Though I didn't keep a scrapbook and the war in which I cheered for Israel was in 1967, I can certainly identify with your opening account.
Now, in the latest favor for Israel, President Biden has said that American Jews are not safe! Add this to the weapons and UN shielding. Where is the limit? Is our government really ours? This is scary and the pro-Israel faction in America has been perfecting this control from within for decades while the American pubic hasn't seen it going on. Now it is in plain view and it is due to the current mess that all is revealed.
Re.: "Anti-semitism won’t be alleviated by thousands of bombs " ; no, and in fact I rather suspect it is greatly worsened by that steady rain of high explosives. I've never held any degree of animus towards Jews- having admired some and loved others. Yet recently I've begun to notice a degree of coolness, or even anger in myself; especially when I see some friend or another displaying an Israeli flag. Or especially, as in the case of pro-Israel activists at certain universities or in the House, I see them playing the victim card while dishonestly smearing as 'anti-semitic' those who dare speak out for Palestinians' rights and/or decry the genocidal ethnic cleansing in progress.
The truth of your observation that Israel's campaign is not at all about protecting Israelis has been made abundantly clear. It is clear that it is about wiping clean the land of Gaza, to provide for yet further expansions, control over certain resources and greater regional dominion- all inherent objectives of Zionism. And it is infuriating that enablers - in Europe and the U.S. deliberately conflate opposition to it as "anti-semitic"; specifically, a hatred of Jews. As many Jews of conscience, from Rabbis to survivors of the Nazi holocaust point out, that rabidly right-wing government does NOT represent them or Judaism. It is quite the opposite. See, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtMV2i8-8 .
At any rate, I would not be surprised, somewhere down the road, that Mossad itself, perhaps with an agent provocateur, had helped plan the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, in order to give the IDF the cover needed to accelerate its otherwise slow-steady expansion project. There is no evidence to this, yet- I'm just engaging in admittedly loose speculation. Yet we do know that Israel itself helped create Hamas and put it in the driver's seat. We know that Israeli intelligence had warned the government that attacks were planned- even giving the details thereof; and that those reporting were told to ignore them. And we know, from what has since transpired, that Israel clearly intended to clear Gaza and possibly beyond, for re-colonization. And we know that Israel didn't really care too much about hostages after all; engaging in what some are calling a Hannibal-like killing of a significant number.
So my speculation here may not be all that wild after all.
w/ definitude, roger hoffmann; it is the only scenario that makes sense... eminent sense. one is an arenicolous, nescient, low-grade moron to assume or wish to embrace any other narrative than the one you elucidate w/ such clarity. myth-making is what too many dim-witted americans live for; they gorge themselves to adipose-brained obesity on their feckless fantasies.
Well, Jeanie, even though my speculated scenario is certainly plausible, I won't jump to that conclusion. Nor would I want to lead anyone to believe it to be true... beliefs being all too readily embraced by far too many, these days.
Oct 1973, I was a Lt. in a support section within a C-141 wing.
We were about 6 months since we flew our C-141 to sustain combat in Vietnam, we were making up for hard flying and delayed maintenance.
Israeli "difficulties" spurred the US to supply Israel with a number of newest precision guided munitions. Many were designed for but rarely used for Vietnam hard targets.
The munitions delivered by the C-5's and C-141 made a big difference in destroying tanks who had been operating with abandon because the Israeli AF had been 'reduced'.....
Today the USAF C-17's are delivering guidance kits for iron bombs and other precision weapons to thump the rubble in urban sectors of Gaza.
Only Nixon could 'go to china', make peace in Vietnam (3 years late!!), and save Israel.
