“Hamas is the enemy not only of Jews, but of the Palestinians themselves. Israel hoped that when Gaza was evacuated it would become an economic powerhouse. Had that happened, many Israelis would have been prepared to withdraw from most of the West Bank. The purpose of Zionism, after all, was to provide a homeland for Jews, not to rule over another people. But Gaza chose a different path, electing Hamas in 2006; and when, in 2017, an Israeli minister said he would help Gaza economically if it renounced terror, Mahmoud al-zahar, a Hamas co-founder, said that if Gaza had wanted to be like Singapore, it would have done so already.”
– Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government, King’s College, London. (Item in Daily Telegraph behind the paywall.) The professor delivers a succinct summation of the moral depravity of Hamas, and by those who, through evasion of the facts, seek to excuse its actions. As an aside, there is another reason that the writer doesn’t spell out for why Hamas will not renounce terror: it is in many ways like the Mafia, or what Sinn Fein/IRA was and became: a gangster group that enjoys the trappings of power, including the money (as shown by how some of its political leaders reside in comfort, hundreds of miles away, in Qatar, etc).
There is a contradiction in what the Professor is saying – he admits that the Islamic population voted for Hamas, but then says that Hamas is their enemy.
The school text books in the “West Bank”, under the control of the “Palestinian Authority” NOT Hamas, also teach that the Jews should be driven into the sea – the “we accept Israel’s right to exist” claims from various figures in positions of authority are obvious lies, that only the must self deluded person could believe.
And note the avoidance of such words as “Islam”, “Islamic” and “Muslim” (instead we get the word “Palestinian” – a word that became fashionable in the 1960s – YES there are Christian Arabs, but the number of them in the Gaza Salient, or in the “West Bank” is very small) the refusal to accept that the conflict is rooted in Islamic theology, in the teachings and personal example of Muhammed.
Muhammed made claims about the whole world – not just “the land between the river and the sea” (indeed Muhammed never said anything about a “land between the river and the sea”) the Islamic claim on the lands of Western Europe is just as sound, or just as unsound, as the Islamic claim to a “land between the river and the sea” that the, mostly NON Muslim students in Western nations chant. The passion of the NON Muslim “Woke” students to murder millions of Jews (which is what “the river to the sea” means) is exceeded only by their passion to murder babies and sex change children – both of which Islam condemns, and rightly so. If Islam was in a position of power these “Woke” students in the West who consider themselves its friends would be punished for their support of abortion and sex changes for children. The forces of Islam privately despise their “friends” in the West – and, if in a position of power (due to demographic changes over time) would wipe out “Queers for Palestine” (Muhammed said, at least according to a hadith, “kill the one who does it, and kill the one to whom it is done” in relation to male homosexual acts) and all the other “Woke” groups.
Not acting on the commands of God is what Muslims criticised Jews for – “raise your hand” (a common Islamic cry) was not a request to surrender – it was a criticism of the Jewish practice of placing one’s hand over certain passages in scripture (for example about killing women for adultery) whilst reading allowed – to the Muslims this was hypocritical, if something was in scripture it should not be covered up (literally covered up – by having one’s hand over the passage) it should be acted upon.
“Paul it is illegal in Britain to write honestly about these matters”
Perhaps that is so – but then why write anything at all? If one can not be honest is it not better to be silent?
Last point – much of the “West Bank” is closer to the Mediterranean Sea than the Jordan River – if it was “given independence” Israel could, by an attack, be cut in two in a matter of hours.
The Professor must know this – he must have seen a map.
There is no contradiction. I voted for Bojo in the last election so that Brexit would (finally) be ‘done’.
The result is that he changed and is now my enemy
It browns me off to see various pundits in the West attempt to analyse the Israel – Palestine question. They don’t even understand their own countries, let alone this area.
Why anyone gives democratic credence to Hamas on the strength of an election victory to a four year term in 2005 is beyond me.
Well, it is in keeping with general Arab/Islamic election protocols… One man, one vote, one time.
