'Who Deserves Our Support?'

"Whenever I begin to debate certain issues such as the war in Iran or the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, I am confronted with the fact that the side I support has done some pretty stupid (sometimes evil) things. America supported the Shah, who was an oppressive dictator. Israel enabled the rise of Hamas by supporting Islamist social and charitable organizations within Gaza in order to create a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). And then there allegations of even more sinister actions, ranging from the plausible to the ridiculous. It is easy to see why so many people retreat to a kind of neutrality. They shrug and say both sides have some valid points. Who can know which is worth supporting?

"Without a well-grounded philosophical framework, there really IS no way to know. ... if you’re not thinking conceptually, it might be hard to make a distinction between this group dropping bombs and that group dropping bombs.

"You might be tempted to view the conflict in terms of who is the underdog. Who is the David fighting Goliath? Of course, even on these terms, it’s pretty bizarre to view a nation of about 10 million (Israel) as the Goliath when they are facing down Iran (a nation of about 90 million) or the entire Arab world (around 500 million) or the entire Islamic world (perhaps as many as 2 billion).

"But regardless, this is the wrong way to look at the conflict. Instead, we should be thinking in terms of what kind of civilisation does each side represent? What values would we like a society to uphold — and which of these 'sides' [if any] better represents those values? ... it does mean understanding the fundamental distinction between [semi] free and unfree societies — between good societies that sometimes makes mistakes, and fundamentally bad societies that (like all societies) have many good people in them who are just trying to live their lives.

"Once you understand the distinction, you might come to understand that the only way to 'Free Palestine' or to truly support any of the “underdogs” in the world is to free them from the ideological chains of their terrible belief systems. Fundamentally, these people are not angry at the West because they have (sometimes legitimate) grievances about particular actions, but because they resent the example that even a semi-free society presents. While we can’t force people to be free or even to believe in freedom as an ideal, we can (and should) show them the utter futility of continuing to support the death cult of Islamism. It was only utter defeat that discredited Nazism in Germany and emperor-worship in imperial Japan — and allowed them to develop into much happier, freer, and more prosperous societies. That is what I wish for Palestine, Iran, and all the oppressed people of the world."

~ Stewart Margolis from his post 'Who Deserves Our Support?'

"Israel becomes not just another country among many but a kind of moral index of the age – a stage upon which the world’s conscience is imagined to be tested and revealed."

"In the first nine months after October 7, the New York Times published 6,656 articles about the Gaza War. That compared to 80 articles about the American-led battle to free Mosul ... Israel is covered by more full-time staff than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined ...

"This saturation coverage creates the illusion of centrality. It trains audiences to believe that whatever they see most frequently must be the most important event in the world. Israel becomes not just another country among many but a kind of moral index of the age – a stage upon which the world’s conscience is imagined to be tested and revealed.

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict occupies a peculiar and disproportionate place in the West's political imagination, unmatched by conflicts that are deadlier. And so it becomes over-seen, over-examined, intensely dissected, and uniquely moralised until the examination itself becomes both activism and a substitute for understanding."

~ Samuel Hyde from his op-ed 'Why global media obsess over Israel and ignore deadlier wars '

"Israel surrendered"

 

"If you've seen my 'Why I Stand With Israel' video, you would know that I really wasn't interested in talking about things outside of the US when I first started making content. But that changed on October 7th. ... 

"So last week was the 2-year anniversary of October 7th. And it's crazy to think that 2 years have gone by because I don't feel really any better about the state of the world right now. Hamas killed so many of the hostages and hundreds of Israeli soldiers have died in battle since that day. And Hamas is still using innocent people, using children as human shields. They are publicly executing dissenters and promising that they're going to continue attacking Israel. 

"And then there's the West Bank. People talk about the West Bank as if it's any better than Gaza. As if the Palestinian Authority hasn't allowed so many terrorist groups to just flourish under their control. ... 

"And still, with all of this going on, people are pretending that Israel is the villain in this conflict. ...

"So, all this being said, I was very, very disappointed to see that ... President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu proposed another ceasefire deal to Hamas. People are trying to negotiate with jihadists again. Like they haven't tried to do that so many times during this conflict. I mean, we in America keep saying that we don't negotiate with terrorists, but apparently we do. 

