-for-february/
On Oct 7th, Israel had shown itself being weak. Everyone goofed. The Mossad had no idea, the Merkava tanks were nowhere to be seen, the videos from the battlefield show complete tactical superiority of Hamas fighters over the IDF’s “Tik-Tok Army”, and so on. Their super-duper superiority in everything that the Israelis were bragging about for many years went down the toilet on a single day.
After this had happened, Bibi’s government had to show the world that Israel is strong. And for this purpose, they chose a very simple way. They will be absolutely brutal in their actions in Gaza and demonstrate that they’ll get away with it.
This is all about power. Killing 8,000 children and getting away with it puts them on top of the world. It’s like raping a virgin in Times Square during the New Year celebration in full view of the 10,000 crowd and MS NBC cameras, and proudly walking away.
What it shows is the weakness of everyone else. Any decent person would intervene.
Exactly, Bramble. It demonstrates beyond a shadow of doubt that none of the “liberal democracies” are liberal or democratic. That their media are unutterably corrupt and dedicated to hiding the truth rather than revealing it. As for their rulers…
This is not weakness, this is indifference. Compare with “everyone else’s” reaction to the Ukrainian war.
Yuri, you assume bibi wasn’t aware of the upcoming attacks. If he was aware and had acted then the Israelis would only have been able to kill a couple of thousands as punishment and that would be the end of it. But, by pretending he wasn’t aware and letting the attacks happen has enabled him to empty gaza and destroy the people and infrastructure and put his greater Israel agenda into play.
I don’t believe any of this is accidental or unplanned – and the West is fully on-board.
I am aware of this theory but I always favor stupidity over clever conspiracies.
“I always favor stupidity over clever conspiracies.”
Or it could be a stupid conspiracy.
@ Stevie Boy
I second that emotion, of course they knew.
In the Max Hastings book Netanyahu is quoted as saying “In the next war, if we do it right, we’ll have the chance to get all the Arabs out … We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.”
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/middle-east-war-expands.7662971/page-620?post_id=70929408
And why was the military response so slow?
“Section Commander of the Gaza Fence: “The obstacle is built so that even a fox cannot pass it”. They Let It Happen. The Hamas Attack Was Allowed to Close the Book on Palestine.” –
https://www.globalresearch.ca/speculation-mark-hamas-attack-allowed-close-book-palestine/5836029
I think the Egyptian leadership is bought and paid for, who would think a nation of 112 million people could not use its considerable heft to aid the Palestinians, they are cowards with no self respect. Maybe the US/Israel knew this all along. What did the West do when those Oblasts seceded from Ukraine, why they have destroyed their own economies and shipped billions of dollars worth of weapons to their European neighbours, even though the Ukraine has no chance of winning, still the foolish West perseveres. But the Arab leaders what a bunch of ……………
I wondered how much revenue the Suez canal authority and Egypt will lose now that four of the top five shipping lines have halted Red Sea routes. The longer it continues the more revenue is lost. USA, UK, France and others are apparently putting together a “taskforce” to deal with the Houthis in Yemen. Should they delay that and allow the situation to continue as is, it will put financial pressure on Egypt.
On the other hand it messes up global trade. How long can they allow it to continue?
The threat of Israeli nuclear weapons hangs heavy over all participants. The bigger nations – like Egypt – have far more to lose. Nuking the Houthis might not have a huge pay-off.
Whoever was reponsible for giving the Israelis nuclear weapons will go down in history as possibly the worst criminals of the 20th century. Always assuming they really have nuclear weapons… the greatest feature of the Zionists is their chutzpah, which they have developed to the level of an art form. They may be bluffing.
A list of the crimes committed in the name of religion would encompass much of the worst that humans have ever done. Without religion, Israel could never have happened.
Tom, there was a lot of French collaboration in the Israeli nuclear programme in the early to late 50’s.
And British, I believe, andy. But I suspect the Americans passed on actual bomb data – secretly.