Israel was a predatory state back in 1973 and it has remained so ever since. The only difference between now and 50 years ago is that 1) Over the years Israel was able to amass an enormous arsenal of armaments and materiel thanks to US largesse, so that the balance of power has shifted dramatically in the region in Israel's favor. Of course, also lurking in the background is Israel's significant nuclear arsenal; and 2) the Arab countries in the region have completely abandoned the Palestinians, since the leaders in the countries view Hamas as a threat to their rule. As a result of these two factors, the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians goes on without end. The US, the parent predatory state, gladly gives Israel cover at the UN and ships weapons without hesitation to facilitate the slaughter. We are witnessing crimes that are unspeakable. yet according to the US media outlets any criticism of such crimes is proof of anti-semitism. It's time again to dust off my copy of Orwell's 1984.
what the Nazis did to the jews- herded them into ghettos than into gas chambers and mass graves;
Isreal is doing to the Palestinian peoples- herding them into ghettos and keeping them their as their captives than instead of gas they use 5000 lbs bombs and bury them in mass graves of concrete rubble.....
the usa was on the right side of history in one of these. you pick my brothers and sisters
Bill please, quit with this.... "Forces like Hamas.....have the capability to launch terrorist attacks"!
For goodness sake!
These young Hamas men are fighting for their freedom and dignity from 75-years of cruel oppressor.
Palestinians tried a peaceful protest against Israel. Unarmed - they were gunned down by Israeli snipers.
Ray knows the details of this better than I. In 2018.
"Amnesty International said about that protest, “We are witnessing an abhorrent violation of Int law and human rights. 38-confirmed dead, including children/minors, with close to 2,000 people injured in Gaza. Many injured to the head and chest. Over 500 injured with live ammunition. This horror must end now.” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, tweeted, “Those responsible for outrageous human rights violations must be held to account. The int’l community needs to ensure justice for victims.”
The Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, live ammunition, and artillery shells at the unarmed protesters.
-
Oct 7 was not a bunch of "terrorists"!
They were a brave organized group of young freedom fighters exercising the ONLY option left to them. Far removed from "terrorists". That would be the IDF.
They used the only thing Israel understands - killing and violence.
Quit labeling Hamas as "terrorists" please. You have done this before!
You are free to call them freedom fighters if you wish, Dennis.
Without rendering a value judgment, I see Hamas as using traditional tactics of the terrorist. And I see Israel replying in an exponentially worse and far more destructive way.
What I seek to avoid is cartoonish descriptions of either side as "good" or "evil." What I can say, without reservation, is that Palestinian innocents are suffering and dying in the tens of thousands, and if this war continues, they may suffer and die in the millions. And that would indeed be evil.
However, I do NOT see Hamas as using traditional tactics of the terrorist.
No more than any other invading military, or paramilitary, or the CIA guerrilla army in the Bay of Pigs for example eh?
Why use the label for these desperate young Palestinian men eh? Don't you agree that they have the moral high ground here? How can they be "terrorists" for chrissake? Apart from their oppressors, who the hell are they terrorizing? No terrorist ever released their hostages? They chopped their heads off! Hamas's released hostages were smiling, shaking the hands of the capturers, and reporting they were treated respectively, kept in good health, and respected. The tactics of terrorists eh Bill? GMAFB!
Is a prisoner, serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit, by killing his jailer to escape - a "terrorist"? Hell no!
Watching Al Jazeera TV this morning is truly sick making.
And the psychopath Netanyahu saying Hamas has two options: Surrender or die!
The sooner Netanyahu meets the same fate as Mussolini - the better it will be for EVERYBODY. And that freak Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. His war plan - drop 2,000lb bombs on hospitals and refugee camps. On a nation that has zero air defense! There is not even a place in hell bad enough for what this animal of a man deserves.
And the actions of the POTUS where I lived for 41-years, and where my kids live - is just shocking and unconscionable. I am ashamed when NZ people hear my American accent. "It is clear that the Biden regime’s amoral support for Israelis’ bloodlust in Gaza is destabilizing America and hastening the collapse from within that this nation has feared since it declared itself the United States." - Patrick Lawrence.
And watching Genocide Joe with the corrupt Zelensky* in a WA DC Press Conference as I type here just makes one want to scream - or worse. Give this 75-year-old man an AK-47 and I will go and kill these two motherfuckers. And that Jew Victoria Newland, Antony Blinken, John Kirby, Loyd Austin and Jake Sullivan. And the ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker Rishi Sunak, the Limey Yank arse licker! Sorry for the language.
*Ukraine’s President Zelensky Accused of Embezzling Western Aid Money | Vantage with Palki Sharma.
"Language, an important cultural artifact, becomes a contentious question in this context. If language arises from the community that comes to speak it, the state determines to control and manipulate language so as to enlist communities in the state’s cause, the cause of nationalism and power."