It wasn’t like the Palestinians had a real option. Who were the two biggest parties? Hamas and Fatah. What’s the real difference between Hamas and Fatah? Exactly. It’s like what’s the difference between the Democrats and Republicans? The Dems run towards Communism while the Republicans are strolling towards it. Even the next two smaller parties were basically Hamas and Fatah lite. Do any of those parties really have a plan for Gaza beyond “destroy Israel”? A plan for economic growth or developing infrastructure or doing any of those things governments do?
There’s no contradiction that the Palestinians voted for Hamas and that Hamas is their enemy.
If the Gaza Arabs wanted options besides Hamas, they’d have them.
The problem with the way you frame it is that you’ve removed all agency and responsibility from the people who a.) voted for these homicidal maniacs, and b.) support them in their efforts.
If Gaza Arab mothers told their sons not to join Hamas and kill Jews, instead of celebrating them? We’d have a different situation. It’s about time you and everyone else accepts that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah are the true expressions of Arab will, and respond accordingly.
Spend some time on MEMRI; digest the fact that these Arabs do not think like you do, and have spent decades inculcating their values and mores into their children, who’re not like the ones living on your block with you. They’ll gladly kill you; the games they play in their UN-sponsored schools that you pay for are all about killing Jews and other infidels.
Everyone looks at the situation in Gaza and projects their own values onto it all: “Gee, I’d hate for that to be me and my family…”, while missing that the actual Gazan Arabs do not think like that, at all. They’re gleeful when they’re “martyred” for the cause; they love the idea of their families getting killed in an Israeli airstrike on a missile launch site, because that then becomes yet another weapon in their arsenal of hatred.
You have to start out from the premise that these are not your fellows, other people who think just like you do. They’re that most alien of things: Humans that do not comport with your values, your expectations, or your ideas of what is “civilized”. Sooner you recognize that, the sooner you will be able to process these things according to reality.
They really do mean all those nasty things they say to each other in Arabic on MEMRI; that’s not just posturing, that’s reality. We saw Israel’s future under a Hamas or Hezbollah victory there in the desert outside of Gaza. Only it will be far, far worse, and it will be broadcast in living color on international television, have no doubt. The Arabs in Gaza are proud of what they did, just like ISIS was. Accept that, and learn to recognize that they are not “just like you…” Because, they really are not. Not unless you’re a psychopath.
I don’t think it’s as simple as “if the Gazans wanted peace, they’d have it” any more than “if the American people wanted no corruption in DC they’d have it” when the only choices are douchebag and turd sandwich to elect when both the douchebag and turd sandwich both have the same basic objective. Neither Hamas nor Fatah care about Gazans any more than the DNC or GOP care about Americans, but those are our only choices on election day.
Paul:
I see no contradiction there: people do vote for their enemies, more often than they realize.
The working class often voted for Leninists.
American Jews and Black Americans mostly vote for Democrats.
To put it another way: turkeys sometimes do vote for Christmas; and chicken sometimes vote for KFC.
John M and Snorri.
Those people in the Gaza Salient who do not support Hamas support Islamic Jihad or Fatah (the “Palestinian Authority”) – all of these groups (including the PA – check its school text books and everything else it does) want the Jews eliminated and want Islam to dominate the world – and why should they not?
At least the followers of Islam believe in their civilisation, their culture – the education system of the Western world (and the people it produces to dominate the institutions – public and private) have nothing but hatred and contempt for Western civilisation, for example the 100 thousand Islamic students in the United States are not converted to Western civilisation – how could they be in universities that are dominated by “Woke” hatred of Western civilisation.
The Professor, like the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the “President of the United States”, or rather the people who control the unelected puppet Mr Joseph Biden, is trying to draw a distinction between “the terrorists” and “the vast majority of good people”.
In short the West has learned nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq (in Iraq and many other Islamic lands the people are out on the streets denouncing the Americans – who are throwing money at the general area, in the deluded belief that giving them food and so on will make them friends).