"This plan that Trump and Netanyahu proposed has 20 points.... I think this is a very terrible plan. To even contemplate granting amnesty to the people responsible for October 7th is disgusting. It is such an insult to the victims of that day. It is an insult to the soldiers who died in this battle. It is an insult to justice. 

"I mean, this is essentially a surrender. Offering Gaza and the West Bank an independent state is admitting defeat because everyone knows that that is not actually going to solve this problem. 

"[I]t baffles me how many people are still pretending that this conflict is about land. I don't understand why there is still this fantasy that if Israel just gave up enough territory, if they formally recognised a Palestinian state, if they loosened their military presence at their borders, there would just be peace and this conflict would end. Because the two-state solution is not a new idea.  ... 

"Despite decades of negotiations, concessions, and proposals, every offer for a Palestinian state has been rejected and met with violence because they do not want a state. ... 

"This is not a dispute over borders or state recognition. This is a matter of ideology. What Israel is fighting against is the idea that they shouldn't exist as a state at all.... 

"Again, all we have to do is look at Gaza post-2005. They were essentially their own state. They had their own government. Israel was gone. And instead of building infrastructure and being productive, they decided to build rockets and commit October 7th. 

"And it's not like Hamas hid their intentions before October 7th. Their founding charter openly talks about how much they want to kill the Jews in Israel. After they started this war, Hamas paraded the bodies of innocent, murdered Israelis through the streets as people cheered. And their leaders promised to repeat the attack of October 7th over and over again until Israel is destroyed. 

"Now, let me be very clear here because a lot of people think that the issue is just Hamas and that if Israel was to get rid of Hamas that would end everything. But Hamas won the election for a reason. These ideas about destroying Israel are not fringe. They are mainstream culture in Gaza. In Gaza, the anti-Israeli indoctrination is so embedded in daily life. Children's television shows teach kids that they need to slaughter Jews. School curricula completely deny the existence of Israel and glorify martyrdom. Military-style youth camps train young boys to kill Jews from a young age. And public rallies they hold in the streets celebrate martyrs who blew up buses or stabbed Israeli civilians. 

"Yes, Hamas is one of the main issues and one of the main obstacles to peace, but there's not going to be peace if Israel gets rid of Hamas and the citizens of Gaza just rally around another terrorist group to take their place once they're gone. 

"Right now, Gaza is not very happy with Hamas. And a lot of people see this as this really great positive thing that we should be celebrating. But being angry at Hamas because they messed up Gaza is not the same thing as being angry at Hamas because they slaughtered innocent people and attacked a peaceful neighbour that they realise they shouldn't be attacking anymore. 

"So, we'll see exactly what happens because right now it's kind of unclear where the Gazans stand. But most likely the reason that the Gazans are not happy with Hamas is because Hamas was not as effective at destroying Israel as they would have wanted. ...

"[And] support for Hamas skyrocketed in the West Bank after October 7th because the people of the West Bank don't see the Palestinian Authority as effective enough at destroying Israel. So all of this to say there is absolutely no way that Israel can give full independence to Gaza and the West Bank and expect there to be peace. It will lead to more slaughter. It will be a repeat of what happened when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005....

"A lot of people have pushed back and have said, 'Look, all we want are the hostages back, and if Hamas breaks any of their agreements, then Israel will just continue to defend itself and they'll have the full support of the US. So what's the problem here?" Here's the thing. If I thought that this was true, if I thought that the plan was to get the hostages out, and then all bets are off, Israel is going to finish what it started, finish getting rid of jihadism in the area. I would be so on board with this plan. I am so for lying to Hamas to get the hostages back and then attacking them again. But I am almost 100% certain that that is not what is going to happen. And the issue here, like the real issue is that Trump is involved in this deal. ...

"Trump does not care about Israel. I mean, Trump really doesn't care about most things. The thing that Trump cares about is feeling good in the moment. ... his policy decisions are entirely based on who's going to make him feel good in the moment. Right now, Trump likes Israel because Netanyahu is being very nice to him. ... [But] He would drop Israel in a heartbeat. ...

