This mini-documentary gives much more extensive coverage of our visit to Baalbek just before the ceasefire. The day before we went, sixty civilians had been killed in Israeli bombings throughout the small city. This video captures something of the terror with which the inhabitants had been living for months, and their extraordinary resilience.
With thanks to Niels Ladefoged for the filming and editing.
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Thank you for reporting these crimes at extreme personal risk. They need to be documented with Biden again calling the Syrian President a brutal dictator “whose hands are stained with the blood of innocents”.
“The origins of the Israelites are obscure. Outside their own writings there is virtually no mention of them as a people before the 9th century BC and many of the events recorded as history in the Hebrew scriptures have no separate archaeological or documentary evidence to confirm them. This has made any discussion of their history intensely difficult. Since the 19th century, there have been Western scholars preoccupied with fitting the stories of the Old Testament to historical evidence, some of them implying that the existence of a Christian God could be substantiated if such links were found while the establishment of Israel as a state in 1948 led to intensive efforts to confirm the link of the Jewish people with their territory back to kings such as David.
Much depends on the status given the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament as a historical source. The scholar Amelie Kuhrt gives a balanced assessment: ‘like many accounts of the past the Old Testament was not intended to provide a critical historical study; rather it contained stories detailing the interaction of a people, Israel, with their God, Yahweh, who had chosen them to work out his divine plan’. It is a complex, ideologically driven compilation, within which stories were refashioned to drive home particular lessons of the past. In other words, historians should read the Hebrew scriptures as texts in which historical events have been shaped to provide a coherent understanding of how the Israelite people came to be, above all in relation to their god, Yahweh. In this the scriptures remain the only account of a Near Easten people that describes how they themselves visualised the emergence of their nation. Increasingly scholars are insisting that the history of Israel can only be fully understood if the first Israelites are placed among their neighbours of the region and seen as facing many of the same challenges.”
(Ref. “Egypt, Greece, and Rome” by Charles Freeman.)
@Malcolm – I’m not sure what a “Christian God” is, or how his existence could be “substantiated”, but the fact that the followers of the world’s two largest monotheistic religions believe that their supposedly universal God used to be the tribal god of the Jews, who helped his chosen people steal land and commit genocide, does rather weaken their cases.
The notion that the “first” temple of Jerusalem didn’t exist on the physical plane, and nor did the kingdom of David and Solomon, is important and probably true. I am not sure whether you are aware of the role in these matters (both in the past and now) of 1) the chemical substance DMT and 2) ideas of the astral plane.
Very nice video. The sanctuary in Baalbakk is wonderful. Of course they don’t say the temple survived because it was converted into a medieval castle with the colonnades walled up (Baalbakk was never conquered by the Crusaders, so it’s an Islamic castle). The French of course cleaned off the medieval masonry, but there are parts of the castle still there.
Congratulations. Baalbekk was certainly worth the trip. Too bad this obnoxious drone ruined the soundtrack on your video, but maybe this can be corrected by further mixing. Having the whole site open just for your private party was no little achievement. Laith was very efficient.
And you give a remarkable performance of your favorite simile, your famous ‘Celts claim over Switzerland’ routine. Very adequate. You could also wonder why the French Normans don’t claim property of England, where they settled back in 1066. Even funnier.
Nothing looks more like rubble than more rubble. In that capacity, Baalbekk doesn’t change much from Beirut from what you saw. It’s probably quite different in the south of Lebanon where former residents struggle to get back to their homes.
Best of luck for your future reports.
The Normans are still there, as grand landowners, at least were when I was young.
Please let Craig know, so he can make variations to his number.
The Normans were just a bunch of Vikings with their helmets off.
No question about it. That’s exactly why they can be a perfect example of the insanity of territorial disputes based upon prior history. Craig Murray is by all means the best defender of this thesis.
Sent the link to my MP and a few other peopIe I know.
In Russia it’s being said today that the Ukrainian government – and in particular its military intelligence service – may have been involved in the HTS offensive in Syria. The specific allegation is made that both Ukrainian and Turkish officers were killed in a strike by the Syrian government on an HTS facility. As far as I know, this allegation hasn’t been made explicitly by the Russian government yet, but it has been reported (attributed to “experts”) by TASS, the government-owned news agency:
https://tass.com/pressreview/1880493
Any military action or sabotage that links the European and Middle Eastern theatres of war deserves attention. We all know the prophecies about Megiddo and the army coming down from the north. One day soon we might wake up one morning and BANG, Russia and Israel have fallen out with each other. And that is *not* going to be a pretty sight.
Personally I don’t think Ukraine has an independent foreign policy or war policy any more than Britain does.
The South Korean martial law event was strange and it’s clear that someone was absolutely stitched up like a kipper.
Meanwhile there has been an incident in the Baltic Sea involving a Russian warship and a German army helicopter. The British f*ckwit “buy toilet paper now before the Albanians do” gutter press are loving it. Meanwhile there are Russian military “exercises” in the eastern Mediterranean.
Is punishment imminent for those who spoke or voted for the anti-genocide motion at the Oxford Union, and for those who allowed the debate to happen in the first place? The Torygraph and the ascendancy are putting it out that the debate “broke the law”:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/03/israel-gaza-apartheid-state-genocide-oxford-union-debate/
Apparently a genocidalist got “hectored”. Oh the indignity! Someone must pay!
It won’t surprise me if Genocide Starmer himself is made to apologise for the debate happening.
Meanwhile the Jewish Chronicle is sticking the boot into Britain’s other top university, Cambridge:
https://www.thejc.com/news/billionaire-son-of-holocaust-survivors-defunds-cambridge-over-infestation-of-anti-israel-bias-vivhfsum
And Nigel Farage is accusing the British government of “pandering to Hamas”:
https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/nigel-farage-meets-emily-damaris-mother-and-accuses-government-of-pandering-to-hamas-peebwzkc
Presumably no doors are about to be closed to Nige. No flies on him!
As Craig Murray said a while back, we are the bad guys. Let’s all repent. Only martyrs in the ME may forgive us. Genocide Joe, back up. Let our people go. Oh Lord, when will the bloodshed stop?