Tom, What year do you think this transfer began, from America to Israel?
“A list of the crimes committed in the name of religion would encompass much of the worst that humans have ever done. Without religion, Israel could never have happened.”
“When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything”
— G.K.Chesterton.
We Humans need to believe. If you get rid of “religion”, things that have all the forms of religion, but don’t involve deities, so aren’t “religion”, spring up in their place. You and I have been lambasted by the adherents of just such a belief system. The crimes that are committed in the name of religion are simply crimes committed in the adherence to a belief system. Such systems display the behaviour of living organisms like viruses, seeking to grow and infect new hosts. Sometimes they accrete the belief that those who do not adhere to their system are lesser beings, then that such lesser beings do not deserve a share of the world’s resources. Obviously, it is an aid to a belief system trying to gain a dominant position, if it calls upon its adherents to kill all non-believers. Such things have arisen since the dawn of “civilisation”. You can no more abolish religion than abolish greed.
Bayard I find the Chesterton quote funny and terrifying, at the same time – from bathos to pathos and back again.
I knew a few people who “believed in anything” once. Some crazy religious beliefs they seemed to have made up. It was never clear to me what they believed. What was clear was their penchant for raising large numbers of goats in their small council flat the whole lot of them dressed in goat skin shoes, hats and clothes. I think they thought they were outside of society. They were quite a sight out on the street
Their leader was that rarest of violent criminals, a seemingly independent armed robber who worked alone, and who had spent 20 years robbing the local all-night garages and off-licences with a sawn-off shotgun. The local OCG’s (Organised Crime Groups) treated him with great respect and the Police never got him. Coming home late one night, I saw a group of young thugs try and run him over using a BMW. He evaded the speeding vehicle and somehow launched a projectile through the windscreen of the car. It crashed and he proceeded to drag those foolish men out of the car and beat them – took him 30 seconds and he was over 50 at that point.Then he coolly nodded to me and went into his house. He was very violent in general – think “The Law Of Club and Fang” in Jack London’s writing but not without some kind of code – he respected violence. It was only after 10 years or so the local council stopped the goat farming operation – he was a difficult man to negotiate with. We, his neighbours were quietly ecstatic because of the many unpleasent goat noises that came from the flat – I got used to the smell real quick but I could never get used to the noise of shrieking goats.
There is an interesting article in ‘the Cradle’.
“Instead of pressuring Israel to stop its brutal assault on the Gaza Strip, the Biden administration is now mobilizing Arab and western fleets – and perhaps an Israeli one as well – to safeguard Tel Aviv’s economic, political, and military interests. It is not beyond the Houthis if attacked by the US coalition to target the 180 km Suez canal, then you are really talking big bucks all around. Genocide Joe is probably fast asleep while all these actions are happening,, all for his Zionist cause.
Amid heightened naval operations carried out against Israel-bound vessels by Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned armed forces, this US mobilization is taking place under the guise of upholding freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab.”
https://new.thecradle.co/articles/from-the-river-to-the-red-sea-why-the-us-is-forming-a-new-naval-task-force
It seems like the West is prepared to go to war with all comers in its quest to save the Apartheid monstrosity that is Israel..
Protestors who squirted tomato ketchup on to a Commons statue of Arthur Balfour, after whom the UK’s commitment to the creation of an Israeli state on Palestinian land is named, have been found not guilty of criminal damage by a unanimous jury decision.
This is a significant jury decision, if people supportive of Hamas have a jury trial, and the defence argue that Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement as stated in UN resolutions, a not guilty verdict should be more than possible.