"Trump's whole thing isn't about doing what's right. It's not about recognising the facts and acting accordingly. Trump cares about who's going to suck up to him the most. 

"Having someone like that who is so unpredictable as part of this deal means that his support for Israel is unpredictable. He might say that he supports Israel one day and then full support the next. I mean even when it's come to Israel he has gone so back and forth with his support. When he was elected into office, he said that by his inauguration, all of the hostages needed to be released or else he was going to let all hell break loose on the Middle East. And that did not happen. Then in February, he made a similar threat saying all of the hostages needed to be released by a certain day or else he was going to just let Israel do what they needed to do and support them fully in destroying Hamas. And again, that did not happen. Even with this deal now, Trump threatened this 72-hour deadline on Hamas and they just blew right through it and nothing happened. ... 

"He bullied Netanyahu into accepting this deal. Like Netanyahu has been so public with the fact that he does not want to allow the Palestinian Authority anywhere near this new Palestinian government. 

"So long story short, people are pretending. They are pretending that if Gaza or West Bank attacks Israel, Trump is going to be there to help them and Israel cannot rely on Trump. .... 

"I so understand wanting to get the hostages back, especially because we know that some of them are alive. 

"I know that their families and their friends and just normal Israeli civilians want them back. 

"I know that their loved ones and their friends and really just the average Israeli civilian or even just people with a heart want them back because we value human life. 

"And I cannot imagine what they have had to experience being tortured for 2 years in captivity in Gaza. 

"This is not how you do that. This is not how you get them back. 

"We've seen what happens with these 'hostage exchanges,' right? We've seen what happens when hostages are exchanged for prisoners. They're going to release 2,000 prisoners from Israeli prisons. Just a reminder, Sinwar, one of the masterminds behind October 7th, was released in a hostage exchange. 

"And let's be real about what happened. pulling out of Gaza, participating in this exchange, relying on these other countries to support and defend Israel, like that's just going to cause more deaths. It's going to cause more October 7ths like Hamas has promised. And unfortunately, when that happens, I keep saying this, but the world is not going to stand by Israel.... 

"So for Israel to survive, they are going to have to go it alone right now and for the foreseeable future. Which means they are probably going to have to abandon all of these deals that they have made with the US, with these UN, European countries and with all of these Arab countries because they are not going to stand by Israel when, not even if, when Gaza and the West Bank attack again. 

"But I think Israeli leadership has shown that they are not willing to do that. ... it seems right now like Netanyahu and the Israeli government are more worried about international approval than they are about saving the lives of their citizens. So, Israel really just needs to find the strength to do what needs to be done to destroy this terrorist threat, to destroy the infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank that allows for these attacks to happen and to destroy the bloodthirsty anti-semitic culture that is thriving there. But they cannot do that if they are still pretending that the two-state solution is going to solve this problem. 

"They can't do that if they are still pretending that Hamas will willingly demilitarise and accept Israel as a state. They cannot do that if they are pretending that they have allies in countries that do not care about Israeli safety. But that is what needs to happen here. 

"So I really just don't think this conflict is going to end anytime soon."

~ Kiyah Willis [hat tip Craig Biddle]

Recognition => Consequences

"Keir Starmer has announced the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Several other countries have done likewise.

"I think the consequences of this will be very bad.

"There will be even more Muslim terrorism worldwide. It evidently works.

"There will be more use of tactics like taking hostages and livestreaming murders and torture for political effect by non-Muslim groups and states, too. These tactics evidently work.

"Those people who think that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians still won’t get to see what actual genocide looks like, but Israel will be more willing than before to kill Palestinian civilians in order to destroy Hamas. Israel has lost a major motive for restraint. ...

"I do not wish for any of this. I just think it is what is likely to happen."

~ Natalie Solent from her post 'Consequences'

Niall Ferguson: Osama bin Laden’s Posthumous Victory

"Comparing the world today with that of 24 years ago, I am tempted to say that bin Laden lost the war on terror but is winning the clash of civilisations. ...