Think about it! Powerful analysis - and why it is extremely important not to label Hamas as "terrorists".
Yes, language is very important. The Hamas attacks of October 7th on civilians, the kidnappings and holding of hostages: if you wish to call these the acts of "freedom fighters," so be it.
I can denounce terror as a weapon by Hamas while recognizing why they chose to do what they did. I can also denounce Israel for its war of conquest, which is on a scale far worse than what Hamas did.
If you want to praise Hamas for the alleged purity of its motives and actions, that's your choice. Recognize, however, that there are those who are praising Israel for the purity of its actions in "defending" themselves.
Bill, nobody wants to "choose" to "praise" Hamas for the "purity" of their actions!
For goodness sake. There's that language thing again!
Using language to imply that people are blowing off the actions of the Freedom Fighters on Oct 7 as not being vile. Obviously, they were vile.
But like an injured, cornered wild animal their actions were inevitable. Lashing out, fighting back, mirroring the ferocity and actions perpetrated on them by their attackers for years. Shooting unarmed civilians and taking hostages in the same way the IDF did in all the other "mowing the grass" operations of recent decades.
Those that want to compare Hama's 1-day of atrocity, to Israel's, what is it 56-days now, of genocide and massive property destruction, are sick folks. Israels purity of action in "defending" itself is unarguably indefensible by any criteria, using any language.
And BTW, as a war scholar, isn't it correct that taking prisoners (hostages) is a part of fair warfare as long as you do them no harm in captivity? Hamas's few well treated hostages were hardly "terrorism" on the scale of Israel holding 1,000's of Palestinians, many kids, in jail for years without charge and treating them abysmally. To compare Hamas's treatment of its hostages - to the kids released from Israel prisons, incarcerated for throwing stones, with broken bones and horror stories of the way they were treated. Come on!
For me the scales of "terrorism" are way tilted to the Israeli side.
agree perfervidly, dennis; when i came to that same line astore wrote i choked and nearly gagged-up my breakfast. shame on you bill for colluding w/ the zionist/US rhetoric by perpetuating such mendacity. naming hamas as 'terrorists' is inflammatory... a fulsome form of fabrication and market-driven propaganda. i was w/ many hamas members this year during my 3-months as a volunteer teacher in the west bank's palestinian refugee camps, and i can guarantee unequivocally, w/ unalloyed certitude, that these young boys, girls, and men are precisely as dennis proclaims, FREEDOM FIGHTERS, not terrorists.
Well put, Bill. The Israelis are using the horrific October 7th attack as a perfect to push the Gazans into the desert or the sea and hope that the rest of the world will take care of whoever is left. Eliminating Hamas is a smokescreen for the removal of Palestinians from their land that has been going on since 1947. If you have any doubts about this, please read respected Israel historian Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" or listen to one of the recent interviews with him on YouTube.
if any of you BV-ers `can still sleep at night or swallow a morsel of food during the day, you are in a better, less bitter, less knotted, less emetic, more salubrious state than i am in… gagging and drowning in a vertiginous maelstrom of near insanity over the israeli-zionist/US murder machines blasting across the skies of gaza and the west bank, filling the air w/ their instruments of death, dropping their bombs on helpless palestinian children huddled in rat-infested sewers trying to escape the cacophony of their oppressors’ weapons-of-slaughter that are so loud the children's screams of terror cannot be heard, knowing there is nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide, no way to survive, painfully enduring all the maimed bodies and shattered limbs around them, knowing they are next, that it’s a matter of mere minutes before they too will be just another statistic in this mindless, benumbing feast of total destruction... of the lives they once knew. of life altogether.
and who are these demented murderers of these profoundly poignant child-deaths, the total destruction of their young lives? allow me to remind you: the putative acolytes of the judeo-christian god… the god of compassion, of love and beneficence for children, of love for one’s neighbour, of omniscience, of omnipotence, of divine perfection. where is that all-knowing god, protector of children? if he still resides in the judeo-christian ambit of worshippers, he is the most cruel, demonic delusion ever contrived by a vicious cabal of cruel, demonic human acolytes, epigones, and myrmidons. their god is as demented as they are.
you need not "jump to any conclusions" rh; it is as close to the actual, factual 'mis-en-scène' as anyone w/ a nano-mole of cortical furniture could possibly conclude and narrate to the hoi polloi... particularly one like myself who has had an extensive background among palestinians and their freedom fighters, reaching back to the 1st intifahdah in 1988 when we worked in the hashemite kingdom of jordan. it is well-known that hamas was inchoately funded w/ lucre from the israeli govt. and that their spy 'services' are the most sophisticated on the planet.