The protest by the two women took place on the 105th anniversary of the ‘Balfour Declaration’ by the British Government in 1917:
Legal argument during the trial included whether the protest amounted to damage, whether the defendants had a lawful excuse in accordance with their right to freedom of expression protected under Article 10 of the EHRC, and also due to their belief that the public would consent to their protest as a form of expression and if they were aware of the history, consequence and legacy of the Balfour Declaration. https://skwawkbox.org/2023/12/19/two-palestine-action-activists-acquitted-by-jury-for-putting-ketchup-on-balfour-statue/
Just came across the following page linked to in a Jonathan Cook piece posted on December 15th:
14 kids under 10, 25 people over 80: Up-to-date breakdown of Oct 7 victims we know about
Age, gender data for most civilian victims of Hamas onslaught, based on media tally, provides a picture authorities aim to complete as they continue efforts to identify bodies
It’s dated December 4th, and unlike the article I linked to listing the names of hundreds of Israeli citizens who were killed on October 7th which only included the age of about half of them, the follwing page lists them all by age group:
Almost two months after the unprecedented Hamas onslaught on southern Israel, which left some 1,200 people dead, the exact data on those killed in the biggest terror attack in Israeli history is still shrouded in uncertainty.
There have been efforts to compile the available data, particularly the number of babies, children, and elderly people murdered on October 7, even as several members of emergency organizations have been quoted giving imprecise information.
Authorities have identified a total of 274 soldiers and 859 non-soldiers killed during the brutal assault. The latter figure includes 57 Israel Police officers and 38 local security officers. It is unclear which of these individuals were on duty when killed. Removing those victims leaves a figure of 764 civilians.
Partial data by Hebrew media covering the civilians — killed by thousands of invading terrorists and by some of the thousands of rockets fired that day at Israeli cities — reveals that they include two infants, 12 other children under the age of 10, 36 civilians aged 10-19, and 25 elderly people over the age of 80, accounting for 75 of the 764 civilians.
The largest number of confirmed civilian victims, 421, were in the age group of 20-40. Among them were 259 men and 162 women.
There were 161 victims between the ages of 41 and 64 — 102 men and 59 women.
Walla reported that 100 victims were aged 65-80, including 69 women and 31 men.
An unknown number of bodies — in mid-November the number was around 100 — are still awaiting identification at the Shura pathological center near Tel Aviv, with difficulties in the process arising because of the state of the remains. Some of the remains are believed to belong to Hamas terrorists.
In summary, Israel has officially identified 1,151 people murdered in the Hamas onslaught, with an unknown number of others still awaiting confirmation, and some of the remaining Gaza hostages possibly dead as well.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/14-kids-under-10-25-people-over-80-up-to-date-breakdown-of-oct-7-victims-we-know-about/
I should point out that it doesn’t actually list the names. But I still can’t understand why the article that listed seven hundred and something names only included the age of about half of them. Anyway, in the final analysis, given that BN and Co (and in turn Biden et al) knew that an attack was coming (and I have little doubt they knew the actual date as of shortly after Hamas decided on it) Netanyahu and Co are responsible for all the deaths of Israelis, both civilian and military, because the very least they could have done is call the music festival off, and evacuate all the residents of the Kibbutzim and any other people living in the area, and obviously been prepared for Hamas with a surprise counter attack. But then I doubt there would have been more than a handful or two of Israeli soldiers killed, if that.
In Jonathan’s December 15th article entitled ‘Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel’s own actions on 7 October?’, it says the following:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even described in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.”
I came across the story about five or six weeks ago, but I hadn’t heard about Blinken describing it in graphic detail before. I assume he didn’t claim he’d seen pictures of Hamas doing it!
Funny though, isn’t it, that we only first heard about the woman at the festival who had a breast cut off a couple of weeks ago in the Sunday Times, just two days after the truce ended….. the beautiful woman with a face like an angel who the guy hiding under the stage witnessed being raped by 8/10 men and then shot in the head, and then cutting one of her breasts off, and then ‘playing with it in the street’.
Oh, well, at least they cut her breast off after they killed her! Needless to say, like the forty beheaded babies, it’s ALL atrocity propaganda lies dreamed up and concocted by evil inhuman beings
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/why-is-the-media-ignoring-evidence.
