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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Hamas in its own words: “We will do this again and again”.

The video embedded in this tweet from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas Political Bureau speaking on LBC Television, a Lebanese TV channel, on October 24th 2023. What follows is my transcription of the first minute of this video clip. I often do this, transcribe what was said on video into writing, to make it easier for people to search for and cite the relevant words later.

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Ghazi Hamad: “Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation and must be finished.”

“We are not ashamed to say this with full force.”

“We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.”

“The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight.”

Interviewer: “Will we have to pay a price?”

Ghazi Hamad: “Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”

“We did not want to harm civilians, but there were complications on the ground, and there was a party in the area with (civilian) population. It was a large area, across 40 kilometres… The occupation must come to an end.”

Interviewer: “Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?”

Ghazi Hamad: “No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.”

Interviewer: “Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?”

Ghazi Hamad: “Yes, of course.”

73 comments to Hamas in its own words: “We will do this again and again”.

  • lucklucky

    There are also significative videos that shows how rotten is the journalist profession. None of this makes front pages.

    Here is one where the Hamas leader says that Palestinian children, women and elderly blood is necessary to infuse the Hamas combatants with revolutionary spirit. They need to die for the combatant to have resolve.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZ2kY0dOQo

    Another where the Hamas representative says that Gaza children, women and elderly are not their responsibility. Their tunnels are for military only.
    https://twitter.com/MEMRIReports/status/1718973338486260097

  • Fraser Orr

    I think the western media are confused. A “ceasefire” means both sides put down their weapons, not just one side.

  • Steven R

    It’s almost like we should listen to people when they say, “this is what we want to do and what we are going to do,” and take them seriously. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and was laughed at, all those Commies from Lenin to Stalin to Mao kept writing their screeds and kept doing what was in them, and jagoffs like this guy say they’re going to keep up the terror attacks and don’t care about civilians on either side.

  • Runcie Balspune

    Exposing this would also expose the rationale behind Islamist doctrine, that lands once conquered and colonised by Islam must remain so, and if reconquered then it is an individual obligation to ensure the land returns to Islam.

    This is a key tenet of the religion, and scary when you think it could easily be applied to south-east Europe or Spain and Portugal.

    To think that religious extremists are going to abandon their god’s instructions and listen to the moderations of unbelievers is naive, perhaps violence is the only answer, either that or throw the unfortunate population under the bus?

  • Sigivald

    “We did not want to harm civilians”

    What, you “accidentally” killed everyone at a rave at close range, butchered and raped them on camera, etc.?

    I’m honestly surprised to see them try that ploy, rather than “none of THEM are really civilians, all are complicit” line.

  • lucklucky

    A good part of western media are the enemy. Even if some of its journalists are not aware.
    BBC translates “Death to the Jews” said by Palestinians as “Death to Israelis”… what is this?

  • john in cheshire

    I think it’s true to conclude that every piece of land that muslims inhabit and dominate was stolen from others.

  • APL

    Hamad and Netanyahu are two cheeks of the same arse.

    Runcie Balspune: To think that religious extremists are going to abandon their god’s instructions and listen to the moderations of unbelievers is naive,

    Netanyahu: Utterly destroy all that Amalek have, and spare them not; but slay both: man, woman, suckling infant, ox sheep, camel, donkey!

    Collective punishment is illegal under international law and a war crime.

    No thanks, we have no need to take sides in this dispute.

  • Fraser Orr

    @APL
    Netanyahu: Utterly destroy all that Amalek have, and spare them not; but slay both: man, woman, suckling infant, ox sheep, camel, donkey!
    when exactly did Netanyahu say that? I know where it says that in the Bible, but Netanyahu? Citation please.

    Collective punishment is illegal under international law and a war crime.
    Perhaps that is true, but collateral damage is not. It is self evident that Israel does not want Palestinian innocents to die and try what they can short of surrender to make that happen. Hamas, on the other hand REALLY want Palestinians to die, and organize things to make that inevitable. Now THAT is a war crime.

    After all, I presume you are in favor of the American Civil War to free black Americans from slavery? The siege of Atlanta was just as brutal, and the Confederates weren’t cowards hiding behind the skirts of their women and children.

    The enemy of the Palestinians is Hamas, not Israel. Without Hamas the Palestinians could have a prosperous two state solution without border restrictions. But that isn’t what Hamas wants. They want dead Palestinians for good TV coverage. Which makes sense if you realize that they are a death cult who “loves death more than you love life.”

  • lucklucky

    Collective punishment is illegal under international law and a war crime.

    If there is war there is collective punishment or you think that your civilian life can goes as in the past? The question is the extent and degree of it.

    Destruction of Coventry, firebombing Hamburg, that is other level. What about Dambusters Sqn 617 destroying Rhine dams? is that collective punishment in your nice book?

  • bobby b

    “Collective punishment is illegal under international law and a war crime.”

    But, as the history of the world demonstrates so clearly, it is the only way that state aggression is quelled. We bombed the hell out of the German and Japanese citizenry in order to stop them. “Innocent” people died. But far more “innocent” people got to live.

    Who is most responsible for fixing a culture that has gone off the rails? Other cultures? Or the people of that bad culture? I’d vote for the latter. If Gazans suffer for Hamas’ acts, but Gazans supply all of Hamas’s needs and recruitment and cheerleading, I’d say that was the closest we’re going to come to a just result. Not entirely just, but more just than all of the other possible reactions.

    There’s no perfect and beautiful solution to this situation. There are only more bad and less bad solutions. What’s happening now in Gaza is less bad.

  • Andrew Thomas Carey

    Brilliant by Fraser Orr

  • APL

    lucklucky: “Destruction of Coventry, firebombing Hamburg, that is other level. What about Dambusters Sqn 617 destroying Rhine dams? is that collective punishment in your nice book?”

    The corpus of international law was largely introduced after the second world war. As a direct attempt to avoid those sort of atrocities.

    If you wish to discard that progress, because two prehistoric sects are settling ancient scores, I disagree with you. But you also open the door wide to Islamic terror groups like ISIS to justify their own barbaric atrocities.

    bobby b: What’s happening now in Gaza is less bad.

    From your rather comfortable perspective, perhaps.

  • bobby b

    “From your rather comfortable perspective, perhaps.”

    Jeffrey Dahmer’s mom loved him. Close perspective doesn’t always give the clearest vision.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    APL, the Times of India piece says Netanyahu himself said all that stuff about slaying everyone down to suckling infants.So far as I can tell, he didn’t. He did say, “Remember what Amalek has done to you”.

  • Kirk

    APL said:

    If you wish to discard that progress, because two prehistoric sects are settling ancient scores, I disagree with you. But you also open the door wide to Islamic terror groups like ISIS to justify their own barbaric atrocities.

    Amazing. The Israelis respond to what the real primitives did to them, and they’re somehow equivalent? How’s that work, again?

    News flash for you: The Arabs in question don’t respond to civilized “Proportional Response”. If they did, they’d have long since ceased to do what they do best, which is primitive atavistic behavior such as we see occurring on October 7th. Haven’t seen that from Israelis, ever, let alone seen it celebrated and rejoiced at. The few times Israelis have done anything at all analogous, there were recriminations galore, the responsible parties were tried and imprisoned (if alive…) by the Israelis themselves.

