President Joe Biden spoke today in Tel Aviv, Israel, reiterating support for the Israelis but also hammering on the need to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Agreed Herb,,,I didn't see or hear a feeble old man, stumbling, bumbling and confused. I saw, and heard an elder statesman with years of experience, pain and wisdom LEADING the way to humanitarian assistance and staunch warnings to all that this was not going to be a time to destroy innocent lives or inflict pain for revenge, or out of anger. He did well. Hard to imagine someone else doing as well.
Even without the latest Hamas upsurge. So here we remain with a barricaded, impoverished Gaza operated by a Hamas which on one front preaches a One Palestine non-Jewish state across the territories between and including Gaza and West Bank - on the other operates what we could call general civil authorities and administration.
And compare with the gop presidential candidates. 🤡💩 and the gop public servants. And the gop Supreme Court. Grifters. Liars. Haters. So many criminals. 😱🤬
The preference for GOP/Trump on the economy has been a long standing as far as I'm concerned false perception of the two parties actual performance. GOP long-term drumbeat may have a lot to do with that, plus an archaic popular view that the Dems' pursuit of social infrastructure has been seen as "socialism" a dirty word across the US, linked to "godless Communism" and likely loaded with a racist bias. My guess. Clinton's failed effort at implementing a healthcare program, then Obama's partial success, likely stimulated outsized efforts by the GOP on that drumbeat. lol I have mistyped "dumb.." twice now.
They never mention that Trump’s “ imaginary “ great economy was the result of Obama. Trump is incompetent to get anything done and the administration pandered to the wealthy. He just rode on Obama’s shirt tails.
And the next president will ride on the Biden Administration's successful financial handling of the pandemic hand-off ails, inflation taming monetary policy, etc., etc. Inflation policy is painful, ie., the necessity of high interest rates to curb folks and business's living on borrowed - nearly free money (1 percent interest). The nation's people and business's were living like drunk sailors on shore leave for far too long; the eventual end result it to divide the total nation value of the money supply making all dollars worth less. Folks in general have a very hard time getting their minds around economics. I'm fearful that Biden, without a massive effort to educate the public will pay a dear price come 2024 election time. In fact, I'm browsing a poll soon that may confirm that; I'll post a link if I think it holds any water. * As I think about it, that will mark twice in my lifetime that I experienced a democrat president being 'handed the bag' of past monetary mismanagement; the first I recall was Carter being handed the necessity to tame inflation with high interest rates. * Also the 2nd oil crisis via OPEC. That was an awful time for average Americans; borrowing was extremely painful. Of course the gop beat him up for it, and then the failed (military and cyclonic sandstorm) hostage rescue in Iran. Reagan gop machine made mincemeat of likely the most honorable, and brilliant (near mensa I.Q.) president in my lifetime as a voter.
Neither do I. They are no more than another 'statistic' - eg., "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". A 'Murphy's Law' corollary needs added to that saw regarding 'polls.' However, they do influence a segment of the general public and broadcast frenzy that feel a need to 'jump on some rolling bandwagon.' There are fallacies of faulty logic applicable there that's been widely exploited before - including the election / even the electability of TFG. If you'll recall it was widely exploited by the gop, our adversary countries, and gop ally's broadly on social media. TFG winning was turned into a 'virtual' sure thing, along with the vilification of Clinton.
Years ago when the Maddow blog was still available, we had a person who had worked in polling for years....Carolina Lady with Fan. She explained how polling works and after that I take most polls with a grain of salt.
Bronwyn, Drill down to the original poll. They say "Americans" but the sampling is 1137 people, often online. In the last presidential election, Biden had over 81 million votes. His tfg opponent had over 74 million. 1137 is a tiny drop in the bucket and statistically inaccurate when you think of all the online cheating his cult and the Russians have done to help elect a compulsive liar manchild. These breathless polls are just clickbait for lazy media. Try to avoid them
Skipping any other issues, turns out a properly (random) chosen small sample will generate a plus/minus 5% accurate result, meaning 19 times out of 20. Larger sample sizes dont provide a comparable gain in accuracy. That amazed me when i took a business stats course abt 45 years ago, but the math was reasonably easy to follow. On the other hand we've had historically huge mis-calls.
Frank, maybe 45 years ago statistics were more straightforward. When Tulsi Gabbard ran for president in 2020, she told people how to sign up for polls. We know that Russians had thousands of Facebook accounts in the 2016 election pretending to be Americans. If the media would put the sampling number in the headline or first paragraph instead of saying what “Americans”believe, it would certainly lower my blood pressure!
Exactly right Gigi. I spoke to that above ↓↑, or wherever it landed (lol). Now I've got to read back to find the Bronwyn post to see if he's talking about the poll I'm reading; from your comments, I'm thinking it is, inasmuch as you mention the small, and 'online' sampling. Brava ~
They’re not thinking. Trump would kill US all. Time to educate that food and water are necessities for human life. Gasoline and gold are not. Eggs come from well-fed (grains) chickens (I used to give them watermelon and cantaloupe rinds in summer). I met a package of asparagus last week that said “made in the grocery store.” First time I knew how deceptive the food guys are.
D4N: Why is it funny? Too many Americans are too far removed from farms and farming to understand the dangers of climate change. Food is NOT made in the grocery store nor grown there. False advertising is no longer a joke, if ever it was.
From Simon Rosenberg, Dem strategist who accurately predicted the faux red wave in ‘22.⬇️
“Encouraging Biden and Ohio Polls - A new large sample, high quality NPR/NewsHour/Marist poll has Biden up over Trump 49-47 (+2), and Biden leading Trump in a three way ballot with RFK 44-37-16 (+7).”
Rolyac, for all those who claim that Biden is "too old," "senile," or as Scott Pelley described him, "tired," they need to have watched his bravery, resolve, and statesmanship during the current crisis in the Middle East. Even Netanyahu, who is certainly not aligned with Biden's political brand, was eager to be hosting him - perhaps because "Sleepy Joe" is more popular with the Israelis than Bibi is.
If this man is "tired," he has earned the right to be. People half his age would have fallen apart at this point, and if anyone I know tells me that he's unfit, I will remove them from my contacts list, right after smacking them down.
Consider smacking down Pelley. For quite some time now, I've been turning the tables around on some of these broadcasters, but as tastefully as I can manage. I don't always get wins, but it seems I did get a few. Most recently, I got on Scripps broadcasting for how they were narrative 'spinning' regarding the autoworker's striking, a topic I have in depth knowledge about. Their tenor has changed a bit.
Good for you, D4N. We should all stand up to these self-appointed "experts." It's clear that the motivation is little more than stirring up controversy. The best that they appear to be interested in is both-sides "reporting."
I'd be interested to see how long it would take for Scott Pelley or any of the other MSM who are so eager to comment negatively on Biden to keep his schedule. We won't even discuss how he'd negotiate the current poisonous right-wing crap that is constant background noise, trying to upend anything positive to keep our fragile democracy together.
I can’t even imagine the ignorant word salad that would come out of Trumps mouth right now. I’ll never forget the deer in the headlights look on George W’s face when he was told about 911 while he was reading stories to kids. He went on vaca shortly after that. Biden is doing a stellar job.
“Israel has to build a wall around itself to keep out the people it forced into refugee camps at its formal founding in 1948, but that is O.K. Incessant violence against the Palestinian population: This is O.K., too—part of the story, as they say. For the sake of its security it must bomb the airports in neighboring countries, as it did this week in Syria and Lebanon. But Israel is Israel, Israel is a great post–World War II success, a monument to human decency and the rule of law, and Israel must be.
And amid this cacophony, all this grating noise, a vast, rueful silence. Among the Western democracies’ countless unsayables, the greatest of these is that the state of Israel, founded on injustice 75 years ago, is a failed experiment. Instead of jubilee celebrations, it is ethnic-cleansing a helpless population—a monstrous memorial to the six million whose names it was intended to honor. In the same way, no one in Washington or among the European vassals can say what needs to be said about the long record of America’s “unconditional support” for Israel: It is the gravest foreign policy failure—among many, of course—in the postwar period.”
Yes-- Biden left all that for another time maybe. That's another strength of his visit. I read that in 6 days, Israel used more bombs on Gaza than we used in 4 years in oh, you know that country we withdrew from a while ago. It was way too many! I'm pretty sure Biden must loathe Netanyahu-- remember how he came over to visit Trump while Barack was president? To show that any treaty we signed could be thrown away the following week? I think that's how it was.
I also heard on the CBC‘s “as it happens“ that the number of bombs that have fallen on Gaza so far exceed the number that fell in Afghanistan in over a year. What struck me was that Gaza is the size of Hoboken New Jersey and Afghanistan is the size of Texas. We are talking true urban warfare here -in very close quarters.
Just finished said article. Cogent and timely. We have propped up Israel for far too long. They served their purpose as allies with the intelligence they were well positioned to obtain in a region that started going south on us when the oil rich Arab world began throwing its weight around, highjacking airplanes and finding other ways to tell us to butt out of their business. Cooler heads had better start prevailing in this hotbed of revenge and spite. The eye for an eye thing doesn’t work for an atomic world. It’s completely inimical to life as we need it to be.
Thanks you very much for this Patrick Lawrence article. A great voice, a refreshing take on this tangled knot.
However, I must say, the idea of Palestinians sharing a legislature with Israelis makes our current chaos in the House of Representatives seem like a Latin club at Oxford.
Why not? Both are Semitic and intelligent. Religion is the center of this quarrel, as it has been for how many thousands of years. My god is better than your god. This time the Israelis won on that score. My hope is that the US Catholic bishops will not go after Biden on this one which would denigrate them to the level of jihad. Here we are fighting the crusades (our fault) all over again. As a group, why can’t humans grow up to be nice? My theory: parental beatings and hatred passed from generation to generation. Has everyone noticed Biden’s loving family or are Hunter’s problems all they see? Our president has risen above multiple tragedies to serve with human distinction and grace that should be an example to US all.
Somehow they need to see their common humanity. There was a story years ago about a camp, in the US, that brought together Arab and Israeli teens in the hope they would learn from each other and return home wiser and more tolerant. I wonder what became of that.
You may be referring to an initiative by President Carter. He spent an awful lot of time and capital suing for peace, and in particular between Egypt, Palestinians (Arafat), and Israel; As I recall the Camp David accords were one result.
It's way to too late for any kind of peace or understanding or safety for Israel and certainly not for the Palestinians. 100 million in additional aid to Gaza, where the population (50% are children/Hamas supporters) is losing everything: living in rubble, no water, no medical aid, nothing, to be shared with the West Bank: what a joke.
I agree. He didn't falter at all; as well, he didn't mince words with wanna' be dictator Bibi, privately and publicly. Uncomfortable diplomacy at it's best by a master of the craft. He also publicly expressed his / our sympathy for the innocent victims in Gaza and Israel. Paraphrasing in his public address, "The majority of Palestinians suffering are 'not' hamas."
Sadly, the rejection and wars by the Arabs against the new state, whatever you want to think of that, did more to create the Palestinian disaster. A very different history might taken place with another response. Every war, mind you, that the Arab states LOST.
So, it’s all about winning and losing? Not about right and wrong? Just what ‘another response’ are you referencing here?
From my limited reading/investigation so far, Israel’s decision to pursue hardline Zionism over democracy has done more to ‘create the Palestinian disaster’. But then, I tend to take the side of oppressed over oppressor, so maybe that’s my own bias talking.
I do agree this was a massive Jewish intrusion into Palestine over several generations, and it didn't take long for a Palestinian resistance, even if at the front end Palestinians were selling Jewish immigrants then very low-value land. Anti-semitism in Europe was really the propellant for further immigration esp after the Nazi takeover, and Jews sought futilely to emigrate to eg England, USA, Canada etc, who consistently turned them away. So help yourself to pointing the blame finger. And remember the British aided and abetted the Jewish immigration into Palestine, trying to keep down the un-ending jewish movements, well the movie gives you some idea how that worked out. Ultimately a small majority in the UN supported the creation of both Jewish and Palestinian states. Then all hell broke loose. That, and 2 more brief wars launched by Arabs, all failures. Without the wars the mass removals and flight of Palestinians to Arab countries wouldn't have happened. The alternative would have been a negotiated co-operation. So we've got to a point that a terrorist organization which won power in Gaza by both the ballet box and bullet, gunning down their fellow Gazans, maintains a terrorist campaign on the grounds that Israel has no right to exist. So kudos to your sympathies to Gazans but what kind of outcome do did Hamas' military and terror campaigns have for Gaza? We have a pretty good idea on that right? And in the end, likely 10 to 100 to one kill ratio for their efforts not to mention enormous property and infrastructure damage in Gaza. I do agree, this have been an ongoing tragedy in multiple parts.
Hamas won power because Israel and the U.S. wanted it; a wedge driven to neutralize the PLO. Blowback much? Your kill ratio is, to put it gently, flawed.
Feel free to provide real information on the "wedge" thesis, and i just provided a rough idea of outsized casualty ratios, my only point being Palestinian casualties have always been far larger than Israeli.
I agree but to point out this happening at this moment BECAUSE Hamas started this, as the article pointed out. And Lindsay Graham is just a plain Nutbag in my book. Not to be taken seriously by any measure. I agree that Israel needs to take responsibility for their share of essentially imprisoning Palestinians but Hamas also reigns terror on its own people. How do root out Hamas without effecting Palestinians?
I get it Tom; hence I have to regard one conflict at a time there. The current conflict was initiated by the defacto rulers of the Palestinians from territory of the Gaza Strip that was ceded to Palestinians by Israel. This time, "they" - the Palestinians sucker punched Israel; they have the right and responsibility to respond.
You want to re-write history on that blood-soaked piece of earth. Am sure The Christian Crusaders as well as the Muslim Infidels believed each were “right” too. In 2005, there was a fight in The Church of the Holy Sepulcher between Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics—am sure each thought they were “right” also.
The winner of the war—and there have been so many wars on that piece of earth!—gets management/ownership of the land. Israel won all the wars. Right or not, it’s the way of what we now call The Middle East, and around the world.
Like too many, the focus appears to be on the symptoms and not the cause. I agree with Tom High and thank him for the link to the article. I am so pleased that people in this forum are not afraid to address the gorilla in the room.
The whole situation is part of the long standing quagmire in the Middle East, much of the blame for which falls to the Brits in their handling of the Palestinian Mandate after WWI where they treated both groups horribly. I recommend Legacy of Violence about the British Empire in various places and Lawrence in Arabia for insight into the players in the area around WWI. Also Arab countries have refused to take Palestinian refugees after the creation of Israel and still don't want them. Both the Israelis and groups like Hamas bear the blame for their treatment of ordinary Palestinians. We also have Jerusalem, sacred place for three religions who have much in common. There are no easy solutions. The one good thing that may come of this is the rejection in the end of the corrupt Bibi.
Good. I thought Lawrence in Arabia was one of the best histories I had read in a long time. The one on the British Empire showed me how so many current situations go back to their empire. at least in part.
I completely disagree. I have studied the history which is, of course, complicated but from its inception after WWI, when Great Britain won the war and mapped out a place to be shared by Jews and Muslims it was the Muslims who refused to accept the Jewish people. Great Britain tried to moderate but failed and turned the problem over to the UN which, like Britain came up with a two state solution which the Palestinians rejected. After Israel declared itself a state, it was attacked on all sides by Arabs and won the war. Instead of accepting it lost the war the Palestinians began its unending grievance campaign of rage and terror attacks. The Arab nations not only expelled all their Jewish population, it also refused to allow the Palestinians to gain citizenship, the ability to work and any rights. Did the Palestinians blame their inhospitable neighbors? No. They blamed the Jews. Israel is itself a nation largely populated by Holocaust refugees and refugees of Russian pograms. After additional attacks in the 1960s by Arab countries, Israel again won and obtained even more land. Israel gave most of the land back which it didn’t have to do in exchange for peace. Instead it became the victim of countless terror attacks carried out by the PLO including the kidnapping and murder of Israels athletes at the Olympics in 1972, bombed busses, suicide bombers, additional kidnappings and more. So even though Palestinians lost the war in 1947-48 it is still contesting the results. The walls around Israel didn’t go up right away but only after repeated attempts to live without a wall resulted in escalating terror attacks against Israeli civilians.
The population is largely radicalized around the mission of elimination of the State of Israel and all Jews. And that was over 50 years ago before Hamas existed and became more extreme. They not only torture, butcher, kill and kidnap innocent children, babies, men and women, they videotape themselves committing these atrocities and not only brag about it - they rejoice publicly about it. They post pictures of themselves on social media attacking Israel and are hailed in Iran and other countries as great victors!
After all that did Israel declare a day of rage, burn Palestinian flags, surround embassies? No. They mourned and set about trying to save the hundreds of hostages taken. Of course they bombed Gaza. There are still missiles being fired upon Israel from Gaza. As Hamas demands an end to Israel’s bombing it is actively bombing Israel and holding on to hundreds of hostages. They like hostages- the ultimate weapon of terror.
So I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the situation. Every attempt to mediate a two state solution has been derailed by terror attacks. I don’t think much of the current prime minister of Israel- his hard right and unlawful actions have done much to discredit the Israeli government. He is a wanna-be autocrat. But past prime ministers have done much work towards peace. And Israelis do not celebrate the murder of civilians or threaten endless rage campaigns.
I’ve studied history as well. It’s interesting how your studies seem to indicate a preference to always come down on the Israeli side of wall, as it were.
It comes down on the Israeli side of wall when facts dictate that it should. In this case, the Arab state would today be thriving on half of Palestine, next to Israel on the other half, if Arabs had said yes. They chose to invade Israel instead to take both halves for an all-Arab State of Palestine, and their loss to Jewish defenders proved disastrous.
Israel gets some blame for some of the things that have happened over the decades. But Israel being built on half of Palestine in 1948 is not one of them. The Jews of Palestine were as entitled as the Arabs of Palestine to a state of their own, and they didn't make the Arabs go to war. That's on Arabs.
Agree completely, 60. Smart Arab leaders would have taken the offer and run in 1948, avoiding the next 75 years of humiliation and blood. They betrayed their own people, and the new crop is even worse.
What are you talking about? That's exactly what should have happened in 1948: half the land to Palestine's Jews, half to Palestine's Arabs. Had the latter said yes, today they'd be partners instead of enemies.
But losing the wars of conquest waged by Palestine's Arabs to steal the half owned by Palestine's Jews--i.e., the legally formed State of Israel--changed the paradigm of nationhood forever, and not in the Arabs' favor.
My understanding is how you describe it. I'd add the number of Jews that were expelled from Arab countries and 'sent' to Israel, along with survivors of the Russian pogroms and Holocaust was close to a million. Palestinians share with Israelis and Jews worldwide the experience of having been rejected and/or tormented by our neighbors.
The right drones on about American exceptionalism! However, the American and British negotiators after World War I and World War II were EXceptionally Bad at creating redrawing national boundaries after each war!
But, of course, the US understands and supports - and partcipates in - genocide. You and I live on land taken from a sophisticated culture by force and by the murder of millions of people.
And what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is a one hundred year process of genocide. Theodor Herzl's plan, formed in 1895, was (and still is) to remove - one way or another - all Palestinians from "our land". What Israel is doing now is attempted genocide. That is not a political statement - it is a monstrous fact.
Roger Waters? Seriously? Major antisemite. Pogroms in Israel, yet again and again and again it’s the Jews fault. Enough of the hating the Jewish People. After millennia of these crap tactics which Do. Not. WORK! Give it a rest.
Major antisemite? Prove it. You do understand thinking that being opposed to Israeli government policy and hating the Jewish people are inextricably connected is absurd, fallacious mental gymnastics? Maybe not.
This excerpt made me wonder if the entire story would be a steaming pile of yak dung. So, to be sure, I hit the link and read every word.
Yep. Steaming pile of yak.
Israel exists as legally and morally as any other nation built on forfeited Ottoman Empire land in the postwar era. Those six nations were Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. The Mandate system, set up by the League of Nations after WWI to distribute Allied-conquered Ottoman land to local populations for states of their own, made the same offer to all six:
"Here's your land, free for the taking. Ready to build and govern your own state?"
The first five people said yes, built their states, and got on with their lives. The last, the Muslim Arabs of Palestine, told Mandate powers to get lost and invaded newborn Israel instead, with the goal of conquering it and merging both halves of geographic Palestine into an all-Arab State of Palestine.
That plan went kablooey when Jews won that War of 1948, thereby capturing some of the land Muslim Arabs could have used to build Palestine if they'd said yes. Remember, Israel haters: Palestine was NOT an "Arab nation" or "Islamic land." It was a province of the Ottoman Empire on which two peoples would eventually have legitimate claims to states via the Mandate system: Arabs AND Jews, not just Arabs.
If Arabs had said "Yes!" instead of "Open fire!, they'd have been living free and prosperous next to Israel for 75 years. Instead, their invasions of Israel in 1967 and 1973, Intifadas that murdered thousands of Jews in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Hamas massacre just two weeks ago, guaranteed their self-inflicted "Nakba" never healed.
Do I want Palestinians to have their own sovereign state? Yes, I do. They deserve a place of their own just as Israelis do. But Israelis aren't stopping them from getting that. They're stopping themselves.
Palis need to get realistic about what that state's size and contours will be, because waging and losing three wars of annihilation against a state that did nothing to you but exist carries strong penalties. You will not get Jerusalem, you will not get the right of return. You will get land and permanent borders and the freedom to run your place as you see fit, provided it doesn't harm your neighbors. So suck it up, take what you can negotiate with sovereign power Israel, build your state, and thrive in peace. Do it NOW, to differentiate yourself from the murdering viper of Hamas.
When peace finally breaks out, you and Israel can join other decent neighbors to fight those real enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, Islamic State, and their paymaster, Iran, the terrorists who want to destroy not just Israel, but all of you, to return the Middle East to Caliphate status with its rejection of modernity and murder of any who dare object.
Don't let what them do to you what they did to Afghans. Partner up and win.
Spot on history lesson Shane. You expended more effort there than I would care to, so kudo's to you friend. For me, I'm done giving this topic and myth believers any more oxygen.
Wait. Back up a moment please. You lost me somewhere between the Mandate system set up by the League of Nations after WWI.
"The Mandate system, set up by the League of Nations after WWI to distribute Allied-conquered Ottoman land to local populations for states of their own, made the same offer to all six:
"Here's your land, free for the taking. Ready to build and govern your own state?"
The first five people said yes, built their states, and got on with their lives. The last, the Muslim Arabs of Palestine, told Mandate powers to get lost and invaded newborn Israel instead, with the goal of conquering it and merging both halves of geographic Palestine into an all-Arab State of Palestine. "
Except you jump almost 30 years and leave out a great deal of extremely pertinent history and what you have written is not quite accurate. In fact it's a lot of bull in which you have revised and reshaped history to fit the Israeli narrative with a stunning absence of context and leaving out some fairly significant facts such as how the British completely sold out the Palestinians with the Balfour Declaration (oh yeah, remember that?) and how in the original mandate contrary to your ridiculous fantasy the Palestinians were promised their own state along with the other five countries but the reason they never got it was not because they turned it down but because the Brits had engaged in a whole of lot of shady dealings behind the scenes, negotiations about who would get Palestine with significant input and lobbying by the Zionists primarily Weizmann, and no input by the Palestinians.
The ultimate decision about division of the land was made was made in the absence of any consultation with the Palestinians whatsoever and land on which the Palestinian people had lived for two millennia was given away by Great Britain under the Balfour Declaration for the purpose of establishing the Jewish state based on the Zionists' assertion for decades that Palestine was the Biblical homeland of the Jews who were entitled to it on that basis. The rights of the indigenous Palestinian population were never acknowledged, a consideration or an issue.
So yes, indeed, they did not take it well when their lands, homes, olive groves and orchards were expropriated and 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of Israel and contrary to the narrative Israel continues to promote, and to which American and other Jews steadfastly adhere, very few of them left voluntarily.
If you think I am posting this to exculpate or excuse the vile acts of Hamas which I abhor and consider atrocities and barbaric war crimes you could not be more wrong. Like D4N, I'm pretty tired of giving this topic and myth believers any more oxygen as well.
"it's a lot of bull in which you have revised and reshaped history to fit the Israeli narrative with a stunning absence of context and leaving out some fairly significant facts . . ."
We're done talking, Lin. You want to continue to write your own myths, do it on your own thread.
Guess you don’t believe the UN is valid international entity, either. The Palestinian Arabs stated so in rejecting the Partition. Now, of course, Palestinians demand the UN condemn Israel for something every week.
