We are witnessing a kind of unwitting absolution of Hamas. It seems the West’s cultural elite, drunk on woke, can only interpret this war through the warping prism of identity politics. So ‘white’ Israel is seen as the only true, conscious actor in the war, while ‘brown’ Hamas are the victims, or at least hapless players whose actions are not worth dwelling on for long. In this twisted vision, Israel acts, Palestine is acted upon – even though it was Hamas’s acting upon Israel on 7 October that started the entire thing. It’s time to stop blaming Israel for everything. It’s time to talk about Hamas’s culpability. It’s time to give evil its due.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Hamas’ culpabilitySamizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts) · Culture Wars · Middle East & Islamic · Slogans & Quotations August 24th, 2024 |
 42 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Hamas’ culpabilityLeave a Reply |
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68998654
Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist group by the UK government, claims Nadav Popplewell died of wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike more than a month ago.
This was a BBC article from 12th May which would place his death in early April because of course Hamas never lie about these things. So these six bodies had been retained, or more accurately a conscious decision was made to leave them to rot in a tunnel, for over four months.
FFS even if you intend to use the bodies as a negotiating tool you take some sort of care of them. But no, this is a culture that considers those of another religion to be worse than animals whether alive or dead. And yet they’re the ones we are being relentlessly nudged into believing are the real innocent helpless victims.
RIP Nadav Popplewell. In an age when “Cardiff man”, “Newcastle man” and “Manchester man” commit murders and other atrocities with little or no interest expressed in their actual background you were just the wrong sort of Brit. Jews don’t count.
Hamas is one group of many – both Sunni and Shia.
The Western establishment can not accept the truth about all this – because to do so would be to admit that Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle were correct, that the whole policy of mass Islamic immigration and natural increase in Western lands is a terrible blunder.
In the end there is, from the Islamic point of view, nothing particularly special about the land “between the river and the sea” – all land (everywhere) is created, according to Islam, by Allah and, therefore, should, eventually, be under the governance of the followers of Allah and his final prophet Muhammed.
Islamic, both Sunni and Shia, is theologically and politically (Islam is a legal and political philosophy as well as a religion) consistent.
The problem is NOT Islam or Muslims – the problem is the Western establishment which is, on this and many other matters, utterly delusional.
The Western establishment refuse to accept objective reality – they cling, with insane fanaticism, to their delusions (such as DEI – EDI).
If such people as Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle were alive today they would not be really listened to – the establishment would scream that they were “Nazis”, even though Churchill and De Gaulle were leading enemies of the National Socialists – and the Nazis were not enemies of Islam, indeed the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a friend and ally of Mr Hitler and Mr Himmler.
Indeed, today, Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle (and Prime Minister Gladstone – and so on) would be sent to prison – sent to prison for telling the truth. And, it must be stressed, it would not be Muslims who would send them to prison – it would be the Western establishment who would send Churchill, De Gaulle, and-so-on to prison.
Sadly the Israeli establishment cling to many of the same delusions as the rest of the Western establishment.
For example, the Israeli establishment think their enemy is a few little groups who have “distorted and twisted” a “religion of peace”.
That this is the same idea that dominated the Iraq War and the Afghan War (utter failure – defeat) escapes the establishment – including the Israeli establishment.
It used to be claimed that if the public in Western countries experienced mass attack, attitudes would change – but over a period of years thousands of English girls have been raped and forcibly prostituted by the, oddly named, “grooming gangs” – and there was no change in establishment attitudes at all, as for ordinary people – if they complain about changing demographics using strong language, they are sent to prison (sent to prison by the Western establishment – not by Muslims).
I can only agree, Paul. The warnings go back a long way, Lothrop Stoddard was writing over a century ago. White western civilization is under concerted attack on multiple fronts, e.g. net zero has nothing to do with Islam, and all western governments seem complicit in the destruction of their own nations. One can only repeat the by now rhetorical question, where do you think you will retire to, and who do you think will be paying your pensions?
