On Thursday evening news came through that we had at long last gained the full list of approvals required to travel to report outside Beirut; we were cleared by the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Defence, and the local authorities.
Laith Marouf of Free Palestine TV called me and suggested we go down together on Friday to the southern capital of Nabatieh, which has been enduring heavy bombing.
I asked Laith to give me half an hour, and did some quick research. Nabatieh is about 12 miles from the Israeli border and has been devastated by Israeli bombing attacks. In the South of the country some 70,000 homes have been destroyed. Following the Gaza model, hospitals, schools, mosques, waterworks, churches, bakeries have all been systematically taken out. In brief occupations Israel has demolished entire villages.
Israel has also deliberately destroyed the crops and livestock.
I read this brilliant article by Hanna Davis for Middle East Eye ten days earlier, which describes Nabatieh in apocalyptic terms. It is centred on interviews with the heroic civil defence workers, who are especially targeted by Israel.
Back at the hilltop, Fakih’s colleagues also spoke about the immense stress and psychological pressure they were under.
“Mentally, we are all struggling,” Hussein Jaber, 30, from Nabatieh’s civil defence, told MEE.
“We are struggling with the lack of stability. We are always on the move, can’t sleep well, and are being put in intense situations,” he said.
“We have to pull out the dead bodies of people we love, friends and families we know, neighbours, people from our own area.”
Since then, the situation had deteriorated even further. 100 people had been reported dead in Nabatieh in a fresh wave of airstrikes the day before.
It had not been exactly safe in Beirut since I had arrived, but now Laith had faced me with the inevitable question. Did I really have the courage to do what I had come to Lebanon in order to do? That is why I had asked for half an hour to research and think it over.
Well, I phoned Laith back and asked him what time we could start.
Laith is good company. A lifelong activist, he has been hounded and demonised by Zionists his entire career, which has centred on attempting to establish independent broadcasting platforms. He is currently trying to grow FreePalestineTV into a serious operation, and is full of cheerful facts about the relative reach of online and broadcast media. I do hope he succeeds.
The next morning Niels gathered his equipment and I took a spare jacket and tie, in case my suit got dusty. Laith arrived with his cinematographer, the debonair and intrepid Hadi Hotait, driving. Hadi’s car is a capacious SUV from which all signs of branding fell off many years ago, along with many other superfluous pieces. He appeared to have an entire film studio packed in the back. I should not have been surprised if, on arrival, a couple of extras had appeared from under the unfathomable mound.
Hadi navigated his way through the backstreets of Beirut between cars triple-parked so badly it seemed a physical impossibility to get between them. Hadi overcame this by the simple expedient of going very fast. I think his old car, like the DeLorean in Back to the Future, enters a different dimension at sufficient speed. I cannot imagine how else he did it.
While I was contemplating that the Israelis might not be as likely to kill me as Hadi’s driving, Laith blithely announced we were not going to Nabatieh after all. The bombing there was so intense this morning that the army had closed the road. We were therefore going to Baalbek instead.
I knew that 60 people had been killed in bombing the day before there. I hated to think what was happening in Nabatieh if it is more dangerous than Baalbek. But on the other hand I had long wanted to go to Baalbek and to see the famed Bekaa Valley, so I was quite pleased.
We chatted away as we climbed the steep ascent of the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Hadi’s ancient car was somehow texting warning messages to his phone: “transmission overheating”, “check fluid levels”. At one stage an old Scotsman popped his head out of all the equipment in the back and said “Captain, the warp drive is not stable.” Although I may have nodded off and dreamt that.
Hadi emerged as a driver of incredible speed and skill, though whether it was an entirely appropriate way to proceed when not on a racetrack might be open to debate. Anyway, we managed only to crash once before we reached the top of the pass and the Bekaa Valley spread out below us like a beautifully worked carpet.
What surprised me was how close it all is. We were only 30 minutes outside of Beirut, and there to my right I could see the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Straight ahead were the mountain ranges where Hezbollah had defeated Isis. We were on the spot of the defining 1982 battle where the Syrian Army and Iranian-reinforced Palestinians heroically blocked the Israeli advance. Heading to our left, you could be in Damascus by lunch.
I was also surprised that we had not been stopped once, by any kind of security checkpoint. We had passed through a patchwork quilt of different communities, with drifts of posters in the central reservation supporting various factions, changing from Muslim to Christian symbolism and back again with bewildering frequency as we drove along.
We went down into the valley. The land is highly cultivated and I went to look at the soil. At the entrance to the valley it is rich and organic but also red with iron oxide. Further to the South it turns a deep black and becomes rich and pasty in consistency. It smells good.
We made a rendezvous with a convoy of journalists outside a hospital. I will not name it because the fact it was the meeting point might give a crazed Israeli or his AI a “reason” to attack it. The convoy of journalists was being assembled to be taken around the ruins of the previous day’s destruction.