You're welcome. They are banned in Israel. I learned about them when their journalists were targeted and killed by an Israeli missile. Bright young people who were broadcasting from South Lebanon. I never thought I'd be getting news through Instagram but that is how I discovered Al Mayadeen.
My belief has long been that the aftermath of the 1973 war was the best opportunity to have made regional peace. The Arab states saw it as a kind of moral victory, with their pride lost in 1967 restored somewhat. At the same time they hadn’t actually recovered any territory. Israel survived, “won” the war, but was shaken out of their post-1967 illusion of invulnerability. Ultimately I think the record shows it was Israel that refused to make a deal at that time. Treaties with some individual states eventually followed, of course, starting with Egypt, but the window to fundamentally begin a new era of co-existence closed (if it was ever really open).
In a way, my view of post-1973 compared to today is the inverse of Bill Astore’s. Then, despite some dicey moments at the beginning of the war, Israel looked and felt strategically secure. Now, despite the damage they are inflicting on Gaza, their long-term future seems bleak to nonexistent.
Accordingly, I don’t see Israel as “being driven by a desire for conquest” here. I think those ambitions are focused on the West Bank (and in fact, Israel seems to be using the attention being paid to Gaza to create some of new facts on the ground in the West Bank relatively unnoticed). Rather, (and the similarity to 9/11 is strong here) I see Israel as having fallen into a trap of Hamas’s making by overreacting to what (as Bill correctly notes) was an upsetting but not strategic level of threat from Gaza manifested on Oct. 7.
I think people sympathizing with the Palestinian side may be overestimating the military problems Israel is having short-term (because that’s how people are), but there’s an underlying weakness which all the violence Israel is unleashing hasn’t effaced.
I’m not sure where I stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict; I’ll leave that to seemingly every other person on earth, who all seem certain either one side or the other is in the right. But I do want my country, the U.S., out of it.
The bloom has faded from the Ukrainian rose, Ray. That conflict has gone on too long without the hope of victory for the little guy. No light at the end of the tunnel. So, the US (literally) loads up on the short-odds favorite. The Administration and The Pentagon love winners, even if they prove to be vile and despicable in the process. A win's a win.
I think so, the access of social media, citizen journalists in Gaza and outlets like Al Mayadeen in Lebanon are showing the world what is really happening. Days before anything is shown in MSM - if at all.
I hope the US still has a large supply of 155mm and 105mm shells in "war stocks".
The supplies sent to Ukraine are mostly taken from "war stocks". In the case of Ukraine the stocks are more important to US missions, one of which could be IDF.
Though I didn't keep a scrapbook and the war in which I cheered for Israel was in 1967, I can certainly identify with your opening account.
Now, in the latest favor for Israel, President Biden has said that American Jews are not safe! Add this to the weapons and UN shielding. Where is the limit? Is our government really ours? This is scary and the pro-Israel faction in America has been perfecting this control from within for decades while the American pubic hasn't seen it going on. Now it is in plain view and it is due to the current mess that all is revealed.
Precisely, Clif. The government isn't ours. It's been hijacked by the moneyed interests.
Re.: "Anti-semitism won’t be alleviated by thousands of bombs " ; no, and in fact I rather suspect it is greatly worsened by that steady rain of high explosives. I've never held any degree of animus towards Jews- having admired some and loved others. Yet recently I've begun to notice a degree of coolness, or even anger in myself; especially when I see some friend or another displaying an Israeli flag. Or especially, as in the case of pro-Israel activists at certain universities or in the House, I see them playing the victim card while dishonestly smearing as 'anti-semitic' those who dare speak out for Palestinians' rights and/or decry the genocidal ethnic cleansing in progress.