    See any Hamas members on trial by Hamas for crimes against humanity? Hmmm?

    You won’t, ever. This is what they are: Animalistic filth I’m embarrassed to see classed as “human”. They may walk on two legs, but anyone capable of putting babies into ovens and cooking them in front of their parents? Not a member of my species, darling. Yours? Maybe. One rather hopes you personally experience something like that, yourself. It’d only be just…

    Israel’s real problem here is that they’re too civilized about this crap. If they’d done to the Arabs in Gaza what the Arabs in Gaza would do to them, first? There’d be no Arabs in Gaza. That, I am afraid, says it all: Restraint in war is utter foolishness. Especially dealing with creatures like this. They want a binary solution, Israel or Arabs. Fine; make it so. I’d term it a “no state solution” for the Arabs.

    You cannot allow this kind of crap to happen, or it will spread. All the yammering idiots saying that the Israelis ought to be restrained are missing a really major point here: You let the Arab Islamics get away with making this sort of religion-based atrocity a thing again, and they won’t be the only ones doing it. Not at all. It’s like with your dogs out in the countryside; they pack up and start going after livestock? You have to put them all down, or any random dog out there will join the pack and become a livestock killer like the rest. The behavior is copied, especially if it’s successful.

    Today, it’s the Arabs. Tomorrow? Re-energized Christianity, Hindus, and all the rest. The Moslems are benefiting right now because we’re at a point in history where a lot of religions have run out of steam, and are no longer the sort of faith that does things like the Catholics did to the Cathars. You want that back? Just keep right on enabling the Moslems; they’re rather bad at organized warfare, so in the end, the only thing they’re going to get is slaughtered like the sheep most of them are.

    This is really one of those cases where you’re being far more cruel by being “kind” than you are by allowing nature to take it’s course and see Hamas made one with the Old Man of the Mountain. End result of slaughtering Hamas and the Gaza Arabs? Less dead Muslims, over the long haul. Hamas gets away with this, the day that comes not too far in the future will see Islam utterly destroyed. And, idiots like yourself will be shedding tears, never grasping how you made it happen with all your apologia.

    Barbarity must be answered by barbarity. Sad fact of life, but that’s the way people actually work. Bullies and killers don’t stop because someone suddenly enlightens them; they get stopped because someone kills them or does to them what they’ve been doing to others.

  • bobby b

    “Some critics of Israel’s war against Gaza claimed the Prime Minister intentionally alluded to the war with Amalek to incite a genocide. Viral social media posts and multiple articles falsely reported that Netanyahu quoted the directive to eradicate the nation of Amalek: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Samuel 15:3). That distortion of the Prime Minister’s words has now gone around the world to further demonize Israel in the conflict.

    What did Netanyahu really say? He cited the war with Amalek in the context of a series of existential conflicts the Jewish people have fought for survival in the land: “Our brave soldiers who are now in Gaza, around Gaza and in the other sectors throughout the country, join a chain of heroes of Israel that has continued for over 3,000 years, from Joshua, Judah Maccabee and Bar Kochba, and up to the heroes of 1948, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and Israel’s other wars,” Netanyahu said. “Our heroic soldiers have one supreme goal: To destroy the murderous enemy and ensure our existence in our land. We have always said ‘Never again’. ‘Never again’ is now.”

    https://ffoz.org/messiah/articles/war-in-the-holy-land-2

  • lucklucky

    If you wish to discard that progress, because two prehistoric sects are settling ancient scores, I disagree with you. But you also open the door wide to Islamic terror groups like ISIS to justify their own barbaric atrocities

    Maybe you can explain nuclear weapons then…

    “But you also open the door wide to Islamic terror groups like ISIS to justify their own barbaric atrocities.”

    You seem to have a rather thin capability to see differences, i wonder if your only one tone of grey is on propose.
    Do ISIS says for civilians to evacuate, have humanitarian aid, attack places with combatants?
    It is quite interesting you protect Hamas not caring for their civilians but you count on Israel government to protect theirs to not talk about Hamas attacks.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Sorry, pressed ‘post’ too soon. Mentioning Amalek at all could be considered inflammatory, given what it says in the next few verses, but in the rest of his media appearances have he has expressed a desire to avoid civilian casualties – “No Palestinian civilian has to die. There is a safe zone”. I’ll find the video of him saying that tomorrow. He may not truly be as bothered by the prospect of enemy civilian deaths as he claims. People who have suffered a surprise attack rarely are. But he is not openly calling for genocide.

  • Kirk

    His and his people’s enemies are calling for genocide.

    There’s really only one response to that, I fear: Do unto them, before they do unto you.

    The Gazan Arabs elected Ghazi Hamad. They say he speaks for them.

    So be it. Genocide it should be.

    I’m not really sure what the hell else should happen, here. Did anyone call for restraint, against Nazi Germany? Would that have made WWII “better”, this restraint we demand from the Jews of Israel? Should we have warned the residents of Dresden to get out while they could? I think we actually did do that, on several occasions, but they never listened. They never looked at the devastation around them and did anything about their political leadership until we showed up with infantrymen and rifles, to put a serious punctuation point on the whole issue of “Nazi”.

  • Ferox

    But you also open the door wide to Islamic terror groups like ISIS to justify their own barbaric atrocities.

    Islamic terror groups find all the justification they need for their own barbaric atrocities in words written down for them 1300 years ago.

    Do you really think there are a group of murderous bastards sitting around in a cave someplace reviewing the recent rulings of international courts, saying “ah look, now we can get away with murdering babies and hijacking planes!” ?!?

  • Mr Ed

    Kirk

    Did anyone call for restraint, against Nazi Germany?

    Yes, upper middle class Lefties in England. The sorts who founded Oxfam to send Allied food to Nazi-occupied Greece in WW2 as my grandparents faced the risk of starvation for the second time due to U-boats.

    With the Nazis gone, they opposed the West having nukes but not the Soviets.

    They are still with us.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Ferox writes, “Do you really think there are a group of murderous bastards sitting around in a cave someplace reviewing the recent rulings of international courts, saying “ah look, now we can get away with murdering babies and hijacking planes!” ?!?”

    Yes, though they are sitting in hotels in Qatar rather than in a cave. Their belief that they are justified in murdering babies comes from them reading the Koran. But their belief that they can get away with murdering babies comes in great part from them reading the recent (and not so recent) rulings of international courts, UN resolutions, and other public statements of international bodies.

  • APL

    Kirk: Amazing. The Israelis respond to what the real primitives did to them, and they’re somehow equivalent? How’s that work, again?

    No, what is really amazing, is that Samizdatistas seem to think the Israeli – Palestinian conflict started on 7th Oct. News for you! It’s been ongoing since before 1945. If it isn’t Palestinians the Israelis were killing then, it was the British.

    But even, a cursory comparison of the map now with the territory allocated by the UN under resolution 181, it is clear that those Palestinian lands have been progressively annexed by Israel.

    If someone moved into my house, and told me to get out, frankly, I’d be pretty pissed about it. Actually, somebody has been inviting foreigners into my country without consulting me, and I am pretty pissed about it!

  • The Pedant-General

    FFS APL.