A local official talked to Hadi, and it was clear that I was being singled out in some way. I was at first slightly concerned by this, but then Hadi explained that I was being granted an interview with the Mayor of Baalbek, whose authority covered the whole of the north of the Valley.
We headed into Baalbek itself, about a further fifteen minutes’ drive. It was a lovely sunny day and I was struck by the beauty of the valley. It is not densely populated, but it is extensively populated. Homes are more frequent amongst the farmland than in most rural communities. Baalbek itself has no tall buildings that I saw.
It looks both distinctive and pleasant. Many houses are obviously centuries old. Ancient mosques nestle by ancient churches. The rows of single-storey shops were surprisingly Western in names and goods proffered. We passed a Pizza Hut. But horribly, incongruously, every few minutes we would pass a home or homes that had been massively bombed into rubble.
Like missing teeth in a beautiful smile.
We stopped near the centre of town and met a man and a woman from the local authority. They explained that the Mayor would be coming to meet us in the Temple of Bacchus, because it was felt unlikely the Israelis would bomb there.
Only two days earlier, all four of us journalists had been at the site of an Israeli missile strike in Central Beirut, where the district Mayor had been killed at a community centre providing aid parcels for refugees. Four other people had also been killed, and fifteen seriously injured. Israel has made a point of targeting elected local leaders throughout its invasion, killing a number of mayors in the South.
I thought it ironic to see all the Western politicians repeating the Zionist line that Netanyahu should not be arrested by the International Criminal Court because he is an elected leader, when Netanyahu is killing elected leaders all over Lebanon.
We were, however, told that there would be a delay, because of intense Israeli drone activity over the city. In particular there was one drone circling low right over our heads, and had been for a while. We were to proceed to the ruins and wait.
When we re-entered the vehicle, Hadi, the most light-hearted of company, became suddenly very serious:
Sometimes the drones do miss. They really do. If they fire at us and miss, just get the door open and get as far from the vehicle as you can.
As we drew near, the quality and the extent of the ruins was breathtaking. It is on the scale of the Forum in Rome. What has been excavated is not as extensive as Ephesus but much more is complete. Just what we could see from the road was wonderful, and then the Temple of Venus opened before us on the other side as we drove along. And Pizza Hut.
I had grown rather blasé about drones. I have had Israeli drones buzzing low overhead pretty much the entire month I have now been in Beirut, and while I know that they are missile- as well as surveillance-equipped, and highly lethal, I find it best just to ignore them. But the people with us were extremely concerned that this one had moved along with us as we drove.
It was clearly visible and they pointed out to me that we were right at the centre of its circle. My own sense of geometry rather disintegrates when I tilt my head right back and gaze at an object in a featureless sky, but I took their word for it. They had been living with this lethal threat for months, and their lives depended on understanding it. They even could even tell various actions of the drone by the change in tone of the engines.
Without the mayor, we did not have permission to enter the archaeological complex, so we stood outside the gate. At some stage the atmosphere changed and it became obvious that our hosts were really, really worried. They explained that they were quite sure that the drone had focused on us, specifically. Obviously it would not be safe for the mayor to come in these circumstances.
So the meeting was cancelled.
Instead they were awaiting permission for us to look around the temple complex, but in the meantime we could do nothing but stay where we were. They felt that leaving now might provoke a missile strike. So we just stood there.
I find it hard to describe it to you. It was a lovely sunny day. The soldier inside the locked temple gate was explaining to the local authority people that he had no instructions that would allow our entry. The drone buzzed menacingly right overhead, observing us constantly.
A ginger cat came through the temple railings, and I crouched down, holding out my balled fist so she could rub her head against it. She purred and went back and forth rubbing my fist several times, before lying down to be stroked. I found myself pondering a most unlooked-for dilemma; was I putting the cat in danger by keeping it next to me? Should I chase it away?
The surreal nature of life endured in Baalbek became more evident as two men in donkey jackets strolled by smoking, saying their salaams as they came by, without a hint of concern for the drone above us. Vehicles went up and down the road slowly, as though nothing were wrong.
Then three boys arrived, about eight years old, one on a bicycle. They thought it great fun to see strangers in town in current times and they came up to us and asked lots of questions in Arabic. One showed us tricks on the bike. Strangely, he was wearing a Welsh Rugby Union hoodie. I was acutely aware that the presence of the boys would not in any way deter the Israelis from striking; they would probably enjoy killing them.
I felt a huge anger that this threat is being constantly visited on children by Israel. Almost certainly these children would know some of the sixty people killed the day before. Yet there they were, exactly as friendly and cheeky as children ought to be.
Eventually, the gates were opened and we were allowed in to the temple complex. It is an incredible place and should be much more widely known; it deserves to be as famous as the Pyramids or Petra. Originally the temple of the Canaanite God Baal and his consort Astarte, successive Phoenician, Greek and Roman temple complexes were built, with most of the current buildings being Roman, but constructed on the foundations of the original.