Indeed Mr Biden, reading the lines written for him, has announced that the American taxpayers will continue to fund BOTH sides in this war – with another 100 million Dollars of “humanitarian aid” to the “Palestinians”. And, we are told, the Prime Minister of Israel has agreed that the Islamic population is to stay-in-place (and will continue to increase).
So there appears to be little long hope for Israel – or, in due course, for much of Europe (including Poland now – if Donald Tusk proves to be a faithful servant of the International Community, and most Polish voters refused to vote in the immigration referendum, as policy is for the international authorities and Partner Corporations to decide – serfs, indeed willing serfs, should not express an opinion on any important matters of policy – at least so they have been taught by the international media and social media Corporations).
There is little point in writing much more – there may be brilliant tactical victories, lots of won battles, but the long term war seems lost.
If there is hope that the West will regain the-will-to-survive, I do not see it. After all our true enemy is NOT Islam or any other external opponent – our true enemy is the decline of Western civilisation itself, the loss of belief in its principles.
Steven R – as you know American elections are now, post Covid, rigged – by such things as a tidal wave of fake “mail-in ballots” and voting machines which “malfunction” on election day (Arizona 2022).
Indeed it is actually good that American elections are rigged, for if I truly believed that 81 million Americans voted for a supporter of such things as sex changes for eight year old children (Mr Biden – televised “Town Hall” 2020) I would also have to believe that the United States deserved to be destroyed by fire.
I do NOT believe that most people are evil, although the establishment (including Wall Street) are evil. The elections, in some States, are fake.
As for Islamic populations in the Middle East (and Islamic populations in the West)- they tend to support people who support Islamic thinking, the teachings and actions of Muhammed. And it is logical for them to do so – what alternative is presented to them, the half baked drivel of Frankfurt School Marxism that dominates Western institutions?
Even Western religious leaders vomit the same “Woke” nonsense as the Western political and Corporate leaders – it inspires contempt in the Islamic world (among the people – not “a handful of terrorists”), and rightly so.
Although morally problematic Muhammed was a great man – Herbert Marcuse was NOT.
A couple of things… I think @Stephen R makes a great point. Here we are in Britain, the US and AusNz telling the Palestines that they need to elect better leaders. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Second, if I haven’t been clear on this, I think what Hamas did was an atrocity of the worst kind. The thing that surprised me most about that hospital getting blown up was not that Hamas did it, but that they did it by accident. Does anyone doubt that they’d blow up a hospital and kill their own people just for the TV pictures? I sure don’t. I mean how kind of them to give their children the opportunity to be martyrs for Allah, right?
However, I have been thinking about the Israeli role in this, and it all seems a bit fishy to me. Israel is a tiny country, what, about the size of Cornwall and Devon put together. It is also a fortress; it is not like they don’t expect to be attacked. So what the hell happened? How could it possibly take them six hours to respond. FFS the IDF could practically walk there in that time. Can you imagine if the French invaded St Ives? The ships from Portsmouth would have been there in an hour, the helicopters from RNAS Culdrose in twenty minutes. And, last I checked, Britain wasn’t expecting a French Invasion, not since Prince Harry sorted them out anyway. (The other Prince Harry — the good one.)
Shin Bet are widely considered one of the premier intelligence agencies in the world. What the hell happened there? What, was an invasion by Hamas a surprise? Did they think that Hamas had become a friendly ally? Perhaps they had been lulled into a false sense of security by Iron Dome. But even with that, six hours? How is that possible.
How could they have failed so badly? Of course Hamas attacking and getting a jump on them — for sure I understand that. It was the utter failure, the utter incompetence, the unfathomable delay in response that I don’t understand. I’m not sure, for example, what the head of the IDF and Shin Bet haven’t been taken out back and shot… that is what a failure of this magnitude would call for in most wars.
I have always liked Netanyahu, but it strikes me how silly that is. I don’t really know much about Israel politics, but surely he, like all politicians world wide, is just as scummy and corrupt as them all. Is it ridiculously conspiratorial to suggest that all the political unrest in Israel might have made someone think that a little attack might distract the mind, unite the people? Or on the other side, that a little attack might embarrass the government? And maybe that “little attack” just got out of hand.