"It is not just that the West has been successfully penetrated by an antagonistic civilisation that fundamentally rejects the fundamental division between religion and politics - church and state - that lies at the heart of both Christianity and Judaism. The West is also being geopolitically outmanoeuvred by 'the rest' in just the way Huntington foresaw*.

"Contrast the global order after 9/11 with the global order today. We have come a long way since NATO secretary-general George Robertson’s statement on September 11, 2001 - 'Our message to the people of the United States is . . . "We are with you." '

"In the past three years, Zbig Brzezinski’s worst-case scenario has come about. 'Potentially, the most dangerous scenario,' he wrote in 'The Grand Chessboard' (1997), would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by 'complementary grievances' Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that grand coalition has come into being, with North Korea as a fourth member. The 'Axis of Upheaval' (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) are now cooperating in military, economic and diplomatic ways. Moreover, the Trump administration’s combative treatment of American allies (the European Union, Japan, South Korea) and neutrals (Brazil, India, and Switzerland), not least with respect to trade policy, is alienating not only the traditionally nonaligned but also key partners.

'The upshot is that Israel is now virtually alone in fighting against the Islamists, so that even the United States wants plausible deniability when, as this week, the Israeli Air Force strikes the leadership of Hamas in the Qatari capital, Doha.

'The point is that the clash of civilisation continues. Now ask yourself: Who’s winning? 

...
"[C]omparing the world today with that of 24 years ago, I am tempted to say that bin Laden lost the war on terror but is winning the clash of civilisations. That’s not to say his particular brand of Salafist jihadism is winning; it can even be argued that it’s in decline. Bin Laden’s creed was always too uncompromising to form alliances of convenience. By contrast, the pro-Palestinian 'global intifada' is much more omnivorous, and can easily absorb the old left (Marxism and pan-Arabism) and the new (anti-globalism and wokeism). ...

"At the same time, Western civilisation today is so much more divided than it was 24 years ago. The public response to 10/7 illuminated the divisions. Whereas older voters generally remain more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, younger cohorts have swung the other way. Perhaps that’s because to Gen-Z, 9/11 is a faint memory - as distant as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy’s assassination were to my generation. But it’s also because the Islamists have done such a good job of co-opting the campus radicals, somehow overriding the cognitive dissonance in slogans such as “Queers for Palestine,” while at the same time tapping the antisemitism that still lurks on the far right. ...

"Walking the streets of New York this week, I felt old. To my children, my students, and my employees, 9/11 is not a memory. It is not even an historical fact. It is something people argue about on social media. ...

"It has taken me all these years to understand that 9/11 really was a clash of civilisations. And it has taken me until this week finally to face the reality that ours is losing."

~ Niall Ferguson from his post commemorating September 11, 2001: 'Osama bin Laden’s Posthumous Victory'

* Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntiongton, whose seminal essay on “The Clash of Civilizations” was published in 1993, aligning with the Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis, who had long argued that Islam was chronically unable to modernise.

"Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop."

"News consumers worldwide were galvanised over the weekend by disturbing photos like those of the Gazan child Muhammad al-Matouq, who appeared on the front page of Britain’s 'Daily Express' and then on that of 'The New York Times' and elsewhere as the symbol of Israel’s cruel starvation of innocents. After the photographs were seen around the world it became clear that the child in fact suffers from cerebral palsy and other conditions unrelated to starvation. The suffering child ended up being less the intended symbol of Israeli evil than of how genuine misery can be put to use by practitioners of narrative war. ...

"[This is not new.] A few weeks into the Gaza war that began on October 7, 2023, we Israelis learned from every major press outlet in the West that we’d just bombed a hospital and killed hundreds of people. The devastated Al-Ahli hospital was on front pages around the world, with a New York Times headline reporting 'at least 500 dead.' Furious protests erupted, and a mob burned a synagogue in Tunisia.

"The story was fake. A misfired Palestinian rocket had landed near the hospital, which was intact.

Around the same time, we started reading that Israel’s response to the October 7 terror attack—a war that Palestinians started, and which had barely begun at the time—was actually a 'genocide,' an ideological slur thrown at Israel by Soviet propagandists, Arab dictators, and the Western left beginning in the 1970s. ...