And those foundations are astonishing. The largest blocks of stone I have ever seen used for construction, with some of them weighing 500 tonnes. By comparison, the largest stones in the Pyramids are 80 tonnes and the largest at Stonehenge 50 tonnes. The transport and construction theories for those monuments just can’t be scaled up to 500-tonnes.
Once you tear your gaze around from the Canaanite foundations, the Roman superstructure is intoxicating. It is massive, and there is a finesse and delicacy to the carving not characteristic of Roman work.
Baalbek was conquered by Alexander and he renamed it Heliopolis, its name throughout the Classical era.
Archaeology is contentious in the Middle East. Two days before our visit, an Israeli archaeologist had been killed by Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. At least, that was the media framing. The truth is somewhat more complex.
Zeev Erlich was, despite being in his 70s, armed and in full military uniform. A retired Major in the Israeli Defence Force reserve, Erlich was with a group of soldiers when killed. A Sergeant was killed alongside him and a General wounded.
The Israeli army brought an archaeologist along on its invasion of Southern Lebanon to look for evidence of ancient Hebrew occupation – to justify annexation. At the time of his death he was at the site of the shrine of the Prophet Shamoun Al-Safa, who Christians know as Simon Peter, the first Pope. Very few Christians realise he features positively in the Koran.
It is a reflection of the madness of Zionist ideology that an armed invasion is accompanied by archaeologists to justify it. It is highly probable that thousands of years ago there were Hebrews in Southern Lebanon. The idea that this justifies annexation is so lunatic I find it hard to describe.
In the same time period, Switzerland was occupied by the Celts. This is not in academic dispute; the La Tène culture is one of a number of Celtic cultures that were established in Switzerland in the Classical period. Eventually the Celtic people and their culture moved on, as peoples do over millennia. Such migrations had push and pull factors, but broadly the arrival of more aggressive and militarily capable peoples from the East was a main cause.
But if I said to you “I am a Celt” and demanded the right to move to Geneva, take somebody’s house and throw them onto the street today, you would think I am a complete lunatic. Nobody would accept a Scots or Irish claim to land in Switzerland. And rightly so. Yet that really is the premise of Zionism. And astonishingly, Keir Starmer, Joe Biden, David Lammy, Donald Trump, Ursula von der Leyen, and most of the population of states like Germany and the USA, actually subscribe to this utterly ludicrous, mystical, medievalist nonsense.
So we have fake archaeologists travelling with invading Israeli armies. I do try to avoid comparing Israelis to Nazis because of the Holocaust, but the comparison is compelling. The Nazis loved to justify their crackpot racial theories with fake archaeology, as parodied in the Indiana Jones series.
Zeev Erlich was indeed a dangerous crackpot. He was a founder of the illegal West Bank settlement of Ofra and he wrote numerous articles arguing that the area was historically Jewish and supporting annexation. He led IDF raids on Palestinian communities, or as one of his friends told it to Israeli internet outlet ynet: “He volunteered and assisted soldiers across various sectors, showing his unmatched knowledge of villages and farms”.
As we left the temple complex, the drone still overhead, we stopped and looked at the completely flattened Menshiya Palace, home to the Ottoman Governor, that had been destroyed by Israeli bombing. It stands close to some of the Classical ruins which had been damaged by fragments. There was no justification for destroying this museum other than the obliteration of history and cultural heritage.
We then proceeded on to two civilian houses that had been destroyed. Two people were killed and twelve seriously injured. This was quite a drive away, but the drone followed us and again circled right overhead. I looked through the detritus of the buildings; Laith was very insistent I climb to the top of the rubble, which was frankly very precarious. Coming down was even worse. But close inspection revealed nothing at all but the contents of a normal civilian family home with children.
It was also worth noting that in addition to the two destroyed homes, about ten homes nearby had been rendered uninhabitable. A dozen vehicles had been destroyed; some of them – fifty or sixty metres from the site – appeared to have had their paint burnt off by great splashes of some kind of burning or caustic liquid from the explosion.
Death in the Bekaa Valley is sudden, random and frequent. There are no warnings at all here that Israel is about to bomb and the targets are always civilian homes. Since we have left the Director of the hospital has been killed in his home.
The Israelis claim that all the targets are Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the ruling party here, so they take that to mean any government employee can be targeted. This is of course not the case in international law, and this terror inflicted on a helpless civilian population is a war crime. Many victims appear to be entirely random.
Missiles have never been fired at Israel from within the town of Baalbek.
We then received information that fresh bombing attacks were believed to be imminent; F-35s had been seen and we were ordered to get out as quickly as possible, which we did.
It was an unexpected and then truncated time in the Bekaa Valley, and as darkness fell we were pleased to be driving back to Beirut all still alive and well. My overwhelming reflection is that any fear or pressure we experienced is felt by those in Baalbek every single day. I recall the thoughts I had about the safety of the cat, and wondered how mothers felt, who were making decisions on where their children go from moment to moment which may kill them, in the lottery of death the Israelis have inflicted on the Bekaa Valley.