I mean, that is a crazy conspiracy theory, right? No way that could have happened.
I get more personal mileage out of thinking that someone in the anti-Bibi military – and there are a lot of them who oppose the judicial cleanup – slow-walked an alert, thinking it would make Bibi look bad, but not thinking it would get anywhere near as bad as it did.
Anyone expecting perfect performance by intelligence agencies every time something goes wrong needs to seriously reconsider their expectations.
I worked intel for the last few years I was on active duty. I’d already had a decent appreciation for the limitations thereof, but… Man. You do it, trying to analyze what is going on from the data you’re given, working within the constraints you have to work within? It’s not at all easy; I can see precisely how these things happen. You can’t catch everything being thrown at you, every time. The Israelis have to be right every time; the Arabs only have to succeed the one time. And, frankly…? With the practice they’ve gotten, it is unsurprising that they got this one huge success in. Look at 9/11: Without some lucky breaks and a lot of help from the prep work performed by Jamie Gorelick during the Clinton administration, the hijackers likely would have been caught, because the two halves of the FBI would have been able to talk to each other. That was all preventable, but everything would have had to have lined up for the US.
Perfection in intelligence isn’t attainable. Which is why I lean towards draconian responses such that anyone considering such activities and then talking about them with their friends meets with a quick and silent death at their hands, because those friends remember what happened the last time someone pulled one of these things off…
I dunno if anyone remembers the parable of “spanking the baby with an axe” that Robert Heinlein wrote about in several places, but it is pertinent here. Restraint in responding to these things is all well and good, but you have to think about the signal you’re sending with all that “civilized restraint”.
Take 9/11, for example: Provocation after provocation, and the US did nothing. Then, when the fools of al Qaeda made the fatal error of going too far, they got a decade-long nightmare of being hunted like rats. From their perspective as child-like fanatics, that was terribly unfair: They had no experience of what a pissed-off and motivated US would or could do, no appreciation for what they were screwing around with.
So, they poked the bear. Every time they’d done that before, the bear just grunted, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
From their point of view, they expected more of the same. So, when the US did what it did in the aftermath, they were shocked and dismayed. Not to mention, they felt like they’d been swindled. If the US felt that strongly about such things, why had they led the Arab/Islamicists down the primrose path by failing to respond earlier?
Soooo… You could say that we asked for 9/11 by not burning al Qaeda to the ground after Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, or any one of a half-dozen other deliberate provocations. Kenya, for example… The men running al Qaeda genuinely expected limited to no response after 9/11. Again.
So, because we failed to respond forcefully to earlier, lesser provocations, we set the stage for them to escalate until they did get the reaction that they should have gotten the first time around.
Ain’t nobody with any sense goes and screws with a Siberian tiger: Those big boys are well-known for cunning and deliberately personal retribution. That one Siberian hunter that stole a kill from one, and had the cat hunt his ass down like he was the game animal…? Yeah; that’s the way you want to deal with these things: So completely, so thoroughly, that the example you set terrifies the kiddies ten generations on. Look at the success the Mongols had conditioning the Assassins belonging to the Old Man of the Mountain: They’re so thoroughly non-violent these days that it’s ridiculous.
Which is why I say that restraint in war or anything at all closely related to war is the height of stupidity and folly.
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the US had gone after al Qaeda, hounded them around the world wherever they were, slaughtering their members, capturing them and torturing them until they gave up names, locations, and the financiers. Consider what would have happened had we taken that information to the Saudi government and said “These men, your citizens, seek to wage war on us. Either you hand them over to us for prosecution, or you do it yourself… For real, and with full penalties. If you won’t do that, then we will be at war. To the knife…”
D’ya think the Saudis who expedited all those clean passports for the hijackers and who vetted them for the State Department would have done so, with that example? Hell, most of them would have likely been picked up and dealt with during the earlier reprisals.