@Paul Marks
Indeed, De Gaulle came to support Algerian independence because he understood that a French Republic with tens of millions of second class Muslim citizens was untenable, both morally and politically, and also that a French Republic with tens of millions of fully equal Muslim citizens would not remain French in any true sense.
The pieds noirs saw him as a traitor (and the OAS tried to kill him) but he had to choose. He chose France over l’Algérie française.
AFT – correct, and, perhaps fortunately, Charles De Gaulle did not live to see the betrayal of France by French governments in the 1970s – who invited in (yes invited in) mass immigration.
Roue le Jour – by all accounts Muhammed was a pale man as are many Muslims, Greens, Marxists, and others today – so the word “white” is not needed in front of the word civilisation.
After all such establishment stations as “France 24” are just as happy to gloat of the undermining of Japan as they are to gloat over the undermining of France.
I agree that the real problem is NOT Islam (not Muslims) – the real problem is the Western establishment who will use any means (drivel about C02, “modern monetary theory”, anything at all) in their fanatical war to destroy what is left of liberty – and replace civilisation with top-down tyranny (the sort of society Henri Saint-Simon dreamed of).
This is a struggle that goes back, at least, to Plato – but the degree of control “the other side” (for want of a better form of words) now have is without precedent.
They control almost every institution, public and private.
I wonder if that’s not simply the public line that they’ve adopted in the hope that they can keep SOME world opinion in their corner. The Israelis I know say far different things in private.
Actually Paul, they think that their real enemies are the Israeli “right-wingers”, the “settlers” and the ultraorthodox Jews. Not that they really like the Arabs, it’s just that they are more scared of their fellow Jews.
Imagine an ideology (religious or secular) as a series of concentric circles. The bullseye represents the founder, and the circles in order of progression represent the founder’s inner circle, contemporary followers, next generation of followers, and so on. The “if Christianity can reject violence, so can Islam” fantasy stems in part from a refusal to compare apples to apples – to examine the origins of each of the worldviews and their qualitative differences. Deeply religious folks seek to be loyal to their founder and the founder’s most faithful, and when they see that their faith was founded in military imperialism and that the canon is absent the notion of all humans being equally valuable to God, they tend to resist notions of equality under the law that their heroes rejected.
If true Alisa they are probably not unlike many of those who attended the Re’im Music Festival for a celebration of “friends, love and infinite freedom”.
I’m certainly not defending the ultra-orthodox crowd but FFS for an Israeli to consider them the bigger threat?
If true Alisa they are probably not unlike many of those who attended the Re’im Music Festival for a celebration of “friends, love and infinite freedom”.
I’m certainly not defending the ultra-orthodox crowd but FFS for an Israeli to consider them the bigger threat?
Mind you there are probably hundreds of thousands over here who genuinely believe the far right and the EDL are the biggest threat to our future safety.
bobby b – no I think the Israeli establishment are sincere, I wish they were not sincere.
Alisa – yes indeed, quite so. The Israeli establishment (which is really the local branch office of the international establishment) regards “right wing Jews” as the true enemy, whether they are religious Jews or not.
Everywhere the establishment is obsessed with wiping out “right wingers”.
Sometimes this leads to weird confusions.
For example, former Governor Cuomo of New York said that right wingers who believed in such things as the 2nd Amendment (but he listed a whole string of other things as well – such as being anti abortion, odd for a self described Roman Catholic to hate anti abortion people) “had no place in New York”.
Naturally enough such people started to leave – but, somewhat later, Governor Cuomo complained about the number of people leaving New York.
It did seem to occur to him that they were only doing what he had asked them to do.
Harris/Walz have an answer to this “problem” – they will make all of the United States like New York or California – so that people have no where to flee to.
In such a situation people would either have to accept Progressive doctrines – or face endless persecution.
Not a pleasant position to be in.
Lothrop Stoddard:
A highly educated man – with a total lack of common sense.