    “If someone moved into my house, and told me to get out, frankly, I’d be pretty pissed about it. ”

    If someone bought the shitty swamp next to your house that didn’t belong to you then drained it, cleaned it up and made it into a really nice property and you got jealous and ganged up with your mates to burn their house down and kill them all, but in the ensuing battle you and your mates got your arses handed to you and, because you were being cry-bullies and kept on trying to kill them, the battle moved across the boundary and you refused to agree terms where your neighbours would move out in return for a solemn promise from you not to keep trying to kill them, they held onto it, and if afer all that, you remain pretty pissed about it, that’s your problem, not your neighbours.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    APL writes, Samizdatistas seem to think the Israeli – Palestinian conflict started on 7th Oct. News for you! It’s been ongoing since before 1945. If it isn’t Palestinians the Israelis were killing then, it was the British.

    I knew about the King David hotel bombing. As a matter of fact, my late father-in-law was nearby when it happened, doing his national service.

    I also have a reasonable amount of knowledge of the 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. And that’s the point. They were wars. It is true that Israel (and Britain and France of course) initiated the Suez Crisis (war would be a better name) in ’56, though not without provocation, but if any of the wars of 1948, 1967 or 1973 had been won by the Arabs, Israel would not exist. That was the stated war aim of the coalition of Arab states that attacked Israel without warning on October 6th 1973, fifty years and one day before the “Al-Aqsa Flood”. The fact that the Palestinians retained any territory at all was only because the Israelis did not do to them what they would have done to Israel.

    And far from your picture of Israel inexorably annexing more and more land, Israel withdrew voluntarily from the Gaza strip in 2005, hoping to trade land for peace. How did that work out for them?

  • Paul Marks

    “Hamas will do it again” and so will the other Islamic groups – and not just in Israel. For example, a few years ago 80 people (eighty people) were killed in Nice (in France) – nothing effective has been done in response.

    Whilst the West continues to operate under the delusion that such attacks are a “misinterpretation” or “perversion” of Islam, and whilst telling the truth continues to be punished as “Islamophobia”, the world situation will continue to get worse.

    This is not really about “the land between the river and the sea” (thinly populated even in the 19th century), and it is certainly not about “Palestinians” – a word that was rarely used by Muslims before the 1960s.

    For example, the Islamic members of the American House of Representatives regard the Districts they represent as either part of the Islamic world or to be in the future part of the Islamic world. And why should they not do so? After all, according to Islam, Allah created the universe (not just a little land “between the river and the sea”), the world, therefore, belongs to the followers of Allah and his final Prophet Muhammed – if one starts from this, then the reasoning is entirely logical.

    What is not logical is the hysterical response of Western authorities (NOT Muslims) in relation to anyone who states the truth in relation to Islam – even telling the truth in the most polite way gets the response (again NOT from Muslims – but rather from the Western establishment) of hysterical screaming about “Islamophobia”.

    The Western establishment (yet again – NOT Muslims) are utterly bizarre.

    I respect Muslims, I have no respect whatever for the Western establishment. Not even such things as the utter failure of the Afghan and Iraq wars (both of which were based on the false assumption that a small group of baddies was oppressing a general population who were much the same as people in Vermont), and the large scale rape of girls in British cities and other Western countries, seems to have any impact on the thinking of the Western establishment.

  • lucklucky

    News for you! It’s been ongoing since before 1945.

    You talking about Hebron massacre of 1929 and the Mufti allegiance with Hitler? The creation of Jordanian Kingdom?

  • No, what is really amazing, is that Samizdatistas seem to think the Israeli – Palestinian conflict started on 7th Oct.

    So what? On 7th Oct, any illusion that a political settlement with Hamas was possible was strongly disabused. Frankly, given Hamas have been shooting rockets at essentially random targets that almost always hit civilian targets when they hit anything, this should not have come as a surprise to anyone.

    Israel can kinda sorta work with Fatah, but they have to literally exterminate Hamas.

  • psol

    Perry, thinking that “Israel can kinda sorta work with Fatah” is just saying “Israel can kinda sorta work with Hamas” twenty years ago.

  • Runcie Balspune

    You talking about Hebron massacre of 1929 and the Mufti allegiance with Hitler? The creation of Jordanian Kingdom?

    Or even the Arab Islamic empire invasion and colonisation in 7th century?

    Sounds ridiculous? But that is exactly what the likes of Hamas use as an excuse, they invaded and once that happens it stays invaded.

    Some might like to turn this into some sort of stolen Palestinian property argument but the reality is Hamas is enacting Islamic scripture that imperils the retaking of land to return it to Islamic rule, the original two state solution isn’t in their plans, which invalidate any arguments about post-1919 agreements.

  • Paul Marks

    APL

    Yes Islamic massacres of Jews, and Christians, go back centuries before 1945 – in the “Holy Land” and outside it. As for the massacres of Jews in the 1920s and 1930s organised by Hitler’s friend and ally the Grand Mufti – yes I am aware of them, the old rule applies never-be-unarmed. I am also aware of the one sided British immigration policy – allowing Muslims to emigrate to the land without limit (the land was once very thinly populated), but severely restricting Jewish immigration.

    There were massacres of Jews during the Frist World War – indeed if it had not been for the German General Falkenhayn the mass murder of Christians (Armenians and others) seen in other parts of the Ottoman Empire would have been seen in this area as well – Christians saying “but we are Arabs” would not have saved them.

    German paid propagandists (nothing to do with General Falkenhayn) had been going around for years telling the Islamic “street” that if they allied with Germany they would get the women of the British and French “infidels” (“what the right hand takes” and so on) – if someone said “but is not the German Emperor not also an infidel?” it would be explained that he was about to convert (or had already secretly converted) – no one told Kaiser Bill about this (or about sending “Lenin” into Russia – but that is another story). Anyway local Christians were far more convenient to kill or enslave than distant Christians in London or Paris (the forces of Islam were, back in the early 1900s, rather thin on the ground in London or Paris) – as the Armenians and other groups of Christians found out, although massacres of Christians had been going on (from time to time) for centuries – as both Winston Churchill and Prime Minister Gladstone had pointed out.

    As for Jews – every attempt to return to the land over the centuries ended in massacre. However, the largest group of people in the only town of importance in the 19th century (Jerusalem – and even that was a not a large town) were “Jews” (according to the Ottomans). Their places of worship were mostly destroyed after 1948 – by the Jordanians (old language “Trans Jordan”) who occupied the centre of Jerusalem.

    I am not sure what you mean by “Palestinian land” – as the term “Palestinian” was rarely used by Muslims – the Ottoman state owned the vast majority of the land and this was passed on to later governments. There were indeed private Muslim landowners – and there still are. That is a very small proportion of the land – the Ottoman Empire was not exactly famous for private property in land, it was well know as an area of the world what was largely waste land (desert or marsh) less developed (and less populated) than thousands of years before.

    By the way does this “Palestinian land” (if we are going to use the word “Palestinian” as a sort of code word for Islamic – there are Christian Arabs but they are very much on their way out) extend to Michigan and Minnesota – certain members of Congress think the land there should be Islamic, do you agree with them APL?

    As for Chairman Arafat and the “Palestinian Liberation Organisation” – Chairman Arafat was an Egyptian, born and raised, and the “PLO” was set up by the Soviet KGB.