"Reports of impending hunger engineered by Israel in Gaza have been commonplace not just since the beginning of this war but for at least a decade and a half, since Hamas seized the territory and Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade that supposedly turned Gaza into an 'open-air prison.' The famine never materialised. Now we hear claims that this same period of supposedly extreme deprivation was actually a Gazan idyll that Israel has cruelly destroyed in this war.

"Very little of what is reported here, in other words, is what it seems. This is nothing new. Over the years, Israelis have been accused of fake massacres and rapes. The country’s actions are lied about almost daily by people describing themselves as journalists, analysts, and representatives of the United Nations, often using statistics that are themselves untrue. ...

"But one of the most awful prices [ of being unmoored from objective reality] was made clear this past week, with reports of acute hunger in Gaza.

"In a blizzard of ideological fiction, how are sane citizens in Israel, or anywhere else, supposed to know what’s true and to do the right thing? It’s not an exaggeration to say, as we’re seeing right now, that the answer to this question can be a matter of life and death. ...

"[O]ur plight as journalists is only marginally better than that of the average citizen. ... [T]here [are] nearly no trustworthy sources regarding reality in Gaza—certainly not the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which answers to Hamas; or Palestinian reporters intimidated by Hamas; or the international organisations, like the UN refugee agency UNRWA, embroiled in various forms of collaboration with Hamas. All of the above are engaged in a successful information campaign that uses Palestinian suffering, real and imagined, to catalyse international anger and tie Israel’s hands.

"The international press isn’t the answer. During my years as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, I saw coverage altered by Hamas threats to our staff, while this fact was concealed from readers. I know firsthand that nearly no information coming from Gaza can be taken at face value.

"But neither can ... Israelis trust [their] own government, which has regularly misled the public ....

"And we can’t trust much of the information from the army, which regularly spins information overtly or by omission. ...

"When I asked ... a senior government official, with connections at the highest levels here and abroad—if people are starving in Gaza, he answered honestly, 'I don’t know.' ...

"Ohad Hemo, the Palestinian affairs reporter for [Israel's] Channel 12 News, the country’s most widely watched news programme ... report[ed] last Wednesday [that f]ood warehouses serving Hamas fighters are still full, ... and the crisis wasn’t only Israel’s fault. However ..."there is hunger in Gaza, and we need to state this loud and clear.” ... [A] senior figure in the Israeli military told one of my colleagues at the end of last week that while there isn’t mass starvation as claimed by pro-Hamas propaganda, Gaza really is on the brink this time.

"This explains why Israel, in panic mode, began air-dropping aid this weekend, along with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, and has declared 'humanitarian pauses' to let food reach civilians—essentially unilateral ceasefires without any reciprocation from Hamas. There are now indications that food prices are dropping and that some of the scarcity is being addressed, but the situation for many civilians remains dire.

"Israel says Hamas bears the responsibility, as the group has diverted aid both to hoard for its fighters and to sell to finance the war—and then cynically uses Palestinian suffering as a propaganda tool. ... [Earlier this year] Israel began trying to conclusively break Hamas’s control of food by providing it through a new organisation, American-run and Israeli-affiliated, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

"Because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is an acute threat to its power, Hamas has been doing what it can to foment unrest around its distribution sites, kill its workers, and intimidate people accepting its food. ... —[which] has often meant chaotic scenes of thousands of men descending on the distribution sites and picking them clean, coming into dangerous and sometimes fatal contact with Israeli soldiers who are understandably scared of disguised Hamas fighters and unprepared for the kind of mass chaos they’re expected to control.

"It’s impossible to know how many Palestinians have been killed in these incidents, because Hamas numbers are part of the group’s information war. ...

"An experienced Israeli civilian involved in the aid efforts, from an organization that works both with international aid groups and the Israeli military, said on Friday that mass starvation is not yet the reality but could be in the near future. ...

"You might have thought that hunger in Gaza would work against Hamas, forcing the group to have mercy on its own civilians and accept the ceasefire desired by Israel and the U.S. and currently under discussion in Qatar. But Hamas knows that the opposite is true: The disaster they’ve engineered in Gaza fuels the global campaign against Israel. ...