Thank you for the link - I for one, had no idea - NONE - as to exactly what the Oslo Accords & the "two state solution" actually meant. It would appear to mean that the Palestinians get to live in Gaza and Israel gets all else! Two states? AND a wall to keep them in. The picture of that wall did it for me. A ghetto really. Why doesnt that make Israelis stop to think?
Its colonialism - just like what was done here to our NATIVE Americans or Africa or India or how many other countries.
I’m not 100% pro Israel either, especially with Netanyahu in power, BUT would you have ethnic cleansing? It’s what has been happening to Israel for a long time and is still happening.
Herb Klinker, Speechwriters are told what to write. They don't make it up. And President Biden's remarks sounded precisely like him and his decades of experience, not someone else.
"Magnificent!" - yes, if you ignore the abysmal conditions imposed by the Israelis on the population daily. At least 1/3 in "extreme poverty. The Israeli Defense Minister's view of Palestinians as "human animals." If truth matters, then context matters and in this case details of Gazan daily life matter. See "The Chris Hedges Report with Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp."(chrishedges.substack.com)
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Herb, Biden’s latest speeches just keep getting better and better. Even with his hectic schedule, his delivery and obvious empathy make them stand out.
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
The truth is we don't know who fired the missile that blew up a hospital that had become a haven for refugees.
We only know that Palestinians claim Israel did and Israel claims Hamas did. Very predictably apparently nobody fired the missile.
What we can also say is: IF the United States spends 20 years in a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 twin tower bombing, dropping bombs on the civilian population while claiming that "we" were fighting terrorists, then,
other countries will learn that neat USA Pony trick: To hide behind "fighting terrorists" while simply testing weapons on an innocent civilian population.
As you know Mike, I agree that those 20 years in Afghanistan were a travesty - a horror show of a solution looking for a problem created elsewhere by other people.
But if every element of our intelligence apparatus tells us that it was a bad rocket from a Jihad terrorist group, I think I would take that explanation over ANYTHING that Hamas would claim.
Hamas left their morality in the dust when they accepted billions from Qatar and used it to build a military machine - vs building infrastructure for the people they claim to protect. Tunnels vs water facilities. Rockets instead of more hospitals. Training kids to fight instead of collecting trash properly and growing food.
Hamas has no integrity. Nothing they ever say will be based on truth. They are merciless self aggrandizing political beasts. They warrant eradication - not trust.
We have made many mistakes in foreign policy. And we will make more, I am sure. In some ways we have just continued the "colonial" attitudes of our European ancestors. Lots of blame and shame to go around about that. But Hamas is no better than Nazis or Russian troops who rape and slaughter with glee.
" ... rape and slaughter with glee ..." and disseminate images of the victims ... feeding fires of grief, fear, hatred and more violence ... does nothing to resolve conflict or invite peaceful resolution - only furthers the destructive behaviors on all sides ...
Russia does not want to resolve the conflict (their genocide of their cousins) in Ukraine. And Putin loves the Gaza story. It's all about keeping Russian eyes off his incompetence and his theft of their national treasure at home.
Did you see the AlJazeera footage of the rocket being fired inside Gaza and then making a u-turn into the hospital? Al Jazeera is more trustworthy than any of the media outlets in the US. They named the terrorist organization that fired the rocket and they were associated with Hamas.
I trust Jake Sullivan way more than anyone in the TFFG administration to do everything possible to not get us into WWIII, even though it may have already begun.
We used to watch AlJazeera USA before it was sold. Ali Velshi was awesome. Their news was the least biased I've seen since CNN first came on the air in 1980.
Of course, Velshi is now with MSNBC, but the stories I've seen on the Ukraine War from Al Jazeeri seem to be devoid of commentary.
With all the disinformation that we live with, we have ( I hope) gotten to demand evidence for allegations. The talk of Hamas responsibility for the hospital bombing ,sounds very similar to Trump proving to his believers that the election was stolen
Following weird comment tracking here, I think that, since his "line" is the same as those that are responding directly to the original author of this "thread" who is Herb Clinker.
Per your citation. According to a media bias fact check:
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.
Overall, we rate Moon of Alabama Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
Bias Rating: LEFT
Factual Reporting: LOW
Country: USA
Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
History
Moon Of Alabama is a political blog founded in 2004. According to its about page, they are an independent and open forum for members of another blog called the Whiskey Bar. Moon Of Alabama states its purpose as “to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon’s Whiskey Bar writings.” A Daily Kos article describes Blogger Billmon (pseudonym) as one of the earliest and leading guest bloggers of Daily Kos and a self-admitted financial writer working for a big Wall Street firm.
Read our profile on the United States government and media.
Funded by / Ownership
The editor and the person who runs the blog are anonymous, and the about page states that “Bernhard started and still runs the site, and you can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA_at_aol.com (replacing _at_ with @).” The Moon of Alabama does not have advertising, but they do have a donate button, so we assume this is the primary funding method.
Analysis/ Bias
Moon of Alabama looks at the issues from a progressive perspective; for example, this article describes Trump’s cabinet as follows: “Soon Netanyahoo will have the cabinet in place in DC he always dreamed of. A hawkish Pompeo at State, a real torturer as head of the CIA, and now Bolton are already sufficient to protect Israel’s further expansion” The majority of blog posts utilize emotionally loaded headlines such as “Trump Asks Russia To Roll Over – It Won’t” and “John Bolton Wants No Deal With North Korea Or Iran – But Is There Any Other Choice?”
Moon of Alabama utilizes questionable sources such as RT News, Fox News, as well as credible sources such as Bloomberg, NY Times, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, Politico, cisac.fsi.stanford.edu, and blogs such as johnhelmer.org.
In this update, we find that Moon of Alabama has become sympathetic toward Russia and the war in Ukraine, often citing misinformation. For example, in this article they claim a false flag Neo-Nazis In Ukraine Fake Incidents To Gain More ‘Western’ Support – Updated. Media credibility rater Newsguard has detailed an extensive list of false and misleading claims regarding Ukraine. Generally, Moon of Alabama is a pro-Russian conspiracy website.
Failed Fact Checks
None in the Last 5 years. See above.
Overall, we rate Moon of Alabama Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency. (M. Huitsing 6/6/2018) Updated (12/12/2022)
I completely agree with you. I thought Operation Gaza in 2014 was horrific. This is genocide in no uncertain terms and the U.S. is a funder/contributor/supporter of it.
I agree, but this is a completely different administration that has done everything they can to keep our troops out of harm's way. When was the last time that happened? And don't say under TFFG, because he murdered a Navy Seal in Yemen two weeks into his term.
The trumpers were quick to make fun of the fact he repeated a word 3 times-for emphasis- they attributed it to being confused and stuttering. They should talk.
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
You are living in an erroneous bubble. You cite this the Alabama publication as the bedrock for your opinions and it is a piece of junk. That is your right.
What is not your right is to continually be rude to Dr. Richardson. It makes you look small and mean. I, personally, can't stand your disrespect towards an author who could actually get you banned from her site. And yet she doesn't.
He was quite active earlier this year. He routinely made wild accusations and resorted to name calling of anyone who disagreed with him (hilariously, "thugly" was his favorite and applied it to many of the most senior commenters on this forum)
He resorted to copy/pasting his diatribes, sometimes over a dozen times per Letter. He was repeatedly reported to the Letters administrator, and finally disappeared from the Letters forum.
I picture Jack Nicholson's face coming through the door in The Shining:
Willful ignorance runs willy nilly in far right media. Let’s get more information before blaming anyone. I want evidence and the truth. God bless Joe Biden’s strong, measured, heartfelt words and his bravery in going into war zone.
John Schmeeckle - "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda..."
Overall, we rate 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮 Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
Mr. Biden continues to speak and act in a way that will secure his place in history as one of the more effective representatives of the US of A. We voted for and received wisdom, courage, experience, humility and HUMANITY. It pains me that so many people think we shouldn't choose another 4 years of the same...In such a start contrast to his predecessor, he RISES to occasions rather than constantly sinking to new lows with every opportunity. I'm confident we'll look back on his tenure with a great deal of gratitude and pride another half century from now, as we currently do for Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc.
I have said, Biden is the best president in my lifetime. Even when I don't agree with everything he says and does, I understand why he does it, and it makes sense. He has intelligence and integrity, and the latter is non-existent in the Republican Party right now. There are some people like Former Judge J. Michael Luttig in the Republican party who have integrity, and they are not backing the MAGA part of the party. In fact, they are standing with Biden in times of crisis.
I am very grateful for your words and the respectful words of others regarding all who have worked diligently to support both Jews and Palestinians. We should be free to hold different faiths.
Wars are from those who want power without regard , without respect for human life.
I am so grateful for President Joe Biden, for Anthony Blinken and for the many men and women who are a part of his team. Without such patriots, we too may be taken over by despots.
May we always stand for freedom....for decency...for the hope of a better life for all and for the health of our planet. This work is hard...this work takes determination. I am so grateful for President Joe Biden's leadership and for his outstanding team of freedom loving Americans!!!!!!
Dismaying. Especially, after hearing the abysmal conditions imposed upon the Gazans by Israel - for decades. Trapped inside a strip of land 5 miles wide. 1/3 in extreme poverty. Almost 50% unemployment rate. No jobs. Majority under 25.Please see "The Chris Hedges Report with Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp." (chrishedges.substack.com) How can you ignore the Israel Minister of Defense view of Palestinians as "human animals"?
The conditions “imposed” by Israel are abysmal. Worse than abysmal.
And exactly what has any Arab country done to help their fellow Muslims? Offered refugee status? Offered land, support, humanitarian aid? Engaged in diplomacy with Hamas or Hezbollah? Helped Egypt with equipment for the humanitarian corridor?
Look at a map of the Middle East and North Africa. Tens of thousands of miles of land Arabs could offer as a way to diffuse the situation. Do they? What solutions does the Arab world offer Palestinians?
We have turned a blind eye to the problems of Palestinians throughout. But blaming Israel and the US Government for this complex situation is a pretty naive reading of several thousand years of religious and racial animosity that existed long before the US government got involved. Do we need to clean up our act? In a huge way. But so do the rest of the players in this horribly terrorist-torn region.
Selina, if people attacked your rightful, legal residence, would you then buy them dinner and invite them over for movies and popcorn? Are you noticing that no other countries are assisting the Palestinians? Of course other Jew hating countries will assist Hamas, but that’s another story.
I have to note that well more than half of the reader commentary and a large number of “likes” are about Biden and his performance, not about the 2,000,000 trapped in Gaza, nor about the vengeful savagery that Hamas inflicted on Jewish civilians this month, nor about the policies of a Jewish leader (Netanyahu) who intentionally propped up Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian authority and lessen the possibility of a two state solution or the emergence of a single non-apartheid state. I am going to guess this is in part because we don’t have a solution to offer. Maybe we have been acting for decades like enablers and should make clear that at the end of the day this is not for the United States to solve.. Deterring other outside powers (Iran) is certainly legitimate but what happened these last few days is not about “us” or our politics. Israel is not an orphaned child; it is a wealthy nuclear and military power. Israelis need to find a lasting solution that is something other than genocide.
O, but it is tied to the US. The US Jewish population and many evangelicals in the US support Israel, Israel provides a strategic military space for the US, and the US has nearly always pledged to support Israel in return for Israel doing what the US wants.
My point is that the US has only minimal influence over the complex conflicts and events in Israel/Palestine, not that there aren't domestic constituencies that push us to "intervene". These interventions often have not been helpful. Seventy-five years after Israel's establishment the conflict festers and erupts. Moreover, I'm not sure that the historical record would support your assertion that Israel does what the US wants. Nor should it do so; Israel is an independent country that must act on its own perceptions of its interests and the people living within it. The conflict is primarily their problem not ours and we are not well equipped to solve it---that's my main assertion.
yes the US is involved and thank you for staying with me. I also appreciate that many wish to support President Biden but I would like to see less focus on our domestic politics and more on the events on the ground and the realization that this may not be a problem for us to solve. We have, as Pres. Biden has noted, a bad history in trying to impose our will in the region. In a phrase, it's really not about us.
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
John, I just read where a huge segment of our population would agree to Trump serving as POTUS from his prison cell, and this after all that has been disclosed about Putin's puppet. This is the thought that came to my mind from what you penned above: "With our willful, public blindness,. . ." Why do MAGA/KKK Republicans support Trump, even if he is serving time in prison? It's because he represents their core racist feelings. It is so intense (their racism) that they would subvert a democratic system in order to install a white Protestant supremacy autocratic system.
" It's because he represents their core racist feelings."
Richard, my own perspective is that Trump has managed to do something that is only rarely done successfully. He has managed to replicate what Jesus did and what Mohammed did.
He has imbued in many people a feeling that he is some kind of divinely supported leader who has special powers and really, really cares about those who choose to "believe in him".
I have met folks before who are fanatically attached to a belief. Those folks are not going to debate, they are not going to think, they are not going to analyze.
They are going to BELIEVE. And, having chosen to BELIEVE they will defend that belief against any logic.
I ran across these people in my first semester at A&M, knocking on my dorm door and asking me "if I was saved".
Yes. An odd comparison. But I think Mike is comparing the powers of charisma - the ability to get folks to "believe" vs employing critical thinking skills. The concern is that people "believe" as virtual robots and they can be convinced to love or hate. To help or kill.
Jesus had the perfect message. But all too often, his followers have perverted his teachings and used his name to justify all manner of abuse and violence.
You have heard of "Jews for Jesus". I am in the camp of "Nones for Jesus". But no support for the majority of "Christians" who don't have a clue what "Christ's" message was.
Your posts are a valuable reminder that there are still some Christians worthy of respect. More please :)
Mike, not to worry - death is final and, after death, pain free. But, back to the point about Trump. I encourage you to read "A Fever in the Heartland" by Timothy Egan, recounting the rise of the KKK in the Midwest (principally Indiana) in the 1920's. Trump is the "reincarnation) of D.C. Stephenson, the head of the KKK in Indiana and the other states back then. What did Stephenson peddle? Pure KKK" white Protestant supremacy now, white Protestant supremacy forever." I am not a psychiatrist though I do have three advanced degrees. Still, that doesn't qualify me to opine professionally on the matter, but I suspect that, down deep, those evangelicals who support Trump don't truly buy the Christian message, particularly the lessons in Matthew 25: 34-46. But, perhaps they're unfamiliar with 25: 45-46 - "Then he will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." If i were a believer, this message would scare the hell out of me.
Yes, they will and do, but there is no equivocation in Jesus' words, no qualifications on race, color, creed, national origin or anything else. It's absolute. And so is his promise of eternal damnation. So, my inference. They don't buy it. What are they in reality? Fair weather Christians?
Check out Alexandra Pelosi's documentary on the insurrectionists of 1/6. She interviews about a dozen people and some of their kids and family members from various places across the US.
Spoiler alert. There are no hostilities shown by anyone and several of them have not changed how they feel about TFFG.
Helen, the MAGA Republicans are so like the 1920's KKK and Trump is the reincarnation of D.C. Stephenson. It's as though history is repeating itself, but, in reality, the racism runs deep into the core being of these folks. What a tragedy.
John Schmeeckle - "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda..."
Overall, we rate 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮 Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
You consistently peddle information that has been analyzed to be the following:
"Overall, we rate Moon of Alabama Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency. (M. Huitsing 6/6/2018) Updated (12/12/2022)"
Source: Media Bias Fact Check
In addition, you operate on this forum as a bully. This is sad for you and the good people who use and like this forum. Perhaps it is time for you to move on.
Biden's view of the nature of what is right and what is fair, his ability to make the distinctions between the bad actors and the innocent is unparalleled. This is a day to focus on his message and the way each of us should live our lives in seeking right and justice.
It's just he's got bad actors to deal with internationally who smile at him while they keep their hand on the hilt of the knife beneath their clothing. And bad actors here to deal with.
If truth matters more than propaganda, Georgia Fisanick, please see yesterday's "The Chris Hedges Report with Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp." (chrishedges.substack.com) Incidentally, Finkelstein's parents were Nazi Holocaust survivors whereas most of his remaining family were exterminated. (Ibid)
I will read it. But Biden did not go there to resolve Palestinian problem. He went there to in an effort to tone down the immediate response from the Israelis based on the US experience after 9/11 and try to get humanitarian relief through the blockades by both Israel and Egypt to the people in Gaza.
All I am commenting on is Biden's decency in trying to meet those limited objectives. As I said yesterday, I have worked closely with both Palestinians and Israeli's so to do more cuts too close to the bone for me.
As far as inciting a conflict to suck up the oxygen, Iran, (&Putin?) could not have chosen a better one. Bibi’s patriarchal iron-fist suppressing the independence of the Supreme Court created conflict for support of Israel beyond the conflict created by increased settlement building. Now with the Bibi declared war, you get the best, most divisive situation possible. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians can be narrated as “at fault”, allowing a billion arguments and counter-arguments to add to the fog of hate. Social Media gets to show-off its great ability to obfuscate the truth with misinformation/disinformation, and outright faked -AI imagery. The answer to “Who bombed the Gaza Hospital?” reveals more about each of our news bubbles than about truth. And because of the Middle East with its oil, and America’s memory of the 1970’s Oil Embargo not too distant, our attention is pulled off Ukraine. (And China, I bet is angling for the best moment to make it’s move on Taiwan.) Meanwhile in our House of Representatives, the MAGA are achieving what they could not achieve with Speaker McCarthy - government shutdown, funding shutdown, a shiny-made-for-tv circus to feed the profits of shareholders of MSM. And Politicians simplify their legislative mission to “save democracy” down to “Who can fund raise off the outrage more? Please send a donation NOW!” A line from the musical “Hamilton” keeps looping in my head. During the crucial battle of Yorktown they sing the line: “The World’s Turned Upside Down!” Yes, it feels that way. By design. Buckle Up.
Selina, a friend of ours had a daughter that served as a pastor in the West Bank for a number of years. Her stories of what the average Palestinian had to go through daily just to get to work out of their area was horrid. She also saw people being evicted from homes they lived in for decades just to make room for a Jewish family.
Indeed they do. Isn't it curious our country choosing to adhere itself to an apartheid country every bit as callous as was South Africa's? And, in the national conversation omit completely such details that you bring to the fore here? What's behind the USA's rigid one sidedness and blindness?
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
It took a lot of reporting of him by many of the readers before he disappeared for a month or so. He must be licking his chops as so many are taking his bait today. It was when he started laughably referring to anyone who disagrees with him as "thugly the troll" that he got removed, for a time.
Have done so---twice, today. I'd left the commentary for hours after my first report. I return and guess what appeared again. Hence, report #2. Where are HCR's aides/ proofers?
I am not an expert on this, and I realize the long history. But I listened to this counterargument from Beau of the Fifth Column which makes sense to me and it supports Heather's position.
I agree. I've been watching Beau's videos for a long time now, and really appreciate how he takes emotion and commentary, often peddled as news, out of current events and looks at the facts. His perspective is more from a strategic and/ or military pov, so his analysis along with Heather's historical / political perspective, I feel, give me a well rounded insight of current events. I highly recommend him.
I would add for those who have not seen his videos - 'don't judge a book by its cover'.
Your last sentence made me laugh. Beau's commentary kept popping into my YT feed for quite a while before I finally watched one of his episodes and eventually subscribed. I thought the YT algorithm was punking me. 😊 I also enjoy his second channel where he has longer format posts that talk about the news that got flattened by the hair-on-fire headlines or Q&A from his inbox.
The first video of his I shared (maybe 2 years ago??) was one where he was delivering a "point" (I think it was around abortion, but I don't really remember) and doing it in his presentation style. The kicker was when he said something along the lines of the most liberal position that was "out there" and finished up, "It's just a thought". I was hooked from that point on.
'What is Israel’s endgame in Gaza invasion?' (Reuters)
By Samia Nakhoul, Matt Spetalnick and Alexander Cornwell
'Summary'
'Israel's invasion has no clear exit strategy - sources'
'Arabs fear Gaza conflict could trigger regional war'
'Biden cautions Israelis of U.S. mistakes after 9/11'
'DUBAI/WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Israel is vowing to wipe out Hamas in a relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip but has no obvious endgame in sight, with no clear plan for how to govern the ravaged Palestinian enclave even if it triumphs on the battlefield.'
'Codenamed "Operation Swords of Iron", the military campaign will be unmatched in its ferocity and unlike anything Israel has carried out in Gaza in the past, according to eight regional and Western officials with knowledge of the conflict who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.'
'Israel has called up a record 360,000 reservists and has been bombarding the tiny enclave non-stop following Hamas's assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians.'
'The immediate Israeli strategy, said three regional officials familiar with discussions between the U.S. and Middle Eastern leaders, is to destroy Gaza's infrastructure, even at the cost of high civilian casualties, push the enclave's people towards the Egyptian border and go after Hamas by blowing up the labyrinth of underground tunnels the group has built to conduct its operations.'
'Israeli officials have said that they don't have a clear idea for what a post-war future might look like, though.'
'Some of U.S. President Joe Biden's aides are concerned that while Israel may craft an effective plan to inflict lasting damage to Hamas, it has yet to formulate an exit strategy, a source in Washington familiar with the matter said.'
'Trips to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this past week had stressed the need to focus on the post-war plan for Gaza, the source added.'
'Arab officials are also alarmed that Israel hasn't set out a clear plan for the future of the enclave, ruled by Hamas since 2006 and home to 2.3 million people.'
"Israel doesn't have an endgame for Gaza. Their strategy is to drop thousands of bombs, destroy everything and go in, but then what? They have no exit strategy for the day after," said one regional security source.'
'An Israeli invasion has yet to start, but Gaza authorities say 3,500 Palestinians have already been killed by the aerial bombardment, around a third of them children - a larger death toll than in any previous conflict between Hamas and Israel.'
'Biden, on a visit to Israel on Wednesday, told Israelis that justice needed to be served to Hamas, though he cautioned that after the 9/11 attacks on New York, the U.S. had made mistakes.'
'The "vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas", he said. "Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people."
'Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Biden's visit would have given him a chance to press Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to think through issues such as the proportional use of force and the longer-term plans for Gaza before any invasion.'
'CITY OF TUNNELS'
'Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have said they will wipe out Hamas in retribution for the Oct. 7 killings, the deadliest militant attack in Israel's 75-year-old history.'
'What will follow is less defined.'
"We are of course thinking and dealing with this, and this involves assessments and includes the National Security Council, the military and others about the end situation," Israeli National Security Council director Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters on Tuesday. "We don't know what this will be with certainty."
"But what we do know is what there will not be," he said, referring to Israel's stated aim to eradicate Hamas.
'This might be easier said than done.'
"It's an underground city of tunnels that make the Vietcong tunnels look like child's play," said the first regional source, referring to the Communist guerrilla force that defied U.S. troops in Vietnam. "They're not going to end Hamas with tanks and firepower."
'Two regional military experts told Reuters that Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has mobilised for an invasion, setting up anti-tank mines and booby-trapped explosive devices to ambush troops.'
'Israel's coming offensive is set to be much bigger than past Gaza operations that Israeli officials had previously referred to as "mowing the grass", degrading Hamas's military capabilities but not eliminating it.'
'Israel has fought three previous conflicts with Hamas, in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, and launched limited land invasions during two of those campaigns, but unlike today, Israel's leaders never vowed to destroy Hamas once and for all.'
'In those three confrontations, just under 4,000 Palestinians and fewer than 100 Israelis died.'
'There is less optimism in Washington, though, that Israel will be able to completely destroy Hamas and U.S. officials see little chance that Israel will want to hold on to any Gaza territory or re-occupy it, the U.S. source said.'
'A more likely scenario, the person said, would be for Israeli forces to kill or capture as many Hamas members as they can, blow up tunnels and rocket workshops, then after Israeli casualties mount, look for a way to declare victory and exit.'
'CLOUDS OF WAR'
'The fear across the region is that the war will blow up beyond the confines of Gaza, with Lebanon's Hezbollah and its backer Iran opening major new fronts in support of Hamas.'
'Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned of a possible "preemptive" action against Israel if it carried out its invasion of Gaza. He said last weekend that Iran would not watch from the sidelines if the U.S. failed to restrain Israel.'
'Arab leaders have told Blinken, who has been criss-crossing the region this past week, that while they condemn Hamas's attack on Israel, they oppose collective punishment against ordinary Palestinians, which they fear will trigger regional unrest.'
'Popular anger will ratchet up across the region when the body count rises, they said.'
'Washington has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean and is concerned that Hezbollah might join the battle from Israel's northern border. There has been no sign, however, that the U.S. military would then move from a deterrent posture to direct involvement.'
'The regional sources said Washington was proposing to re-energise the Palestinian Authority (PA), which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, although there is huge doubt whether the PA or any other authority would be able to govern the coastal enclave should Hamas be driven out.'
'Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, expressed deep skepticism about the potential for establishing a post-Hamas government to rule Gaza.'
"I could paint you a picture more appropriate to a galaxy far, far away and not on planet Earth on how you could combine the U.N., the Palestinian Authority, the Saudis, the Egyptians, led by the U.S. marshalling the Europeans, to basically convert Gaza from an open-air prison to something much better," he said.'
'In the meantime, calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors within Gaza and escape routes for Palestinian civilians have drawn a strong reaction from Arab neighbors.'
'They fear an Israeli invasion will spark a new permanent mass wave of displacement, a replay of the 1948 Israeli war of independence and 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee then have remained stranded as refugees in the countries that hosted them.'
'Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land into the Sinai peninsula bordering Gaza, adding that any such move would turn the area into a base for attacks against Israel. He said Egyptians in their millions would protest against any such move.'
'East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 war and then annexed, and Israeli settlement expansion across occupied territory are at the core of the conflict with Palestinians. Netanyahu has openly embraced the religious and radical far-right, promising to annex more land to be settled by Jews.'
'Hundreds of Palestinians have died in the West Bank since the start of the year in repeated clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers, and there is widespread concern that the violence might engulf the territory as nearby Gaza burns.'
"Whatever worst-case scenario you have, it will be worse," a second regional source said about the potential for the conflict to spread beyond Gaza.'
Aditional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem and Andrew Mills; Editing by Crispian Balmer, Pravin Char and Nick Macfie
This article from Reuters has been copied in-full.
The United States has moved enough military assets into the general area to help Israel topple the Assad government in Damascus, which would cut off the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.
John Schmeeckle - "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda..."
Overall, we rate 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮 Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party, it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”
President Dwight Eisenhower
“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
The Republicans need to show that they are not a conspiracy to seize power, but a political party again.
After the insanity (as in repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result) displayed in the House yesterday with the second Jordan rejection, perhaps more than 5 Republicans are thinking about a return to the familiar comfort of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Yes, he committed the mortal sin of compromising with Democrats on the continuing resolution and the budget, kicking the can down the road until a now looming November 17, but that was to avoid having the Republican dysfunction on vibrant display during this year’s balloting. It now will be hugely disruptive in state and local races and ballot initiatives, and the Republican game plan has long been to work at the local level then up.
The fact that major Republican donors are reported to be pulling support because they will not work with Jordan is making it clear he won’t be able to make good on his promises to the conference. Jordan has tried bullying but the transparency of it is making a modestly growing number of members of the House take pause. If McCarthy was good at one thing, it was at raising money for members of the conference.
The issue for Republicans is the clock and how long the party can withstand its own members talking about their own dysfunction. McCarthy is also near the center of the spread in the Party’s ideological spectrum (1), so he theoretically can portray himself as a pragmatist in a return to sanity and someone who recognizes that the job of the House is to pass Legislation.
Of course, there is McCarthy’s habitual lying, but that is not currently a stumbling block within the Republican Party. After all, their leader is Donald Trump.
There is, however, the major issue of the motion to vacate rule. Interestingly, it is not written in the Republican House Conference Rules that are posted online.(2) Instead, this statement appears.
Policy Statement on the Motion to Vacate the Chair
It is the policy of the Republican Conference that the privilege under House Rule IX Clause 2(a)(3) should only be available with the agreement of the Republican Conference so as to not allow Democrats to choose the Speaker.
Has any Republican noticed? Is it a message written by the finger of God from cyberspace? Were the Republicans hacked? Or is this just another reminder of their incredible dysfunction? What Republicans need to do first is change the damn rule to remove the tyranny of minority rule by one (otherwise known as rule by veto.) Once that is gone, they will have freed themselves to choose a speaker that represents the majority of the majority.
Is this acceptable to Democrats? Not yet. But they, too, have to watch the clock. Democrats have a far better awareness of the danger to America and its allies and the consequences to average Americans as long as there is a totally dysfunctional House.
I think it is time for Hakeem Jeffries to start telling a different story—That true majority rule is the American ideal. That Republicans have hamstrung themselves by their own choice of rule by veto. They should ditch the rule and elect the best person (by whatever their standard is) to the speakership. Democrats will abide by the choice.
Keith, thank you! I hope you’ll comment on what I wrote about the religious (crusades) aspect of all of this. Jihad against unbelievers scared me when I first heard (read it). Hearing it translated “day of rage” when I learned “holy war” makes me, as I do not know Arabic, very curious about the background of jihad. My husband refused finally to visit cathedrals thinking of the many who died building them. I thought of him this morning listening to the Israeli first responder recounting the slaughter of the music festival. But that was butchery that I have NEVER heard. (Morning Joe: c. 8:00.) And most certainly not from someone who had seen it. This is savagery worse than the Holocaust. BTW: In case you haven’t had time for news: Maddow’s book brings in how American racism inspired Hitler. Not surprised, but saddened.
Virginia I missed your comment about the Crusades. In my severe downsizing prior to moving into our new condo, I have gotten rid of my Crusade books, so this will be from memory.
The Crusades were not the ‘Christian’ events portrayed by Catholics and others in the West. There is some evidence that the initial Crusade in the late 11th century was, as least in part, a fundraiser for the Pope. Early on, in addition to targeting Moslems in the Near East, a Crusade sought to eliminate the Cathars (sp?), a fringe Christian group in France.
Sorting out the various Crusades is difficult to do from memory. Clearly Crusaders acted like their vision of Moslems in their brutality and savagery. In Contrast, Saladin, leader of the Moslems, acted like a ‘Christian” in his humanity.
One Crusade stopped by Constantinople and upgraded a prostitute to the palace. The Children’s Crusade was a horrible disaster.
One result was that Islam was considered dreadful in Europe. This played out in Spain and also in other countries. Ironically, much of the upgrading of Europe during the Dark Ages came through Islam, in Spain and through the intellectual work, including translations, in Persia and elsewhere.
For many years I taught a course on similarities and differences between early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A lot of core similarities for those not taught to hate others.
Good job, Keith. Knew most of what you wrote, but hadn’t either learned or remembered loot for the pope, which makes me laugh! Would you comment on one of my (?) misapprehensions: that although Mohammed preached peace, it was only for Mohammedans?
Good for you for teaching the course you mention! That knowledge and the spirit of it is essential to how we need to move forward. I have a question about the psychologists’ experiment with too many rats in a trap: should their findings be taught to inspire behavior to reduce world population gently instead of by war and plague? In short, can we be civilized? Americans, the bad adolescents on the [western world] block, are ‘way behind in this. How many are attacking the president this morning for whatever reason when he has shown what a truly civilized person is? Using “civilized” as the least controversial, yet most complete word I know.
Virginia Some of my colleagues were puzzled that I included Islam in 1992.
The Koran is really two separate books. The first, based on pronouncements from an angel, deals mostly with core Islam. The second deals with his flight to Medina and his fight with Arabs (and Jews) before returning to Mecca prior to his death.
Mohammed recognized Jesus as a prophet, though Mohamed was the final prophet. As Islam rapidly expanded, Jews and Christians were accommodated at a price. One can find elements in the Koran and the Old Testament that could condone horrible actions towards ‘nonbelievers.’ Indeed, some of the worst is between Sunnis and Shiites.
In years of living in Egypt, I did not feel threatened by zealots. Historically, Moslems have been treated much worse in Europe.
Thank you, again, Keith, a true scholar! Our good luck to have you writing in this forum. You understand perfectly, then, not only what I wrote to Fern about the state of American “universities” and the power of propaganda.
If not poorly understood teaching about the Koran in Europe, is it the history of the crusades that dominates in Europe? Didn’t everyone learn that our numerals are Arabic? Thinking of the New Yorker cartoon with the guy in toga chiseling in credit card numbers in Roman numerals. Have forgotten the caption but it was something about speed.
'Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza' (AP)
JACK JEFFERY AND SAMY MAGDY
October 18, 2023 at 8:36 PM
CAIRO (AP) — As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don’t take them in.
The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.”
Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty.
Here is a look at what is motivating Egypt’s and Jordan’s stances.
A HISTORY OF DISPLACEMENT
Displacement has been a major theme of Palestinian history. In the 1948 war around Israel’s creation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.”
In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.
The refugees and their descendants now number nearly 6 million, most living in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further, with many refugees building lives in Gulf Arab countries or the West.
After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Since then, Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a return of refugees as part of a peace deal, arguing that it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority.
Egypt fears history will repeat itself and a large Palestinian refugee population from Gaza will end up staying for good.
NO GUARANTEE OF RETURN
That’s in part because there’s no clear scenario for how this war will end.
Israel says it intends to destroy Hamas for its bloody rampage in its southern towns. But it has given no indication of what might happen afterward and who would govern Gaza. That has raised concerns that it will reoccupy the territory for a period, fueling further conflict.
The Israeli military said Palestinians who followed its order to flee northern Gaza to the strip’s southern half would be allowed back to their homes after the war ends.
Egypt is not reassured.
El-Sissi said fighting could last for years if Israel argues it hasn’t sufficiently crushed militants. He proposed that Israel house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbors the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.
“Israel’s lack of clarity regarding its intentions in Gaza and the evacuation of the population is in itself problematic,” said Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director. “This confusion fuels fears in the neighborhood.”
Egypt has pushed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Israel said Wednesday that it would, though it didn't say when. According to United Nations, Egypt, which is dealing with a spiraling economic crisis, already hosts some 9 million refugees and migrants, including roughly 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fleeing their country’s war.
But Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect Israel might use this opportunity to force permanent demographic changes to wreck Palestinian demands for statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967.
El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region.” He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now.
“All historical precedent points to the fact that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return back,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Egypt doesn’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Arab countries’ fears have only been stoked by the rise under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hard-right parties that talk in positive terms about removing Palestinians. Since the Hamas attack, the rhetoric has become less restrained, with some right-wing politicians and media commentators calling for the military to raze Gaza and drive out its inhabitants. One lawmaker said Israel should carry out a “new Nakba” on Gaza.
WORRIES OVER HAMAS
At the same time, Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt's military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.
Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.
With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” Fabiani said.
El-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself ... and would strike Egyptian territory.”
“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.” (AP) This article was copied in full for this comment.
Fern I visited the Gaza Palestinian refugee camp in 1953. The Egyptians kept them in tents, not wishing to make their presence permanent. Israel occupied this area after the 1967 war.
Neither Egypt nor other Arab countries wish to be inundated by millions of Palestinian refugees. Over the years a number of Palestinians have managed to work in some Arab countries, but this has been selective and severely limited in numbers. I have met some of these individuals, a few of whom were Eisenhower Fellows.
The USA supported the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948, apparently under the broad umbrella of the "Holocaust" (which was horribly bad but not done by Palestinians).
And, now, for 75 years the USA has supported genocide and Israel's land grabs from Palestinian people. Worse, Jordan and Egypt know that if Israel displaces millions of Palestinians from northern Gaza to Jordan and Egypt Israel will never leave the northern Gaza area. So, they will not help the displaced Palestinians.
Thank "God" I was not randomly born in Gaza. Wait, I mean thank random chance.
Yes! I thank "random choice" daily - wait, no, hourly. For a lot, including where I have the privilege to live.
I think it comes down to this. Israel needed to be a home for Jews - a place to be safe. No explanation needed unless one is an alien who just landed here and has no human history in his brain.
But Palestinians should have been part of the process from day one. Either be included in this new state or be given a state of their own. Jews and Palestinians are cousins. They could have been partners. Both have been abused and shuffled around by Europeans for centuries.
I drove through a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in 1982. Some of those families had been there since 1948. Their plight was a weapon then, as it is now. What struck me the most was that the camp was at the foot of a hill with a long, sweeping green lawn up to a gorgeous royal palace. The contrast was extreme. What also struck me were the very temporary-looking dwellings with tin corrugated roofs held down by stones, each with a television antenna.
KR I have difficulty imagining what life must be for the 4,500,000 Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza and the West Bank (where 500,000 Israeli settlers have been intruded).
Minimal schooling, poor job possibilities, in Gaza half the population youths. A marvelous recruiting ground for terrorists who would welcome the thrill of attacking folks with automatic weapons.
In the Foreign Service, I experienced such a syndrome in Congo in the 1960s. It spread to Mozambique and elsewhere in the 1970s.
When there is scant hope in a society, one should expect deadly reactions. And I doubt, after this current explosion, that there will be much change in the Israel/Palestinian situation unless, perhaps, we have a systemic post-Netanyahu change—-unlikely, but I always hope for a Hail Mary.
The sad truth is that the Palestinian people have been used/abused as pawns since 1948. That have suffered at the hands of their own self-aggrandizing leaders and largely been abandoned by the leadership of all the Arab states. That does not justify Hamas’ goal of slaughtering all Jews. It does mean a two-state solution - rejected by the Arabs in ‘48 - seems to be the only path to peace.
WS The Oslo Accords in 1993 breathed life into the ‘two state’ option, but it seems dead as a door nail today. Arafat at the Clinton 2000 Camp David confab fumbled the ball. There hasn’t be an obvious Palestinian leader since then, and Netanyahu has been peeing in the Palestinian pot for nearly two decades.
50 minute update on child victims after the 2014 Gaza war: "Born in Gaza" on Netflix. The visuals and restrictions remind me of the Nazi ghettos, like in Warsaw and Lodz, that quickly became sealed off enclaves of hell--death from starvation, disease, if not bullets or bombs. Gaza people still require clean water, food, shelter, and medical care to meet basic needs; schooling; opportunities for work; rebuilt infrastructure for housing, business, farming, and fishing; trauma healing; trade; and functional self-governance to build regional peace.
Thank you, Ellie. Americans need to know this and what has happened since. Some of our 'leader's' talk the talk, but do less than nothing to change their horrid circumstances and often do worse.
Ellie, most Americans have no clue what the Palestinians have been experiencing. Many Israeli Jews have no clue what life is like in Gaza because of the government owned media.
It’s not so simple. When Israel’s withdrew from Gaza they left agricultural infrastructure which was then destroyed by Palestinians lest Israel be viewed positively. There has to be a two state solution and coexistence
Thanks, Fern for providing analysis explaining the rationale for Egypt and Jordan's positions. I appreciate your shedding some needed light on a long-standing, complex , and highly emotional issue.
You're welcome, Georgia. The struggles, including oppression of the Palestinians is primarily unknown; I wonder how much of it is known by the Israelis. You are correct about how emotional this is. The persecution of the Jews for centuries and the Holocaust are much better known. Contradictory stories are the norm about the centuries long history of conflicts in the Middle East. Under such a load, digging for the facts is time consuming, difficult and likely to draw ire, whatever the 'facts' may be.
Sorry, Fern. These courses are part of a liberal arts education, mostly dead in America. Only about 300 left. As for universities: an international medievalist of whom I had the good luck to be a student, reported gleefully (he was a rare person in every respect) that he managed to get his PhD and get out of Harvard “while it was still a university,” the year before they put in the business school. By now, thanks to the work of the Koch brothers and their friends, most of our universities are job training. What we are undergoing in DC is largely a result of no history, civics, or humanities classes and the propaganda about “socialism”
that has destroyed the middle class and May yet destroy US. Do you notice that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare and destroy unions? Anything to keep the poor working to survive until they die.
Virginia, while there is truth to what you say, some of it has nothing to do with the fact that with some time and effort historians and writers knowledgeable about the middle ages and the crusades could be identified in the US and other countries.
You know who else is treated badly? Millions of people in, Russia, Iran, Turkey, North Korea, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Venezuela and dozens of othe countries. The government and internal terrorist groups in these countries kill people without recourse all the time.
The Biden administration is treading very lightly here to try to keep this situation from escalating into WWIII.
Meanwhile, the Republicans complain about Venezuelans coming across the border seeking asylum from a cruel and oppressive government. How many stories have been published lately about the Venezuelan government? I haven't seen any. Are they just not killing enough people to make the news or is it the fact they have the largest oil reserves in the world?
Thank you, D4N. I was listening to tv news around Gaza as Israel prepares to attack.. That tiny country at war again. Crying in the night for all involved. We stoop so low. Apologies for my howl.
'State Department Official Resigns Over Arms Transfers to Israel'
'Josh Paul spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations.'
By John Ismay
• Oct. 19, 2023, 1:01 a.m. ET
'A State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers resigned this week in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel as it lays siege to Gaza in its war with Hamas.'
'In his resignation letter, Josh Paul, who has been the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for over 11 years, said the Biden administration’s '“blind support for one side” was leading to policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”
“The response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” he wrote, adding, “I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer.”
'In an interview, Mr. Paul said that Israel’s cutting off of water, food, medical care and electricity to Gaza, a territory of two million people, should prompt protections in a number of longstanding federal laws intended to keep American weapons out of the hands of human rights violators. But those legal guardrails are failing, he said.'
“The problem with all of those provisions is that it rests on the executive branch making a determination that human rights violations have occurred ,' ” Mr. Paul said. “The decision to make a determination doesn’t rest with some nonpartisan academic entity, and there’s no incentive for the president to actually determine anything.”
“This administration, I think, knows better and understands some of the complexity, but brought very little of that nuance to the policy decisions that are being made,” said Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department.'
'Mr. Biden has embraced Israel since Hamas killed more than 1,400 people and took nearly 200 hostages in an attack early this month, and his administration is preparing a request of $10 billion in mostly military aid, according to aides familiar with the plan. But in a visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Mr. Biden also warned Israelis not to give in to “an all-consuming rage” that could drive the country too far in response, and his administration has pushed Israel to limit civilian deaths.'
'Israel has said that the scale and gruesomeness of Hamas’s attack justify its response and that it is acting in compliance with international law. The State Department’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night.'
'Mr. Paul, whose resignation was reported earlier by The Huffington Post, said that he had seen the U.S. government approve numerous sales or shipments of matériel to other Middle Eastern countries, even when he believed federal law should have prevented them from going forward.'
“On all of them there’s a moment where you can say, OK, well, you know, it’s out of my hands, but I know Congress is going to push back,” he said, by issuing a hold on the transfer or grilling officials in hearings at the Capitol. “But in this instance, there isn’t any significant pushback likely from Congress, there isn’t any other oversight mechanism, there isn’t any other forum for debate, and that’s part of what got into my decision making.”
'Continuing to give Israel what he described as carte blanche to kill a generation of enemies, only to create a new one, does not ultimately serve the United States’ interests, Mr. Paul said.'
“What it leads to is this desire to sort of impose security at any cost, including in cost to the Palestinian civilian population,” he said. “And that doesn’t ultimately lead to security.”
“This administration, I think, knows better and understands some of the complexity but brought very little of that nuance to the policy decisions that are being made.”
'Since posting his resignation letter online Wednesday, Mr. Paul said he had received an outpouring of support from State Department colleagues and congressional staff members.'
“A lot of people are wrestling with this being the current policy and are finding it to be deeply problematic,” he said. “I’ve really been quite moved by some of the folks who have reached out to say that they understand where I’m coming from. They respect my decision. It’s been very supportive.” (NYTimes) This article was copied in full.
$100 Million for aid to help the people of Gaza and $10 Billion for arms to Israel seems all wrong to me. I would like a lot of that $10 Billion in our tax dollars to go to Americans living in poverty or Africans facing starvation or anyone in serious need. This actually enrages me.
Perhaps THE largest lobby/most influential group of lobbyists in Washington emanate from the US weapons manufacturers. That is the main reason why the only bills in Washington that are bipartisan are the funding to build weapons (the defense budget).
So, as long as we live in something akin to a Democratic House of Prostitution, where lobbyists purchase Congressional representatives and Presidents.......
we just have to embrace that our main product in the USA is ....... weapons.
That $10 billion goes to American arms manufacturers which subsidizes our own military needs as well as providing jobs in the armament industry. That’s capitalism. Ugh. I Hope we can send more to Ukraine quickly (like yesterday)
And the weapons that WE sell to Mexican cartels - the ones that send us fentanyl and traffic in humans. We arm our own enemies - by "we" I mean the American oligarchs.
Fern As a former Foreign Service Officer, sadly I am aware that very seldom, when a State Department official resigns over principle, is this long remembered.
Can you remember the name of the Secretary of State who, after the botched Iran hostage rescue mission in 1980, resigned over principle? Or the four Foreign Service officers who resigned over our Bosnia policy in the early 1990s?
Keith, I have no idea who anyone under Carter was. But, I DO remember that Reagan's stall of the return of the Hostages DID make Carter look weak and did cost him the election beginning the aggressive use of fakery in the US by Republicans.
Jimmy Carter was one our finest presidents. But my sense was that he lost re-election for two major reasons.
First, he didn't know how to play the "inside game" of DC politics. He relied too much on his Georgia advisors.
Second, he did the unthinkable. He actually asked selfish Americans to make small personal sacrifices like turning down the heat a couple of degrees or putting on a sweater during an energy crisis. He actually thought people would pull together in common efforts to help each other. He was a real "Christian". But fake money grubbing Christians voted him out. And the "ME" generation was born - and they reproduced like rabid rabbits.
Jimmy never had a chance to exercise his brilliant brain. He was naive. And good. Ah, the irony of a "none" like me loving a bible thumper from Georgia is hard to fathom. But good is good, regardless of faith or the lack thereof.
Bill Jimmy Carter was a fine, bright individual with an extraordinary drive and focus. He was good on strategy and poor in what was necessary for effective implementation. He failed to relate to the power elite in Washington, as his Georgia boys ignored senators and congressmen.
Also, Carter was extremely strong willed—which is how he got to be president. In a sense, he failed at being an effective president, but succeeded in his future life. I believe he won the Nobel Prize. I thought that his mother, Lillian, was exceptional.
I am now re-watching the PBS American Presidents on Carter. He seems less likable than I had recalled.
Mike Actually not true. Carter was frantic to get the hostages out before Reagan took the presidential oath. Warren Christopher, then Under Secretary of State, was waiting for this in, I believe Algiers. [He later personally recounted this story to me.]
Iran, perhaps in part because of the failed hostage rescue mission, waited until Reagan took the oath of office to release the hostages. Reagan graciously provided a plane for Carter to greet the hostages.
Ref. State Department officials resigning over principles, I remember Matthew Hoh, a distinguished US Marine Officer who served in Iraq and then went on to join the State Dept. in Afghanistan. He spent time daily out working with the Afghan people in different regions of the country and listening to their complaints.
Mr. Hoh resigned in 2010. He wrote in his resignation letter, “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”
Mr. Hoh went on to add, “I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.” He further spoke of the utter corruption in the Afghan government, and how almost a billion dollars a year went from corrupt government officials to their private accounts in Dubai (per a Wall Street Journal article in 2010).
That was in 2010. Yet the Afghan war, sponsored by the U.S., went on for another dozen years or so. More currently, I can’t help but wonder how much of the U.S. aid to Ukraine is ending up in Dubai or other offshore accounts. I wonder about some of the aid to Israel as well, considering that Bibi has been brought up on corruption charges. And what of the U.S. military which has failed every audit to account for its vast budget?
Heydon In Afghanistan I suspect that foreign bank accounts absorbed a significant portion of US Aid. In Africa, much higher. In Israel, I suspect that the direct corruption level is much lower, though I wouldn’t bet my jodhpurs on that. As for assistance in the US, on pandemic funds, for example, I’d guess that we’d touch the Afghans level of corruption.
In the Pentagon they don’t measure corruption. Rather they call add ons, readjustment of original budget, or simply miscellaneous, with Congress adding its own goodies. It’s not by chance that there has never been. A comprehensive audit of the Pentagon budget—too many unicorns and lizards buried in the figures.
If there are any Republicans who are Americans first and foremost, let them stand straight and tall to join their Democratic colleagues who are true Americans and place a real American, Hakeem Jeffries, as House Speaker and put our country back on track.
There is little question in my mind that Biden is the right president for the moment and for our times. He comports himself on the world stage with deft aplomb, as he does domestically. Of course, age is a question...but he answers it every day with his actions...in spite of the drivel his detractors and opponents spew out in the public forum. This was a clear, strong and balanced message in an impossibly complicated situation.
We must listen to as many viewpoints as possible. These two men are serious, honest and know the history of this conflict better than most. Thank you, Heather for today’s letter.
But us loonie liberals are not trying to take down our democracy. Multiple sides to every story is true, but an inch further and you have alternative facts. Proceed with caution to those who are smarter than most MAGAts but with a similar agenda.
TC won’t listen, and he won’t read. His liberal class thin-skinned sensitivities cannot abide critique of his propagandized narrative of how the world works, from Hedges or anyone else. The silo is strong with that one.
Oh Tom, it takes a silo to know a silo. Hedges may have some information to offer. But I have also learned a lot from TC who is also a Tom. A lot.