    I also note, APL, that you express no sympathy at all for the Jewish populations driven out from many countries in the Middle East – where they had lived for thousands of years (in spite of massacres from time time) centuries before there was any such thing as “Islam” or “Muslims”.

  • Paul Marks

    No Perry – Israel can not, really, work with Fatah, as (for example) looking at the school textbooks the “Palestinian Authority” produce, would show you.

    Again – this is not about a particular group, be it Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Martyrs Brigade (the last one is Fatah) and it is not really about “the land between the river and the sea” either. Islam does NOT regard that land as more sacred than other land. All land, according to Islam, was created by Allah – and should be under the power of the followers of his final Prophet.

    Whilst the West persists under the mistaken ideas that this is about a particular group (say “Hamas”) or is about a particular piece of land, then the world situation will continue to get worse.

    Sadly the reaction of the Western establishment (NOT Muslims – the Western establishment) to even the most basic statements of truth, is to scream hysterically about “Islamophobia” and to demand that the person presenting basic facts to them, be punished for doing so.

    Again – I respect Muslims, if one accepts their assumptions their thinking is entirely logical. But I have no respect for the Western establishment.

  • NickM

    Kirk,
    Israel can’t win like that. Israel is already a borderline pariah state in the eyes of many (and not just Muslims) but that would be a tipping point beyond which Israel couldn’t ever recover. They’d lose whatever support they have and then it’s game-over for Israel.

    Also, you simply can’t win a “meat-grinder” war with an enemy that positively exults in it’s own losses. Especially when people in the West fall for it all. A couple of dead Gazan babies on Global TV is worth an armoured brigade.

    Anyway, Hamas can replace those loses quickly. Seen the demographics of Gaza? Not to mention the huge influx of foreign jihadis that will result.

    I really don’t know how see how Israel can win this one. Except they’ve gotta release all the footage, recordings, social media and whatever of the atrocities of October 7th and distribute it as widely as possible. Hell for the families, I know but unless people see the true horror it is way to easy for Hamas to own the narrative. I know that’s hard and lots of people will think it’s an AI fake in the same way they deny the Holocaust but it’s the only idea I have. Israel has to retake the narrative here or it won’t exist a few years down the line.

  • Clovis Sangrail

    Not wishing to add to the pile-on but, for me, the most shocking thing happening outside the ME is the number of demonstrators uttering variations of “remember Khaybar”.
    Now there’s a, barely coded, existential threat to all Jews.

  • Fraser Orr

    @Natalie Solent (Essex)
    And far from your picture of Israel inexorably annexing more and more land, Israel withdrew voluntarily from the Gaza strip in 2005, hoping to trade land for peace. How did that work out for them?

    The fact that the bargain was “land for peace”, and Gaza has not delivered on the “peace” part of the deal, doesn’t that mean Israel has the right the revoke the “land” part of the deal? I don’t think they should but the story of the Arab Israel conflict is one of Israel trying to come up with a working deal with Palestine (and the Arab world in general) and Palestine agreeing so they get something, and then immediately reneging on their promises. Can anyone think of a promise or commitment that the Palestinians have ever kept? Perhaps “we promise to sacrifice our children to destroy the zionists”. Yup, that is one promise they keep.

    You can’t negotiate with people if they are self evidently doing so in bad faith, and fool me once shame on you, fool me a thousand times shame on me seems to apply here. You also cannot negotiate peace with some group who again and again and again state they wish to utterly destroy you and are willing to die in the cause of destroying you.

    To negotiate with Hamas is utterly ridiculous. Israel (and to be clear, this is Israel’s responsibility not the USA’s) has only one choice, and they are executing it with an overabundance of caution for civilians. Hamas on the other hand, does not give a shit about Palestinian civilians. When that hospital blew up the only think that surprised me is that Hamas did it by accident rather than deliberately.

    To demand a ceasefire when one side has plainly stated they will never cease firing is either dishonesty, evil or insanity.

  • Perry, thinking that “Israel can kinda sorta work with Fatah” is just saying “Israel can kinda sorta work with Hamas” twenty years ago.

    It would be hard not to see the difference between Gaza & the West Bank (no thanks to Netanyahu). There are no easy or even obvious choices in the Middle East.

  • Paul Marks

    Perry – the difference between the Gaza Salient and the “West Bank” (much of which is closer to the sea than to the Jordan river) is that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and did not withdraw from Judea and Sumeria – if Israel had withdrawn from the “West Bank” there would be vast numbers of rockets raining down from there and endless terrorist attacks.

    “No thanks to Netanyahu” to write in such a way is to play into the hands of the intelligence services, both Israeli and American, who have been working to undermine Israeli democracy for quite some time.

    If they, the intelligence agencies (and their American establishment friends), had not been so obsessed with “getting rid of Bibi” they might have done their jobs in relation to the massive (very-large-scale) attack that was being prepared from the Gaza Salient.

    It is not just “Bibi” they want to get rid of – it is any Israeli (or any leader in any other country) who does not dance to the tune of the International Community.

    I am not a great “Bibi” fan – after all he went along the Covid stuff (just as Mr Johnson did), but he is vastly less bad than some puppet of the International Community (the American intelligence services – and so on).

  • Paul Marks

    Is there any Western country whose intelligence and security services are not a gang of establishment people committed to subverting democracy and subverting national independence?

    In the case of the United States, Director William Casey was a patriot – but he died in 1987.

    Every later CIA Director (with the exception of the serving one in 2020 – Mike Pompeo) was trotted out in 2020 to say that the evidence of the corruption of Joseph Biden and his family was “Russian disinformation”.

    They, the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence and security agencies, knew (they knew) that Mr Biden was compromised by payments from the People’s Republic of China and other sources – but they did not care, and they lied about it. Just as they did not care about the rigged election – because they care only about the agenda of the International Community and if democracy, in America, Britain, Israel (where ever) gets in the way of that agenda – then democracy has to go, so that national independence (and any prospect of individual liberty) will die.

    Damn them – damn them to Hell.

  • Paul Marks

    The intelligence and security services, such as the CIA and FBI in the United States, are corrupted – they work to subvert the very things, Constitutional government and national independence, that they were created to defend.

    Is there any Western nation where this is not so?

  • Kirk

    The poster calling themselves “APL” has a really interesting and utterly incomplete reading of history behind their ideas.

    The majority of the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank were not “indigenous” to the area before the Zionists showed up. I’ve got family that were Christian missionaries/pilgrims in the region before the Zionists really got started, and their papers make it pretty ‘effing clear that they were working in a depopulated wasteland. There’s a letter they wrote back home to their sponsors, somewhere in there, talking about how these misguided Jews from Europe were showing up with no agricultural experience, getting sold wasteland that “could never be productive” by the local Turkish authorities, and all that. Some of the land they had to be talking about is now some of the most productive agricultural land in the world…

    There were no major populations of Arabs or anyone else in the region. The primary industry was ripping off pilgrims to Jerusalem and the other Biblical landmarks; the Arabs were described as either nomadic Bedouin or severely backwards sedentary farmers who could barely feed themselves. It was the Jews working to recover their ancient homelands that pulled that which is Israel out of the wreckage that two thousand years of war and rapine by the Arabs (and others, to be honest…) had made of the place, and a lot of today’s Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank only showed up afterwards to take advantage of it. The Turkish census backs that up, along with early British Mandate documentation.