His defence of segregation was qualified by his famous (or infamous) position that schools, and so on, should be segregated but “good” – i.e. that the schools, busses, and-so-on that black people were allowed to use should be good. So, it could be argued, he was not actually defending the South as it really was – but rather some future segregated society that existed only in his head.
However, his final book discredited him even with many segregationists – Mr Stoddard visited Nazi Germany and published a book in 1940 (a book that is off copyright outside the United States – America with its demented Disney Corporation copyright laws keeps post 1920s works on copyright for almost a century) in which he seemed to take on trust everything the National Socialist (Nazi) leaders said to him – and to approve of their policies – although, officially, he claimed to be simply presenting what the Nazi policies were, rather than formally supporting them.
Even to many segregationists in the United States this was going too far – as they knew the Nazis were criminal thugs.
As far back as the 1920s Mr Stoddard had been exposed as a member of the KKK – an organisation with a long history of criminal violence (although very popular in the 1920s), but the Nazis were a step too far even for most of the former supporters of Mr Stoddard.
I must stress that I am not just repeating “mainstream” attacks on Mr Stoddard – I have taken the trouble to read his final (1940) book, which is on-line (an Australian source) and free for the access of people outside the United States.
The 1905 war between Russia and Japan was taken by many racialists, including Mr Stoddard, as proof of their theories – but it really refuted the foundation of the doctrine.
The foundation of their doctrine was that white people were genetically superior and, therefore, should be “protected” from racial interbreeding as this would lead to the downfall of “white civilisation” – and the war with Japan was taken as proof of “the racial threat”.
However the 1905 war showed that Japanese people were in no way inferior – that their courage and intelligence was at least as high as that of the white people.
As for black people (by the way Africans are genetically very diverse – a point often missed by people obsessed with skin colour) – the defeat of Italy in 1896 in Ethiopia could, absurdly, be explained away in terms of “Mediterranean” white people being inferior to “Nordic” white people – but not so the defeat of the British army by the Zulu in 1878 (battle of Isandlwana) where being outnumbered should have been made up for by firearms.
The British force lost the battle because its commander advanced the battle lines too far from the camp – meaning that supplies of ammunition broke down and there were no defences (such as overturned wagons) protecting the exposed British lines out in the open.
In short the British officers showed lack-of-intelligence – the very thing that white people were supposed to be superior in.
By the way, and I write as someone utterly opposed to “Woke” doctrine, almost a third of the British force at the Battle of Isandlwana was black – these local units should be shown more than they are, after all they died for the Crown just as much as the white soldiers from the British Isles did.
I’d like to ask Paul Marks what he means by ‘the establishment’; and this is not a rhetorical question.
I define it to myself (and said so previously in this forum) as the most powerful faction within the ruling class; and define the ruling class as the minority that holds most of the power of coercion and persuasion. So, for example Trump is of the ruling class, but not of the establishment.
But surely Netanyahu is a member of the Israeli establishment?
Snorri – I mean the people who control the institutions – public and private. Sadly President Trump did not control the government (although he did not have more influence than a British Prime Minister does over the government machine) – a danger, the danger of officials taking over, that Senator Conklin warned of even in the 19th century (so did Disraeli – indeed his opposition to the rising power of officials and “experts” is just about the only issue I agree with Disraeli on).
As for Prime Minister Netanyahu – the Israeli establishment (the local branch of the international establishment) have a fanatical hatred of him. Like President Nixon (50 years ago now) he has tried to appease the establishment by following their policies from time to time (for example the Covid lockdown and the dodgy injections) – but they hate him anyway.
One of the interesting things about Mr Stoddard’s 1940 book (Into Darkness – the title gave me hope that he understood that the Nazis were evil, but no), is how he approves of the German government practice of forcing people to divide all their trash into various types and put in different bins for recycling (no private “rag and bone” men allowed in Nazi Germany).
To English speaking readers this sort of detailed control of every aspect of life may well have seemed very strange – sadly it is now the norm in Britain and much of the United States.