Well that was an interesting excursion. I look forward to our next tour.
————————–
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“astonishingly, Keir Starmer, Joe Biden, David Lammy, Donald Trump, Ursula von der Leyen, and most of the population of states like Germany and the USA, actually subscribe to this utterly ludicrous, mystical, medievalist nonsense”
Being a Zionist requires you to believe six impossible things before breakfast, like the Queen in Through the Looking Glass. That comes naturally to the individuals you named as they are also Neoliberals.
For that lot, it is the price of entry. QED
Cynically Netanyahu today claimed he might go along with a ceasefire. Thats is like you have physically abused, tied up and tortured someone for months, destroyed his house in the mix and now want a pause and want everything to go back to normal. What if someone destroyed Israel to the same extent and killed as many people? That nation would would face israeli nuclear weapons in return. When Israel waged their massacre-war against PLO in the 80s in Lebanon, Hezbollah came out of those atrocities. What will come after Israel’s destruction of Lebanon this time?
ICC ought to open a case on israeli war crimes against Lebanon.
Speaking on ICC, former ICC boss – Luis Moreno Ocampo – claimed last year that the siege of Gaza, itself, is a type of genocide:
https://youtu.be/9b8ddCxv2tg?t=238
Hezbollah are putting up a strong fight against the aggressors, as they also did in 2006.
A strong fight that’s winning.
Craig, I very much admire your courage and determination. But please, at least take some elementary precautions. These are not onerous and may well save your life and that of your companions. Dress as the locals do. If any locals wear wide brimmed hats, wear one. Dark glasses always when going outside regardless of the weather. If a drone notes your presence and persists, disperse on foot and reconvene at an agreed location later. I’m sure you can think of other ways to stay safer. Good luck.
Pasha,
Thank you. Interestingly I suggested the disperse on foot and reconvene later tactic, but the locals rejected it out of hand. As they have a lot more experience than me, I assume they have good reason.
I think on balance the Israelis may be less likely to kill me than a random local, so am not going with the hat and sunglasses approach. I may of course be wrong about this.
They are shooting toddlers in the head and chest. They will kill you first chance they get a plausible excuse. Please leave, this type of insane gonzo journalism is for younger men. You’ve done your shift. I can’t believe your family are not going off their nut at you doing this. I am being selfish here, I want you alive.
What do you think the response would be if Bibi asked his buddy Starmer what to do about you ?
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest” …
If you flourish a copy of the Guardian, will the drone nazis assume that you’re one of them?
A wide brimmed hat and dark glasses are sensible things to wear in bright sunlight regardless.
I suppose if a drone operator spotted somebody in a suit and tie they might think he was a VIP of some sort but whether that would protect you or make you a target I wouldn’t like to say. Fair to assume that the Israelis do know about Craig’s presence and are keeping tabs on him.
I know a Russian lady whose husband was a film producer whose final project (He passed away last year) was a film (Jaber, 2019) where the Jews were claiming archaeological evidence to prove that Moses brought his Jews to Petra instead of Mount Sinai where they spent the 40 years before moving on to Palestine. The project almost collapsed because most Arab/Palestinian actors would not touch the script.
“In the same time period, Switzerland was occupied by the Celts. ….the La Tene culture is one of a number of Celtic cultures that were established in Switzerland in the classical period. Eventually the Celtic people and their culture moved on, as peoples do over millennia…….
But if I said to you “I am a Celt” and demanded the right to move to Geneva, take somebody’s house and throw them onto the street today, you would think I am a complete lunatic…. Nobody would accept a Scots or Irish claim to land in Switzerland. And rightly. Yet that really is the premise of Zionism”
=========
Excellent parallel.
I have made exactly that argument in several forums over many years but not so thoroughly or elegantly. I ought to be surprised that no legacy journo has, to my knowledge, picked up on it, especially since Craig has voiced it at least once before. Why then am I not surprised?
Edward Longshanks claimed suzerainty over Scotland using the Brutus of Troy myth.
Family tradition has it that my ancestors were driven out of Ulster in the time of James VI & I and later in the 19th C sought refuge in Canada. Should I pick out a house in Londonderry or Belfast for my return?
What happens if they shoot the drones? Shotguns would be very effective.
No, the more elaborate drones, heron, hermes, etc. can fly at ‘medium’ altitude (~10,000 m) more than the effective range of a shotgun. Plus they’re armed so you don’t want to piss them off.
Please remember that Friends of Israel control both major UK political party leaderships. The petition is for anarchy, and after so many years of Tory damage to our infrastructure I would acknowledge that we are unlikely to get a better outcome by rerunning the election. Israel controls the UK, whichever party is in power.
Hold steady and keep pressuring the government on key issues. The balance of influences between the US and Europe is as yet undetermined. We are just 6 months into a new effort at leading the country through a highly risky situation.
The election won’t be rerun, agreed. But ~3M people cannot be totally ignored by zionist Starmer.