    Calling the Arabs “dispossessed victims” isn’t even a lie; it’s a complete line of BS akin to Hitler claiming he was “Aryan”, history completely made up out of the whole cloth and utter fantasy. Hell, you go look at a lot of those land deeds the Arabs produce, and they can’t get much further back than the 1890s, when the Zionists showed up and started doing modern things like recording property ownership. From what I’ve seen of contemporary accounts, the Turks were great ones for real-estate fraud, and the Jewish insistence on recording crap with documentation came in because they’d “buy” land from the local Turkish official, work their asses off restoring it, and then they’d suddenly be told “Oh, our mistake… This isn’t actually the land we sold you…”, be thrown off of it, with the land passed over to a “friend of the Turk” Arab, and Hey! Presto!!!, there you were with an Arab land deed…

    The chicanery recorded by those missionaries was pretty wide-spread; I’ve seen it in the history books about that era, written by both Jews and others.

    Saying that the Arabs have a “right” to those lands is like saying that Bankman-Fried’s parents and other beneficiaries have a right to keep the monies he transferred to them illegally, while ignoring the rights of the people who deposited the money with him. You’re looking at extensive fraud perpetrated for centuries by third parties, and going “Well, I like this bunch better than that bunch, so they’re obviously in the right…”

    I look at the care that the Arabs take of things, see what the Jews have done in Israel, and I’m thinking that the Arabs really ought to be living in camps out in the desert, riding/raping camels to their heart’s content, and doing the things they enjoy, which obviously ain’t modern civilization or agriculture. They’ve wrecked every single environment they’ve ever conquered; ever wonder how the “Fertile Crescent” got turned into a big brown swath across Eurasia…? One word: Arabs.

    Literally turned the Garden of Eden into a shithole over the course of the centuries they’ve run the place. Telling point, that… Just like with Gaza, which the Israelis left with greenhouses and all sorts of other improvements intact. Within literal months, those things had been wrecked, and the pipes dug up to make missiles out of.

    On that basis alone, I’d say the Arabs deserve what they’re getting, and shouldn’t be treated like civilized human beings. You want to behave as animals? Then, you will be treated as such.

    The word “genocide” doesn’t really apply here. Curettage? Yep, that’s it… The cutting out of diseased tissue. You’re never going to “reform” the people who voted in and celebrated Hamas; all you can do is remove them.

    As the world grows smaller and things like WMD become easier and easier to make, there’s a word for people who tolerate this sort of behavior: Suicidal. It’s like living next door to a schizophrenic who heavily arms himself while telling you he’s going to kill you, one of these days… Eventually, “one of these days” is gonna be “today”, and you’re going to either die at his hands or have to deal with him. My advice? Deal with him before he deals with you… Hamas isn’t any different; only the scale really differs, and that’s just too damn bad. I think it was Robert Heinlein that said “Don’t throw shit at people; don’t stand next to people throwing shit at other people, either…”

    October Seventh, 2023 was about as epic a shit-throwing session as you could imagine, and the foolish Arab “street” decided to celebrate it. Sad. Stupid. Now, witness “Nemesis” visited upon “Hubris”.

    I don’t celebrate it, but I fully support it. Consequence must visibly flow, or we’re going to have nothing but this crap going forward. Islam will never reform, never mature, never change. It has always been recidivist and primitive, those being the virtues it celebrates and worships. Remember that Kuwaiti female parliamentarian who advocated for sex slaves for her sons, because that would keep them out of trouble with “nice Muslim girls”…? Used the Koran, to justify such things…?

    I lost any and all empathy for Islam right there. It’s a degenerate culture, everywhere it prevails. And, as degenerates, they should be dealt with as such. You want slaves? Fine; you can be slaves yourselves, until you grow up and join modern humanity.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    It also says something about a deep dread of Western, secular society -with a Jewish twist – that this fanatic and his colleagues can’t endure the idea that anywhere in the ME is not dominated by his death cult.

    At least there’s no excuse fir not understanding what these goblins want.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Paul:

    the difference between the Gaza Salient and the “West Bank” (much of which is closer to the sea than to the Jordan river) is that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and did not withdraw from Judea and Sumeria – if Israel had withdrawn from the “West Bank” there would be vast numbers of rockets raining down from there and endless terrorist attacks.

    Please correct me if i am wrong, but my understanding is that the Gazans are mostly people who escaped from Israel (sensu stricto) when the war of independence started; while most Palestinians in the West Bank/Judea+Samaria have always been there.

    It follows that Gazans resent Israel much more than other Palestinians.

    Not that this resentment is justified in any way, but we ought to be aware of it.

  • Snorri Godhi

    No thanks to Netanyahu

    Paul interprets this as criticism of Netanyahu, but it is somewhat cryptic to me.

  • Kirk

    What’s simultaneously mind-boggling and enraging is the fact that were I to go out on the street and say the things that Hamas and its adherents are saying, as a “white male oppressor”, rephrased to as to be directed at any other group…? I’d be excoriated and run out of public life so fast that your head would spin.

    It’s like they can’t hear themselves with what they’re saying. I used to run into this crap with a lot of Eastern Europeans like the Serbs, who’d constantly whinge and whinge about how they were victims of everyone from the Turks to the British under Churchill, which they’d then turn around and use as justification for what they were wanting to do to others, whether Jewish or Bosnian Muslim. The Muslim thing I can kinda get; from the Serb perspective, the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims were all turncoat quislings who were doing the bidding of the conqueror, and that kinda made a sort of sense… But? The Jews? Dear God, how many ‘effing Jews were there in the Balkans to begin with? You’d hear the various Serbs talking, and they made it sound like they’d had their own personal Jewish oppressor assigned to them and their family, keeping them down and oppressed.

    You’d then start asking for particulars, and it would turn out that they didn’t actually even know any Jews, and that the closest they’d ever come to one was the guy over in the other village whose great-grandfather was a lapsed Jew that had married a nice Orthodox girl and who drank like a fish, while making the best slivovitz in the valley…

    The whole thing is often pathologic, and just utterly bizarre. I guarantee you that the majority of these idiots out there in the US and in England have not only never been around Jews, they’ve got no real idea why they don’t like them, other than that they’ve been told by someone that they should hate them. It’s like a bizarre game of generations-long “Telephone” where there might be some basis for someone, a long, long time ago having reason to dislike a Jew, and that just snowballed down the generations.

    Crap like this is why I hate people in general. “Why do you hate Jews…?” “No idea, really… It’s just how the crowd was rolling, see…?”

    I have to admit, there are a bunch of Israelis that I’ve met who came off as arrogant assholes, but that’s true of just about every national group. Ain’t nobody talking about genociding the French because of rude waiters in Paris…

  • Mr Ed

    Yasser Arafat, the late Chairman of the PLO, the people who brought us hijacking as a feature of everyday life, (apparently at the suggestion of the Soviets) was born in Cairo in 1929. Whilst the Duke of Wellington was born in Ireland and reputedly said when asked if he was Irish something like ‘If I had been born in a stable, would that make me a horse?‘ (which is a fair point, no one ‘chooses’ where they are born), I never quite saw an explanation for how the late Chairman was a ‘Palestinian’, albeit his father hailed from Gaza.