All is not black or white. Hedges could reveal some helpful info. But he also was employed by the Moscow manipulated Russian Television. That is a bridge too far for me.
And personally attacking others for having different views in this forum is unseemly. Please forgive me if I have ever done such. I am miles away from perfection. Perhaps we could work on just sharing facts and opinions based on facts?
Oh Bill, you’re trying to give me lessons on black and white cliche while saying RT is a bridge too far? Please. My silo is the truth and justice one, which means I will accept truth from any source; you, TC, or Hedges, regardless of employment status. Perhaps we just define ‘personally attacking others’ differently. In my book, responding to a good faith link someone posts by using crude, pithy, fallacious ad hominem against the author of the link, instead of specific example or shared reasoning, is likewise personal attack, albeit not quite as direct, which is revealing in its laziness. So I merely respond with the same disdain the author of the ad hominem uses…. nothing personal, just trying to keep the conversation on an even keel.
Hedges was also employed by the Washington DC manipulated New York Times. Should people not give credence to truths spoken by Hedges because they consider that a bridge too far?
I, too, am miles away from perfection. I gave an opinion, based on TC’s response to a link in a comment. Unseemly? You address your attack concern to TC’s comment, then I’ll give your paternalistic critique a revisit. Lots of bridges in the distance these days.
I'll take the "paternalistic critique" comment as a compliment. I guess you see me as a "father figure"?
You seem to have ignored my comment about Hedges having some good info. But I will stand by my comment about RT. To compare the NYTimes to an arm of a government that seeks to destroy the West is laughable - hysterical. But to each his own world view.
Listen to last night's discussion hosted by The Lever with Naomi Klein, Omar Baddar and David Sirota. They are not loonies, and neither is Hedges. It would be better to caution self to avoid listening uncritically to stooges for any political organization with no scruples about cementing its power with force, threats, lies, and abuse.
Here is a conversation from fellows at Lakota People’s Law Project:
"Hearts continued to break around the world this past week as a sequence of horrific events unfolded in the Middle East. First, an attack by Hamas militants killed hundreds of innocent people at a music festival. The Israeli government responded by declaring war on Palestinians and locking down Gaza, prompting a call for global jihad by a former Hamas leader. Like you, we watched with sadness and horror, wishing for a solution to this age-old conflict that has already shattered far too many lives.
"At Lakota Law, we work toward justice for Indigenous peoples, and by extension, for our entire human family. Though these events may be unfolding far from Turtle Island, they affect all of us — and we feel it’s our responsibility to lend whatever perspective we have to find a path toward equity, peace, and healing. To that end, noted Indigenous actor and advocate Raoul Trujillo invited Lakota Law co-director Chase Iron Eyes and me to his ranch on Pueblo lands in so-called New Mexico to talk about Israel-Palestine and how we can think and act effectively together.
"I invite you to watch some of that conversation right here:
"You may be asking: why are you hearing from me? Lakota Law is here to talk about things through an Indigenous lens, but I’m non-Native. However, as someone dedicated to Indigenous justice and raised in a traditional Jewish household and community — who has organized alongside Palestinians and Israelis in the Holy Land — I have a studied, lived-in perspective.
"Of course, Chase also brings a very important viewpoint to this dialogue. In various ways, and with varying degrees of success, many have noted parallels between worldwide Indigenous and Palestinian struggles against colonial rule. As Chase points out in our discussion, all people deserve freedom and dignity, but the Lakota way does not condone the targeting of innocents.
"The fact is that no one person or organization has the answers, and there simply isn’t room in an email to delve deeply into the long history of displacement or the political complexities present in Israel and Palestine. That’s precisely why we believe it’s important to consider a diversity of perspectives and share our conversation with you.
"So, please watch it right here, and I hope you’ll join us in praying for shalom, salaam — peace — and justice for our relatives all over the world. As the Lakota wisely say, Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ. We are all related."
Let's hope that Biden's embrace of Netanyahu won't save Netanyahu. He belongs in jail, just like TFG. Biden has been partially responsible for this mess by putting all his emphasis on the Abraham Accords. Negotiating in secret behind the backs of the Palestinian people while passively condoning the settler attacks on Palestinians on the West Bank has the region seething. He should have moved the embassy back to Tel Aviv and told the Israelis that the settlements in the West Bank will be part of the new Palestinian state. Israel is doomed to eternal war by its plan to drive all the Palestinians out of Palestine. Lip service to a two-state solution has long been a farce.
Biden isn’t embracing Netanyahu. He’s embracing the Israeli people at a time of great need. And you heap far too much blame on him for the grotesque sins of the Israeli government.
"you heap far too much blame on him for the grotesque sins of the Israeli government"
Perhaps blaming Biden specifically is "not fair" but blaming the US specifically is fair.
The US has been exporting massive amounts of weapons to Israel for many years. Presumably because the US understands those American weapons will be utilized, by Israel, to continue its long arc of Palestinian displacement from their own homeland.
I agree that the Palestinians have been wrongfully displaced and that Israel has failed to address their rightful needs to a homeland or to offer full integration. It's the faulty foundation of this endless stupid conflict.
But also, if I lived in Israel right now, I would hope that America would send me the help I need to survive the continuous attack on my very existence since the first Jew was born.
Agree. Over the decades — with some obvious exceptions — the U.S. has failed miserably to help the Palestinians. And recently, of course, Netanyahu's right-wing corrupt government has made it impossible to bring about meaningful reform and exacerbated the long-simmering divisions.
I didn’t feel good about the trip until I read Heather’s letter. I concentrated on the negative, the cancelled Jordan meeting, the snub of Blinken by that smug Saudi Prince, and thosein our own country calling Biden a war criminal for supporting Israel.
She brought me back to reality. Biden was pitch perfect. He is balancing support of Israel with a commitment to humanitarian aid, real change, a two-state solution and his resolute calmness. He stands alone in such leadership while so many others act to take advantage.
This morning I have two anchors in reality, Heather and President Biden.
Heather Cox Richardson the stark contrast of the world leading Administration and the Romper Room of the House just shows who can govern and who cannot.
For anyone who thinks for an instant that all the explanations in the world about what really happened at the hospital will change a thing on the "Arab Street" and bring around the Arab governments to deal with this realistically, I want some of whatever you're imbibing. This situation is incredibly dangerous and nothing has been done that will convince the other side to ease off. I wish to hell I was wrong, but I'm not.
Tom You recall, in the Battle of Midway, that the US initially reported the success of B 17 attacks on the Japanese fleet. Subsequently it was determined that not a single B 17 bomb hit a Japanese ship.
during the Suez War, the Egyptians highlighted that they had sunk the French battleship Jean Bart. More than a year later I took a photo of the Jean Bart being decommissioned to a meeting with a top Nasser aide. He simply winced and grinned.
You are totally correct that, in the Arab world, the ‘evidence’ from Israel and the US that an errant Hamas missile destroyed the Gaza hospital will be totally ignored.
Personally, I believe that this ‘evidence’ is correct, but I’m not 100% sure. I still recall official reporting from Vietnam.
I have two brothers who served during the Vietnam era. One of them in-country, earning himself a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, and a lifetime of debilitating PTSD. Service for which he was once spit on at the SFO airport.
The lies our Government told then are still remembered today by many whose lives were directly and irrevocably impacted by them.
As a young man from the Midwest, I used to vote Republican, once believing all the motherhood and apple pie, God and family, Trickle Down, ‘kill a commie for Mommy’ bullshit the Regan administration spewed back in the day.
Since then, I’ve traveled the world, seen a few things, learned even more, and realized just how wrong-headed the Republican platform is. And today’s MAGA cult is beyond belief—except that I’ve read the history of how the Nazi’s came to power. The MAGA apple isn’t falling far from that tree. Those who burn books eventually burn people.
All this to say that Government lies are not new but real people suffer their consequences. And that seeing what the Republicans have done, and are doing, to hobble our country, the lies, the inability to govern, and the unfettered support of a wannabe dictator will not be forgotten. Must not be forgotten.
I’ve seen the error of my early ways. Luckily , that was an easy fix at the ballot box.
I am one also, converted to "Republican" by the far right writings of George Will and William F Buckley who graced the weekly pages of the Texas A&M Battalion school paper.
I threw off the yoke of lies of "Republican" when Bush invaded Iraq WHILE the on the ground weapons inspectors, put their by Reagan, we screaming "no weapons here!".
I will never vote Republican again. Ever. Nor will my children.
I think this post is so, so important. It’s a relief to know that people can “wake up” and change their path forward. Nothing is perfect but some choices are much more valuable to our humanity than others. Bless you for caring enough to change...
Read my book, "the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club." The incident was worse than you think. The "lights in the water" were the reflection of the moon and lightning off the enormous school of flying fish that annually transit the Gulf of Tonkin in early August.
Tom That Johnson joked about the supposed Vietnamese Tonkin attack in a conversation with my hero, Under Secretary of State George Ball, is a new dimension of sick humor.
In fact, in late October, 1964, Ball wrote a carefully argued 75-page legal brief on our options in Vietnam. His conclusion: get out. Subsequently he was used as a foil by Johnson, who continually escaped the war, while lying to the American public.
Sam Adams, my CIA current intelligence counterpart during the Congo 1964 foreign hostage crisis, shifted to assessing Viet Cong order of battle. An excellent analysis, he discovered that the Army was undercounting Vietnamese military by 200-300,000.
When he sought to expose this, he was shafted by General Westmoreland and, later, by the CIA director.
All of this is spelled out in his book WHAT THE HELL ARE WE FIGHTING FOR.
I agree with you TC, you're right, and we both wish you were wrong. The issue of blame for the hospital lbombing is also far less important than the fact of the hospital bombing.
On top of the decades long Israeli oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza prior to the recent Hamas atrocities, and their post Hamas atrocity carpet bombing and other war crimes in Gaza, the far more powerful State of Israel is clearly responsible for the devastation precipitated in Gaza overall, perceptions in the streets of Beirut, Baghdad and Damascus aside.
"The issue of blame for the hospital [ ]bombing is also far less important than the fact of the hospital bombing."
Say what?
It it was an "errant" Hamas rocket, it was an accident by definition. If it was an Israeli air strike it was almost certainly intentional. If the latter, whether a commanded strike or a trigger happy and pissed off Israeli F16 pilot armed with a smart bomb acting alone, Israel bears full responsibility.
Given an apparent direct hit to the hospital, I have my doubts about the errant rocket explanation, and I am very much skeptical of the story being told by so called "intelligence sources".
I guess I'm just too dense to get your point then, Daniel. What I hear you saying is that who did it (and why) doesn't matter; that the important thing is that it happened at all. I think the answer to the question is immensely important, maybe even more important than the actual fact of the bombing itself, given the immense scale of the carnage already committed. Anyone found to have intentionally perpetrated this act for whatever reasons should be tried for a war crime, and that includes all parties concerned.
At the risk of running this thread a bit too far, I will say the following:
First of all, you are certainly not dense, LeMoine. I may have been a bit unclear in my initial statement. In no way am I minimizing the importance of the perpetrator of the hospital strike. I am maximizing the unmistakable fact that the downhill slide into war, propelled primarily by the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza, creates the conditions for this type of thing to happen, irrespective of who or which side is directly to blame. In deflecting blame to Islamic Jihad, the Israelis are acting both reflexively to demonstrate that they, the good guy victims in their minds, would never stoop to such depths as bombing a hospital. Yet even if the Al Afsi hospital were never bombed, they have already hit hospitals, schools, numerous homes, etc. The barbarity they deny is all around them, even if they are correct that this particular barbarity was not of their doing.
OK Daniel, I understand. Maybe I should have read all the related posts more thoroughly to get that context. But I still maintain that the "hospital episode" along with the "who and why" is an act so heinous that it stands above the general chaos and barbarity. Here you have a hospital overflowing with already traumatized victims that pose a threat to no one. If Hamas deliberately blew it up in order to pin it on the Israelis for PR purposes, the perpetrators should be drawn and quartered in public. If it was Israel, doing their own version of "shock and awe" then those within the decision matrix should be boiled in oil, so to speak. Accountability is the only means of reversing this escalation. running the thread a bit too far, Daniel? no one is paying any attention to us at this point. Besides, I still have three inches of blank space on the right hand side of my monitor:-) Thanks for indulging me.
Here's the problem with your logic, TC: In a broader view than from "Arab Street", lets say in the view of the international community at large, If it turns out the Israelis actually did target that hospital (and given the incredible destruction they've so far rained down on the southern part of Gaza that isn't a giant stretch) then giving Israel a pass on such an atrocity is exactly the wrong thing to do and further encourages Netanyahu and his cronies to stay the course. Wrong answer.
Thanks Heather, the world is a mess and the GOP wants to send more money to the ultra rich while ignoring the real issues that affect the citizens of America. I also admire that your letters provoke an enriching dialogue among those who comment. We are in a state of war and we must not turn our faces away in apathy from the issues that confront us.
Thank you for staying with this and pulling the narrative threads together. In the interests of amplifying the voices of those who would like the violence to stop while keeping us all aware of the historical nuances that make this so difficult:
Excerpted from Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning” in the London Review of Books, 19 Oct 2023. I highly recommend reading the whole of the original.
“I oppose the violence that Hamas has inflicted and have no alibi to offer. When I say that, I am making clear a moral and political position. I do not equivocate when I reflect on what that condemnation presupposes and implies. Anyone who joins me in this condemnation might want to ask whether moral condemnation should be based on some understanding of what is being opposed. One might say, no, I don’t need to know anything about Palestine or Hamas to know that what they have done is wrong, and to condemn it. And if one stops there, relying on contemporary media representations, without ever asking whether they are actually right and useful, whether they let the histories be told, then one accepts a certain ignorance and trusts in the framework presented. After all, we are all busy, and we cannot all be historians or sociologists. That is a possible way to think and live, and well-intentioned people do live that way. But at what cost?
“What if our morality and our politics did not end with the act of condemnation? What if we insisted on asking what form of life would release the region from violence such as this? What if, in addition to condemning wanton crimes, we wanted to create a future in which violence of this sort came to an end? That is a normative aspiration that goes beyond momentary condemnation. To achieve it, we have to know the history of the situation, the growth of Hamas as a militant group in the devastation of the post-Oslo moment for those in Gaza to whom promises of self-governance were never made good; the formation of other groups of Palestinians with other tactics and goals; and the history of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for freedom and the right of political self-determination, for release from colonial rule and pervasive military and carceral violence. Then we might be part of the struggle for a free Palestine in which Hamas would be dissolved, or superseded by groups with non-violent aspirations for cohabitation. ...
“An Israeli friend, a self-described ‘anti-Zionist’, writes online that she is terrified for her family and friends, that she has lost people. And our hearts should go out to her, as mine surely does. It is unequivocally terrible. And yet, is there no moment where her own experience of horror and loss over her friends and family is imagined to be what a Palestinian might be feeling on the other side, or has felt after the years of bombardment, incarceration and military violence? I am also a Jew who lives with transgenerational trauma in the wake of atrocities committed against people like me. But they were also committed against people not like me. I do not have to identify with this face or that name in order to name the atrocity I see. Or, at least, I struggle not to.
“In the end, though, the problem is not simply a failure of empathy. For empathy mainly takes form within a framework that allows for identification to be accomplished, or for a translation between another’s experience and my own. And if the dominant frame considers some lives to be more grievable than others, then it follows that one set of losses is more horrifying than another set of losses. The question of whose lives are worth grieving is an integral part of the question of whose lives are worth valuing. And here racism enters in a decisive way. If Palestinians are ‘animals’, as Israel’s defence minister insists, and if Israelis now represent ‘the Jewish people’ as Biden insists (collapsing the Jewish diaspora into Israel, as reactionaries demand), then the only grievable people in the scene, the only ones who present as eligible for grief, are the Israelis, for the scene of ‘war’ is now staged between the Jewish people and the animals who seek to kill them. This is surely not the first time that a group of people seeking release from colonial shackles has been figured as animals by the coloniser. Are the Israelis ‘animals’ when they kill? This racist framing of contemporary violence recapitulates the colonial opposition between the ‘civilised ones’ and the ‘animals’ who must be routed or destroyed so as to preserve ‘civilisation’. If we adopt this framework in the course of declaring our moral opposition, we find ourselves implicated in a form of racism that extends beyond the utterance to the structure of everyday life in Palestine. And for that a radical reparation is surely in order."
I had been looking for what Butler might have to say since Hamas’ attack, and found the link at Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack yesterday afternoon. She offers more——I found Masha Gessen’s “The Tangled Grief of Israel’s Anti-Occupation Activists” particularly compelling and nuanced——as well as a whole other rabbit hole on the limits of forgiveness:
Masha Geffen (at The New Yorker. Unfortunately I cannot gift the article: I only was able, luckily, to read it as my last free one for the year. Maybe somebody else can share it?):
Hats off to Biden and Biden’s speechwriters. This address was magnificent!
Agreed Herb,,,I didn't see or hear a feeble old man, stumbling, bumbling and confused. I saw, and heard an elder statesman with years of experience, pain and wisdom LEADING the way to humanitarian assistance and staunch warnings to all that this was not going to be a time to destroy innocent lives or inflict pain for revenge, or out of anger. He did well. Hard to imagine someone else doing as well.
damnit, will Americans vote Biden up more now? They SHOULD, and should have already. Compare that with the GOP catastrophe in the House.
Frank, compare what Biden did with what Trump might’ve done. Very very scary.
Keeps me awake at night.
Trump would have said the same thing: The United States fully supports Israel....promising military assistance and billions.
Without any mention of what this will mean to the 2.1 Palestinians: further genicide.
Even without the latest Hamas upsurge. So here we remain with a barricaded, impoverished Gaza operated by a Hamas which on one front preaches a One Palestine non-Jewish state across the territories between and including Gaza and West Bank - on the other operates what we could call general civil authorities and administration.
And compare with the gop presidential candidates. 🤡💩 and the gop public servants. And the gop Supreme Court. Grifters. Liars. Haters. So many criminals. 😱🤬
Minority "exceptionalism"
I am discouraged by a poll showing that Swing State voters prefer Trump to Biden over the economy. : < https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-19/trump-leads-biden-in-key-us-states-as-voters-worry-about-economy-poll?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top&leadSource=uverify%20wall
The preference for GOP/Trump on the economy has been a long standing as far as I'm concerned false perception of the two parties actual performance. GOP long-term drumbeat may have a lot to do with that, plus an archaic popular view that the Dems' pursuit of social infrastructure has been seen as "socialism" a dirty word across the US, linked to "godless Communism" and likely loaded with a racist bias. My guess. Clinton's failed effort at implementing a healthcare program, then Obama's partial success, likely stimulated outsized efforts by the GOP on that drumbeat. lol I have mistyped "dumb.." twice now.
They never mention that Trump’s “ imaginary “ great economy was the result of Obama. Trump is incompetent to get anything done and the administration pandered to the wealthy. He just rode on Obama’s shirt tails.
And the next president will ride on the Biden Administration's successful financial handling of the pandemic hand-off ails, inflation taming monetary policy, etc., etc. Inflation policy is painful, ie., the necessity of high interest rates to curb folks and business's living on borrowed - nearly free money (1 percent interest). The nation's people and business's were living like drunk sailors on shore leave for far too long; the eventual end result it to divide the total nation value of the money supply making all dollars worth less. Folks in general have a very hard time getting their minds around economics. I'm fearful that Biden, without a massive effort to educate the public will pay a dear price come 2024 election time. In fact, I'm browsing a poll soon that may confirm that; I'll post a link if I think it holds any water. * As I think about it, that will mark twice in my lifetime that I experienced a democrat president being 'handed the bag' of past monetary mismanagement; the first I recall was Carter being handed the necessity to tame inflation with high interest rates. * Also the 2nd oil crisis via OPEC. That was an awful time for average Americans; borrowing was extremely painful. Of course the gop beat him up for it, and then the failed (military and cyclonic sandstorm) hostage rescue in Iran. Reagan gop machine made mincemeat of likely the most honorable, and brilliant (near mensa I.Q.) president in my lifetime as a voter.
Frankly, I don’t trust polls. Remember the Hillary polls?
Neither do I. They are no more than another 'statistic' - eg., "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". A 'Murphy's Law' corollary needs added to that saw regarding 'polls.' However, they do influence a segment of the general public and broadcast frenzy that feel a need to 'jump on some rolling bandwagon.' There are fallacies of faulty logic applicable there that's been widely exploited before - including the election / even the electability of TFG. If you'll recall it was widely exploited by the gop, our adversary countries, and gop ally's broadly on social media. TFG winning was turned into a 'virtual' sure thing, along with the vilification of Clinton.
Years ago when the Maddow blog was still available, we had a person who had worked in polling for years....Carolina Lady with Fan. She explained how polling works and after that I take most polls with a grain of salt.
Bronwyn, Drill down to the original poll. They say "Americans" but the sampling is 1137 people, often online. In the last presidential election, Biden had over 81 million votes. His tfg opponent had over 74 million. 1137 is a tiny drop in the bucket and statistically inaccurate when you think of all the online cheating his cult and the Russians have done to help elect a compulsive liar manchild. These breathless polls are just clickbait for lazy media. Try to avoid them
Skipping any other issues, turns out a properly (random) chosen small sample will generate a plus/minus 5% accurate result, meaning 19 times out of 20. Larger sample sizes dont provide a comparable gain in accuracy. That amazed me when i took a business stats course abt 45 years ago, but the math was reasonably easy to follow. On the other hand we've had historically huge mis-calls.
Frank, maybe 45 years ago statistics were more straightforward. When Tulsi Gabbard ran for president in 2020, she told people how to sign up for polls. We know that Russians had thousands of Facebook accounts in the 2016 election pretending to be Americans. If the media would put the sampling number in the headline or first paragraph instead of saying what “Americans”believe, it would certainly lower my blood pressure!
Exactly right Gigi. I spoke to that above ↓↑, or wherever it landed (lol). Now I've got to read back to find the Bronwyn post to see if he's talking about the poll I'm reading; from your comments, I'm thinking it is, inasmuch as you mention the small, and 'online' sampling. Brava ~
They’re not thinking. Trump would kill US all. Time to educate that food and water are necessities for human life. Gasoline and gold are not. Eggs come from well-fed (grains) chickens (I used to give them watermelon and cantaloupe rinds in summer). I met a package of asparagus last week that said “made in the grocery store.” First time I knew how deceptive the food guys are.
Lol...
D4N: Why is it funny? Too many Americans are too far removed from farms and farming to understand the dangers of climate change. Food is NOT made in the grocery store nor grown there. False advertising is no longer a joke, if ever it was.
Ignore the polls.
From Simon Rosenberg, Dem strategist who accurately predicted the faux red wave in ‘22.⬇️
“Encouraging Biden and Ohio Polls - A new large sample, high quality NPR/NewsHour/Marist poll has Biden up over Trump 49-47 (+2), and Biden leading Trump in a three way ballot with RFK 44-37-16 (+7).”
https://open.substack.com/pub/simonwdc/p/the-gazan-hospital-good-new-biden?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I’d like to see him behind bars. Not just a anchor!
Rolyac, for all those who claim that Biden is "too old," "senile," or as Scott Pelley described him, "tired," they need to have watched his bravery, resolve, and statesmanship during the current crisis in the Middle East. Even Netanyahu, who is certainly not aligned with Biden's political brand, was eager to be hosting him - perhaps because "Sleepy Joe" is more popular with the Israelis than Bibi is.
If this man is "tired," he has earned the right to be. People half his age would have fallen apart at this point, and if anyone I know tells me that he's unfit, I will remove them from my contacts list, right after smacking them down.
Consider smacking down Pelley. For quite some time now, I've been turning the tables around on some of these broadcasters, but as tastefully as I can manage. I don't always get wins, but it seems I did get a few. Most recently, I got on Scripps broadcasting for how they were narrative 'spinning' regarding the autoworker's striking, a topic I have in depth knowledge about. Their tenor has changed a bit.
Good for you, D4N. We should all stand up to these self-appointed "experts." It's clear that the motivation is little more than stirring up controversy. The best that they appear to be interested in is both-sides "reporting."
Bibi, is a 'poster boy' wanna' be autocrat; I think I posted an analysis of him here not long ago.
Scott Pelley used every word in the Thesaurus for “old” on 60 Minutes.
I'd be interested to see how long it would take for Scott Pelley or any of the other MSM who are so eager to comment negatively on Biden to keep his schedule. We won't even discuss how he'd negotiate the current poisonous right-wing crap that is constant background noise, trying to upend anything positive to keep our fragile democracy together.