Of course he can ignore a silly petition. A lot more than 3M people voted for parties other than Labour, and he couldn’t care less about them.
Of course they can. And will be.
The FoI is an arm of the US empire.
Excellent reportage. Something the MSM never does. Much respect to you.
Craig I love you man but get out of there. They will kill you.
Have you noticed that we are feeling a parallel, or at least the shadow of a parallel, to the vicarious fear the whole of the diaspora feels for their people in the territories surrounding Israel.
“Their people”?
Excellent reporting – but that’s exactly what the Israelis hate – good quality reporting of the truth. Seems like they’re letting you know they’re aware of you, and could kill you if they wanted to. And they might well decide they want to.
Telling the truth is terrorism as far as they’re concerned.
Our government wouldn’t care in the slightest if they did, nor would any of Israel’s stooge states. Upsetting your supporters would be an added bonus. I would advise you to leave it at what you have already achieved, and carry on the conversation (like those excellent video interviews) from Scotland.
Is it possible that HMG’s influence is restraining the Israelis from harming Craig? Just asking.
No!
Craig is about as popular in HMG as a fart in a spacesuit.
+1
Al Jazeera were thrown out of Israel
Haaraetz is being boycotted by the Israeli Govt.
I thnk Glenn has a point.
What a trip! Congrats !
Clearly, in a distant past, Cleisthenes of Athens would have loved to be your guide among those archeological wonders. And it’s probably safer today than downtown Beirut.
Please keep up the good work…
Thank you, Mr Murray for giving me insight into the situation on the ground in Lebanon that puts to shame all MSM journalists.
I have a small quibble which I do not intend to detract from your excellent work.
I fully agree that Israel’s claim to land based on archaeology is nonsense but the Celts migration from Switzerland analogy may not fit perfectly. (The lunacy of the modern equivalent of a lad from Dublin, say, going over to expel people from their house in Zurich is fitting, though.)
My quibble: do we know that the ancient Hebrew population of Southern Lebanon were not adherents to a sect within Judaism that developed into Islam?
Even if not, they may have simply converted from Judaism to Islam rather than been driven out. Modern Muslims of the area are likely direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews. No historical migration in this case.
Indeed, but the point is that even if the origin claims are true, the argument from them is ludicrous.
I’d heard on Al Jazeera that the Israeli government was examining the Bible (Torah, whatever) because it seems to indicate that southern Lebanon is in fact northern Israel.
That’s all the justification they needed to put “settlers” all over Palestine before stealing it. Any excuse will do for a tyrant.
Indeed – any excuse will do. Zionists don’t believe their ancestors were in Palestine or Lebanon millennia ago, or that their tribal “God” promised them the land and they’re doing his work by stealing it. They couldn’t care less about any of that crap. It’s whatever myth works. What they believe is that might is right, unity makes ethnic strength, and that they can do whatever they like if they’re strong enough. The mass murder of Jews 80 years ago in parts of Europe is also wheeled into use as a myth, despite being true. True or false doesn’t matter to them. Practical use matters. They are totally and utterly cynical when dealing with other ethnicities.
The ancient Hebrews, Palestinians and modern Lebanese are mostly Canaanites and Phoenician. The Lebanese dispute that they have any arab descent. The modern Ashkenazi Israeli is a construct of mostly Iranian/ Iraqi and European descent. Italian dna is the main component of your modern Ashkenazi Israeli at about 33% but over 25 % North European which is surprising. The Sephardic Israeli is mostly North African Berber.
It goes to show that where humans go, loadsa shagging goes too.
Well yes. The essence of Judaism as I understand it is that the messiah will come but hasn’t done so yet. So it’s not unreasonable that, over the course of 2000 years, two putative messiahs might come along and some of the former Jews in that area choose to follow one or the other.
@Steve – I’m not sure but I think you may be suggesting that some former Jews may have viewed Muhammad as the Messiah.
Muslims view Jesus as the Messiah. He is called the Messiah in the Koran. As far as I know, no group, whether Muslim, Jewish, or something else, has ever viewed Muhammad as the Messiah.
Some Chabadnik Jews (“Lubavitchers” being a previously common name) have viewed this chap as the Messiah though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Mendel_Schneerson
It appears that the US is preemptively reporting that a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel is imminent. Is this connected perhaps with Iran’s most recent announcement yesterday that it will retaliate in response to the earlier Israeli attack against Iran?
If Hezbollah were to agree a ceasefire with Israel, would it then leave Israel a free hand to carry on the genocide in Gaza?
Apologies. This is just me thinking aloud.
This is the same trick the US played on Iran when they told Iran to wait before striking Israel, it was all a ruse because Netanyahu did not agree with a cease fire. Hezbollah has made it plain, they will not agree with a cease fire unless a Gaza deal is included.