The truth of your observation that Israel's campaign is not at all about protecting Israelis has been made abundantly clear. It is clear that it is about wiping clean the land of Gaza, to provide for yet further expansions, control over certain resources and greater regional dominion- all inherent objectives of Zionism. And it is infuriating that enablers - in Europe and the U.S. deliberately conflate opposition to it as "anti-semitic"; specifically, a hatred of Jews. As many Jews of conscience, from Rabbis to survivors of the Nazi holocaust point out, that rabidly right-wing government does NOT represent them or Judaism. It is quite the opposite. See, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtMV2i8-8 .
At any rate, I would not be surprised, somewhere down the road, that Mossad itself, perhaps with an agent provocateur, had helped plan the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, in order to give the IDF the cover needed to accelerate its otherwise slow-steady expansion project. There is no evidence to this, yet- I'm just engaging in admittedly loose speculation. Yet we do know that Israel itself helped create Hamas and put it in the driver's seat. We know that Israeli intelligence had warned the government that attacks were planned- even giving the details thereof; and that those reporting were told to ignore them. And we know, from what has since transpired, that Israel clearly intended to clear Gaza and possibly beyond, for re-colonization. And we know that Israel didn't really care too much about hostages after all; engaging in what some are calling a Hannibal-like killing of a significant number.
So my speculation here may not be all that wild after all.
You are on the money Roger.
I am not a conspiracy theorist - 9/11 was an inside job....pppppfft!
But a lot of powerless people, like you, me, and all our fellow BV commenters, and thinking people all over the World have long know what the plan is.
Israel clearly intends to clear Gaza and beyond, for re-colonization by only Jews.
And the US is letting it happen. Not only "letting" it, but facilitating it.
The only Nation in the World who could easily stop this tomorrow - refuses to do so!
w/ definitude, roger hoffmann; it is the only scenario that makes sense... eminent sense. one is an arenicolous, nescient, low-grade moron to assume or wish to embrace any other narrative than the one you elucidate w/ such clarity. myth-making is what too many dim-witted americans live for; they gorge themselves to adipose-brained obesity on their feckless fantasies.
Well, Jeanie, even though my speculated scenario is certainly plausible, I won't jump to that conclusion. Nor would I want to lead anyone to believe it to be true... beliefs being all too readily embraced by far too many, these days.
Oct 1973, I was a Lt. in a support section within a C-141 wing.
We were about 6 months since we flew our C-141 to sustain combat in Vietnam, we were making up for hard flying and delayed maintenance.
Israeli "difficulties" spurred the US to supply Israel with a number of newest precision guided munitions. Many were designed for but rarely used for Vietnam hard targets.
The munitions delivered by the C-5's and C-141 made a big difference in destroying tanks who had been operating with abandon because the Israeli AF had been 'reduced'.....
Today the USAF C-17's are delivering guidance kits for iron bombs and other precision weapons to thump the rubble in urban sectors of Gaza.
Only Nixon could 'go to china', make peace in Vietnam (3 years late!!), and save Israel.
Israel was a predatory state back in 1973 and it has remained so ever since. The only difference between now and 50 years ago is that 1) Over the years Israel was able to amass an enormous arsenal of armaments and materiel thanks to US largesse, so that the balance of power has shifted dramatically in the region in Israel's favor. Of course, also lurking in the background is Israel's significant nuclear arsenal; and 2) the Arab countries in the region have completely abandoned the Palestinians, since the leaders in the countries view Hamas as a threat to their rule. As a result of these two factors, the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians goes on without end. The US, the parent predatory state, gladly gives Israel cover at the UN and ships weapons without hesitation to facilitate the slaughter. We are witnessing crimes that are unspeakable. yet according to the US media outlets any criticism of such crimes is proof of anti-semitism. It's time again to dust off my copy of Orwell's 1984.
what the Nazis did to the jews- herded them into ghettos than into gas chambers and mass graves;
Isreal is doing to the Palestinian peoples- herding them into ghettos and keeping them their as their captives than instead of gas they use 5000 lbs bombs and bury them in mass graves of concrete rubble.....
the usa was on the right side of history in one of these. you pick my brothers and sisters
Bill please, quit with this.... "Forces like Hamas.....have the capability to launch terrorist attacks"!