Afterthought: In the Times of Israel article it says:
There have been efforts to compile the available data, particularly the number of babies, children, and elderly people murdered on October 7, even as several members of emergency organizations have been quoted giving imprecise information.
I wonder what this imprecise information was??! The Times of Israel doesn’t say, and yet you would expect a newspaper to explain what it was somewhere in the article…… at the end of the article, for example. But it doesn’t. I wonder why not. The obvious thing – one of them, that is – would be about the fact that only one baby is mentioned. And it’s not just ONE member of an emergency organisation, but several members of emergency organisationS! And it’s also interesting that they say ‘There have been efforts to compile the available data, particularly the number of babies, children, and elderly people murdered on October 7….’. Now why would they think to say that, or have any reason to think to say that?
I just did a search on their website re >emergency workers quoted giving imprecise information<, and the only relevant article that came up in the list of results was the December 4th one, and was the first in the list, so it appears that at no point either before or since the December 4th article have they explained what this imprecise information was.. When I first heard about the forty beheaded babies I did a search and, as such, found that some of the MSM were reporting that forty babies had been beheaded by Hamas, and some were reporting that forty babies were killed by Hamas and some of them beheaded, and it obviously couldn't be both, and concluded it was almost definitely NONE, and that it was atrocity propaganda and a big Goebbels-type falsehood. Apart from which, it seemed highly HIGHLY unlikely that Hamas would do such an atrocious thing and turn public opinion around the world against them right from the get-go. And they had no history of doing such a thing, or any of the other atrocious things they were accused of doing. And you can be absolutely certain that the MSM knew the instant they first heard it that the forty beheaded babies story was a falsehood. Of course they did, and they certainly have no excuse for not knowing it now.
They also knew Lammy’s claim of “raped babies” was a degenerate lie and exactly why he was spreading it.
Over 10,000 Palestinian children have now been murdered. Lammy will be anointed as UK Foreign Secretary next year and portrayed by Britain’s media and political class as an uncontroversial appointment. That’s how they are.
Greg Park.
Here is the Zionist equivalent of the White Helmets in Syria, they spread lies of Hamas atrocities to get people onside.
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/12/06/scandal-israeli-october-7-fabrications/
And just in.
Here is the top ten US politicians who receive the most (blood) money from Israeli lobby groups.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/blood-money-top-ten-politicians-taking-most-israel-money-israel-lobby/286491/
Sadly Bernie Sanders’ recent refusal to endorse a permanent ceasefire (a position held by virtually the entire world) has earned him AIPAC’s praise.
https://twitter.com/AIPAC/status/1733897185228394770
This is utterly appalling and sick if you ask me, the link to the story is in the link below.
“Ha’aretz reports that the Israeli military’s Operations Directorate operates a Telegram channel called “72 Virgins – Uncensored” that posts sadistic images of Israelis murdering Palestinians, mutilating their bodies:”
https://nitter.net/jeremyscahill/status/1734507744135127108#m
RoS, just now, live on Al Jazeera the genocidal murderers bombed residential homes next to a hospital, it was full of people and refugees. More Palestinians killed in this genocidal madness.
Nevermind.
Yes the Zionists are committing unspeakable acts against civilians, such as using bulldozers to run over civilians in tents and burying some of the (still alive) in mass graves.
The discovery of a mass grave near Kamal Odwan Hospital in Gaza, with evidence showing that injured civilians were crushed by bulldozers and buried alive.
I am surprised that there are billions of muslims sitting and watch this unfold and still not one single 1 have even commited 1 single “retalitory” act against israeli interest worldwide during this massacre. Where is the resistance?? Something is unfortunately, very rotten, in the islamic/arabic world when it comes to taking action. I thought, obviously naively, that the arab streets would ignite as soon as Israel launched their invasion, but nothing happend, the arab street is almost as silent as the corrupt arab leaders. They are many more but they apparently choose to be humiliated by Israel and israelis.