And israel has used this tactic countless times in the past. They allow it to be reported that a deal is ‘close’, then either stage an atrocity, or claim that a strike by their opponents means that the deal is off because ‘they’ don’t want a deal. And once again Israel is the victim of these ‘terrorists’. It is a tired old strategy, but every time the boneheads in Western media report it verbatim from the Zionist agencies, with no attempt to report some salient facts.
The word “archaeology” was coined in England in the 1820s.
“Scientist” had to wait until the following decade.
When I went to the British Museum as a child, the person who gave a talk about Tutankhamun’s tomb and its looting on behalf of the Earl of Carnarvon (Eton and Trinity) seemed very keen to draw a distinction between “archaeologists” (rich white Europeans still in charge, with personalities and serving the cause of humanity) and “grave robbers” (some kinda venal barbarians who lost).
The imperialist organ known as “Wikipedia” (with the word “wiki” taken from the Hawaiian language) makes the same distinction even today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun#Tomb
The Earl of Carnarvon was the financier of the expedition; he didn’t do any work himself, but he was present. The archaeologist was Howard Carter.
@Laguerre – I know.
Someone can send someone else around someone’s house to burgle it.
I’m struck by how loud and intrusive the sound of the drone was during your report. Obviously designed to be that loud and intrusive, an intimidation tactic.
It’s not lost on me the comparison to Nazi Germany is always put forward as being an anti-Semitic trope but it seems unavoidable now. The continuous effort to corral people into ever smaller spaces, wall them off, control food, water, medicine and fuel. The refusal to allow anyone out for medical assistance never mind escape and the refusal to allow international observers or press to see what’s going on. Gaza is an open-air concentration camp, one where the people are continually picked off at their oppressor’s leisure.
I’d thought that the atrocity on October 7th was either absolute madness or absolute (twisted) genius. It has accelerated Israeli expansion and genocide but it has also given Palestinians their ‘George Floyd Moment’ The people of the world are disgusted and expect their governments to do something – even to condemn it! Slowly, very slowly, they will comply.
It appears we learned nothing from the atrocities during WW2.
@El Dee –
The Zionists will have role-played various responses from other regimes.
See also the capability of implementing a “Samson Option” which has long been part of their strategy. See for example Mordechai Vanunu’s writing about it. He worked at the nuclear installation at Dimona.
“I’d thought that the atrocity on October 7th was either absolute madness or absolute (twisted) genius.”
I wouldn’t call a breakout from a concentration camp and an attack on captor positions an “atrocity” – it was a great and audacious operation – but it is certainly very sad that children who were not present of their own accord were harmed. How many of the children killed were killed by Zionists following the Hannibal directive is unclear. Certainly some were captured – far fewer than the number of Palestinian children held in Zionist jails, but all harm to all children and all other innocents harmed in conflict is of course to be grieved. As for the adults – no sympathy whatsoever. Imagine a big party held outside the fence of Auschwitz with lots of SS men present for comparison.
Did Hamas misread the “red heifer” signalling?
Did Zionist assets within Hamas assist with the misreading?
Who knows?
But Hamas and allies would have roleplayed enemy responses too.
I had to recalibrate when the heifer wasn’t sacrificed, but the night remains young. The pressure on the West Bank is being ratcheted up.
In case anyone doesn’t know what I’m talking about: Hamas have explicitly referenced the red heifer plan as cause for the timing of the breakout, which was codenamed “Al Aqsa Flood”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See
The drones are reminiscent of the Focke-Wulf 189 floating over Belarus in Idi i smotri.
Thanks for another in parts hilariously written post from your drone infested abode.
If the occupying Zionists today decide to agree to a 60-day ceasefire with Hezbollah, that will hopefully stop the drones and bombing in Lebanon, Beirut and the Bekaa valley.
But will this ceasefire extend to Gaza? Will Blackburn’s fundraisers be able to distribute warm cloth, heaters and food in Gaza and the westbank?
Hope you will be able to do your videos without feeling threatened, so we can see you again one day, coming home for the winter solstice, celebrating the return of the light.
Take care, the Canaries suffering from injuries and are barely muddleling through.
I have no idea whether the American ceasefire proposal is going to work. The US negotiator, Amos Hochstein, is a dual US-Israeli citizen born in Israel, so presumably will deliver simply an Israeli victory proposal, which Netanyahu will pretend to hesitate about if he wants to go on with the war. I’m not at all sure that the US has succeeded in provoking disaffection in Lebanon that would force a Lebanese signature. could be, but not necessarily. The Israelis haven’t succeeded in their aims, so they’re trying to get them through a ceasefire agreement. Whether the Israeli public is majoritarily tired of the war is also unclear. The Israeli airforce is the only element that’s actually doing anything, and they’re somewhat separated from public opinion in the sense that few are dying, and they can go on as long as the US is supplying the bombs.
Mr. Murray, thank you for this work. Please stay safe.
I think you are right to draw parallels with the Nazis. There’s a lot of debate in our side about the behavior of Israel. Someone formulated their ideology this way:
Zionism, aka Jewish nationalism, is a mind-boggling mixture of “we are chosen by God” and the syndrome of a victim who supposedly has the right to do anything “because of the Holocaust”.