I can’t even imagine the ignorant word salad that would come out of Trumps mouth right now. I’ll never forget the deer in the headlights look on George W’s face when he was told about 911 while he was reading stories to kids. He went on vaca shortly after that. Biden is doing a stellar job.
Yes ... everyone, repeat after Roylac ... Biden, leading as Our elder statesman. "He did well."
Here’s another take on the speech, leaving the question of ‘old age’ aside; focusing more on the ‘leadership’ question as it relates to empire.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/20/empire-joe-biden-gaslighting-in-tel-aviv/
Talk is cheap.
https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/18/patrick-lawrence-roger-waters-and-the-one-state-solution/
“Israel has to build a wall around itself to keep out the people it forced into refugee camps at its formal founding in 1948, but that is O.K. Incessant violence against the Palestinian population: This is O.K., too—part of the story, as they say. For the sake of its security it must bomb the airports in neighboring countries, as it did this week in Syria and Lebanon. But Israel is Israel, Israel is a great post–World War II success, a monument to human decency and the rule of law, and Israel must be.
And amid this cacophony, all this grating noise, a vast, rueful silence. Among the Western democracies’ countless unsayables, the greatest of these is that the state of Israel, founded on injustice 75 years ago, is a failed experiment. Instead of jubilee celebrations, it is ethnic-cleansing a helpless population—a monstrous memorial to the six million whose names it was intended to honor. In the same way, no one in Washington or among the European vassals can say what needs to be said about the long record of America’s “unconditional support” for Israel: It is the gravest foreign policy failure—among many, of course—in the postwar period.”
Yes-- Biden left all that for another time maybe. That's another strength of his visit. I read that in 6 days, Israel used more bombs on Gaza than we used in 4 years in oh, you know that country we withdrew from a while ago. It was way too many! I'm pretty sure Biden must loathe Netanyahu-- remember how he came over to visit Trump while Barack was president? To show that any treaty we signed could be thrown away the following week? I think that's how it was.
I also heard on the CBC‘s “as it happens“ that the number of bombs that have fallen on Gaza so far exceed the number that fell in Afghanistan in over a year. What struck me was that Gaza is the size of Hoboken New Jersey and Afghanistan is the size of Texas. We are talking true urban warfare here -in very close quarters.
Thank you for the link to that article, Tom. Well worth the read.
Just finished said article. Cogent and timely. We have propped up Israel for far too long. They served their purpose as allies with the intelligence they were well positioned to obtain in a region that started going south on us when the oil rich Arab world began throwing its weight around, highjacking airplanes and finding other ways to tell us to butt out of their business. Cooler heads had better start prevailing in this hotbed of revenge and spite. The eye for an eye thing doesn’t work for an atomic world. It’s completely inimical to life as we need it to be.
Thanks you very much for this Patrick Lawrence article. A great voice, a refreshing take on this tangled knot.
However, I must say, the idea of Palestinians sharing a legislature with Israelis makes our current chaos in the House of Representatives seem like a Latin club at Oxford.
Why not? Both are Semitic and intelligent. Religion is the center of this quarrel, as it has been for how many thousands of years. My god is better than your god. This time the Israelis won on that score. My hope is that the US Catholic bishops will not go after Biden on this one which would denigrate them to the level of jihad. Here we are fighting the crusades (our fault) all over again. As a group, why can’t humans grow up to be nice? My theory: parental beatings and hatred passed from generation to generation. Has everyone noticed Biden’s loving family or are Hunter’s problems all they see? Our president has risen above multiple tragedies to serve with human distinction and grace that should be an example to US all.
Somehow they need to see their common humanity. There was a story years ago about a camp, in the US, that brought together Arab and Israeli teens in the hope they would learn from each other and return home wiser and more tolerant. I wonder what became of that.
You may be referring to an initiative by President Carter. He spent an awful lot of time and capital suing for peace, and in particular between Egypt, Palestinians (Arafat), and Israel; As I recall the Camp David accords were one result.
Has anyone else here any information on this camp?
Could it be revived?
It's way to too late for any kind of peace or understanding or safety for Israel and certainly not for the Palestinians. 100 million in additional aid to Gaza, where the population (50% are children/Hamas supporters) is losing everything: living in rubble, no water, no medical aid, nothing, to be shared with the West Bank: what a joke.
And 10... 15? billion for Israel. .....
More folly of the human race.
I agree. He didn't falter at all; as well, he didn't mince words with wanna' be dictator Bibi, privately and publicly. Uncomfortable diplomacy at it's best by a master of the craft. He also publicly expressed his / our sympathy for the innocent victims in Gaza and Israel. Paraphrasing in his public address, "The majority of Palestinians suffering are 'not' hamas."
Lol....
Sadly, the rejection and wars by the Arabs against the new state, whatever you want to think of that, did more to create the Palestinian disaster. A very different history might taken place with another response. Every war, mind you, that the Arab states LOST.
So, it’s all about winning and losing? Not about right and wrong? Just what ‘another response’ are you referencing here?
From my limited reading/investigation so far, Israel’s decision to pursue hardline Zionism over democracy has done more to ‘create the Palestinian disaster’. But then, I tend to take the side of oppressed over oppressor, so maybe that’s my own bias talking.
I do agree this was a massive Jewish intrusion into Palestine over several generations, and it didn't take long for a Palestinian resistance, even if at the front end Palestinians were selling Jewish immigrants then very low-value land. Anti-semitism in Europe was really the propellant for further immigration esp after the Nazi takeover, and Jews sought futilely to emigrate to eg England, USA, Canada etc, who consistently turned them away. So help yourself to pointing the blame finger. And remember the British aided and abetted the Jewish immigration into Palestine, trying to keep down the un-ending jewish movements, well the movie gives you some idea how that worked out. Ultimately a small majority in the UN supported the creation of both Jewish and Palestinian states. Then all hell broke loose. That, and 2 more brief wars launched by Arabs, all failures. Without the wars the mass removals and flight of Palestinians to Arab countries wouldn't have happened. The alternative would have been a negotiated co-operation. So we've got to a point that a terrorist organization which won power in Gaza by both the ballet box and bullet, gunning down their fellow Gazans, maintains a terrorist campaign on the grounds that Israel has no right to exist. So kudos to your sympathies to Gazans but what kind of outcome do did Hamas' military and terror campaigns have for Gaza? We have a pretty good idea on that right? And in the end, likely 10 to 100 to one kill ratio for their efforts not to mention enormous property and infrastructure damage in Gaza. I do agree, this have been an ongoing tragedy in multiple parts.
Hamas won power because Israel and the U.S. wanted it; a wedge driven to neutralize the PLO. Blowback much? Your kill ratio is, to put it gently, flawed.
Now, back to blame finger follies.
"because Israel and the US wanted it" ... never heard of that myself, here's a Wiki summary of things. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election
Feel free to provide real information on the "wedge" thesis, and i just provided a rough idea of outsized casualty ratios, my only point being Palestinian casualties have always been far larger than Israeli.
Hamas certainly does its share of oppression of its own people.
Not saying Hamas isn’t flawed. But come on.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-warmongers-keep-pushing-the-narrative
I agree but to point out this happening at this moment BECAUSE Hamas started this, as the article pointed out. And Lindsay Graham is just a plain Nutbag in my book. Not to be taken seriously by any measure. I agree that Israel needs to take responsibility for their share of essentially imprisoning Palestinians but Hamas also reigns terror on its own people. How do root out Hamas without effecting Palestinians?
I get it Tom; hence I have to regard one conflict at a time there. The current conflict was initiated by the defacto rulers of the Palestinians from territory of the Gaza Strip that was ceded to Palestinians by Israel. This time, "they" - the Palestinians sucker punched Israel; they have the right and responsibility to respond.
You want to re-write history on that blood-soaked piece of earth. Am sure The Christian Crusaders as well as the Muslim Infidels believed each were “right” too. In 2005, there was a fight in The Church of the Holy Sepulcher between Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics—am sure each thought they were “right” also.
The winner of the war—and there have been so many wars on that piece of earth!—gets management/ownership of the land. Israel won all the wars. Right or not, it’s the way of what we now call The Middle East, and around the world.
Tom, I am posting your very informative Norman Finklestein speech.
Most probably didn't find it yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnCf18IRvFk
Like too many, the focus appears to be on the symptoms and not the cause. I agree with Tom High and thank him for the link to the article. I am so pleased that people in this forum are not afraid to address the gorilla in the room.
The whole situation is part of the long standing quagmire in the Middle East, much of the blame for which falls to the Brits in their handling of the Palestinian Mandate after WWI where they treated both groups horribly. I recommend Legacy of Violence about the British Empire in various places and Lawrence in Arabia for insight into the players in the area around WWI. Also Arab countries have refused to take Palestinian refugees after the creation of Israel and still don't want them. Both the Israelis and groups like Hamas bear the blame for their treatment of ordinary Palestinians. We also have Jerusalem, sacred place for three religions who have much in common. There are no easy solutions. The one good thing that may come of this is the rejection in the end of the corrupt Bibi.
Thank you for the reading recommendations, they are now lined up on my kindle! :-)
Good. I thought Lawrence in Arabia was one of the best histories I had read in a long time. The one on the British Empire showed me how so many current situations go back to their empire. at least in part.
Yep.
Do you think crusades too?
Yes, that issue added to the problem way back when.
I completely disagree. I have studied the history which is, of course, complicated but from its inception after WWI, when Great Britain won the war and mapped out a place to be shared by Jews and Muslims it was the Muslims who refused to accept the Jewish people. Great Britain tried to moderate but failed and turned the problem over to the UN which, like Britain came up with a two state solution which the Palestinians rejected. After Israel declared itself a state, it was attacked on all sides by Arabs and won the war. Instead of accepting it lost the war the Palestinians began its unending grievance campaign of rage and terror attacks. The Arab nations not only expelled all their Jewish population, it also refused to allow the Palestinians to gain citizenship, the ability to work and any rights. Did the Palestinians blame their inhospitable neighbors? No. They blamed the Jews. Israel is itself a nation largely populated by Holocaust refugees and refugees of Russian pograms. After additional attacks in the 1960s by Arab countries, Israel again won and obtained even more land. Israel gave most of the land back which it didn’t have to do in exchange for peace. Instead it became the victim of countless terror attacks carried out by the PLO including the kidnapping and murder of Israels athletes at the Olympics in 1972, bombed busses, suicide bombers, additional kidnappings and more. So even though Palestinians lost the war in 1947-48 it is still contesting the results. The walls around Israel didn’t go up right away but only after repeated attempts to live without a wall resulted in escalating terror attacks against Israeli civilians.
The population is largely radicalized around the mission of elimination of the State of Israel and all Jews. And that was over 50 years ago before Hamas existed and became more extreme. They not only torture, butcher, kill and kidnap innocent children, babies, men and women, they videotape themselves committing these atrocities and not only brag about it - they rejoice publicly about it. They post pictures of themselves on social media attacking Israel and are hailed in Iran and other countries as great victors!
After all that did Israel declare a day of rage, burn Palestinian flags, surround embassies? No. They mourned and set about trying to save the hundreds of hostages taken. Of course they bombed Gaza. There are still missiles being fired upon Israel from Gaza. As Hamas demands an end to Israel’s bombing it is actively bombing Israel and holding on to hundreds of hostages. They like hostages- the ultimate weapon of terror.
So I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the situation. Every attempt to mediate a two state solution has been derailed by terror attacks. I don’t think much of the current prime minister of Israel- his hard right and unlawful actions have done much to discredit the Israeli government. He is a wanna-be autocrat. But past prime ministers have done much work towards peace. And Israelis do not celebrate the murder of civilians or threaten endless rage campaigns.
I’ve studied history as well. It’s interesting how your studies seem to indicate a preference to always come down on the Israeli side of wall, as it were.
It comes down on the Israeli side of wall when facts dictate that it should. In this case, the Arab state would today be thriving on half of Palestine, next to Israel on the other half, if Arabs had said yes. They chose to invade Israel instead to take both halves for an all-Arab State of Palestine, and their loss to Jewish defenders proved disastrous.
Israel gets some blame for some of the things that have happened over the decades. But Israel being built on half of Palestine in 1948 is not one of them. The Jews of Palestine were as entitled as the Arabs of Palestine to a state of their own, and they didn't make the Arabs go to war. That's on Arabs.
The Arab Palestinians, now called Palestinians, have been betrayed or abandoned by its leaders since 1947. It’s very sad.
So of course they blame the Jews, the eternal scapegoat.
Agree completely, 60. Smart Arab leaders would have taken the offer and run in 1948, avoiding the next 75 years of humiliation and blood. They betrayed their own people, and the new crop is even worse.
Ah, the ol’ half a loaf meme. ‘Israel being built on… half of Palestine’. Couldn’t have expressed it better myself. Thank you!
What are you talking about? That's exactly what should have happened in 1948: half the land to Palestine's Jews, half to Palestine's Arabs. Had the latter said yes, today they'd be partners instead of enemies.
But losing the wars of conquest waged by Palestine's Arabs to steal the half owned by Palestine's Jews--i.e., the legally formed State of Israel--changed the paradigm of nationhood forever, and not in the Arabs' favor.
I recommend everyone read Legacy of Violence if they think the Brits did a great job in Palestine.
Sadly, those are the facts in evidence Tom. If you disagree with facts in evidence that's an altogether different matter.
My understanding is how you describe it. I'd add the number of Jews that were expelled from Arab countries and 'sent' to Israel, along with survivors of the Russian pogroms and Holocaust was close to a million. Palestinians share with Israelis and Jews worldwide the experience of having been rejected and/or tormented by our neighbors.
The right drones on about American exceptionalism! However, the American and British negotiators after World War I and World War II were EXceptionally Bad at creating redrawing national boundaries after each war!
What would you have done.
Accepted Jewish refugees into Britain and France, instead of displacing an indigenous population.
Sounds really sane. How would you have sold that idea to those Countries?
Check this book for details: The Last Million by David Nasaw. Interview on C-span...
But, of course, the US understands and supports - and partcipates in - genocide. You and I live on land taken from a sophisticated culture by force and by the murder of millions of people.
Please don't use the word genocide: it has become vulgar.
Genocide IS vulgar. What would you like to use instead? Ethnic cleansing? Denial is also vulgar.
It has become vulgar in it's overuse. No one is in denial.
What word shall I use to indicate an action that is meant to - and does - kill an entire population?
You are right.. altho the word is overused and heavily political, what settlers did to the Indigenous people in North America was genocide.
And what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is a one hundred year process of genocide. Theodor Herzl's plan, formed in 1895, was (and still is) to remove - one way or another - all Palestinians from "our land". What Israel is doing now is attempted genocide. That is not a political statement - it is a monstrous fact.
Roger Waters? Seriously? Major antisemite. Pogroms in Israel, yet again and again and again it’s the Jews fault. Enough of the hating the Jewish People. After millennia of these crap tactics which Do. Not. WORK! Give it a rest.
Major antisemite? Prove it. You do understand thinking that being opposed to Israeli government policy and hating the Jewish people are inextricably connected is absurd, fallacious mental gymnastics? Maybe not.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-is-just-a-nonstop-bombing
This excerpt made me wonder if the entire story would be a steaming pile of yak dung. So, to be sure, I hit the link and read every word.
Yep. Steaming pile of yak.
Israel exists as legally and morally as any other nation built on forfeited Ottoman Empire land in the postwar era. Those six nations were Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. The Mandate system, set up by the League of Nations after WWI to distribute Allied-conquered Ottoman land to local populations for states of their own, made the same offer to all six:
"Here's your land, free for the taking. Ready to build and govern your own state?"
The first five people said yes, built their states, and got on with their lives. The last, the Muslim Arabs of Palestine, told Mandate powers to get lost and invaded newborn Israel instead, with the goal of conquering it and merging both halves of geographic Palestine into an all-Arab State of Palestine.
That plan went kablooey when Jews won that War of 1948, thereby capturing some of the land Muslim Arabs could have used to build Palestine if they'd said yes. Remember, Israel haters: Palestine was NOT an "Arab nation" or "Islamic land." It was a province of the Ottoman Empire on which two peoples would eventually have legitimate claims to states via the Mandate system: Arabs AND Jews, not just Arabs.
If Arabs had said "Yes!" instead of "Open fire!, they'd have been living free and prosperous next to Israel for 75 years. Instead, their invasions of Israel in 1967 and 1973, Intifadas that murdered thousands of Jews in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Hamas massacre just two weeks ago, guaranteed their self-inflicted "Nakba" never healed.
Do I want Palestinians to have their own sovereign state? Yes, I do. They deserve a place of their own just as Israelis do. But Israelis aren't stopping them from getting that. They're stopping themselves.
Palis need to get realistic about what that state's size and contours will be, because waging and losing three wars of annihilation against a state that did nothing to you but exist carries strong penalties. You will not get Jerusalem, you will not get the right of return. You will get land and permanent borders and the freedom to run your place as you see fit, provided it doesn't harm your neighbors. So suck it up, take what you can negotiate with sovereign power Israel, build your state, and thrive in peace. Do it NOW, to differentiate yourself from the murdering viper of Hamas.
When peace finally breaks out, you and Israel can join other decent neighbors to fight those real enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, Islamic State, and their paymaster, Iran, the terrorists who want to destroy not just Israel, but all of you, to return the Middle East to Caliphate status with its rejection of modernity and murder of any who dare object.
Don't let what them do to you what they did to Afghans. Partner up and win.
Thanks Shane. Very nicely presented.
You're welcome, Gail, I appreciate your taking the time!
Spot on history lesson Shane. You expended more effort there than I would care to, so kudo's to you friend. For me, I'm done giving this topic and myth believers any more oxygen.
Much obliged, D4N, thanks for this. I spent far more time and effort than I would normally, too, but needed to get all this out of system :-)
I 'get it' Shane.
Wait. Back up a moment please. You lost me somewhere between the Mandate system set up by the League of Nations after WWI.
"The Mandate system, set up by the League of Nations after WWI to distribute Allied-conquered Ottoman land to local populations for states of their own, made the same offer to all six:
"Here's your land, free for the taking. Ready to build and govern your own state?"
The first five people said yes, built their states, and got on with their lives. The last, the Muslim Arabs of Palestine, told Mandate powers to get lost and invaded newborn Israel instead, with the goal of conquering it and merging both halves of geographic Palestine into an all-Arab State of Palestine. "
Except you jump almost 30 years and leave out a great deal of extremely pertinent history and what you have written is not quite accurate. In fact it's a lot of bull in which you have revised and reshaped history to fit the Israeli narrative with a stunning absence of context and leaving out some fairly significant facts such as how the British completely sold out the Palestinians with the Balfour Declaration (oh yeah, remember that?) and how in the original mandate contrary to your ridiculous fantasy the Palestinians were promised their own state along with the other five countries but the reason they never got it was not because they turned it down but because the Brits had engaged in a whole of lot of shady dealings behind the scenes, negotiations about who would get Palestine with significant input and lobbying by the Zionists primarily Weizmann, and no input by the Palestinians.
The ultimate decision about division of the land was made was made in the absence of any consultation with the Palestinians whatsoever and land on which the Palestinian people had lived for two millennia was given away by Great Britain under the Balfour Declaration for the purpose of establishing the Jewish state based on the Zionists' assertion for decades that Palestine was the Biblical homeland of the Jews who were entitled to it on that basis. The rights of the indigenous Palestinian population were never acknowledged, a consideration or an issue.
So yes, indeed, they did not take it well when their lands, homes, olive groves and orchards were expropriated and 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of Israel and contrary to the narrative Israel continues to promote, and to which American and other Jews steadfastly adhere, very few of them left voluntarily.
If you think I am posting this to exculpate or excuse the vile acts of Hamas which I abhor and consider atrocities and barbaric war crimes you could not be more wrong. Like D4N, I'm pretty tired of giving this topic and myth believers any more oxygen as well.
"it's a lot of bull in which you have revised and reshaped history to fit the Israeli narrative with a stunning absence of context and leaving out some fairly significant facts . . ."
We're done talking, Lin. You want to continue to write your own myths, do it on your own thread.
The idea has been to make life so rough for the Palestinians that they would leave.
Baloney. Absent terror attacks from the territories, Israel would have left them alone to do their thing.
Uhhhh, no.
Agreed!
Founded on injustice?
Guess you don’t believe the UN is valid international entity, either. The Palestinian Arabs stated so in rejecting the Partition. Now, of course, Palestinians demand the UN condemn Israel for something every week.
Thank you for the link - I for one, had no idea - NONE - as to exactly what the Oslo Accords & the "two state solution" actually meant. It would appear to mean that the Palestinians get to live in Gaza and Israel gets all else! Two states? AND a wall to keep them in. The picture of that wall did it for me. A ghetto really. Why doesnt that make Israelis stop to think?
Its colonialism - just like what was done here to our NATIVE Americans or Africa or India or how many other countries.
Our history is tainted. But I'd not use the same brush.
The wall went up after the suicide bombers from The West Bank, not before.
I’m not 100% pro Israel either, especially with Netanyahu in power, BUT would you have ethnic cleansing? It’s what has been happening to Israel for a long time and is still happening.
Herb Klinker, Speechwriters are told what to write. They don't make it up. And President Biden's remarks sounded precisely like him and his decades of experience, not someone else.
"Magnificent!" - yes, if you ignore the abysmal conditions imposed by the Israelis on the population daily. At least 1/3 in "extreme poverty. The Israeli Defense Minister's view of Palestinians as "human animals." If truth matters, then context matters and in this case details of Gazan daily life matter. See "The Chris Hedges Report with Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp."(chrishedges.substack.com)
Max Blumenthal, Amy Goodman, Katy Halper,,Aaron Mate and members of Jewish Voice for Peace provide a much needed perspective on this conflict
I invite you to do some LEGITIMATE research on the t
“QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing of credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.“
All of these are well respected journalists and definitely are NOT “questionable sources”!
From Media Bias Fact Check
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing of credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.
Overall, we rate The Jewish Voice (TJV) Right Biased and Questionable based on the promotion of right-wing propaganda, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, poor sources, and several examples of false or misleading claims.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, Propaganda, Poor Sourcing, False Claims
Bias Rating: FAR RIGHT
Factual Reporting: MIXED
Country: USA
Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Newspaper
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
Thanks, Barbara M. It is critically important that we understand bias in reporting.
I disagree.
On the resources I listed,
Was Gaza the world’s largest concentration camp before the Egyptian and Israeli blockade?
Ever ask that question?
Herb, Biden’s latest speeches just keep getting better and better. Even with his hectic schedule, his delivery and obvious empathy make them stand out.
The US is so lucky to have Biden as president. We know that. How do you get more Americans to know that?
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/wests-pro-israel-position-accelerates-its-loss-of-power.html
Speckle,
The truth is we don't know who fired the missile that blew up a hospital that had become a haven for refugees.
We only know that Palestinians claim Israel did and Israel claims Hamas did. Very predictably apparently nobody fired the missile.
What we can also say is: IF the United States spends 20 years in a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 twin tower bombing, dropping bombs on the civilian population while claiming that "we" were fighting terrorists, then,
other countries will learn that neat USA Pony trick: To hide behind "fighting terrorists" while simply testing weapons on an innocent civilian population.
As you know Mike, I agree that those 20 years in Afghanistan were a travesty - a horror show of a solution looking for a problem created elsewhere by other people.
But if every element of our intelligence apparatus tells us that it was a bad rocket from a Jihad terrorist group, I think I would take that explanation over ANYTHING that Hamas would claim.
Hamas left their morality in the dust when they accepted billions from Qatar and used it to build a military machine - vs building infrastructure for the people they claim to protect. Tunnels vs water facilities. Rockets instead of more hospitals. Training kids to fight instead of collecting trash properly and growing food.
Hamas has no integrity. Nothing they ever say will be based on truth. They are merciless self aggrandizing political beasts. They warrant eradication - not trust.
We have made many mistakes in foreign policy. And we will make more, I am sure. In some ways we have just continued the "colonial" attitudes of our European ancestors. Lots of blame and shame to go around about that. But Hamas is no better than Nazis or Russian troops who rape and slaughter with glee.
" ... rape and slaughter with glee ..." and disseminate images of the victims ... feeding fires of grief, fear, hatred and more violence ... does nothing to resolve conflict or invite peaceful resolution - only furthers the destructive behaviors on all sides ...
Yes.
Russia does not want to resolve the conflict (their genocide of their cousins) in Ukraine. And Putin loves the Gaza story. It's all about keeping Russian eyes off his incompetence and his theft of their national treasure at home.
Completely agree Bill.
Did you see the AlJazeera footage of the rocket being fired inside Gaza and then making a u-turn into the hospital? Al Jazeera is more trustworthy than any of the media outlets in the US. They named the terrorist organization that fired the rocket and they were associated with Hamas.