One can only imagine what the palestinians feel about their arab neighbouring states by now. Nothing but contempt. The israelis of course cheer in joy for this divide and conquer game they have been playing against the arabs/muslims/palestinians.
The Iraqis have been doing a lot, firing missiles at US airbases, and according to Crooke, militants have been waiting on the border with Jordan to be allowed to enter and go fight the Israelis. Of course Abdullah is not going to let jihadis enter, as it would stink too much of Black September, and put him personally at risk of being strung up.
“I am surprised that there are billions of muslims sitting and watch this unfold and still not one single 1 have even commited 1 single “retalitory” act against israeli interest worldwide during this massacre.”
Quite apart from that not being true, as the Houthis are doing this rather well, what, precisely, do you mean by “retaliatory act” and what, do you think the effect will be on the Palestinians?
“Something is unfortunately, very rotten, in the islamic/arabic world when it comes to taking action.”
What action do you suggest, against a nuclear-armed adversary?
“One can only imagine what the palestinians feel about their arab neighbouring states by now.”
You would do well not to confuse your imagination with what is actually happening in the world.
It’s all very well excoriating foreign governments from the safety of your keyboard, but if you don’t show some evidence that you have thought what action might be taken and how effective it would be, such calls sound extremely hollow. “Nothing is impossible for him who doesn’t have to do it”
Bayard
What action do you suggest, against a nuclear-armed adversary?
Why do you keep repeating this defaitist argument over and over again? If that is your outlook, well why should palestinians bother at all? They should just lie down and die and billions of muslims too that are apparently, according to you, so scared of “nuclear-armed” Israel that there is no point doing anything.
I have already responded multiple times past months, to you, what the arabs could do – everything from cutting ties, to cutting economic relations, to boycotting of events where israeli reps. are represented like in sports, to call on ICC, to stop any israeli/arab normalization, to kick out israeli diplomats in the arab, muslim world, to cut oil/gas exports, to proclaim economic sanctions, to stop the Gaza blockade from the Egyptian side, to transfer helmets/bullet proof west, small fire-arms, to kick out western diplomats, to arm if not Gaza at least arm PA in the West Bank with heavy weapons etc. Just look how effective the west act against Russia. The arab leaders are not doing 1% of that! They do nothing.
You seems to have this glorified rosy image of the arab leaders. You still do not understand that they are western lackeys, western funded SOB leaders. Egypt just had their presidential election past days, the result? 90% voted for the corrupt western backed Al-Sisi, the same Sissy that refuse to break the israeli blockade of Gaza even when palestinians face genocide.
Do not give me that crap once again that arab leaders work hard in secret to stop this senseless killing, they are not, have not almost 3 months of non stop killing by Israel proved this to you? Let alone decades of wars by Israel. What did the arab leaders do. Nothing.
The Arab leaders’ responsibility is towards the citizens of their own country first and foremost. Unlike the UK, or the USA, who never let a good quarrel go to waste, if it can be used to advance their interests, most countries just want to look after their own affairs, not rush into some quixotic adventure on behalf of another country’s citizens. All those measures you suggest would either have zero effect or cause economic hardship to the country carrying them out, economic hardship which you personally are not going to feel, whilst having little effect either.
Nor have you explained why it is Arab countries who should be “doing something” about the massacre of the Palestinians, and not the US and the UK, who are already “doing something”, but the opposite to you seek. Your insistence that it is the Arab countries responsibility is beginning to look a lot like Islamophobia or racism. Brown people are being killed, so it is up to other brown people to stop it, even though it is white people who are doing the killing.
Did I get modded? Ah well…was it the K word?
How about this for more murderous Zionism ?
https://nitter.net/The_Real_Fly/status/1737314911078768930#m
‘ @The_Real_Fly
10h
ISRAELI MINISTER: “I don’t care about Gaza… for all I care, they can go out and swim in the sea! I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza.”
Sulaiman Ahmed
https://nitter.net/ShaykhSulaiman
They are berserk!