  • Kirk

    The Arafat question has always been there, but nobody ever bothers to ask it. Like most of the Gazan Arabs, he was actually a migrant with pretensions; there are very few people who were actually native to that region before the 1890s and the Zionist-led and financed reconstruction of the agricultural infrastructure.

    It’s a fact: The Arab (and, honestly, others down the years…) conquests destroyed the irrigation systems and denuded the countryside because the Arabs brought in all these damn goats that ate all the trees. They were more comfortable in the desert, see… So, everywhere they went, they made desert. Remember that North Africa was a granary for the Romans. The things that destroyed the fertility of that region weren’t just “climate changes”, but the destruction wrought by nomadic tribal primitives that came in after the plagues killed off the original inhabitants. Islam is what it is mostly because the rise of Islam happened to coincide with the Plagues of Justinian and other disease events; they moved in on territories that were much like North America after the Columbian Exchange brought in all the diseases that wiped out the locals. There were no locals to resist the arrival, and the new overlords mostly didn’t understand or like the old high-intensity agriculture that the previous inhabitants had practiced.

  • Kirk

    Over on PowerLine this morning is a quote from one of Saul Bellow’s books, one that I think worth bringing in, here:

    To Jerusalem and Back, pp 126-127

    What is “known” in civilized countries, what people may be assumed to “know,” is a great mystery. Recently, a survivor of Auschwitz who lives in Chicago had occasion to testify before a grand jury and was asked by the jury foreman, “Why were you sent to this prison camp? What crime did you commit?” “No crime, there was no trial.” “That can’t be a truthful answer,” said the foreman. “When people go to jail it’s because of something they’ve done. You must have had a criminal record in the old country.” When I read Sartre on the Jewish question, I am less surprise by the remoteness of this grand juror’s mind. I am, if anything, surprised at myself and at my own assumptions. A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

    No idea if this anecdote is documented and “true”, or if it’s another one of those “Just So Stories” people like to make up. It does, however, show us something about the Jewish “problem” for a lot of people who’re outside the region and essentially ignorant of the historical facts: They see what the Gazan and West Bank Arabs are doing, and they think “Well, there must be something to this thing about Zionist/Jewish crimes against their people, or they wouldn’t be making these outrageous claims…”

    This is consonant with the intractable facts of human nature, when observed amongst the “nice people”. They think everyone is like them, and since they wouldn’t lie or make baseless crimes such as the Jewish blood libel, they think that other people wouldn’t either… So, therefore, there must be something to these claims.

    Which is how so much anti-Semitism begins, I fear. It’s a game of telephone, where the “average person” hears the over-the-top ludicrous claims made, like “Jews poisoned our wells…”, and then they believe them because that sort of lie is not something that they could conceive of coming up with, let alone telling.

    This is why I’ve always instinctually distrusted “nice people, decent people…” who’ve no real idea how the world works. They’re always telling me to “…turn the other cheek…”, and that I’m wrong for hitting back at bullies. Stupid bastards don’t realize how evil people can be, or that they’re enabling actual evil with their defense of the perpetrators.

    Give me good, old-fashioned pragmatic realists, every time. They may not be “nice people”, but they have better solutions than looking away from things like October 7th.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Lionel Shriver has to this to write in the Spectator, and is something that APL might like to ponder:

    “Alas, it would be naive to expect Gazans to blame the real source of their suffering for Israel’s geopolitically imperative retaliation. But westerners should continuously bear in mind that Hamas asked for this onslaught, which the terrorists would have anticipated both in kind and in scale before cutting a single barbed wire of Israel’s border fence. Just as we don’t much sympathise with tax evaders or indiscriminate American shooters when they meet foreseeably disagreeable fates, we shouldn’t feel too torn up that Hamas assassins are reaping what they sowed.”

    “While I don’t believe in collective punishment, war is collective punishment. War is one giant infliction of collateral damage. People die who don’t deserve to. Houses collapse whose owners fiercely opposed whatever sparked the conflict. War is the bluntest of instruments, which is what makes it so awful and why, Hamas, you don’t start one when you don’t need to.”

    She also makes this point, about an entirely different topic: lockdowns.

    “While we’re at it, we could stand to turn that refrain ‘What did they think was going to happen?’ on ourselves. When we smothered whole economies for months on end to suppress a virus we were all going to catch anyway, bankrupting businesses and lulling us into idleness, what did we think was going to happen? A luxurious utopia in which we discover that all along that arduous nonsense of working for a living turns out to be superfluous, or the high-tax, high-dysfunction, high-dependency mess we’re in now?”

  • Mr Ed

    Re my earlier post, this TV movie about ‘Bomber’ Harris of the RAF contains a perfect example of the type that I am referring to, the Chaplain who goes to see Harris to complain about the conduct of the war.

  • NickM

    JP,
    Hamas wanted “collective punishment” (which this isn’t) but it is being spun that way. They are brilliant at playing the MSM like a violin. Admittedly one that wants to be played. These sort of “wars” are as much fought in the infosphere as with tanks or guns.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Mr Ed:
    IIRC the Wellington quote, asa quoted by Angus Deayton in Have I got New for You, is:
    Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.

    You should know 🙂

  • Penseivat

    Gaza has been given so many billions of dollars in aid over the years, that it could be one of the wealthiest places in the middle East, with the Palestinians enjoying a standard of living that almost everyone else in the world would envy. Unfortunately, the money was dished out to Hamas, with the result that only the heads of Hamas have profited. How many Hamas leaders are living in luxury in Qatar, with the ordinary Palestinians left in Gaza, apart from the Hamas guerrillas in the ground, living in poverty, relying on Israel, the country they wish to destroy, providing water, power, and medical services?
    Remember when that American lady was stripped, beaten, and paraded around in the back of a truck? It wasn’t Hamas who were cheering, spitting on her, and throwing human faeces on her broken body. It was the hatred filled ordinary Palestinians, and yet when Israel responds with force, those hatred filled ordinary Palestinians who start bleating that it’s not fair.
    If Hamas and Hezbollah laid down their weapons, there would be no conflict. If Israel laid down their weapons, there would be no Israel. That is the difference. Hamas has stated they will continue till Israel is destroyed. be careful what they wish for. I assume they are aware of the Samson doctrine, believed to be a policy by a nuclear powered country. Thousands of miles of a nuclear wasteland of glass will play heavily on tourism in that area.

  • APL

    Apart from allowing HAMAS through the border defences, there appears to be a high probability that the IDF may have killed a significant number of Israeli citizens on 7th October in its incontinent and indiscriminate response to the Hamas atrocity.

    It’s not just Blunenthal either, this guy presents his opinion.

    ” the Gaza division who’s head quarters were overrun, stood down …”

  • APL

    Kirk: “I’ve got family that were Christian missionaries/pilgrims in the region before the Zionists really got started, and their papers make it pretty ‘effing clear that they were working in a depopulated wasteland.”

    Honestly, I expected rather better from the denizens of Samizdata.

    Your argument Kirk, is that when the human population of the entire planet, was one quarter of it’s current estimated 8 billion, some places were sparsely populated ?