Sometimes, it’s a lot crueler to all concerned to behave with “restraint”, especially if you’re planning on and capable of going fully Medieval at some point later on down the line, once you’re angry enough… Set the expectations early, and make sure they understand that Medieval is always on the table.
Do that, and you won’t have so much trouble with terrorists.
Ideally, what you want is a situation wherein when some dumbass starts talking about playing terrorist, all of his peers are so thoroughly tired of the consequences that the moment said dumbass opens his mouth, they’re stuffing it full of his underwear and digging him a shallow grave out in a lonely wadi somewhere.
You want to live peacefully, and don’t want to have to kill large numbers of people? That’s what you do, early on, down on the retail level. If the Israelis had done that, the odds are pretty good that they’d not have to kill the massive numbers of Arabs they’re likely to, in order to end this.
It’s like WWI: We thought we were being “kind and humane” to the Germans, by not pursuing them back into Germany and wrecking the place. Because we didn’t do that, failed to teach the German masses that lesson of “War bad, ‘mmmkay?”, we had to fight WWII. Wherein we did do that, and you can see the results around you, there in modern Europe. Where before WWII, you had the Franco-German BS going on every couple of decades, tit-for-tat, today? The Germans have pretty much eschewed war as a hobby.
Consider how many lives would have been saved, had someone done that in 1918/19… Yeah, it would have been an ugly capstone on top of the already ridiculous number of dead in WWI, but it would have saved all those lives lost in WWII.
If the Gazans really don’t support Hamas we can donate all the piano wire and lampposts they need. The fact there is no demand for piano wire is enough proof that the Gazans support Hamas and Hamas’ aims and actions.
“ Hamas is the enemy not only of Jews, but of the Palestinians themselves.”
Of course what he means is that Hamas acts deeply to the best interests of the Palestinians, as he perceives those interests. And by our Western standards of values he is correct.
However, he says this to garner sympathy for the Palestinians and to absolve them of blame for Hamas’ actions, to claim that they as well as the Israeli Jews are equally victims of Hamas. This is not justified. Hamas may act contrary to the interests of Palestinians as well perceive those interests, but this is not as THEY perceive them. Hamas acts with their approval and support, and therefore they deserve neither sympathy nor absolution.
Muslims tend to support people who support Islam – the teachings and personal example (deeds – actions) of Muhammed.
It does not matter if an organisation is called “Hamas” or some other name. The teachings and life (deeds – actions) of Muhammed are not difficult to find out, they have never been a secret. The Western establishment are just lying (yes lying) when they pretend that Muhammed behaved like Buddha or Jesus or taught the sort of things that they taught. The lies of the Western establishment can only be maintained by fear of PUNISHMENT – if a person tells the truth, about Islam, or Covid, or C02, or many other things – they are punished.
As a presenter on “right wing” Talk TV just said – “Freedom of Speech means you are not arrested – it does not mean there are no consequences”, firstly people in the United Kingdom ARE arrested for what they say, but even if the lady was correct what she is really saying is “you can have Freedom of Speech – as long as you are prepared to live in a cardboard box on the street, begging for food – no job, no financial services, and so on”.
But ordinary Westerners are also to blame – not just the elite. For example, in Poland there was just a chance to vote against the mass immigration ordered by the International Community, and most people did NOT vote – they were told (more politely than I will put it – but this was the message) that ordinary people have no right to decide such matters, that important matters are to be decided by the international authorities and Partner Corporations.
And most voters went along with that – they turned out to vote in the general election, putting Donald Tusk (faithful servant of the International Community) into office, but most people did NOT vote in the referendum – as they were told “the question is biased” really “important matters are not for ordinary people to decide – your role, as serfs, is to obey the international authorities and Partner Corporations”.
And most people went along with that.
The followers of Islam despise Westerners – and are they really wrong to despise us?
But you aren’t owed these things and have no right to force people to provide them for you. Surely other people have a right to free of association?