For goodness sake!
These young Hamas men are fighting for their freedom and dignity from 75-years of cruel oppressor.
Palestinians tried a peaceful protest against Israel. Unarmed - they were gunned down by Israeli snipers.
Ray knows the details of this better than I. In 2018.
"Amnesty International said about that protest, “We are witnessing an abhorrent violation of Int law and human rights. 38-confirmed dead, including children/minors, with close to 2,000 people injured in Gaza. Many injured to the head and chest. Over 500 injured with live ammunition. This horror must end now.” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, tweeted, “Those responsible for outrageous human rights violations must be held to account. The int’l community needs to ensure justice for victims.”
The Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, live ammunition, and artillery shells at the unarmed protesters.
-
Oct 7 was not a bunch of "terrorists"!
They were a brave organized group of young freedom fighters exercising the ONLY option left to them. Far removed from "terrorists". That would be the IDF.
They used the only thing Israel understands - killing and violence.
Quit labeling Hamas as "terrorists" please. You have done this before!
You are free to call them freedom fighters if you wish, Dennis.
Without rendering a value judgment, I see Hamas as using traditional tactics of the terrorist. And I see Israel replying in an exponentially worse and far more destructive way.
What I seek to avoid is cartoonish descriptions of either side as "good" or "evil." What I can say, without reservation, is that Palestinian innocents are suffering and dying in the tens of thousands, and if this war continues, they may suffer and die in the millions. And that would indeed be evil.
Fair enough Bill,
However, I do NOT see Hamas as using traditional tactics of the terrorist.
No more than any other invading military, or paramilitary, or the CIA guerrilla army in the Bay of Pigs for example eh?
Why use the label for these desperate young Palestinian men eh? Don't you agree that they have the moral high ground here? How can they be "terrorists" for chrissake? Apart from their oppressors, who the hell are they terrorizing? No terrorist ever released their hostages? They chopped their heads off! Hamas's released hostages were smiling, shaking the hands of the capturers, and reporting they were treated respectively, kept in good health, and respected. The tactics of terrorists eh Bill? GMAFB!
Is a prisoner, serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit, by killing his jailer to escape - a "terrorist"? Hell no!
Watching Al Jazeera TV this morning is truly sick making.
And the psychopath Netanyahu saying Hamas has two options: Surrender or die!
As if the IDF is "winning"! They are not.
"Netanyahu is more likely to fall than Gaza"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV1M6c9k8us
"Israel-Hamas war: Ex-Israeli soldier says this government can't defeat Hamas."
This young Israeli soldier gives everyone the obvious answer to this conflict.
Knowing how right this IDF soldier is, and how ignored he will be, is heartbreaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fPtN4hVlFA&t=1s
The sooner Netanyahu meets the same fate as Mussolini - the better it will be for EVERYBODY. And that freak Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. His war plan - drop 2,000lb bombs on hospitals and refugee camps. On a nation that has zero air defense! There is not even a place in hell bad enough for what this animal of a man deserves.
And the actions of the POTUS where I lived for 41-years, and where my kids live - is just shocking and unconscionable. I am ashamed when NZ people hear my American accent. "It is clear that the Biden regime’s amoral support for Israelis’ bloodlust in Gaza is destabilizing America and hastening the collapse from within that this nation has feared since it declared itself the United States." - Patrick Lawrence.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/12/patrick-lawrence-gaza-confronting-power/
And watching Genocide Joe with the corrupt Zelensky* in a WA DC Press Conference as I type here just makes one want to scream - or worse. Give this 75-year-old man an AK-47 and I will go and kill these two motherfuckers. And that Jew Victoria Newland, Antony Blinken, John Kirby, Loyd Austin and Jake Sullivan. And the ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker Rishi Sunak, the Limey Yank arse licker! Sorry for the language.
*Ukraine’s President Zelensky Accused of Embezzling Western Aid Money | Vantage with Palki Sharma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgT0_Wv6N8o
Thanks Ray.
Have you, (and Bill), read Patrick Lawrences blog on ConsortiumNews today?
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/12/patrick-lawrence-gaza-confronting-power/
"Language, an important cultural artifact, becomes a contentious question in this context. If language arises from the community that comes to speak it, the state determines to control and manipulate language so as to enlist communities in the state’s cause, the cause of nationalism and power."