By Senator Conklin – I meant Senator Roscoe Conkling, I apologise for this and other typing errors.
As for the private institutions – I mean organisations such as Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard (and the Credit Bubble banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase) – they control trillions (yes trillions) of Dollars worth of shares – and all have shares in each other.
So what is supposed to be a capitalist free market economy (the United States) is more like a “blob” – funded by Credit Money (created from nothing) and following a political agenda.
Snorri – a practical example….
Today no European Union nation may have Freedom of Speech – all must have “Hate Speech” laws, who decided that? Were there massive demonstrations in, say, Estonia with people shouting “End Free Speech now! Death to Freedom of Speech!”, did politicians win an election on a manifesto of ending Freedom of Speech?
Of course NOT, any more than Freedom of Speech in the United Kingdom was ended by popular demand or by democratic decision.
The international establishment (the “educated classes” to use an old form of words – although “indoctrinated elite” would be more accurate) decide these matters. They are both victimisers, because they seek to subject the population to tyranny, and victims – for they themselves are indoctrinated.
And Freedom of Speech (and the rest of basic liberties) may well be ended in the United States in much the same way – a couple of appointments to the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights is dead.
Another practical example is the “popularity” of K. Harris.
K. Harris was wildly, and correctly, despised – even by the left. Now according to the opinion poll companies Harris is popular – yet there have been no interviews, and no policies.
Why the change? The change happened because the establishment (in America called the “Deep State” and their Corporate allies – financed by Credit Money created from nothing) ordered it.
They control the vast majority of the media, and almost all poll companies (I can only think of one poll company they do not control) – so they can manufacture “popularity” as they wish.
Paul:
Well, Netanyahu does control one major institution: the Israeli government!
And he has enough control over it to wage war for months, against the wishes of the international establishment!
Paul Marks – August 25, 2024 at 4:40 pm:
Much is made of this. But one should not forget the hundreds of thousands of Moslems who served bravely in the Allied armies during WW II. Four of them won the Victoria Cross.
The reality, in a nutshell (though not a small nut at that).
The lefty protesters flew paragliders over Netanyahu’s house?
And they’re still alive?
Yes, and so are the pro-Hamas protesters in DC (while the J6ers are rotting in jail). It’s a brave new world out there.
Snorri Godhi – August 26, 2024 at 10:32 am:
He is not. The Israeli “establishment” consists of Ashkenazic secular Jews associated with the Labor Zionist movement (Ben-Gurion etc). Netanyahu (and his father) were Revisionist Zionists. The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrachic Jews (from North Africa and the Middle East). Though the Revisionists were also Ashkenazim, as Likud they gained enough support from Mizrachim and religious Jews to take control of the government under Begin and later Sharon and Netanyahu. But the unelected leadership of the bureaucracy and the IDF are nearly all Labor-affiliated Ashkenazim.
And Israel does not have a constitution. Its whole political structure is defined in a “Basic Law” which the legislature can alter at will by majority. There is a “Supreme Court” which has asserted power to declare laws “unconstitutional”, and which is effectively independent of any other authority. (Until 2008, the incumbent Justices effectively selected new Justices.) When Netanyahu tried to rein in the Supreme Court, there were open threats of mutiny in the IDF.
This post by Volokh Conspirator Josh Blackman goes into some detail about the power exercised by Israel’s “elite lawyers”.
What Rich said.
Blackman made an error there: the AG is not a minister (i.e. a member of a cabinet in an elected government). Rather, he is a civil servant technically appointed by that government but in practice appointed by other civil servants. All the same, the thrust of his post stands.
So what percentage of Israel really want the US’s help, and what percentage want us to go away and leave their loving neighbors alone?
(Taub made it sound like the left is a shrinking minority. Maybe not?)
The left is a shrinking minority (Taub himself is a former leftist), it’s just that they still have the grip on most of the levers of power.
Regarding help, we can use any help we can get, but not at any price – certainly not at the price of losing the war, and with the current occupants of the WH, this seems to be the only price on offer. So my educated guess would be that most would say ‘thanks, but no thanks’.