I also see parallels with Nazism in Germany in the last century, since researchers have pointed out that this ideology had fertile ground for growth there in times when Germany was in decline after its defeat in the First World War.
Maybe the parallelism is the other way around ? Which came first.
“researchers have pointed out that this ideology had fertile ground for growth there in times when Germany was in decline after its defeat in the First World War.”
And even before the First World War, Tatyana. A recent paper refers to the “Alldeutscher Verband” (ADV), a German high-society group formed long before Hitler came on the scene:
“The ADV was a kind of elite club for the top echelons of politics, business, the military, the press and senior civil servants. Among its 99 founders were 12 major industrialists and bankers, 30 politicians from the industrial-junker spectrum, leading aristocrats, members of the diplomatic corps as well as countless large landowners and influential representatives of the press.
The ADV propagated a racist ideology of the “racial and cultural unity of all German people” and the conquest of large parts of the world by Germany, with members worshipping war as the great “doctor and gardener” who “accompanies humanity on its path to higher development”. Anti-Semitism had also been an official part of the program since 1909.”
https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/hitler-and-the-german-coal-industrialists-passing-the-keys-to-a-kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger
Right wing politics and its antisemitic corollary were nothing new when the NSDAP was formed by Anton Drexler and his cronies.
Here’s an interesting one.
Just noticed this morning that HSBC are now not processing any transactions with Russia or Belarus.
(Doesn’t affect me, Vlad pays me with vodka and whores ! )
Who cares about bank payments on a day when the chairman of NATO’s military committee is telling us that the alliance has finally stopped viewing itself as defensive, and is discussing preemptive strikes against Russia, and Biden is thinking about giving nukes to Ukraine?
These fucking old senile idiots want World War III ASAP
Agreed. It’s always a good idea to scare gullible people with the threat of doomsday’s weapons. But we both know this not going to happen, simply because on both sides of the global divide these people you charmingly call “fucking old senile idiots” certainly want to remain alive.
In other words, WW III has already begun several years ago, but it doesn’t imply nuclear weapons, it’s mostly fought on the Internet.
With Elon, I’m afraid America has a good head start, but it’s not too late to keep trying…
If we get out of this mess alive, I’m billing both Biden and Bauer for emotional damages, panic attacks, insomnia, plus the cost of sedatives.
I second you. Keep pretending. It can work!
Would you prefer Dollars, Roubles… or Bitcoin?
Let’s be partners in Online Crime!
“But we both know this not going to happen, simply because on both sides of the global divide these people you charmingly call “fucking old senile idiots” certainly want to remain alive.”
Ruling scum, generally speaking, respect each other. That’s not what they say to their home populations, but it’s nevertheless true. See for example how arrangements were made regarding Chelsea Football Club.
See how this guy fared in Nazi captivity, and this is the Wikified version!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Nathaniel_de_Rothschild
The biggest-bang nuclear weapons are citybusters. I wouldn’t expect the rulers in any belligerent country to stay in big cities during WW3.
Why do you think nuclear weapons have been amassed? Do you think for example that those who ran a given regime thought “We’ll convince those who run other regimes that we’re ready to use nukes but we’ll never really use them, because that would be suicide for both of us?” That doesn’t make any sense. You gotta assume those who run other regimes are just as intelligent as those who run the first regime. They will assume exactly that.
You could argue they just want to make profit out of the contracts. You could for example cite as analogy the way the British civil nuclear programme was always a big scam involving, as Churchill was admiringly aware, the Rothschilds and Canada.
But everyone knows that someone can press a button because someone else looked at his girlfriend, no security can ever be 100%, and, y’know, Sod’s Law and stuff. (I’m aware there can also be Dos’s law – see Vasily Arkipov during the 1962 Turkey-Italy-Cuba “crisis” but that’s not the point.)
They could trouser the money from something else if they wanted – maybe some old crap to do with Mars or whatever.
They amass nukes because they want to be able to use them.
It sounds as though you’re not keeping an eye on what we can see of these loons on the internet. You got Sandhurst-trained guys who really do want to cause megadeaths in Russia and who would whoop it up if Ukraine launched nukes at its enemy, or for that matter if Russia launched non-nukes at Poland or Estonia or, indeed, Britain.
Remember this incident?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_missile_explosion_in_Poland
They were whooping it up then.
In the past few days, we’ve had a German plane crash near Vilnius in Lithuania, a Russia plane on fire in Antalya, Turkey, other airport incidents, and today a British regime guy gets expelled from Moscow for spying. It could all crack off at any time.
You should read some Karl Marx. Capitalism if not destroyed will smash the f*** out of the size of “living labour”. It will reduce the population drastically and fast. It will cull. The rulers can’t make profits indefinitely by taking it from state coffers or some old sh*t to do with this wretched computer network called the internet. They make profit from surplus value, which is produced by living workers … and when they can’t they will kill the living workers. They don’t feed proles out of kindness.