1. The attack was carefully planned for a major Jewish religious holiday. Kinda like the Yom Kippur war.
2. It tool place in a remote area and the Palis targeted the local police station, a notch up in sophistication and chutzpah from previous attacks.
3. They picked a soft target – a peace-themed open-air drug rave unlikely to be attended by former combat soldiers.
4. They were effectively stopped in their tracks.
Regarding conspiracies to tarnish Bibi – both the rave attendees and the kibbutzim skewed sharply leftward. Many of those kibbutzim did not cooperate with the “right wing religious extremist” settlers, and turned a blind eye to their suffering and expulsion…
In the current atmosphere of patriotic unity, the leftie affiliation of the victims is largely unspoken but strongly felt. Especially after months during which the Leftist elite attempted a putsch against the elected government, revealing their contempt for The Rest of Us, threatening to ruin the economy and cripple the army. So there is an unexpressed sense of karma/comeuppance – and hope that they have been sobered by events.
So it’s hard to credit the idea that someone sat on info to smear Bibi. If so – it has backfired spectacularly.
My wife’s boss (TelAviv law firm) circulated a tweet for an anti Bibi petition, and was promptly opposed – by fellow liberals…. It is unlikely the Leftie putsch will revive after this.
Kirk is absolutely correct about the Muslims: they are different from us. Different ideas of good and evil, of what is noble or shameful.
And it is not really possible to accommodate them. Democracies must limit the size and influence of their Muslim population. This is not an issue of religious pluralism but of prosecuting sedition, and we should reject the civil rights frame the Left uses for this, and point out the many instances where Muslims declare their intention to disobey our laws and mores.
Oslo was promoted by secular, starry-eyed European Jews who thought the Muslims were just like them. Not religious themselves, they assumed prosperity would calm talk of Jihad and Ummah. Not raised in brutal tribal societies (although they *were* Marxists…) they assumed Arab leaders cared about the prosperity and well being of the masses…
Jews who had lived for generations in Arab lands were the most vocal opponents of Oslo’s folly.
Now we know who was correct…
Paul Marks, in his first comment: “much of the “West Bank” is closer to the Mediterranean Sea than the Jordan River – if it was “given independence” Israel could, by an attack, be cut in two in a matter of hours. The Professor must know this – he must have seen a map.”
I assume that in any event of a two-state solution, the IDF would insist on a measure of military preparedness to prevent that outcome and require disposition of forces to that end. In truth, any boundary for Israel is going to be a problem when you consider how small the country is in general. I am sure the learned prof. knows his geography. He certainly knows enough to explain the fanaticism of those who, like Hamas, aren’t remotely interested in peace and prosperity, as that quotation from the article clearly demonstrates.
Side observation: it is funny how it has become a trope of statists, and folk such as the more ardent Remainers here in the UK, to use the example of Singapore as some sort of attack line, such as “We don’t want to be Singapore by the sea or Singapore-on-Thames”. Clearly there are downsides to that jurisdiction, and we could play classical liberal ideological purity games about that place, but it is far, far superior to so many places on earth that when I hear someone making these attacks on the former UK colony, I treat them in the same way that I treat those who tend to throw the word “neoliberal” around. They are fools at best, and enemies at worst.
The Levant was conquered by Umar, companion of the prophet, in the 7th century, on a visit to Jerusalem, the rock uncovered at Temple Mount was deemed to be al-Masjid al-Aqṣā in the tradition of the night journey, retrospectively making it inline with conquests replacing previous holy sites.
Jurisprudence maintains that it is an individual obligation to help return land previously under the rule of Islam lost to the enemy, consider that Jerusalem and its lands were captured by one of the most revered righteously-guided caliphs, contains the third most holy place, and is now controlled by the most hated of enemies, does anyone really think the devout individual is going to give that a pass?
This episode is the latest in a religious war doctrine employed for the last 14 centuries and it isn’t going to stop tomorrow.
Runcie Balspune – correct, although to say any of that publicly would be punished as “Islamophobia”.