I trust Jake Sullivan way more than anyone in the TFFG administration to do everything possible to not get us into WWIII, even though it may have already begun.
AlJazeera is based in Qatar. Qatar is the largest contributor to Hamas. So its reporting may be biased.
We used to watch AlJazeera USA before it was sold. Ali Velshi was awesome. Their news was the least biased I've seen since CNN first came on the air in 1980.
Of course, Velshi is now with MSNBC, but the stories I've seen on the Ukraine War from Al Jazeeri seem to be devoid of commentary.
I was sorry Al Gore sold Al Jeerza USA also. In the beginning, it was excellent
A level and trustworthy analysis of what happened in Gaza. Sources are not beholden to either side.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tcinla757/p/an-analysis-of-the-hospital-bombing?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=elruf
With all the disinformation that we live with, we have ( I hope) gotten to demand evidence for allegations. The talk of Hamas responsibility for the hospital bombing ,sounds very similar to Trump proving to his believers that the election was stolen
You trying to reason with this speckle guy? waste of time and space.
Why are you here? What an absolute lunatic.
Rickey Woody Writes Rickey’s Newsletter -Woodchuck' - "Why are you here? What an absolute lunatic."
To whom are you referring to?
"You talking to me?" --𝘛𝘢𝘹𝘪 𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳
Following weird comment tracking here, I think that, since his "line" is the same as those that are responding directly to the original author of this "thread" who is Herb Clinker.
Ally House (Oregon) Writes View From the Back Row -- "Following weird comment tracking here"
An understatement. And my point exactly.
Per your citation. According to a media bias fact check:
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.
Overall, we rate Moon of Alabama Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
Bias Rating: LEFT
Factual Reporting: LOW
Country: USA
Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
History
Moon Of Alabama is a political blog founded in 2004. According to its about page, they are an independent and open forum for members of another blog called the Whiskey Bar. Moon Of Alabama states its purpose as “to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon’s Whiskey Bar writings.” A Daily Kos article describes Blogger Billmon (pseudonym) as one of the earliest and leading guest bloggers of Daily Kos and a self-admitted financial writer working for a big Wall Street firm.
Read our profile on the United States government and media.
Funded by / Ownership
The editor and the person who runs the blog are anonymous, and the about page states that “Bernhard started and still runs the site, and you can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA_at_aol.com (replacing _at_ with @).” The Moon of Alabama does not have advertising, but they do have a donate button, so we assume this is the primary funding method.
Analysis/ Bias
Moon of Alabama looks at the issues from a progressive perspective; for example, this article describes Trump’s cabinet as follows: “Soon Netanyahoo will have the cabinet in place in DC he always dreamed of. A hawkish Pompeo at State, a real torturer as head of the CIA, and now Bolton are already sufficient to protect Israel’s further expansion” The majority of blog posts utilize emotionally loaded headlines such as “Trump Asks Russia To Roll Over – It Won’t” and “John Bolton Wants No Deal With North Korea Or Iran – But Is There Any Other Choice?”
Moon of Alabama utilizes questionable sources such as RT News, Fox News, as well as credible sources such as Bloomberg, NY Times, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, Politico, cisac.fsi.stanford.edu, and blogs such as johnhelmer.org.
In this update, we find that Moon of Alabama has become sympathetic toward Russia and the war in Ukraine, often citing misinformation. For example, in this article they claim a false flag Neo-Nazis In Ukraine Fake Incidents To Gain More ‘Western’ Support – Updated. Media credibility rater Newsguard has detailed an extensive list of false and misleading claims regarding Ukraine. Generally, Moon of Alabama is a pro-Russian conspiracy website.
Failed Fact Checks
None in the Last 5 years. See above.
Overall, we rate Moon of Alabama Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency. (M. Huitsing 6/6/2018) Updated (12/12/2022)
Source: https://www.moonofalabama.org/
I completely agree with you. I thought Operation Gaza in 2014 was horrific. This is genocide in no uncertain terms and the U.S. is a funder/contributor/supporter of it.
I agree, but this is a completely different administration that has done everything they can to keep our troops out of harm's way. When was the last time that happened? And don't say under TFFG, because he murdered a Navy Seal in Yemen two weeks into his term.
Biden is sending more weapons to Israel. That's why I say we are complicent.
To John Schmeeckle: "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza."
And you know that is "absurd propaganda" how, exactly? Because Hamas says so? That's pathetic.
Biden is gold. Jordan is dross. Third rate at that.
Biden repeated so much propaganda and misinformation that he should forget about running for president.
The trumpers were quick to make fun of the fact he repeated a word 3 times-for emphasis- they attributed it to being confused and stuttering. They should talk.
Thank you once again, Heather. I am so glad to see that President Biden accomplished what he set out to do; more so, that he has returned safely.
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/wests-pro-israel-position-accelerates-its-loss-of-power.html
Aren't you glad you live in America. You spout stuff like this in China, North Korea, Hungary, China or Russia, you would be in a cell.
It is great to ne an American!
Rickey, you go man.
A perfect response. Thank you 🙏
Don’t respond to this guy.. no likes or replies. He doesn’t deserve any attention whatsoever.
He's the "scroll on by" guy.
Exactly.
You are living in an erroneous bubble. You cite this the Alabama publication as the bedrock for your opinions and it is a piece of junk. That is your right.
What is not your right is to continually be rude to Dr. Richardson. It makes you look small and mean. I, personally, can't stand your disrespect towards an author who could actually get you banned from her site. And yet she doesn't.
Barbara, thankfully HCR doesn’t just preach freedom of speech, she actually allows it!
Yes she does. I also believe in defending people when they are being attacked.
Substack Inc has contractual responsibility to ' Readers' under their CA chosen law.
Speckle,
"C'mon man".
Why doesn't everyone just completely ignore speckle, like we do with petulant children clamoring for attention?
He was quite active earlier this year. He routinely made wild accusations and resorted to name calling of anyone who disagreed with him (hilariously, "thugly" was his favorite and applied it to many of the most senior commenters on this forum)
He resorted to copy/pasting his diatribes, sometimes over a dozen times per Letter. He was repeatedly reported to the Letters administrator, and finally disappeared from the Letters forum.
I picture Jack Nicholson's face coming through the door in The Shining:
Here's Johnny!!
No more oxygen.
Actually, Thugly the Troll was joined by fellow trolls Skidmark and Harmless, not to mention the crooked lawyer.
You could also picture Arnold's face at the police station:
"I'll be back"
Exactly; no more oxygen.
Willful ignorance runs willy nilly in far right media. Let’s get more information before blaming anyone. I want evidence and the truth. God bless Joe Biden’s strong, measured, heartfelt words and his bravery in going into war zone.
John Schmeeckle - "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda..."
Overall, we rate 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮 Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
Bias Rating: LEFT
Factual Reporting: LOW
Country: USA
Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/moon-of-alabama/
Ron - looking at the site - the heading "where barflies get together" - just might say it all!!
Their strong point is battlefield assessments.
Morning, Lynell. Agreed on the tag of your post.
Mr. Biden continues to speak and act in a way that will secure his place in history as one of the more effective representatives of the US of A. We voted for and received wisdom, courage, experience, humility and HUMANITY. It pains me that so many people think we shouldn't choose another 4 years of the same...In such a start contrast to his predecessor, he RISES to occasions rather than constantly sinking to new lows with every opportunity. I'm confident we'll look back on his tenure with a great deal of gratitude and pride another half century from now, as we currently do for Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc.
I have said, Biden is the best president in my lifetime. Even when I don't agree with everything he says and does, I understand why he does it, and it makes sense. He has intelligence and integrity, and the latter is non-existent in the Republican Party right now. There are some people like Former Judge J. Michael Luttig in the Republican party who have integrity, and they are not backing the MAGA part of the party. In fact, they are standing with Biden in times of crisis.
I totally agree. His empathy is inspiring, and it sets a standard that all future presidential candidates should be required to meet.
Yet again, another character trait...
Just Sayin',
I am very grateful for your words and the respectful words of others regarding all who have worked diligently to support both Jews and Palestinians. We should be free to hold different faiths.
Wars are from those who want power without regard , without respect for human life.
I am so grateful for President Joe Biden, for Anthony Blinken and for the many men and women who are a part of his team. Without such patriots, we too may be taken over by despots.
May we always stand for freedom....for decency...for the hope of a better life for all and for the health of our planet. This work is hard...this work takes determination. I am so grateful for President Joe Biden's leadership and for his outstanding team of freedom loving Americans!!!!!!
Dismaying. Especially, after hearing the abysmal conditions imposed upon the Gazans by Israel - for decades. Trapped inside a strip of land 5 miles wide. 1/3 in extreme poverty. Almost 50% unemployment rate. No jobs. Majority under 25.Please see "The Chris Hedges Report with Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp." (chrishedges.substack.com) How can you ignore the Israel Minister of Defense view of Palestinians as "human animals"?
The conditions “imposed” by Israel are abysmal. Worse than abysmal.
And exactly what has any Arab country done to help their fellow Muslims? Offered refugee status? Offered land, support, humanitarian aid? Engaged in diplomacy with Hamas or Hezbollah? Helped Egypt with equipment for the humanitarian corridor?
Look at a map of the Middle East and North Africa. Tens of thousands of miles of land Arabs could offer as a way to diffuse the situation. Do they? What solutions does the Arab world offer Palestinians?
We have turned a blind eye to the problems of Palestinians throughout. But blaming Israel and the US Government for this complex situation is a pretty naive reading of several thousand years of religious and racial animosity that existed long before the US government got involved. Do we need to clean up our act? In a huge way. But so do the rest of the players in this horribly terrorist-torn region.
Yes, I completely agree with you, Selina. I also listened to Chris Hedges Report with Norman Finkelstein.
Selina, if people attacked your rightful, legal residence, would you then buy them dinner and invite them over for movies and popcorn? Are you noticing that no other countries are assisting the Palestinians? Of course other Jew hating countries will assist Hamas, but that’s another story.
It surprises me that something like the horrors of 10/7 had not already happened, in light of the conditions you outline.
Selina, this is straight to the interview with Norman Finklestein
packed with insights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0aemeCbRTk&list=PLy_O1FuTWPSErF5OCxvyUgzJs_yVmP6Wu&index=20
I agree, Just Sayin'. It is a shame we have to wait a half-century or more for his true effectiveness to come to light.
I have to note that well more than half of the reader commentary and a large number of “likes” are about Biden and his performance, not about the 2,000,000 trapped in Gaza, nor about the vengeful savagery that Hamas inflicted on Jewish civilians this month, nor about the policies of a Jewish leader (Netanyahu) who intentionally propped up Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian authority and lessen the possibility of a two state solution or the emergence of a single non-apartheid state. I am going to guess this is in part because we don’t have a solution to offer. Maybe we have been acting for decades like enablers and should make clear that at the end of the day this is not for the United States to solve.. Deterring other outside powers (Iran) is certainly legitimate but what happened these last few days is not about “us” or our politics. Israel is not an orphaned child; it is a wealthy nuclear and military power. Israelis need to find a lasting solution that is something other than genocide.
O, but it is tied to the US. The US Jewish population and many evangelicals in the US support Israel, Israel provides a strategic military space for the US, and the US has nearly always pledged to support Israel in return for Israel doing what the US wants.
My point is that the US has only minimal influence over the complex conflicts and events in Israel/Palestine, not that there aren't domestic constituencies that push us to "intervene". These interventions often have not been helpful. Seventy-five years after Israel's establishment the conflict festers and erupts. Moreover, I'm not sure that the historical record would support your assertion that Israel does what the US wants. Nor should it do so; Israel is an independent country that must act on its own perceptions of its interests and the people living within it. The conflict is primarily their problem not ours and we are not well equipped to solve it---that's my main assertion.
Ok, but the US is involved, in my opinion.
see also Thomas Friedman in today's NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/opinion/biden-speech-israel-gaza.html.
Thank you.
yes the US is involved and thank you for staying with me. I also appreciate that many wish to support President Biden but I would like to see less focus on our domestic politics and more on the events on the ground and the realization that this may not be a problem for us to solve. We have, as Pres. Biden has noted, a bad history in trying to impose our will in the region. In a phrase, it's really not about us.
When the Israelis chose expansion over security, 1967, they invited a change in their politics as well as their military.
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/wests-pro-israel-position-accelerates-its-loss-of-power.html
John, I just read where a huge segment of our population would agree to Trump serving as POTUS from his prison cell, and this after all that has been disclosed about Putin's puppet. This is the thought that came to my mind from what you penned above: "With our willful, public blindness,. . ." Why do MAGA/KKK Republicans support Trump, even if he is serving time in prison? It's because he represents their core racist feelings. It is so intense (their racism) that they would subvert a democratic system in order to install a white Protestant supremacy autocratic system.
" It's because he represents their core racist feelings."
Richard, my own perspective is that Trump has managed to do something that is only rarely done successfully. He has managed to replicate what Jesus did and what Mohammed did.
He has imbued in many people a feeling that he is some kind of divinely supported leader who has special powers and really, really cares about those who choose to "believe in him".
I have met folks before who are fanatically attached to a belief. Those folks are not going to debate, they are not going to think, they are not going to analyze.
They are going to BELIEVE. And, having chosen to BELIEVE they will defend that belief against any logic.
I ran across these people in my first semester at A&M, knocking on my dorm door and asking me "if I was saved".
Trump? He is truly dangerous.
Not just 45, but the extreme conservative faction that has gone autocratic I.E. Project 2025
Mike S,
Ouch. Comparing Trump to Jesus?
Better to say both of them exuded charisma . . . except it would be more accurate to say their messages resonated but for very different reasons.
Trump's messages come from the malignant narcissism astute psychologically trained people have noted.
Jesus' messages came from a heart that forgave his killers and embraced the suffering of others even as he was being executed.
Not the same.
Yes. An odd comparison. But I think Mike is comparing the powers of charisma - the ability to get folks to "believe" vs employing critical thinking skills. The concern is that people "believe" as virtual robots and they can be convinced to love or hate. To help or kill.
Jesus had the perfect message. But all too often, his followers have perverted his teachings and used his name to justify all manner of abuse and violence.
You have heard of "Jews for Jesus". I am in the camp of "Nones for Jesus". But no support for the majority of "Christians" who don't have a clue what "Christ's" message was.
Your posts are a valuable reminder that there are still some Christians worthy of respect. More please :)
I do not believe that Jesus lead by fear, but from a wealth of compassion, the antithesis of 45.
Correct.
The mysticism Jesus employed to garner interest in his message is similar to Trump’s mysticism.
Once some is inspired by mysticism and enters belief space then they are receptive to ANY message.
Mike, not to worry - death is final and, after death, pain free. But, back to the point about Trump. I encourage you to read "A Fever in the Heartland" by Timothy Egan, recounting the rise of the KKK in the Midwest (principally Indiana) in the 1920's. Trump is the "reincarnation) of D.C. Stephenson, the head of the KKK in Indiana and the other states back then. What did Stephenson peddle? Pure KKK" white Protestant supremacy now, white Protestant supremacy forever." I am not a psychiatrist though I do have three advanced degrees. Still, that doesn't qualify me to opine professionally on the matter, but I suspect that, down deep, those evangelicals who support Trump don't truly buy the Christian message, particularly the lessons in Matthew 25: 34-46. But, perhaps they're unfamiliar with 25: 45-46 - "Then he will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." If i were a believer, this message would scare the hell out of me.
I will do and thank you.
I think you would find their own evangelical twist on these words.
Yes, they will and do, but there is no equivocation in Jesus' words, no qualifications on race, color, creed, national origin or anything else. It's absolute. And so is his promise of eternal damnation. So, my inference. They don't buy it. What are they in reality? Fair weather Christians?
Check out Alexandra Pelosi's documentary on the insurrectionists of 1/6. She interviews about a dozen people and some of their kids and family members from various places across the US.
Spoiler alert. There are no hostilities shown by anyone and several of them have not changed how they feel about TFFG.
Richard, I agree with you completely. It’s the racism.
Helen, the MAGA Republicans are so like the 1920's KKK and Trump is the reincarnation of D.C. Stephenson. It's as though history is repeating itself, but, in reality, the racism runs deep into the core being of these folks. What a tragedy.
Agree Richard. I believe it is why Trump was elected in 2016.
Fear of the other who are different from them in color , belief, male supremacy & anyone who challenges their belief system
John Schmeeckle - "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda..."
Overall, we rate 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮 Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
Bias Rating: LEFT
Factual Reporting: LOW
Country: USA
Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/moon-of-alabama/
Great to be an American so you can propagandize without fear of incarceration.
But not without fear of retribution. Targeting students in America... don't you have a clue this has been happening?
Signed any loyalty oaths in your state not to criticize the government of another country other than Israel? Get real, man.
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/22/israel-boycott-canary-mission-blacklist/
You consistently peddle information that has been analyzed to be the following:
"Overall, we rate Moon of Alabama Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency. (M. Huitsing 6/6/2018) Updated (12/12/2022)"
Source: Media Bias Fact Check
In addition, you operate on this forum as a bully. This is sad for you and the good people who use and like this forum. Perhaps it is time for you to move on.
Biden's view of the nature of what is right and what is fair, his ability to make the distinctions between the bad actors and the innocent is unparalleled. This is a day to focus on his message and the way each of us should live our lives in seeking right and justice.
It's just he's got bad actors to deal with internationally who smile at him while they keep their hand on the hilt of the knife beneath their clothing. And bad actors here to deal with.
Hi TC--really, really wishing the thumbs down feature was here today since apparently our resident loonie is back from his vacation.
If truth matters more than propaganda, Georgia Fisanick, please see yesterday's "The Chris Hedges Report with Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp." (chrishedges.substack.com) Incidentally, Finkelstein's parents were Nazi Holocaust survivors whereas most of his remaining family were exterminated. (Ibid)
I will read it. But Biden did not go there to resolve Palestinian problem. He went there to in an effort to tone down the immediate response from the Israelis based on the US experience after 9/11 and try to get humanitarian relief through the blockades by both Israel and Egypt to the people in Gaza.
All I am commenting on is Biden's decency in trying to meet those limited objectives. As I said yesterday, I have worked closely with both Palestinians and Israeli's so to do more cuts too close to the bone for me.
As far as inciting a conflict to suck up the oxygen, Iran, (&Putin?) could not have chosen a better one. Bibi’s patriarchal iron-fist suppressing the independence of the Supreme Court created conflict for support of Israel beyond the conflict created by increased settlement building. Now with the Bibi declared war, you get the best, most divisive situation possible. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians can be narrated as “at fault”, allowing a billion arguments and counter-arguments to add to the fog of hate. Social Media gets to show-off its great ability to obfuscate the truth with misinformation/disinformation, and outright faked -AI imagery. The answer to “Who bombed the Gaza Hospital?” reveals more about each of our news bubbles than about truth. And because of the Middle East with its oil, and America’s memory of the 1970’s Oil Embargo not too distant, our attention is pulled off Ukraine. (And China, I bet is angling for the best moment to make it’s move on Taiwan.) Meanwhile in our House of Representatives, the MAGA are achieving what they could not achieve with Speaker McCarthy - government shutdown, funding shutdown, a shiny-made-for-tv circus to feed the profits of shareholders of MSM. And Politicians simplify their legislative mission to “save democracy” down to “Who can fund raise off the outrage more? Please send a donation NOW!” A line from the musical “Hamilton” keeps looping in my head. During the crucial battle of Yorktown they sing the line: “The World’s Turned Upside Down!” Yes, it feels that way. By design. Buckle Up.
Selina, a friend of ours had a daughter that served as a pastor in the West Bank for a number of years. Her stories of what the average Palestinian had to go through daily just to get to work out of their area was horrid. She also saw people being evicted from homes they lived in for decades just to make room for a Jewish family.
These facts get left out of the conversations.
Indeed they do. Isn't it curious our country choosing to adhere itself to an apartheid country every bit as callous as was South Africa's? And, in the national conversation omit completely such details that you bring to the fore here? What's behind the USA's rigid one sidedness and blindness?
As a reporter, Chris Hedges has years of experience in the Middle East. I trust his insights.
HCR peddles the absurd propaganda that an "errant terrorist missile" destroyed the hospital in Gaza. With our willful, public blindness, the USA and Israel lose the support of the world outside NATO and the "golden billion" countries.
"Israel bombed, probably with a U.S. made Hellfire missile, the courtyard of the Baptist al-Ahli Arab hospital where thousands had sought refuge. A short video of the immediate aftermath shows several dozens if not hundreds of dead and wounded. Doctors later held a press conference while standing among some of the casualties.
"Like other hospitals al-Ahli Arab had been told by Israel to evacuate but could not do so as there are no other places where the sick and wounded, including many intensive care cases, could be cared for.
"Three days earlier, notes the UN, the same hospital had, like others, already been bombed:
"14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured. Sources: Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication
"To then claim, as Biden did, that 'the other team' was responsible for the attack is unfathomable....
"The backlash had solidified entrenched positions in the developing world on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, officials said. They warned that this could derail future diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.
“'We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,' said one senior G7 diplomat. 'All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.'"
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/wests-pro-israel-position-accelerates-its-loss-of-power.html
Three strikes You’re out. Stop with the reposting. Enough!
It took a lot of reporting of him by many of the readers before he disappeared for a month or so. He must be licking his chops as so many are taking his bait today. It was when he started laughably referring to anyone who disagrees with him as "thugly the troll" that he got removed, for a time.
Just report him. Each time he repeats. Every day.
Have done so---twice, today. I'd left the commentary for hours after my first report. I return and guess what appeared again. Hence, report #2. Where are HCR's aides/ proofers?
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-18-2023/comment/42157539
I sometimes suspend my subscription. Then I come back. Right now I'm just dropping in for a bit, and then I'll be gone for a while.
He has to pay to comment
I am not an expert on this, and I realize the long history. But I listened to this counterargument from Beau of the Fifth Column which makes sense to me and it supports Heather's position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHuNmDGb5eU&list=UULF0YvoAYGgdOfySQSLcxtu1w&index=2
I agree. I've been watching Beau's videos for a long time now, and really appreciate how he takes emotion and commentary, often peddled as news, out of current events and looks at the facts. His perspective is more from a strategic and/ or military pov, so his analysis along with Heather's historical / political perspective, I feel, give me a well rounded insight of current events. I highly recommend him.
I would add for those who have not seen his videos - 'don't judge a book by its cover'.
Your last sentence made me laugh. Beau's commentary kept popping into my YT feed for quite a while before I finally watched one of his episodes and eventually subscribed. I thought the YT algorithm was punking me. 😊 I also enjoy his second channel where he has longer format posts that talk about the news that got flattened by the hair-on-fire headlines or Q&A from his inbox.
The first video of his I shared (maybe 2 years ago??) was one where he was delivering a "point" (I think it was around abortion, but I don't really remember) and doing it in his presentation style. The kicker was when he said something along the lines of the most liberal position that was "out there" and finished up, "It's just a thought". I was hooked from that point on.
Me too. It's fun to see him caught off guard sometimes with viewers questions. 😁
I love him but play him on 1.5X playback speed LOL
'What is Israel’s endgame in Gaza invasion?' (Reuters)
By Samia Nakhoul, Matt Spetalnick and Alexander Cornwell
'Summary'
'Israel's invasion has no clear exit strategy - sources'
'Arabs fear Gaza conflict could trigger regional war'
'Biden cautions Israelis of U.S. mistakes after 9/11'
'DUBAI/WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Israel is vowing to wipe out Hamas in a relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip but has no obvious endgame in sight, with no clear plan for how to govern the ravaged Palestinian enclave even if it triumphs on the battlefield.'
'Codenamed "Operation Swords of Iron", the military campaign will be unmatched in its ferocity and unlike anything Israel has carried out in Gaza in the past, according to eight regional and Western officials with knowledge of the conflict who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.'
'Israel has called up a record 360,000 reservists and has been bombarding the tiny enclave non-stop following Hamas's assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians.'
'The immediate Israeli strategy, said three regional officials familiar with discussions between the U.S. and Middle Eastern leaders, is to destroy Gaza's infrastructure, even at the cost of high civilian casualties, push the enclave's people towards the Egyptian border and go after Hamas by blowing up the labyrinth of underground tunnels the group has built to conduct its operations.'
'Israeli officials have said that they don't have a clear idea for what a post-war future might look like, though.'
'Some of U.S. President Joe Biden's aides are concerned that while Israel may craft an effective plan to inflict lasting damage to Hamas, it has yet to formulate an exit strategy, a source in Washington familiar with the matter said.'