When Elon Musk the “Doge” urges everyone (or was it just white people?) to have lots of babies, the megacull is already being prepared.
The rulers can do almost anything they want nowadays, now that the population spend almost all of the time they possibly can picking disgusting little clever television sets.
Tatyana:
What these idiots don’t understand is that the idea of expanding NATO up to the Russian Borders was so as that firing a Nuke (or nukes) at Moscow would deliver the First Strike more quickly.
They lack imagination because yes – you can land yours first in a certain city but there is what is termed a ‘Dead Man’s Switch ‘which means that you land your first and automatically the response follows to whomever fired the first nuke at you and it carries on like that across the world.
It’s a terrible scenario but a lot of Western politicians and media really do not understand the concept.
No-one can fire a nuke without consequences.
No matter what that Southern Swamp Rat – Lindsey Graham thinks.
A fine account. I visited Baalbek as a scruffy back-packing student in the early 60s, so your tour of it felt very real to me. Your point about the Israeli PM being untouchable as an appointed official whilst he kills appointed officials for a pastime (indeed he justifies his whole war in Gaza by saying he’s going after Hamas officials) was very well made.
And, yes, the Welsh and the Cornish can march on London if we can justify an invasion on the ground they lived there 2 thousand years ago!
“Elected” not “appointed”, but doubtless a typo.
‘I was acutely aware that the presence of the boys would not in any way deter the Israelis from striking; they would probably enjoy killing them’.
I believe Israel is unique on earth in this regard. I did always wonder why Israel was singled out by British parliamentarians as the one country they wanted to ostentatiously boast about being Friends with. Never have I seen them align themselves more passionately with Israelis than now, while the rest of the world recoils from this infanticidal depravity.
Thanks for the post Craig. Despite all the death, destruction, drones overhead – all the time, the Bekaa Valley sounds like a lovely, idyllic place. The level of archealogical remains alone is astounding. It has survived millenia, people continue to live there, cats come out to greet you, kids ride their bikes from school and stop for a chat, and the war roars all around them! It really is the spirit of greatness but that is too small a word. There is an animal sanctuary in Syria where hundreds of animals are cared for, fed, given health care. There is a group asking for help to get a container of food into Gaza for the animals. You see pictures of people including children looking for safe places carrying their pets. These people have nothing yet they have their humanity, they try to protect each other and those they love. They are hoping for a better world with peace and security and their memories will be that of kindness. I don’t know what has happened to the western elites – it really is time they realized their countrymen and women do not support them. Keep safe!
Lebanon to file complaint at UN Security Council over Israel’s targeting of army positions
https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/lebanon-news/819311/lebanon-to-file-complaint-at-un-security-council-over-israels-targetin/en
Sigh, instead of coming with this pathetic lament to the US controlled UNSC, Lebanon/Arab League should try to do something of substance. For once. If they had some brain they would have understood, decades ago, that mere whining will take them nowhere so why continue doing the same file-complaints-idiocy time and time again decade after decade?! What is this? Some self-humiliation lifestyle?
And still, still , the humiliated lebanese government nontheless want to sign a “cease-fire deal” with Israel believing Israel is “only” after Hezbollah.
They could do something like calling on all Arab and other countries to stop all trade with the world’s top 100 holders of US dollar reserves.
Dump the dollars unless the US stops all support for the Zionist regime.
They could also end cooperation with Arab countries that have diplomatic relations with the Zionists, like Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE.
Egypt in particular could be totally shunned until it shuts the canal.
Hit the supporters of Israel in their pockets.
More weapons could also be given to Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups on the West Bank.
I look forward to a mysterious new ability to shoot down zionazi terrorflieger with devices that have signs of Cyrillic writing in their wreckage. Go on Vlad sent them to Ooh-aah Hezbollah as well as the Yemenis….
I cannot see a cease fire deal in which Hezbollah agree to move north of the Litani, still less if Israel does not include a cease fire in Gaza also, and all Israeli troops withdraw from there as well. If such a deal was accepted and some in the Lebanese government would indeed sign such a document, Hezbollah will have the last word. Any move by them north of the Litani without without a cease fire in Gaza would mean a comprehensive defeat for the ‘arc of resistance’. The Houthis closed Iilat port in southern Israel, which is approx 2000 Kilometres away.
Whereas Hezbollah (who have far more missiles than the Houthis) have not attempted to close Haifa port when it is almost visible from Southern Lebanon (approx 15 miles) The US has been trying to unsuccessfully gin up a civil war between the various factions, now they hope the Lebanese armed forces will help them do the dirty work for them.
It does look rather fishy doesn’t it?
“…Temple of Bacchus, because it was felt unlikely the Israelis would bomb there.”
;O)
Puts me in mind of the Napoleonic French invasion of Egypt and Syria, although I suspect archaeologists provide cover for British oil explorations in places like Mesopotamia too?