As for the Gaza Salient – the trucks filled with “humanitarian aid” (paid for by the American taxpayers and others) are rolling in right now.
I fear that the long term war is lost.
Colli – “freedom of association” in an economy dominated by Credit Money that has concentrated the economy in the hands of a few Corporate players.
The “Cantillon Effect” – but on a scale that Richard Cantillon could not have dreamed of in his worst nightmares.
Most Western nations have governments whose spending makes up for going on for half the economy, the rest of the economy being dominated by Partner Corporations – also propped up by Credit Money (just as the governments are).
True this Credit Bubble system can not last – it will collapse, but it is what we have at the moment.
Kirk,
What you said in your October 18, 2023 at 7:13 pm… Absolutely right. To the letter.
I once had a (very secular) Jewish girlfriend. Quite a long-term relationship actually. Well, she inspired hatred from some. I saw a guy who claimed to be Palestinian (he was Syrian) show her his new ring with the word “Allah” in Arabic inscribed on it. He showed it off like a knuckle-duster. It was in company and I’d never seen anything like that exact kind of menace. I was stunned and it was in otherwise polite company. So, I did nothing.
She told me that one of her room-mates at Cornell (note the recent words of a history professor there), when she found out J was Jewish, asked, “So why don’t you have horns?”. This room-mate then suggested she’d had them removed as a baby, “To pass as normal”. That’s not a million miles away from “infiltrate” is it?
It never ends does it?
Anyway, Kirk, please don’t copy and paste my brianwaves. I’d look terrible in a tin-foil hat! 😉
Ben David
1. The attack was carefully planned for a major Jewish religious holiday. Kinda like the Yom Kippur war.
2. It tool place in a remote area and the Palis targeted the local police station, a notch up in sophistication and chutzpah from previous attacks.
3. They picked a soft target – a peace-themed open-air drug rave unlikely to be attended by former combat soldiers.
4. They were effectively stopped in their tracks.
No doubt you know a great deal more about it than me. By no means am I saying that the attack was preventable — I’m not sure what could have been done about the music festival absent better intel, for example. But my astonishment is more along the lines of how long it took to respond. I read the stories of mothers holding their babies in their safe rooms why terrorists beat down the doors, stuck for four, five, six hours. Calling and texting desperately.
If such a thing happened in Des Moines, Iowa, then I guess it is understandable. Who’d have thought that might have happened. But Israel? Half the effort of the nation is in preparation for this sort of thing. Israel has a right to respond, obviously, but it has an obligation to find out what the hell went wrong. And, moreover, who was responsible for that spectacular failure. And it has an obligation (to its people of course, not to me) to do that now even as the bombs fall in Palestine.
Like I said originally, the whole thing smells fishy. But I suppose I generally agree with the statement — never ascribe to mendacity that which can be explained by stupidity.
Regarding conspiracies to tarnish Bibi…
I presume you are a fan. My experience is that politicians are almost without exception, terrible people. Perhaps he is the exception.
What I have never understood is the fact that, as a general rule, Jewish people in the west tend to be “liberal”. Not “liberal” as in “in favor of liberty” but “liberal” in the sense of “favoring the heavy hand of government.” After all, the Jewish people’s experience with “big government” has not been good. It is big government that instigates pogroms, holocausts, anti jewish laws and all the usual insults that Jewish people have suffered. Jews tend to be a tiny minority of the population and usually embarrassingly successful, so I suppose they are an easy target. But why would they favor that which has been so devastating to them in the past?
Perhaps though it is a long and old trait baked in from generations. I am reminded of the words of the prophet Samuel in the passage starting at 1Samuel 8:10. Oh that our kings only took a tithe of our wealth.
Well, yeah, that’s why I said ” . . . thinking it would make Bibi look bad, but not thinking it would get anywhere near as bad as it did.”
I was under the impression that a portion of the military was solidly against Netanyahu’s rightist bent – which is why I credited the idea in the first place. Was that impression wrong?
I’ll take your word for it that I got this wrong. I’m just curious where it goes off the rails.