    That’s it !

    Really ?

  • lucklucky

    Are you incapable of reading APL?

  • lucklucky

    incontinent and indiscriminate response

    Where is the evidence?

  • Paul Marks

    Snorri – to a native English speaker (I am one) “no thanks to….” is an attack on the person then named, it is not cryptic, it is a common way that native English speakers attack someone.

    But there is a broader issue here – far broader than whether one likes or dislikes the Prime Minister of Israel (and I was no fan of his Covid policies).

    The central matter is as follows – is the danger just “Hamas” or is the danger much broader?

    The Western establishment, indeed even the Israeli government (although in a somewhat forced way in their case), keep insisting that the danger is just “Hamas” – I am in fundamental disagreement as I believe the danger is the teachings and personal example of Muhammed (a religious, political and military leader – of genius).

    For the Western establishment such a prospect is very scary – they are so scared that they tend to PUNISH anyone who mentions the possibility.

    I can understand why they are so scared – but, obviously, I do not agree with their policy of punishing people who try to warn them.

  • Paul Marks

    APL – yes the forces of Islam believe that the land “between the river and the sea” should be under the followers of the final prophet of Allah – Muhammed. They also believe that the entire world should be under these followers – as Allah made the world. Their position is entirely logical – if one accepts their starting assumptions. There is no fundamental difference, to the forces of Islam, between the country called “Israel” and the countries called “France” or “Britain” or whatever. There is no real moral difference to them between Tel Aviv and Rochdale or Birmingham – and, logically, they are quite correct (hence the happenings in English towns and cities that Mark Steyn, and others, have reported about for some years).

    I can not fault their logic (if one accepts their stating assumptions – their premises), and I have a great deal of respect for them.

  • Kirk

    The low-grade intellect calling itself “APL” said:

    Honestly, I expected rather better from the denizens of Samizdata.

    Your argument Kirk, is that when the human population of the entire planet, was one quarter of it’s current estimated 8 billion, some places were sparsely populated ?

    That’s it !

    Really ?

    Considering that your argument is that the land was always populated by the Arabs…? Yeah, that’s something of a refutation of your arguments, were you capable of comprehending such.

    As an obviously brainwashed cretin unable to think for themselves, you aren’t worth arguing with. The facts are the facts, and those indicate that the land which became Israel was a depopulated wasteland created primarily by Arab fecklessness and abuse of the land. They weren’t there when the Zionists moved there and purchased vacant land sold to them by the Turks.

    A fact that makes most of their claims ludicrously invalid. Also, renders you the joke that you are. Too bad.

  • Paul Marks

    lucklucky

    “incontinent and indiscriminate response” (for the slow response of the IDF – the real problem being their slowness to reinforce the very limited number of soldiers in the area – and the very limited number of soldiers in the area is itself a scandal, as well as that most Israeli civilians were UNARMED due to demented “gun control” regulations) and claims that the IDF (not the followers of Islam) murdered many of the Jews and others, is an effort to provoke anger.

    The late Murray Newton Rothbard would often use the same tactic – he would cite, as truth, German propaganda about both World Wars, or Soviet propaganda about the Cold War, or Islamic propaganda against Israel (yes he did that to), and if someone got angry with him – he would point to their anger and say that this showed that the truth was on his (Rothbard’s) side – the wilder the lie the better (from his point of view) because it had more chance of provoking anger in the person he was debating with.

    He also dropped such things into his books – I have upstairs a copy of Rothbard’s history of money and banking in the United States, which one might think was a fairly non foreign policy topic, but Rothbard puts in how supposedly successful National Socialist German trade deals (with various places) in the 1930s supposedly (according to him) provoked envy in the British and Americans – hence their “drive to war” against Germany.

    Yes, according to Rothbard, it was Britain and America who had a “drive to war” against innocent Nazi Germany. Because they were driven by envy over its trade deals.

    It is a desire to shock people – to write things that one knows will upset and anger others.

    If one comes upon someone who does that – one should move on.

    “Do not feed the trolls” is the saying – although I am guilty of feeding them from time to time.

  • APL

    Paul Marks” writes:-

    “German paid propagandists (nothing to do with General Falkenhayn) had been going around for years telling the Islamic “street” that if they allied with Germany they would get the women of the British and French “infidels” (“what the right hand takes” and so on) – if someone said “but is not the German Emperor not also an infidel?” it would be explained that he was about to convert (or had already secretly converted) – no one told Kaiser Bill about this (or about sending “Lenin” into Russia – but that is another story).”

    I admit Paul, I’m not quite as venerable as you. So exactly what gossip was put about the German-philic ‘Islamic steet’ before or during the first world war, is unknown to me. Obviously, you had your ear closer to the ground at the time.

    “I also note, APL, that you express no sympathy at all for the Jewish populations driven out from many countries in the Middle East – where they had lived for thousands of years (in spite of massacres from time time) centuries before there was any such thing as “Islam” or “Muslims”.”

    It may be Paul, that should I encounter an unfortunate human being down on his luck or the victim of discrimination, the first thought that goes through my mind, isn’t; ‘I wonder what this fellow’s religion is ?’

    they would get the women of the British and French “infidels

    In the former case, one might think Mohammed is getting a bit of a raw deal.

  • APL

    Netanyahu is an albatross around Biden’s neck.

    “Joe Biden has hitched his fortunes to a man — Benjamin Netanyahu — who is co-creator of the ghastly dilemma with which Israel is now faced.”

    As Kissinger said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” well, seems to be acted out in real time.

    The British deep state should note well, too.

  • SteveD

    ‘It’s almost like we should listen to people when they say, “this is what we want to do and what we are going to do,”’

    What we don’t know is how many people say this and don’t mean it.

  • Kirk

    That the deranged simpleton APL thinks Netanyahu is Joe Biden’s ally? LOL… Yeah. Sure. Whatever.

    Moron.

    Joe Biden is being blackmailed into doing the “right thing” in both Ukraine and Israel. He’d far rather be doing other things, things that result in more money coming his way from the Russians and whoever else wants to fill his pockets. Burisma was a Russian front for the oligarchate running that place. Were Joe Biden’s real desires in Ukraine being met, they’d have gotten Zelensky out and into exile while the Russians expropriated everything in the country and suppressed Ukrainian nationalism. That’s what they wanted, that’s what they were moving towards. Zelensky didn’t cooperate, and I suspect that the real deal is that either the US and others make forth with the weapons, or some truly heinous intel comes out about the Bidens and others who were so diligently cooperating with the Ukrainian oligarchy to loot the country… Nothing else matches the open intel out there.

    Likewise, Biden’s Krime Krewe ain’t trying to “help” either Netanyahu or the Israelis; Biden has always been anti-Bibi, and always will be, because that’s who sponsors him: The same loons that have been supporting all of Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel.

    It’s really too bad nobody else pays attention to the news, or jackasses like APL would get laughed out of every conversation they try to participate in… Does nobody remember the Obama-era attempt to interfere in the Israeli elections, and who they were working against? Yeah; Netanyahu. Are we to believe APL when he says that Netanyahu and Biden are now best buddies, and each other’s ally?

    If it weren’t so stone-ignorant, it’d be comedic.