But if we were offering actual good-faith help, there are still Israelis who wouldn’t say no, I assume.
Big “if” these days. We’re trying.
Most Israelis wouldn’t say no – in fact they didn’t until recently, when they finally figured out the game “Biden” is playing.
I feel like you and I are talking past each other – maybe there was something in Taub’s article that I missed or forgot?
Chalk it up to my lack of knowledge of political realities inside Israel. Between Taub’s article and Rich Rostrom’s comment, I was surprised (and dismayed) by how much support it seems Netanyahu DOESN’T have in Israel for his “we will fight them on the beaches . . . ” resolve.
And it made me wonder if perhaps a majority of Israelis would rather forgo the fight and just try to get along. I’ve always been a strong supporter of that fight, and I’d not enjoy thinking that I have been supporting a minority (within Israel) view.
And, yes, I’m rather ashamed of Biden’s policy.
Alisa,
I apologise for questioning the accuracy of your original post.
I’m finally realising that there are no limits to the self-destructive naivety of some of my fellow Jews, whether 3,000 miles to the east or to the west of me here in the UK.
Snorri – the Prime Minister of Israel may have a bit more influence over the government than, say, a British Prime Minister does (although that is a very low bar), but to say that he “controls the Israeli government” is absurd.
As for the war – as Mr Ed pointed out in October 2023, bad decisions were made at the very start. Gradualism rather than removing the enemy (not to Egypt or anywhere else – lands from the Atlantic Ocean, from Morocco to the Pacific Ocean, to Indonesia, are supposedly NOT enough). The Israeli Prime Minister had no choice – as the institutions (including the officials in uniform who make up the HIGHER ranks of the IDF) would not have accepted any other policy – but it was still grim to see the aid trucks go in, and so on – lots of food and water, and so on, for people who tortured Jews to death and gleefully played with the corpses after the Jews died – cheering crowds we are supposed to ignore in order to keep up the pretence that the enemy is just little groups. Almost 11 months later the Israeli establishment (the local branch of the international establishment) will still not allow any rational policy – the Gaza Salient (and it is a salient – look at a map) will remain, with two million (and rising – so much for “genocide” the population is going UP, it is INCREASING) in it.
It is the same, in this aspect, in some European and American towns and cities as it is in Gaza – nothing will be done. Indeed nothing can be done – as it is “racist” and “Islamophobic” to even discuss these matters. Even discussing these matters attracts PUNISHMENT – and NOT by Muslims, but by the Western establishment.
“What about Hungary?” (or where ever) the International Community are clear – Hungary (or where ever) must accept censorship (“Hate Speech” bans) and it must accept immigration in order to create “Diversity” (i.e. the replacement of one population by another population) – the wishes of the Hungarian people do not count (no more than the British or American people count), only the orders of the establishment-elite International Community (such as the European Union) matter.
There has been a long debate over whether the international “Western” establishment elite (who control almost all institutions – public and private) are evil or insane – but it is possible that they are BOTH.
As for Russia….
A nation where when young (and badly trained) conscript soldiers come under attack (and under attack inside Russia) their officers bolt and leave them. This is not the Russia of the Battle of Borodino – where officers and men continued to fight against the French even as they bled to death from their wounds.
And a nation where the basic army rifle, the AK 12, has been a mess for years – it had a confusing two round burst option (which no one wanted) and it had a basic weakness (partly because of a design flaw – partly because key parts of it were made of a weak plastic) that caused it to break if handled roughly – war = rough handling (Russians used to know that).
We are told that the new version of the rifle, which came out in December 2023, has overcome these problems – but most soldiers do not have the new version of the rifle yet, and to go to war with a dodgy basic weapon was crazy.
Russia is presented, by some, as the great shining alternative to the vile “international community” – but I do not see much to be hopeful about in Russia under Mr Putin.