"One of the terrible facts of this war is that the Palestinians who started the war, and who constructed the twisted battlefield on which it has been fought, won’t act to save their own people. Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop."

~ Jerusalem-based columnist Matti Friedman from his post 'Is Gaza Starving? Searching for the Truth in an Information War.'

"Te Pāti Māori’s leaders are too busy preaching about Gaza to notice the blood on their own doorstep."

"While Māori children are being beaten, abused and killed right here in New Zealand, Te Pāti Māori’s leaders are too busy preaching about Gaza to notice the blood on their own doorstep. ...
    "It’s easy for [them] to shout about oppression halfway around the world, but where is [their] voice when Māori kids are dying up in Northland while under the care of Ngati Hine? Where is her anger when Māori families are trapped in gang-run communities plagued by drugs, violence and generational trauma? ...
    "Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer are demanding the New Zealand Government expel the Israeli ambassador unless Israel halts its military campaign and opens up Gaza to humanitarian aid. That’s their priority. Not the Māori kids being buried, not the Māori women being beaten, not the Māori offenders clogging up the justice system with violent crimes. Their outrage is selective and political, not moral."

~ Matua Kahurangi from his post 'Te Pāti Māori more concerned with Gaza than Māori children being murdered at home'

"The time has come to move toward freeing all the people in the Middle East, thereby making the whole world safer."

"Iran under the mullahs is a totalitarian dictatorship, like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and communist North Korea. Dictatorships, by their nature, have no claim to sovereignty.

"Iran’s mullahs, ayatollahs, and other varieties of witch doctors are a cross between a horde of fanatics and a criminal gang. To speak of their enslavement of their own populace as if it had a particle of legitimacy means the rulers have the right to subjugate and terrorise those caught in its jaws. Such relativism does to morality what jihadists did to the World Trade Center on 9/11.

"As one Iranian escapee asked on social media: Why is it, do you think, that there are no Iranians in the West protesting Israel’s attack? The absence of protests by Iranian refugees tells you all you need to know about the nature of the Iranian regime. ...

"Dictatorships do not recognise any rights of their enslaved subjects. They cannot, therefore, claim some 'right to rule.' ...

"Once we cease to think in collective terms, the principle becomes clear: among fully free countries, it does not matter which one has jurisdiction over the area in which you live. Your life and happiness depend on your rights being protected, not violated, by whichever government has jurisdiction.

"Whether or not one lives under the jurisdiction of a rights-protecting government, not the colours of the flag one lives under, is the life-or-death issue. ...

"The time has come to move toward freeing all the people in the Middle East, thereby making the whole world safer. The time has come to end the Islamic Regime in Iran."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Why not end the Iranian dictatorship?'

That said ...

"Iran [is] a country that is vaster, more populous, and significantly more complex than Iraq. ...

"Should Israel continue on its current trajectory, including the targeting of the Islamic Republic’s civilian and energy infrastructure, it will break the Iranian state. But the Israelis are neither capable of, nor inclined to, pick up the pieces afterward. Rather, they will 'internationalise' the problem.. ...

"Optimists may note that Iran isn’t Iraq — an ethno-sectarian hodge-podge cobbled together within artificially drawn borders. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s ethnic constituents have long related organically as Iranians.

"But while this is true, even this innate coherence couldn’t ease the deeper struggle: the difficulty of rebuilding order in a context of profound, culturally ingrained tension between state and society. ..."

~ Sohrab Ahmari from his post 'The regime change maniacs are back'

Still, Iranians deserve better. Much better. And so does everyone the mullahs and their proxies have terrorised since 1979.

PS: A few Iranian and related folk I follow on Twitter...

Masih Alinejad

𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎

Kareem Rifai

mersedeh_eye

Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن

Ali Safavi

Alireza Jafarzadeh

Nasser Sharif

Hamid Azimi

Nasrin Saifi

NCRI-FAC

People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)

"A Palestinian Mandela"?