Think about it! Powerful analysis - and why it is extremely important not to label Hamas as "terrorists".
Take care.
Yes, language is very important. The Hamas attacks of October 7th on civilians, the kidnappings and holding of hostages: if you wish to call these the acts of "freedom fighters," so be it.
I can denounce terror as a weapon by Hamas while recognizing why they chose to do what they did. I can also denounce Israel for its war of conquest, which is on a scale far worse than what Hamas did.
If you want to praise Hamas for the alleged purity of its motives and actions, that's your choice. Recognize, however, that there are those who are praising Israel for the purity of its actions in "defending" themselves.
Bill, nobody wants to "choose" to "praise" Hamas for the "purity" of their actions!
For goodness sake. There's that language thing again!
Using language to imply that people are blowing off the actions of the Freedom Fighters on Oct 7 as not being vile. Obviously, they were vile.
But like an injured, cornered wild animal their actions were inevitable. Lashing out, fighting back, mirroring the ferocity and actions perpetrated on them by their attackers for years. Shooting unarmed civilians and taking hostages in the same way the IDF did in all the other "mowing the grass" operations of recent decades.
Those that want to compare Hama's 1-day of atrocity, to Israel's, what is it 56-days now, of genocide and massive property destruction, are sick folks. Israels purity of action in "defending" itself is unarguably indefensible by any criteria, using any language.
And BTW, as a war scholar, isn't it correct that taking prisoners (hostages) is a part of fair warfare as long as you do them no harm in captivity? Hamas's few well treated hostages were hardly "terrorism" on the scale of Israel holding 1,000's of Palestinians, many kids, in jail for years without charge and treating them abysmally. To compare Hamas's treatment of its hostages - to the kids released from Israel prisons, incarcerated for throwing stones, with broken bones and horror stories of the way they were treated. Come on!
For me the scales of "terrorism" are way tilted to the Israeli side.
Take care Bill.
agree perfervidly, dennis; when i came to that same line astore wrote i choked and nearly gagged-up my breakfast. shame on you bill for colluding w/ the zionist/US rhetoric by perpetuating such mendacity. naming hamas as 'terrorists' is inflammatory... a fulsome form of fabrication and market-driven propaganda. i was w/ many hamas members this year during my 3-months as a volunteer teacher in the west bank's palestinian refugee camps, and i can guarantee unequivocally, w/ unalloyed certitude, that these young boys, girls, and men are precisely as dennis proclaims, FREEDOM FIGHTERS, not terrorists.
As I said, if you wish to call Hamas "freedom fighters," that's fine with me. I'm not going to attack you for it or lose my breakfast over it.
Well put, Bill. The Israelis are using the horrific October 7th attack as a perfect to push the Gazans into the desert or the sea and hope that the rest of the world will take care of whoever is left. Eliminating Hamas is a smokescreen for the removal of Palestinians from their land that has been going on since 1947. If you have any doubts about this, please read respected Israel historian Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" or listen to one of the recent interviews with him on YouTube.
if any of you BV-ers `can still sleep at night or swallow a morsel of food during the day, you are in a better, less bitter, less knotted, less emetic, more salubrious state than i am in… gagging and drowning in a vertiginous maelstrom of near insanity over the israeli-zionist/US murder machines blasting across the skies of gaza and the west bank, filling the air w/ their instruments of death, dropping their bombs on helpless palestinian children huddled in rat-infested sewers trying to escape the cacophony of their oppressors’ weapons-of-slaughter that are so loud the children's screams of terror cannot be heard, knowing there is nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide, no way to survive, painfully enduring all the maimed bodies and shattered limbs around them, knowing they are next, that it’s a matter of mere minutes before they too will be just another statistic in this mindless, benumbing feast of total destruction... of the lives they once knew. of life altogether.
and who are these demented murderers of these profoundly poignant child-deaths, the total destruction of their young lives? allow me to remind you: the putative acolytes of the judeo-christian god… the god of compassion, of love and beneficence for children, of love for one’s neighbour, of omniscience, of omnipotence, of divine perfection. where is that all-knowing god, protector of children? if he still resides in the judeo-christian ambit of worshippers, he is the most cruel, demonic delusion ever contrived by a vicious cabal of cruel, demonic human acolytes, epigones, and myrmidons. their god is as demented as they are.