'Trips to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this past week had stressed the need to focus on the post-war plan for Gaza, the source added.'
'Arab officials are also alarmed that Israel hasn't set out a clear plan for the future of the enclave, ruled by Hamas since 2006 and home to 2.3 million people.'
"Israel doesn't have an endgame for Gaza. Their strategy is to drop thousands of bombs, destroy everything and go in, but then what? They have no exit strategy for the day after," said one regional security source.'
'An Israeli invasion has yet to start, but Gaza authorities say 3,500 Palestinians have already been killed by the aerial bombardment, around a third of them children - a larger death toll than in any previous conflict between Hamas and Israel.'
'Biden, on a visit to Israel on Wednesday, told Israelis that justice needed to be served to Hamas, though he cautioned that after the 9/11 attacks on New York, the U.S. had made mistakes.'
'The "vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas", he said. "Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people."
'Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Biden's visit would have given him a chance to press Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to think through issues such as the proportional use of force and the longer-term plans for Gaza before any invasion.'
'CITY OF TUNNELS'
'Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have said they will wipe out Hamas in retribution for the Oct. 7 killings, the deadliest militant attack in Israel's 75-year-old history.'
'What will follow is less defined.'
"We are of course thinking and dealing with this, and this involves assessments and includes the National Security Council, the military and others about the end situation," Israeli National Security Council director Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters on Tuesday. "We don't know what this will be with certainty."
"But what we do know is what there will not be," he said, referring to Israel's stated aim to eradicate Hamas.
'This might be easier said than done.'
"It's an underground city of tunnels that make the Vietcong tunnels look like child's play," said the first regional source, referring to the Communist guerrilla force that defied U.S. troops in Vietnam. "They're not going to end Hamas with tanks and firepower."
'Two regional military experts told Reuters that Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has mobilised for an invasion, setting up anti-tank mines and booby-trapped explosive devices to ambush troops.'
'Israel's coming offensive is set to be much bigger than past Gaza operations that Israeli officials had previously referred to as "mowing the grass", degrading Hamas's military capabilities but not eliminating it.'
'Israel has fought three previous conflicts with Hamas, in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, and launched limited land invasions during two of those campaigns, but unlike today, Israel's leaders never vowed to destroy Hamas once and for all.'
'In those three confrontations, just under 4,000 Palestinians and fewer than 100 Israelis died.'
'There is less optimism in Washington, though, that Israel will be able to completely destroy Hamas and U.S. officials see little chance that Israel will want to hold on to any Gaza territory or re-occupy it, the U.S. source said.'
'A more likely scenario, the person said, would be for Israeli forces to kill or capture as many Hamas members as they can, blow up tunnels and rocket workshops, then after Israeli casualties mount, look for a way to declare victory and exit.'
'CLOUDS OF WAR'
'The fear across the region is that the war will blow up beyond the confines of Gaza, with Lebanon's Hezbollah and its backer Iran opening major new fronts in support of Hamas.'
'Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned of a possible "preemptive" action against Israel if it carried out its invasion of Gaza. He said last weekend that Iran would not watch from the sidelines if the U.S. failed to restrain Israel.'
'Arab leaders have told Blinken, who has been criss-crossing the region this past week, that while they condemn Hamas's attack on Israel, they oppose collective punishment against ordinary Palestinians, which they fear will trigger regional unrest.'
'Popular anger will ratchet up across the region when the body count rises, they said.'
'Washington has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean and is concerned that Hezbollah might join the battle from Israel's northern border. There has been no sign, however, that the U.S. military would then move from a deterrent posture to direct involvement.'
'The regional sources said Washington was proposing to re-energise the Palestinian Authority (PA), which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, although there is huge doubt whether the PA or any other authority would be able to govern the coastal enclave should Hamas be driven out.'
'Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, expressed deep skepticism about the potential for establishing a post-Hamas government to rule Gaza.'
"I could paint you a picture more appropriate to a galaxy far, far away and not on planet Earth on how you could combine the U.N., the Palestinian Authority, the Saudis, the Egyptians, led by the U.S. marshalling the Europeans, to basically convert Gaza from an open-air prison to something much better," he said.'
'In the meantime, calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors within Gaza and escape routes for Palestinian civilians have drawn a strong reaction from Arab neighbors.'
'They fear an Israeli invasion will spark a new permanent mass wave of displacement, a replay of the 1948 Israeli war of independence and 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee then have remained stranded as refugees in the countries that hosted them.'
'Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land into the Sinai peninsula bordering Gaza, adding that any such move would turn the area into a base for attacks against Israel. He said Egyptians in their millions would protest against any such move.'
'East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 war and then annexed, and Israeli settlement expansion across occupied territory are at the core of the conflict with Palestinians. Netanyahu has openly embraced the religious and radical far-right, promising to annex more land to be settled by Jews.'
'Hundreds of Palestinians have died in the West Bank since the start of the year in repeated clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers, and there is widespread concern that the violence might engulf the territory as nearby Gaza burns.'
"Whatever worst-case scenario you have, it will be worse," a second regional source said about the potential for the conflict to spread beyond Gaza.'
Aditional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem and Andrew Mills; Editing by Crispian Balmer, Pravin Char and Nick Macfie
This article from Reuters has been copied in-full.
What is Israel’s endgame?
The United States has moved enough military assets into the general area to help Israel topple the Assad government in Damascus, which would cut off the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.
Beau fails to consider the possibility that Israel hit the parking lot -- crowded with refugees -- on purpose.
Great to be an American, John, so you won't have to go to jail.
John Schmeeckle - "HCR peddles the absurd propaganda..."
Overall, we rate 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮 Left as Biased and questionable based on the promotion of pro-Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories, the use of poor sources, false claims, and a lack of transparency.
Detailed Report
Questionable Reasoning: Lack of Transparency, False Information, Conspiracy, Propaganda
Bias Rating: LEFT
Factual Reporting: LOW
Country: USA
Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/moon-of-alabama/
As always, think for yourself about the reliability of any news source.
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party, it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”
President Dwight Eisenhower
“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
The Republicans need to show that they are not a conspiracy to seize power, but a political party again.
After the insanity (as in repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result) displayed in the House yesterday with the second Jordan rejection, perhaps more than 5 Republicans are thinking about a return to the familiar comfort of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Yes, he committed the mortal sin of compromising with Democrats on the continuing resolution and the budget, kicking the can down the road until a now looming November 17, but that was to avoid having the Republican dysfunction on vibrant display during this year’s balloting. It now will be hugely disruptive in state and local races and ballot initiatives, and the Republican game plan has long been to work at the local level then up.
The fact that major Republican donors are reported to be pulling support because they will not work with Jordan is making it clear he won’t be able to make good on his promises to the conference. Jordan has tried bullying but the transparency of it is making a modestly growing number of members of the House take pause. If McCarthy was good at one thing, it was at raising money for members of the conference.
The issue for Republicans is the clock and how long the party can withstand its own members talking about their own dysfunction. McCarthy is also near the center of the spread in the Party’s ideological spectrum (1), so he theoretically can portray himself as a pragmatist in a return to sanity and someone who recognizes that the job of the House is to pass Legislation.
Of course, there is McCarthy’s habitual lying, but that is not currently a stumbling block within the Republican Party. After all, their leader is Donald Trump.
There is, however, the major issue of the motion to vacate rule. Interestingly, it is not written in the Republican House Conference Rules that are posted online.(2) Instead, this statement appears.
Policy Statement on the Motion to Vacate the Chair
It is the policy of the Republican Conference that the privilege under House Rule IX Clause 2(a)(3) should only be available with the agreement of the Republican Conference so as to not allow Democrats to choose the Speaker.
Has any Republican noticed? Is it a message written by the finger of God from cyberspace? Were the Republicans hacked? Or is this just another reminder of their incredible dysfunction? What Republicans need to do first is change the damn rule to remove the tyranny of minority rule by one (otherwise known as rule by veto.) Once that is gone, they will have freed themselves to choose a speaker that represents the majority of the majority.
Is this acceptable to Democrats? Not yet. But they, too, have to watch the clock. Democrats have a far better awareness of the danger to America and its allies and the consequences to average Americans as long as there is a totally dysfunctional House.
I think it is time for Hakeem Jeffries to start telling a different story—That true majority rule is the American ideal. That Republicans have hamstrung themselves by their own choice of rule by veto. They should ditch the rule and elect the best person (by whatever their standard is) to the speakership. Democrats will abide by the choice.
georgiafisanick.substack/p/state-of-play-day-2
https://www.gop.gov/conference-rules-of-the-118th-congress/
This older article on the idea of America becoming a vetocracy is relevant. It covers a wider range of examples, but I think it applies here.
https://www.vox.com/2016/10/26/13352946/francis-fukuyama-ezra-klein
Keith, thank you! I hope you’ll comment on what I wrote about the religious (crusades) aspect of all of this. Jihad against unbelievers scared me when I first heard (read it). Hearing it translated “day of rage” when I learned “holy war” makes me, as I do not know Arabic, very curious about the background of jihad. My husband refused finally to visit cathedrals thinking of the many who died building them. I thought of him this morning listening to the Israeli first responder recounting the slaughter of the music festival. But that was butchery that I have NEVER heard. (Morning Joe: c. 8:00.) And most certainly not from someone who had seen it. This is savagery worse than the Holocaust. BTW: In case you haven’t had time for news: Maddow’s book brings in how American racism inspired Hitler. Not surprised, but saddened.
Be well and please keep writing.
Virginia I missed your comment about the Crusades. In my severe downsizing prior to moving into our new condo, I have gotten rid of my Crusade books, so this will be from memory.
The Crusades were not the ‘Christian’ events portrayed by Catholics and others in the West. There is some evidence that the initial Crusade in the late 11th century was, as least in part, a fundraiser for the Pope. Early on, in addition to targeting Moslems in the Near East, a Crusade sought to eliminate the Cathars (sp?), a fringe Christian group in France.
Sorting out the various Crusades is difficult to do from memory. Clearly Crusaders acted like their vision of Moslems in their brutality and savagery. In Contrast, Saladin, leader of the Moslems, acted like a ‘Christian” in his humanity.
One Crusade stopped by Constantinople and upgraded a prostitute to the palace. The Children’s Crusade was a horrible disaster.
One result was that Islam was considered dreadful in Europe. This played out in Spain and also in other countries. Ironically, much of the upgrading of Europe during the Dark Ages came through Islam, in Spain and through the intellectual work, including translations, in Persia and elsewhere.
For many years I taught a course on similarities and differences between early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A lot of core similarities for those not taught to hate others.
Good job, Keith. Knew most of what you wrote, but hadn’t either learned or remembered loot for the pope, which makes me laugh! Would you comment on one of my (?) misapprehensions: that although Mohammed preached peace, it was only for Mohammedans?
Good for you for teaching the course you mention! That knowledge and the spirit of it is essential to how we need to move forward. I have a question about the psychologists’ experiment with too many rats in a trap: should their findings be taught to inspire behavior to reduce world population gently instead of by war and plague? In short, can we be civilized? Americans, the bad adolescents on the [western world] block, are ‘way behind in this. How many are attacking the president this morning for whatever reason when he has shown what a truly civilized person is? Using “civilized” as the least controversial, yet most complete word I know.
Virginia Some of my colleagues were puzzled that I included Islam in 1992.
The Koran is really two separate books. The first, based on pronouncements from an angel, deals mostly with core Islam. The second deals with his flight to Medina and his fight with Arabs (and Jews) before returning to Mecca prior to his death.
Mohammed recognized Jesus as a prophet, though Mohamed was the final prophet. As Islam rapidly expanded, Jews and Christians were accommodated at a price. One can find elements in the Koran and the Old Testament that could condone horrible actions towards ‘nonbelievers.’ Indeed, some of the worst is between Sunnis and Shiites.
In years of living in Egypt, I did not feel threatened by zealots. Historically, Moslems have been treated much worse in Europe.
Thank you, again, Keith, a true scholar! Our good luck to have you writing in this forum. You understand perfectly, then, not only what I wrote to Fern about the state of American “universities” and the power of propaganda.
If not poorly understood teaching about the Koran in Europe, is it the history of the crusades that dominates in Europe? Didn’t everyone learn that our numerals are Arabic? Thinking of the New Yorker cartoon with the guy in toga chiseling in credit card numbers in Roman numerals. Have forgotten the caption but it was something about speed.
Virginia Oy veh, Mother of Mary, Allah u Ahkbar.
The Goebbels I never forget!
'Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza' (AP)
JACK JEFFERY AND SAMY MAGDY
October 18, 2023 at 8:36 PM
CAIRO (AP) — As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don’t take them in.
The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.”
Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty.
Here is a look at what is motivating Egypt’s and Jordan’s stances.
A HISTORY OF DISPLACEMENT
Displacement has been a major theme of Palestinian history. In the 1948 war around Israel’s creation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.”
In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.
The refugees and their descendants now number nearly 6 million, most living in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further, with many refugees building lives in Gulf Arab countries or the West.
After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Since then, Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a return of refugees as part of a peace deal, arguing that it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority.
Egypt fears history will repeat itself and a large Palestinian refugee population from Gaza will end up staying for good.
NO GUARANTEE OF RETURN
That’s in part because there’s no clear scenario for how this war will end.
Israel says it intends to destroy Hamas for its bloody rampage in its southern towns. But it has given no indication of what might happen afterward and who would govern Gaza. That has raised concerns that it will reoccupy the territory for a period, fueling further conflict.
The Israeli military said Palestinians who followed its order to flee northern Gaza to the strip’s southern half would be allowed back to their homes after the war ends.
Egypt is not reassured.
El-Sissi said fighting could last for years if Israel argues it hasn’t sufficiently crushed militants. He proposed that Israel house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbors the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.
“Israel’s lack of clarity regarding its intentions in Gaza and the evacuation of the population is in itself problematic,” said Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director. “This confusion fuels fears in the neighborhood.”
Egypt has pushed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Israel said Wednesday that it would, though it didn't say when. According to United Nations, Egypt, which is dealing with a spiraling economic crisis, already hosts some 9 million refugees and migrants, including roughly 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fleeing their country’s war.
But Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect Israel might use this opportunity to force permanent demographic changes to wreck Palestinian demands for statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967.
El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region.” He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now.
“All historical precedent points to the fact that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return back,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Egypt doesn’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Arab countries’ fears have only been stoked by the rise under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hard-right parties that talk in positive terms about removing Palestinians. Since the Hamas attack, the rhetoric has become less restrained, with some right-wing politicians and media commentators calling for the military to raze Gaza and drive out its inhabitants. One lawmaker said Israel should carry out a “new Nakba” on Gaza.
WORRIES OVER HAMAS
At the same time, Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt's military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.
Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.
With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” Fabiani said.
El-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself ... and would strike Egyptian territory.”
“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.” (AP) This article was copied in full for this comment.
***
Fern I visited the Gaza Palestinian refugee camp in 1953. The Egyptians kept them in tents, not wishing to make their presence permanent. Israel occupied this area after the 1967 war.
Neither Egypt nor other Arab countries wish to be inundated by millions of Palestinian refugees. Over the years a number of Palestinians have managed to work in some Arab countries, but this has been selective and severely limited in numbers. I have met some of these individuals, a few of whom were Eisenhower Fellows.
Seems tragic does it not?
The USA supported the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948, apparently under the broad umbrella of the "Holocaust" (which was horribly bad but not done by Palestinians).
And, now, for 75 years the USA has supported genocide and Israel's land grabs from Palestinian people. Worse, Jordan and Egypt know that if Israel displaces millions of Palestinians from northern Gaza to Jordan and Egypt Israel will never leave the northern Gaza area. So, they will not help the displaced Palestinians.
Thank "God" I was not randomly born in Gaza. Wait, I mean thank random chance.
Yes! I thank "random choice" daily - wait, no, hourly. For a lot, including where I have the privilege to live.
I think it comes down to this. Israel needed to be a home for Jews - a place to be safe. No explanation needed unless one is an alien who just landed here and has no human history in his brain.
But Palestinians should have been part of the process from day one. Either be included in this new state or be given a state of their own. Jews and Palestinians are cousins. They could have been partners. Both have been abused and shuffled around by Europeans for centuries.
I drove through a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in 1982. Some of those families had been there since 1948. Their plight was a weapon then, as it is now. What struck me the most was that the camp was at the foot of a hill with a long, sweeping green lawn up to a gorgeous royal palace. The contrast was extreme. What also struck me were the very temporary-looking dwellings with tin corrugated roofs held down by stones, each with a television antenna.
KR I have difficulty imagining what life must be for the 4,500,000 Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza and the West Bank (where 500,000 Israeli settlers have been intruded).
Minimal schooling, poor job possibilities, in Gaza half the population youths. A marvelous recruiting ground for terrorists who would welcome the thrill of attacking folks with automatic weapons.
In the Foreign Service, I experienced such a syndrome in Congo in the 1960s. It spread to Mozambique and elsewhere in the 1970s.
When there is scant hope in a society, one should expect deadly reactions. And I doubt, after this current explosion, that there will be much change in the Israel/Palestinian situation unless, perhaps, we have a systemic post-Netanyahu change—-unlikely, but I always hope for a Hail Mary.
Exactly.
The sad truth is that the Palestinian people have been used/abused as pawns since 1948. That have suffered at the hands of their own self-aggrandizing leaders and largely been abandoned by the leadership of all the Arab states. That does not justify Hamas’ goal of slaughtering all Jews. It does mean a two-state solution - rejected by the Arabs in ‘48 - seems to be the only path to peace.
WS The Oslo Accords in 1993 breathed life into the ‘two state’ option, but it seems dead as a door nail today. Arafat at the Clinton 2000 Camp David confab fumbled the ball. There hasn’t be an obvious Palestinian leader since then, and Netanyahu has been peeing in the Palestinian pot for nearly two decades.
50 minute update on child victims after the 2014 Gaza war: "Born in Gaza" on Netflix. The visuals and restrictions remind me of the Nazi ghettos, like in Warsaw and Lodz, that quickly became sealed off enclaves of hell--death from starvation, disease, if not bullets or bombs. Gaza people still require clean water, food, shelter, and medical care to meet basic needs; schooling; opportunities for work; rebuilt infrastructure for housing, business, farming, and fishing; trauma healing; trade; and functional self-governance to build regional peace.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81077863
Thank you, Ellie. Americans need to know this and what has happened since. Some of our 'leader's' talk the talk, but do less than nothing to change their horrid circumstances and often do worse.
Ellie, most Americans have no clue what the Palestinians have been experiencing. Many Israeli Jews have no clue what life is like in Gaza because of the government owned media.
It’s not so simple. When Israel’s withdrew from Gaza they left agricultural infrastructure which was then destroyed by Palestinians lest Israel be viewed positively. There has to be a two state solution and coexistence
Thanks, Fern for providing analysis explaining the rationale for Egypt and Jordan's positions. I appreciate your shedding some needed light on a long-standing, complex , and highly emotional issue.
You're welcome, Georgia. The struggles, including oppression of the Palestinians is primarily unknown; I wonder how much of it is known by the Israelis. You are correct about how emotional this is. The persecution of the Jews for centuries and the Holocaust are much better known. Contradictory stories are the norm about the centuries long history of conflicts in the Middle East. Under such a load, digging for the facts is time consuming, difficult and likely to draw ire, whatever the 'facts' may be.
And who does medieval studies any more? Crusades, anyone?
Colleges and Universities generally have history, classics and literature courses and seminars, which cover these fields.
Sorry, Fern. These courses are part of a liberal arts education, mostly dead in America. Only about 300 left. As for universities: an international medievalist of whom I had the good luck to be a student, reported gleefully (he was a rare person in every respect) that he managed to get his PhD and get out of Harvard “while it was still a university,” the year before they put in the business school. By now, thanks to the work of the Koch brothers and their friends, most of our universities are job training. What we are undergoing in DC is largely a result of no history, civics, or humanities classes and the propaganda about “socialism”
that has destroyed the middle class and May yet destroy US. Do you notice that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare and destroy unions? Anything to keep the poor working to survive until they die.
Virginia, while there is truth to what you say, some of it has nothing to do with the fact that with some time and effort historians and writers knowledgeable about the middle ages and the crusades could be identified in the US and other countries.
Very good read. Thank you
Thank you for reading it. The article helps to make clear how continuously awful life has been for the Palestinians, to say the least.
You know who else is treated badly? Millions of people in, Russia, Iran, Turkey, North Korea, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Venezuela and dozens of othe countries. The government and internal terrorist groups in these countries kill people without recourse all the time.
The Biden administration is treading very lightly here to try to keep this situation from escalating into WWIII.
Meanwhile, the Republicans complain about Venezuelans coming across the border seeking asylum from a cruel and oppressive government. How many stories have been published lately about the Venezuelan government? I haven't seen any. Are they just not killing enough people to make the news or is it the fact they have the largest oil reserves in the world?
Thanks Fern. Clarity shared.
Thank you, D4N. I was listening to tv news around Gaza as Israel prepares to attack.. That tiny country at war again. Crying in the night for all involved. We stoop so low. Apologies for my howl.
I howl with you for the innocents on both sides; I believe many of us here are in the same choir.
'State Department Official Resigns Over Arms Transfers to Israel'
'Josh Paul spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations.'
By John Ismay
• Oct. 19, 2023, 1:01 a.m. ET
'A State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers resigned this week in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel as it lays siege to Gaza in its war with Hamas.'
'In his resignation letter, Josh Paul, who has been the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for over 11 years, said the Biden administration’s '“blind support for one side” was leading to policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”
“The response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” he wrote, adding, “I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer.”
'In an interview, Mr. Paul said that Israel’s cutting off of water, food, medical care and electricity to Gaza, a territory of two million people, should prompt protections in a number of longstanding federal laws intended to keep American weapons out of the hands of human rights violators. But those legal guardrails are failing, he said.'
“The problem with all of those provisions is that it rests on the executive branch making a determination that human rights violations have occurred ,' ” Mr. Paul said. “The decision to make a determination doesn’t rest with some nonpartisan academic entity, and there’s no incentive for the president to actually determine anything.”
“This administration, I think, knows better and understands some of the complexity, but brought very little of that nuance to the policy decisions that are being made,” said Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department.'
'Mr. Biden has embraced Israel since Hamas killed more than 1,400 people and took nearly 200 hostages in an attack early this month, and his administration is preparing a request of $10 billion in mostly military aid, according to aides familiar with the plan. But in a visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Mr. Biden also warned Israelis not to give in to “an all-consuming rage” that could drive the country too far in response, and his administration has pushed Israel to limit civilian deaths.'
'Israel has said that the scale and gruesomeness of Hamas’s attack justify its response and that it is acting in compliance with international law. The State Department’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night.'
'Mr. Paul, whose resignation was reported earlier by The Huffington Post, said that he had seen the U.S. government approve numerous sales or shipments of matériel to other Middle Eastern countries, even when he believed federal law should have prevented them from going forward.'
“On all of them there’s a moment where you can say, OK, well, you know, it’s out of my hands, but I know Congress is going to push back,” he said, by issuing a hold on the transfer or grilling officials in hearings at the Capitol. “But in this instance, there isn’t any significant pushback likely from Congress, there isn’t any other oversight mechanism, there isn’t any other forum for debate, and that’s part of what got into my decision making.”
'Continuing to give Israel what he described as carte blanche to kill a generation of enemies, only to create a new one, does not ultimately serve the United States’ interests, Mr. Paul said.'
“What it leads to is this desire to sort of impose security at any cost, including in cost to the Palestinian civilian population,” he said. “And that doesn’t ultimately lead to security.”
“This administration, I think, knows better and understands some of the complexity but brought very little of that nuance to the policy decisions that are being made.”
'Since posting his resignation letter online Wednesday, Mr. Paul said he had received an outpouring of support from State Department colleagues and congressional staff members.'
“A lot of people are wrestling with this being the current policy and are finding it to be deeply problematic,” he said. “I’ve really been quite moved by some of the folks who have reached out to say that they understand where I’m coming from. They respect my decision. It’s been very supportive.” (NYTimes) This article was copied in full.
$100 Million for aid to help the people of Gaza and $10 Billion for arms to Israel seems all wrong to me. I would like a lot of that $10 Billion in our tax dollars to go to Americans living in poverty or Africans facing starvation or anyone in serious need. This actually enrages me.
Perhaps THE largest lobby/most influential group of lobbyists in Washington emanate from the US weapons manufacturers. That is the main reason why the only bills in Washington that are bipartisan are the funding to build weapons (the defense budget).
So, as long as we live in something akin to a Democratic House of Prostitution, where lobbyists purchase Congressional representatives and Presidents.......
we just have to embrace that our main product in the USA is ....... weapons.