  • bobby b

    Aw, c’mon Kirk.

    I agree with what you said completely – but the “Jane, you ignorant slut” model of commenting makes it harder to read.

    (Will only make sense to old SNL fans.)

  • APL

    kirk: If it weren’t so stone-ignorant

    Unfortunately, I regret to admit, I do not write for the FT. But given that media in the west only broadcasts what it’s permitted to broadcast. Such an article is a ‘straw in the wind’ which some folk might not quite be able to grasp. Bless.

    Joe Biden is being blackmailed into doing the “right thing” in both Ukraine and Israel.

    That is top level derangement, right there! [LOL]

    1. How do you extort a demented geriatric ? The man frequently can’t find his way off the stage nor string a barely coherent sentence together.
    2. Someone in the Democratic organisation, knows what the ‘right thing’ is.

    Honestly, I don’t know which of the two proposition is the most preposterous.

    Given that the whole of what’s left of Ukraine’s economy is paid for by US taxpayers, the crowning glory of Kirk’s mountain of nonsense: “Zelensky didn’t cooperate …” is so funny! Anyone who thinks Zelensky has any autonomy at all is, well, I’ll have to say it, a bit of a moron.

  • Kirk

    In APL’s written nonsense, we see not just alternative interpretations of fact, we get to see an entire alternate reality, which is really special.

    I’m not quite sure how the people that put the thoughts into APL’s head square the circle of fact surrounding the long-standing Biden/Obama anti-Netanyahu history that exists, but somehow… Netanyahu is now Biden’s puppet/ally, and all the delay and slow-rolling since October 7 is to be ignored. It’s obvious only to APL’s handlers that Biden must be on Netanyahu’s side, same as the very similar case in Ukraine. Why did it take almost two years to put ATACM missiles and other long-range systems into Ukrainian hands…? Why the slow roll on M1 tanks and F16s…? That doesn’t quite square with the idea that Israel and Ukraine are US puppet regimes, but it does square quite nicely with the US establishment being very, very reluctant to really help either one.

    APL obviously has difficulty thinking for himself, or trying to account for actual information that’s contrary to the narratives he parrots so well. He has been told that Netanyahu and Zelensky are Biden stooges, so anything that demonstrates contradictory fact must be ignored, rather than accounted for and interpreted as contrary to his narrative.

    Perfect example of how poorly educated and fully indoctrinated people cannot think for themselves. If there were actual facts supporting the theory that Biden is really trying to support either Ukraine or Israel in a sincere way, I’d love to hear them. What I see so far is that it’s all lip service and optics; the reality is that had they given Ukraine everything they asked for back at the beginning, the war would be over. As it is, they’re dragging it out, damaging both Russia and Ukraine in ways that are going to be paid for in decades to come.

    I rather doubt that Putin would have invaded, had the US not given him the tacit “OK”. Add in the fact that US military and intelligence was telling the Ukrainians that there would be no invasion right up until 24 February…? Yeah; I don’t think the US was sincerely on Ukraine’s side in any of this. The only sensible interpretation of events since 24 February is that the Ukrainians have enough dirt on US political figures to make them subject to a degree of blackmail, but not enough to lock them in for everything possible. The US is really only helping Ukraine as much as it has to, and no more. This is why the stalemate is happening, and it’s rank stupidity on the part of some very stupid people.

    And, since APL believes these people, taking them at their word?

    Can’t really come up with the words, I’m afraid.

  • APL

    Can’t really come up with the words, I’m afraid

    Kirk who is experiencing difficulty finding words, may have exhausted his vocabulary, after vomiting 458 of the little blighters onto the screen.

    I rather doubt that Putin would have invaded, had the US not given him the tacit “OK”. Add in the fact that US military and intelligence was telling the Ukrainians that there would be no invasion right up until 24 February…? Yeah; I don’t think the US was sincerely on Ukraine’s side in any of this.

    That is cope on a monumental scale.

    US military and intelligence was telling the Ukrainians that there would be no invasion right up until 24 February

    It hasn’t occurred to Kirk that the military and intelligence assets of the US didn’t have a clue? Perhaps, because they were too busy organizing their own invasion of the Donbass, using Ukraine’s first army as proxy.

    Adam Schiff was whinging about Trump withholding ‘hundreds of millions of dollars of aid” to Ukraine, that aid had been flowing copiously under the Obama regime. And we know Biden was up to his neck in Ukraine too. An interesting aside in that clip @06:24 Schiff outright states that Ukraine was at war with Russia during the Trump administration. Get that? The war with Ukraine didn’t start on the 24th Feb. 2022. In any case Kirks proposition that Russia invaded with the permission of the US is, on its face, ludicrous.

    I wonder what possible reason Biden could have for ‘allowing‘ the Russians to invade? To display the ineffectiveness of US ( & NATO ) trained proxy’s arms, tactics and strategy to the world? Surely not, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon wouldn’t like that.

    But never mind about Ukraine, Ukraine is history.

    If you take Kirks assertion at face value, Ukraine was starved of arms and munitions – If you wish to call $billions upon $billions upon $billions in twenty months – starving. By contrast in a matter of two weeks, Israel can summon not one, but two of the US navy’s aircraft carriers and associated battle groups, and rumour has it, US special forces on the ground in Gaza, that’s a funny interpretation of going without ( military assistance ).

    The personal relationship between Biden ( can you have a personal relationship with a demented old fool ? ) and Bibi isn’t the issue.

    But, Kirk draws the conclusion that Biden, who in now a year out from the next Presidential election, isn’t finding the adverse publicity of Israeli genocide in Gaza a bit disconcerting, and would like to distance himself and his campaign from it.

    In that light, the FT article makes perfect sense.

    Note: Zelensky appears to be planning to visit Israel, if I were Netanyahu, I’d stomp on that idea right away. Zelensky has seen off Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Ben Wallace. If I were Bibi, I’d avoid a meeting with Zelensky like the plague.

  • I wonder what possible reason Biden could have for ‘allowing‘ the Russians to invade? To display the ineffectiveness of US ( & NATO ) trained proxy’s arms, tactics and strategy to the world?

    It seems APL doesn’t actually know a thing about US (& NATO) arms, tactics and strategy. Tl;dr version: it is very airpower centric. Now what has Ukraine not been provided with yet? Go on, take a guess. Now tell me about how Ukraine is displaying NATO tactics & strategy.

    Surely not, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon wouldn’t like that.

    If Biden actually allowed Ukraine to have and use all of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon’s goodies, they would be ecstatic.

  • APL

    If Biden actually allowed Ukraine to have and use all of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon’s goodies, they would be ecstatic.

    You still cling to the quaint idea that Biden actually makes a decision.

  • Steven R

    Me: ‘It’s almost like we should listen to people when they say, “this is what we want to do and what we are going to do,”’

    SteveD: What we don’t know is how many people say this and don’t mean it.

    Me: Then we take them at their word. If some national leader or his mouthpiece publicly says “we will invade and destroy those people” then assume it’s going to happen and act accordingly.

  • APL

    US (& NATO) arms, tactics and strategy. it is very airpower centric.

    That is worth pondering.

    Now what has Ukraine not been provided with yet?

    It’s been pretty much established, Ukraine can’t fly a kite in its own airspace, now.