Bobby, the majority in Israel do support Bibi’s position, it’s – wait for it – the Establishment who oppose him. As to Biden, you have no reason to be ashamed, unless you voted for him.
Thanks to those who set me straight about the Israeli Establishment.
Rich Rostrom’s comment, and his link, are particularly helpful in this respect.
Alisa’s link is very helpful in illustrating the mentality of the Israeli Establishment; but at first reading it seems to me that Gadi Taub does not acknowledge that the “progressive” minority that he complains about, are the Establishment. He seems to understate the problem.
Still, Israeli Jews (and British Jews) can take comfort from the knowledge that the majority view amongst them is not auto-genocidal. From what i read (and forgive me for speaking bluntly) the same cannot be said of American Jews.
At the not-very-likely risk of projecting my own views on his: I think that to him it would be like saying that water is wet…
And you are right about American Jews, although that seems to be changing.
I don’t think that’s what happened, Paul. First, Bibi never tried to appease them, he simply always kept in mind that politics is the art of the possible. He always ignored or opposed them when he could realistically do so, without risking his long-term vision for the country.
As to COVID policies, the majority of the public in Israel, both right and (most of the) left, were genuinely scared of the virus and expected, if not outright demanded, the kind of measures ultimately implemented by the government. You have to remember that most Israelis don’t read or listen to dissenting websites or podcasts in English. Even I, as someone who regularly does so, was initially taken in by that scare and went along with most of the precautions (stopping short of taking the shots – but I could afford that due to my particular circumstances). Better safe than sorry kind of thing. I imagine that the same happened to Bibi (and I doubt he has the time to listen to podcasts, even though his English is far better than mine). FWIW.
Alisa – I stand corrected. And I remember what the situation was like in Britain – with the people in my street banging pots in support of the NHS, and most people demanding that evil dissenters (such as me) be punished. By the way the only people in my town who openly behaved in a sane manner were the MUSLIMS – they showed total contempt for the regulations, gathering in a local park as normal (the police backed off – they know better than to interfere with people who will fight back as-a-community), and going into each other’s homes as normal.
Their laws come from their religion (which is also a legal code) – and they despised the population who obeyed every insane edict from the state. I must confess I admired the Muslims – which might surprise people who consider me a vicious “Islamophobe”.
A definition of the “international establishment”.
Those organisations, government and corporate, that accept United Nations Agenda 21 (now Agenda 2030) agreed in 1992 (but only after many years of work – the “C02 is evil” stuff seems to have put the project over the line, but this world governance agenda goes back long before and is NOT really about fear of C02) – which was given financial teeth by the Paris Accords of 2015-2016.
Basically any large corporation that steps out of line will find its supply of Credit Money cut off (and Credit Money is the only sort of money now – no nation uses gold or silver as money any more, money is entirely POLITICAL now which means that supposedly capitalist enterprises are joined at the hip with the state).
Supposedly the Paris Accords of 2015-2016 were about “Climate Change” (the C02 is evil doctrine) – but it should not surprise anybody that the real agenda was world governance – which was the real agenda behind the 1992 Rio Conference.
“The issue is never the issue” as Saul Alinksy used to say – what the campaign says it is about, is not what it is about.
As for dissenters….
Look what happened to Prime Minister Lis Truss – “the minibudget crashed the economy” (not the 400 to 500 Billion Pounds of Covid spending under Johnson and Sunak – no “the minibudget of Liz Truss crashed the economy”) says “right wing” GB News today, and “Liz Truss wanted to end cancer treatment” – supposedly (according to a new book pushed by the media – including “right wing” GB News) the evil Liz Truss wanted people to die of cancer, because? errr because she was so evil (in reality cancer screening was stopped under the Covid lockdowns, nothing to do with Liz Truss, – but abortions continued as abortions, but not cancer screening, was “essential healthcare” in Britain). And the “right wing” Robert Jenrick did not push back against any of these absurd lies when he was interviewed on GB News this morning.
This is what the international establishment does to people who step out of line – it lies about them, it smears them.