And they all know it and feed the evil beast anyway. Why is campaign finance reform always impossible?
Because *nobody* wants to be the one who gets blamed for turning off the spigot. 🙁
Bingo ! 'Cuz they all are feeding from that trough - R's and D's. We the people will have to do it for them, for us.
That $10 billion goes to American arms manufacturers which subsidizes our own military needs as well as providing jobs in the armament industry. That’s capitalism. Ugh. I Hope we can send more to Ukraine quickly (like yesterday)
So do I. It does seem like a never-ending war, though, as long as that smirking devil is still around.
And the weapons that WE sell to Mexican cartels - the ones that send us fentanyl and traffic in humans. We arm our own enemies - by "we" I mean the American oligarchs.
It's madness. It's pretty much always for the oligarchs in the end, isn't it?
Yes.
Then talk to your congressperson. and ask WHY they are not legislating anything ...............
Agreed!
Fern As a former Foreign Service Officer, sadly I am aware that very seldom, when a State Department official resigns over principle, is this long remembered.
Can you remember the name of the Secretary of State who, after the botched Iran hostage rescue mission in 1980, resigned over principle? Or the four Foreign Service officers who resigned over our Bosnia policy in the early 1990s?
Cy Vance, Keith; I still remember!
Fern Kudos! You are savvier (and ‘more mature’) than I had remembered.
What's with your memory Keith; I have been 'mature' for too long!
Lol....
Keith, I have no idea who anyone under Carter was. But, I DO remember that Reagan's stall of the return of the Hostages DID make Carter look weak and did cost him the election beginning the aggressive use of fakery in the US by Republicans.
Jimmy Carter was one our finest presidents. But my sense was that he lost re-election for two major reasons.
First, he didn't know how to play the "inside game" of DC politics. He relied too much on his Georgia advisors.
Second, he did the unthinkable. He actually asked selfish Americans to make small personal sacrifices like turning down the heat a couple of degrees or putting on a sweater during an energy crisis. He actually thought people would pull together in common efforts to help each other. He was a real "Christian". But fake money grubbing Christians voted him out. And the "ME" generation was born - and they reproduced like rabid rabbits.
Jimmy never had a chance to exercise his brilliant brain. He was naive. And good. Ah, the irony of a "none" like me loving a bible thumper from Georgia is hard to fathom. But good is good, regardless of faith or the lack thereof.
Bill Jimmy Carter was a fine, bright individual with an extraordinary drive and focus. He was good on strategy and poor in what was necessary for effective implementation. He failed to relate to the power elite in Washington, as his Georgia boys ignored senators and congressmen.
Also, Carter was extremely strong willed—which is how he got to be president. In a sense, he failed at being an effective president, but succeeded in his future life. I believe he won the Nobel Prize. I thought that his mother, Lillian, was exceptional.
I am now re-watching the PBS American Presidents on Carter. He seems less likable than I had recalled.
Mike Actually not true. Carter was frantic to get the hostages out before Reagan took the presidential oath. Warren Christopher, then Under Secretary of State, was waiting for this in, I believe Algiers. [He later personally recounted this story to me.]
Iran, perhaps in part because of the failed hostage rescue mission, waited until Reagan took the oath of office to release the hostages. Reagan graciously provided a plane for Carter to greet the hostages.
I remember Cyrus Vance, Keith
Ref. State Department officials resigning over principles, I remember Matthew Hoh, a distinguished US Marine Officer who served in Iraq and then went on to join the State Dept. in Afghanistan. He spent time daily out working with the Afghan people in different regions of the country and listening to their complaints.
Mr. Hoh resigned in 2010. He wrote in his resignation letter, “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”
Mr. Hoh went on to add, “I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.” He further spoke of the utter corruption in the Afghan government, and how almost a billion dollars a year went from corrupt government officials to their private accounts in Dubai (per a Wall Street Journal article in 2010).
https://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/1/fmr_marine_state_department_official_matthew
That was in 2010. Yet the Afghan war, sponsored by the U.S., went on for another dozen years or so. More currently, I can’t help but wonder how much of the U.S. aid to Ukraine is ending up in Dubai or other offshore accounts. I wonder about some of the aid to Israel as well, considering that Bibi has been brought up on corruption charges. And what of the U.S. military which has failed every audit to account for its vast budget?
And the beat goes on....
Heydon In Afghanistan I suspect that foreign bank accounts absorbed a significant portion of US Aid. In Africa, much higher. In Israel, I suspect that the direct corruption level is much lower, though I wouldn’t bet my jodhpurs on that. As for assistance in the US, on pandemic funds, for example, I’d guess that we’d touch the Afghans level of corruption.
In the Pentagon they don’t measure corruption. Rather they call add ons, readjustment of original budget, or simply miscellaneous, with Congress adding its own goodies. It’s not by chance that there has never been. A comprehensive audit of the Pentagon budget—too many unicorns and lizards buried in the figures.
If there are any Republicans who are Americans first and foremost, let them stand straight and tall to join their Democratic colleagues who are true Americans and place a real American, Hakeem Jeffries, as House Speaker and put our country back on track.
There is little question in my mind that Biden is the right president for the moment and for our times. He comports himself on the world stage with deft aplomb, as he does domestically. Of course, age is a question...but he answers it every day with his actions...in spite of the drivel his detractors and opponents spew out in the public forum. This was a clear, strong and balanced message in an impossibly complicated situation.
With his age comes experience. I have faith he’ll make it through a second term & then some. Look at Jimmy Carter at 99
Please listen to Norman Finkelstein and Chris Hedges in today’s substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/the-chris-hedges-report-with-professor?r=4tv99&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
We must listen to as many viewpoints as possible. These two men are serious, honest and know the history of this conflict better than most. Thank you, Heather for today’s letter.
Chris Hedges is no one you need to be listening to. He's as loonie on his side of things as any MAGAt on the other side.
But us loonie liberals are not trying to take down our democracy. Multiple sides to every story is true, but an inch further and you have alternative facts. Proceed with caution to those who are smarter than most MAGAts but with a similar agenda.
There are always multiple sides to a story. Chris Hedges documents much needed information.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-culture-of-deceit
Reading this reminds me of the techniques used by Alex Jones, Steve Bannon etc.
TC won’t listen, and he won’t read. His liberal class thin-skinned sensitivities cannot abide critique of his propagandized narrative of how the world works, from Hedges or anyone else. The silo is strong with that one.
Oh Tom, it takes a silo to know a silo. Hedges may have some information to offer. But I have also learned a lot from TC who is also a Tom. A lot.
All is not black or white. Hedges could reveal some helpful info. But he also was employed by the Moscow manipulated Russian Television. That is a bridge too far for me.
And personally attacking others for having different views in this forum is unseemly. Please forgive me if I have ever done such. I am miles away from perfection. Perhaps we could work on just sharing facts and opinions based on facts?
Oh Bill, you’re trying to give me lessons on black and white cliche while saying RT is a bridge too far? Please. My silo is the truth and justice one, which means I will accept truth from any source; you, TC, or Hedges, regardless of employment status. Perhaps we just define ‘personally attacking others’ differently. In my book, responding to a good faith link someone posts by using crude, pithy, fallacious ad hominem against the author of the link, instead of specific example or shared reasoning, is likewise personal attack, albeit not quite as direct, which is revealing in its laziness. So I merely respond with the same disdain the author of the ad hominem uses…. nothing personal, just trying to keep the conversation on an even keel.
Hedges was also employed by the Washington DC manipulated New York Times. Should people not give credence to truths spoken by Hedges because they consider that a bridge too far?
I, too, am miles away from perfection. I gave an opinion, based on TC’s response to a link in a comment. Unseemly? You address your attack concern to TC’s comment, then I’ll give your paternalistic critique a revisit. Lots of bridges in the distance these days.
I'll take the "paternalistic critique" comment as a compliment. I guess you see me as a "father figure"?
You seem to have ignored my comment about Hedges having some good info. But I will stand by my comment about RT. To compare the NYTimes to an arm of a government that seeks to destroy the West is laughable - hysterical. But to each his own world view.
I respectfully disagree, TC.
As long as it's respectfully, Elisabeth. :-)
Listen to last night's discussion hosted by The Lever with Naomi Klein, Omar Baddar and David Sirota. They are not loonies, and neither is Hedges. It would be better to caution self to avoid listening uncritically to stooges for any political organization with no scruples about cementing its power with force, threats, lies, and abuse.
Here is a conversation from fellows at Lakota People’s Law Project:
"Hearts continued to break around the world this past week as a sequence of horrific events unfolded in the Middle East. First, an attack by Hamas militants killed hundreds of innocent people at a music festival. The Israeli government responded by declaring war on Palestinians and locking down Gaza, prompting a call for global jihad by a former Hamas leader. Like you, we watched with sadness and horror, wishing for a solution to this age-old conflict that has already shattered far too many lives.
"At Lakota Law, we work toward justice for Indigenous peoples, and by extension, for our entire human family. Though these events may be unfolding far from Turtle Island, they affect all of us — and we feel it’s our responsibility to lend whatever perspective we have to find a path toward equity, peace, and healing. To that end, noted Indigenous actor and advocate Raoul Trujillo invited Lakota Law co-director Chase Iron Eyes and me to his ranch on Pueblo lands in so-called New Mexico to talk about Israel-Palestine and how we can think and act effectively together.
"I invite you to watch some of that conversation right here:
https://lakotalaw.org/resources/chase-dov-raoul
((Note: Hopefully, that link works - if not, go to Lakota People’s Law Project Facebook site and scroll down: https://www.facebook.com/LakotaPeoplesLawProject/ ))
"You may be asking: why are you hearing from me? Lakota Law is here to talk about things through an Indigenous lens, but I’m non-Native. However, as someone dedicated to Indigenous justice and raised in a traditional Jewish household and community — who has organized alongside Palestinians and Israelis in the Holy Land — I have a studied, lived-in perspective.
"Of course, Chase also brings a very important viewpoint to this dialogue. In various ways, and with varying degrees of success, many have noted parallels between worldwide Indigenous and Palestinian struggles against colonial rule. As Chase points out in our discussion, all people deserve freedom and dignity, but the Lakota way does not condone the targeting of innocents.
"The fact is that no one person or organization has the answers, and there simply isn’t room in an email to delve deeply into the long history of displacement or the political complexities present in Israel and Palestine. That’s precisely why we believe it’s important to consider a diversity of perspectives and share our conversation with you.
"So, please watch it right here, and I hope you’ll join us in praying for shalom, salaam — peace — and justice for our relatives all over the world. As the Lakota wisely say, Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ. We are all related."
In solidarity and with gratitude,
Dov Korff-Korn Attorney & Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project
I think this is a print version of the same or similar conversation between Finkelstein and Hedges for those who don't like podcasts.
https://therealnews.com/no-sanctuary-israels-long-war-on-gaza
Thank you, Lisa.
Thank you for your post.
Thanks, Elisabeth, for posting. Finkelstein's assessment of how this latest atrocity came to be makes perfect sense to me.
Lynell, you are welcome! Finkelstein was incredibly thoughtful and factual in his presentation. How refreshing!
And it's amazing that his parents were former concentration camp survivors from WWII.
Let's hope that Biden's embrace of Netanyahu won't save Netanyahu. He belongs in jail, just like TFG. Biden has been partially responsible for this mess by putting all his emphasis on the Abraham Accords. Negotiating in secret behind the backs of the Palestinian people while passively condoning the settler attacks on Palestinians on the West Bank has the region seething. He should have moved the embassy back to Tel Aviv and told the Israelis that the settlements in the West Bank will be part of the new Palestinian state. Israel is doomed to eternal war by its plan to drive all the Palestinians out of Palestine. Lip service to a two-state solution has long been a farce.
Biden isn’t embracing Netanyahu. He’s embracing the Israeli people at a time of great need. And you heap far too much blame on him for the grotesque sins of the Israeli government.
Michael,
"you heap far too much blame on him for the grotesque sins of the Israeli government"
Perhaps blaming Biden specifically is "not fair" but blaming the US specifically is fair.
The US has been exporting massive amounts of weapons to Israel for many years. Presumably because the US understands those American weapons will be utilized, by Israel, to continue its long arc of Palestinian displacement from their own homeland.
I agree that the Palestinians have been wrongfully displaced and that Israel has failed to address their rightful needs to a homeland or to offer full integration. It's the faulty foundation of this endless stupid conflict.
But also, if I lived in Israel right now, I would hope that America would send me the help I need to survive the continuous attack on my very existence since the first Jew was born.
Agree. Over the decades — with some obvious exceptions — the U.S. has failed miserably to help the Palestinians. And recently, of course, Netanyahu's right-wing corrupt government has made it impossible to bring about meaningful reform and exacerbated the long-simmering divisions.
I didn’t feel good about the trip until I read Heather’s letter. I concentrated on the negative, the cancelled Jordan meeting, the snub of Blinken by that smug Saudi Prince, and thosein our own country calling Biden a war criminal for supporting Israel.
She brought me back to reality. Biden was pitch perfect. He is balancing support of Israel with a commitment to humanitarian aid, real change, a two-state solution and his resolute calmness. He stands alone in such leadership while so many others act to take advantage.
This morning I have two anchors in reality, Heather and President Biden.
Heather Cox Richardson the stark contrast of the world leading Administration and the Romper Room of the House just shows who can govern and who cannot.
Your letter is gratefully received Professor ⭐
For anyone who thinks for an instant that all the explanations in the world about what really happened at the hospital will change a thing on the "Arab Street" and bring around the Arab governments to deal with this realistically, I want some of whatever you're imbibing. This situation is incredibly dangerous and nothing has been done that will convince the other side to ease off. I wish to hell I was wrong, but I'm not.
Tom You recall, in the Battle of Midway, that the US initially reported the success of B 17 attacks on the Japanese fleet. Subsequently it was determined that not a single B 17 bomb hit a Japanese ship.
during the Suez War, the Egyptians highlighted that they had sunk the French battleship Jean Bart. More than a year later I took a photo of the Jean Bart being decommissioned to a meeting with a top Nasser aide. He simply winced and grinned.
You are totally correct that, in the Arab world, the ‘evidence’ from Israel and the US that an errant Hamas missile destroyed the Gaza hospital will be totally ignored.
Personally, I believe that this ‘evidence’ is correct, but I’m not 100% sure. I still recall official reporting from Vietnam.
I have two brothers who served during the Vietnam era. One of them in-country, earning himself a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, and a lifetime of debilitating PTSD. Service for which he was once spit on at the SFO airport.
The lies our Government told then are still remembered today by many whose lives were directly and irrevocably impacted by them.
As a young man from the Midwest, I used to vote Republican, once believing all the motherhood and apple pie, God and family, Trickle Down, ‘kill a commie for Mommy’ bullshit the Regan administration spewed back in the day.
Since then, I’ve traveled the world, seen a few things, learned even more, and realized just how wrong-headed the Republican platform is. And today’s MAGA cult is beyond belief—except that I’ve read the history of how the Nazi’s came to power. The MAGA apple isn’t falling far from that tree. Those who burn books eventually burn people.
All this to say that Government lies are not new but real people suffer their consequences. And that seeing what the Republicans have done, and are doing, to hobble our country, the lies, the inability to govern, and the unfettered support of a wannabe dictator will not be forgotten. Must not be forgotten.
I’ve seen the error of my early ways. Luckily , that was an easy fix at the ballot box.
Welcome to the world of the converted Republican.
I am one also, converted to "Republican" by the far right writings of George Will and William F Buckley who graced the weekly pages of the Texas A&M Battalion school paper.
I threw off the yoke of lies of "Republican" when Bush invaded Iraq WHILE the on the ground weapons inspectors, put their by Reagan, we screaming "no weapons here!".
I will never vote Republican again. Ever. Nor will my children.
Mine either. And thank you for the warm welcome. It’s good to be out of the Matrix.
I think this post is so, so important. It’s a relief to know that people can “wake up” and change their path forward. Nothing is perfect but some choices are much more valuable to our humanity than others. Bless you for caring enough to change...
1964 Tonkin Gulf incident. More than fog of war. An excuse to invade with Marines
Read my book, "the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club." The incident was worse than you think. The "lights in the water" were the reflection of the moon and lightning off the enormous school of flying fish that annually transit the Gulf of Tonkin in early August.
Tom That Johnson joked about the supposed Vietnamese Tonkin attack in a conversation with my hero, Under Secretary of State George Ball, is a new dimension of sick humor.
In fact, in late October, 1964, Ball wrote a carefully argued 75-page legal brief on our options in Vietnam. His conclusion: get out. Subsequently he was used as a foil by Johnson, who continually escaped the war, while lying to the American public.
Sam Adams, my CIA current intelligence counterpart during the Congo 1964 foreign hostage crisis, shifted to assessing Viet Cong order of battle. An excellent analysis, he discovered that the Army was undercounting Vietnamese military by 200-300,000.
When he sought to expose this, he was shafted by General Westmoreland and, later, by the CIA director.
All of this is spelled out in his book WHAT THE HELL ARE WE FIGHTING FOR.
I agree with you TC, you're right, and we both wish you were wrong. The issue of blame for the hospital lbombing is also far less important than the fact of the hospital bombing.
On top of the decades long Israeli oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza prior to the recent Hamas atrocities, and their post Hamas atrocity carpet bombing and other war crimes in Gaza, the far more powerful State of Israel is clearly responsible for the devastation precipitated in Gaza overall, perceptions in the streets of Beirut, Baghdad and Damascus aside.
"The issue of blame for the hospital [ ]bombing is also far less important than the fact of the hospital bombing."
Say what?
It it was an "errant" Hamas rocket, it was an accident by definition. If it was an Israeli air strike it was almost certainly intentional. If the latter, whether a commanded strike or a trigger happy and pissed off Israeli F16 pilot armed with a smart bomb acting alone, Israel bears full responsibility.
Given an apparent direct hit to the hospital, I have my doubts about the errant rocket explanation, and I am very much skeptical of the story being told by so called "intelligence sources".
I think that we are both, in different ways, saying the same thing
I guess I'm just too dense to get your point then, Daniel. What I hear you saying is that who did it (and why) doesn't matter; that the important thing is that it happened at all. I think the answer to the question is immensely important, maybe even more important than the actual fact of the bombing itself, given the immense scale of the carnage already committed. Anyone found to have intentionally perpetrated this act for whatever reasons should be tried for a war crime, and that includes all parties concerned.
At the risk of running this thread a bit too far, I will say the following:
First of all, you are certainly not dense, LeMoine. I may have been a bit unclear in my initial statement. In no way am I minimizing the importance of the perpetrator of the hospital strike. I am maximizing the unmistakable fact that the downhill slide into war, propelled primarily by the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza, creates the conditions for this type of thing to happen, irrespective of who or which side is directly to blame. In deflecting blame to Islamic Jihad, the Israelis are acting both reflexively to demonstrate that they, the good guy victims in their minds, would never stoop to such depths as bombing a hospital. Yet even if the Al Afsi hospital were never bombed, they have already hit hospitals, schools, numerous homes, etc. The barbarity they deny is all around them, even if they are correct that this particular barbarity was not of their doing.
OK Daniel, I understand. Maybe I should have read all the related posts more thoroughly to get that context. But I still maintain that the "hospital episode" along with the "who and why" is an act so heinous that it stands above the general chaos and barbarity. Here you have a hospital overflowing with already traumatized victims that pose a threat to no one. If Hamas deliberately blew it up in order to pin it on the Israelis for PR purposes, the perpetrators should be drawn and quartered in public. If it was Israel, doing their own version of "shock and awe" then those within the decision matrix should be boiled in oil, so to speak. Accountability is the only means of reversing this escalation. running the thread a bit too far, Daniel? no one is paying any attention to us at this point. Besides, I still have three inches of blank space on the right hand side of my monitor:-) Thanks for indulging me.
Here's the problem with your logic, TC: In a broader view than from "Arab Street", lets say in the view of the international community at large, If it turns out the Israelis actually did target that hospital (and given the incredible destruction they've so far rained down on the southern part of Gaza that isn't a giant stretch) then giving Israel a pass on such an atrocity is exactly the wrong thing to do and further encourages Netanyahu and his cronies to stay the course. Wrong answer.
Thanks Heather, the world is a mess and the GOP wants to send more money to the ultra rich while ignoring the real issues that affect the citizens of America. I also admire that your letters provoke an enriching dialogue among those who comment. We are in a state of war and we must not turn our faces away in apathy from the issues that confront us.
Thank you for staying with this and pulling the narrative threads together. In the interests of amplifying the voices of those who would like the violence to stop while keeping us all aware of the historical nuances that make this so difficult:
Excerpted from Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning” in the London Review of Books, 19 Oct 2023. I highly recommend reading the whole of the original.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/judith-butler/the-compass-of-mourning
“I oppose the violence that Hamas has inflicted and have no alibi to offer. When I say that, I am making clear a moral and political position. I do not equivocate when I reflect on what that condemnation presupposes and implies. Anyone who joins me in this condemnation might want to ask whether moral condemnation should be based on some understanding of what is being opposed. One might say, no, I don’t need to know anything about Palestine or Hamas to know that what they have done is wrong, and to condemn it. And if one stops there, relying on contemporary media representations, without ever asking whether they are actually right and useful, whether they let the histories be told, then one accepts a certain ignorance and trusts in the framework presented. After all, we are all busy, and we cannot all be historians or sociologists. That is a possible way to think and live, and well-intentioned people do live that way. But at what cost?
“What if our morality and our politics did not end with the act of condemnation? What if we insisted on asking what form of life would release the region from violence such as this? What if, in addition to condemning wanton crimes, we wanted to create a future in which violence of this sort came to an end? That is a normative aspiration that goes beyond momentary condemnation. To achieve it, we have to know the history of the situation, the growth of Hamas as a militant group in the devastation of the post-Oslo moment for those in Gaza to whom promises of self-governance were never made good; the formation of other groups of Palestinians with other tactics and goals; and the history of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for freedom and the right of political self-determination, for release from colonial rule and pervasive military and carceral violence. Then we might be part of the struggle for a free Palestine in which Hamas would be dissolved, or superseded by groups with non-violent aspirations for cohabitation. ...
“An Israeli friend, a self-described ‘anti-Zionist’, writes online that she is terrified for her family and friends, that she has lost people. And our hearts should go out to her, as mine surely does. It is unequivocally terrible. And yet, is there no moment where her own experience of horror and loss over her friends and family is imagined to be what a Palestinian might be feeling on the other side, or has felt after the years of bombardment, incarceration and military violence? I am also a Jew who lives with transgenerational trauma in the wake of atrocities committed against people like me. But they were also committed against people not like me. I do not have to identify with this face or that name in order to name the atrocity I see. Or, at least, I struggle not to.
“In the end, though, the problem is not simply a failure of empathy. For empathy mainly takes form within a framework that allows for identification to be accomplished, or for a translation between another’s experience and my own. And if the dominant frame considers some lives to be more grievable than others, then it follows that one set of losses is more horrifying than another set of losses. The question of whose lives are worth grieving is an integral part of the question of whose lives are worth valuing. And here racism enters in a decisive way. If Palestinians are ‘animals’, as Israel’s defence minister insists, and if Israelis now represent ‘the Jewish people’ as Biden insists (collapsing the Jewish diaspora into Israel, as reactionaries demand), then the only grievable people in the scene, the only ones who present as eligible for grief, are the Israelis, for the scene of ‘war’ is now staged between the Jewish people and the animals who seek to kill them. This is surely not the first time that a group of people seeking release from colonial shackles has been figured as animals by the coloniser. Are the Israelis ‘animals’ when they kill? This racist framing of contemporary violence recapitulates the colonial opposition between the ‘civilised ones’ and the ‘animals’ who must be routed or destroyed so as to preserve ‘civilisation’. If we adopt this framework in the course of declaring our moral opposition, we find ourselves implicated in a form of racism that extends beyond the utterance to the structure of everyday life in Palestine. And for that a radical reparation is surely in order."
I had been looking for what Butler might have to say since Hamas’ attack, and found the link at Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack yesterday afternoon. She offers more——I found Masha Gessen’s “The Tangled Grief of Israel’s Anti-Occupation Activists” particularly compelling and nuanced——as well as a whole other rabbit hole on the limits of forgiveness:
https://annehelen.substack.com/p/there-is-nothing-magical-about-forgiveness
Masha Geffen (at The New Yorker. Unfortunately I cannot gift the article: I only was able, luckily, to read it as my last free one for the year. Maybe somebody else can share it?):
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-tangled-grief-of-israels-anti-occupation-activists
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rw59LQPatytm8RoQHQ5bLZiXC6ovEGbfDuvy6-MUD5Q/edit?usp=drivesdk