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6020/Over-10,000-infants-and-children-killed-in-Israel%E2%80%99s-Gaza-genocide,-hundreds-of-whom-are-trapped-beneath-debris#:~:text=Geneva%20%2D%20Israel%20has%20killed%20more,in%20a%20statement%20issued%20Saturday.
... wars only prove this world we've-created are-defending remains a-terrible-place
... not-seeing-this stopping-this makes us not-worthy-of-greatness
you need not "jump to any conclusions" rh; it is as close to the actual, factual 'mis-en-scène' as anyone w/ a nano-mole of cortical furniture could possibly conclude and narrate to the hoi polloi... particularly one like myself who has had an extensive background among palestinians and their freedom fighters, reaching back to the 1st intifahdah in 1988 when we worked in the hashemite kingdom of jordan. it is well-known that hamas was inchoately funded w/ lucre from the israeli govt. and that their spy 'services' are the most sophisticated on the planet.
You're welcome. They are banned in Israel. I learned about them when their journalists were targeted and killed by an Israeli missile. Bright young people who were broadcasting from South Lebanon. I never thought I'd be getting news through Instagram but that is how I discovered Al Mayadeen.
Nothing is quite so ruthless as a people who feel they have been wronged
My belief has long been that the aftermath of the 1973 war was the best opportunity to have made regional peace. The Arab states saw it as a kind of moral victory, with their pride lost in 1967 restored somewhat. At the same time they hadn’t actually recovered any territory. Israel survived, “won” the war, but was shaken out of their post-1967 illusion of invulnerability. Ultimately I think the record shows it was Israel that refused to make a deal at that time. Treaties with some individual states eventually followed, of course, starting with Egypt, but the window to fundamentally begin a new era of co-existence closed (if it was ever really open).
In a way, my view of post-1973 compared to today is the inverse of Bill Astore’s. Then, despite some dicey moments at the beginning of the war, Israel looked and felt strategically secure. Now, despite the damage they are inflicting on Gaza, their long-term future seems bleak to nonexistent.
Accordingly, I don’t see Israel as “being driven by a desire for conquest” here. I think those ambitions are focused on the West Bank (and in fact, Israel seems to be using the attention being paid to Gaza to create some of new facts on the ground in the West Bank relatively unnoticed). Rather, (and the similarity to 9/11 is strong here) I see Israel as having fallen into a trap of Hamas’s making by overreacting to what (as Bill correctly notes) was an upsetting but not strategic level of threat from Gaza manifested on Oct. 7.
I think people sympathizing with the Palestinian side may be overestimating the military problems Israel is having short-term (because that’s how people are), but there’s an underlying weakness which all the violence Israel is unleashing hasn’t effaced.
I’m not sure where I stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict; I’ll leave that to seemingly every other person on earth, who all seem certain either one side or the other is in the right. But I do want my country, the U.S., out of it.
How can any human being with a TV set be "not sure where I stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict" kapock?
It must be terrible for you to have to share the world with people who don’t think exactly the way you think your TV is telling you to think
Al Jazeera TV is not the only place I get my information from kapock.
My TV does not determine the way I think my friend.
The bloom has faded from the Ukrainian rose, Ray. That conflict has gone on too long without the hope of victory for the little guy. No light at the end of the tunnel. So, the US (literally) loads up on the short-odds favorite. The Administration and The Pentagon love winners, even if they prove to be vile and despicable in the process. A win's a win.
We have become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Yet our unconsenting voices are not listened to.
They don't need our input. They just need our consent. Actually they don't even need that.
I think so, the access of social media, citizen journalists in Gaza and outlets like Al Mayadeen in Lebanon are showing the world what is really happening. Days before anything is shown in MSM - if at all.
Al Mayadeen. Interesting site. Thanks for the reference.
McConnell is Schumer's right hand man
I hope the US still has a large supply of 155mm and 105mm shells in "war stocks".
The supplies sent to Ukraine are mostly taken from "war stocks". In the case of Ukraine the stocks are more important to US missions, one of which could be IDF.