"If there ever was a Palestinian Mandela, their greatest threat was not Israel, but other Palestinians, along with surrounding despotic regimes that patronised the most fanatical and violent among them. ...
    "The history is there for anyone not too lazy, or too ideologically committed, to see. What may [help understanding here] is to view the PLO and Hamas as a dictatorship first ... and a resistance movement a distant second. When you’re in the business of war ... what use do you have for peace? Or peacemakers? They’d be akin to inviting cockroaches into your restaurant."

~ Dane Giraud from his post 'John Minto: The man who knew too little…'

Remembering October 7

"The first anniversary of the October 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel is approaching. Not a day since has passed when the consequences and after-shocks of that terrible day have not been felt around the world. More than any other event in living memory, it has polarised and divided people everywhere.
    "Eight weeks after the attacks, I was invited to the Israeli Embassy in Wellington to watch the 47 minutes of footage compiled by the Israeli Government called 'Bearing Witness.' ... Did watching 'Bearing Witness' alter any of my opinions? Yes, it did.
    "I expected to see men, women and children slaughtered but the level of hatred and barbarity was incomprehensible. Often the mutilation continued after the victim was killed as if that were only one stage in a process that would continue until what was left was unrecognizable. We saw 139 killings or bodies but in many cases the bodies were so disfigured or burned that they ceased to look human. ...
    "It does, I think, at least partially explain Israel’s ferocious response in the year that has followed the attacks. In my view, anyone in the Israeli government or military who viewed that footage would conclude that they face an immediate existential threat. Their enemies do not simply wish to take territory or wage a war – killing was not enough. Their enemies that day wished for the elimination of every Jewish man, woman and child until nothing remained but dust. That was the point that I did not fully appreciate until I saw this footage. ...
    "October 7 and Israel’s response will undoubtedly be debated for a lifetime. Hopefully we will live to see a peaceful resolution to this most intractable of conflicts."

~ Philip Crump from his post 'Bearing Witness to October 7'

"Logical fallacies are not the only errors that retard thinking. Conceptual fallacies do, too, and often in subtler, more destructive ways."

"Logical fallacies are not the only errors that retard thinking. Conceptual fallacies do, too, and often in subtler, more destructive ways. ..."[These f]allacies ... include package-deals, anti-concepts, frozen abstractions, floating abstractions, and stolen concepts. Below are definitions and examples of each, along with brief indications of the principles they violate. ...

"The fallacy of package-dealing consists in conceptually combining things that are superficially similar but essentially different and, thus, logically do not belong under the same concept. If and when we commit this fallacy, we muddle our thinking about the subject in question and make clear communication impossible. ... 

    "An extremely common instance of package-dealing is the mental blending of 'majority rule' and 'rights-protecting social system' under the term 'democracy.' ... 'Power' is a[nother] package-deal when used to equate 'economic power' with 'political power.' ...

"An anti-concept is a kind of package-deal, in that it combines ideas that logically don’t belong together. But an anti-concept is different from a regular package-deal, in that it is intended to cause conceptual confusion and harm. As [Ayn] Rand defines it, an anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term intended to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept(s) in people’s minds. ...

    "The alleged meaning of 'social justice' [for example] is 'the moral imperative of treating people fairly with respect to various social matters.' Its actual meaning is 'the moral imperative of coercively redistributing wealth and forcing individuals and institutions to act against their judgment for the sake of various groups whose individual members allegedly can’t think or live on their own.' In other words, 'social justice' is the soft bigotry of low expectations—fused with the hard coercion of a government gun.
    "The purpose of the anti-concept of 'social justice' is to obliterate the concept of actual justice in people’s minds. And, when people accept the phrase as legitimate and try to use it, that is what it does. ...

"The fallacy of freezing an abstraction consists in making a false equation by substituting a particular conceptual concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs. Like a package-deal, it involves integrating concepts in disregard of the need for crucial distinctions.
    "[Ayn] Rand’s seminal example of this fallacy is the equating of 'morality' with 'altruism' by substituting a particular morality (the morality of self-sacrifice) for the whole, general class 'morality.' ...

"Conceptual knowledge is hierarchical. Higher-level concepts, such as mammal, animal, mile, and tyranny, presuppose and depend on lower-level concepts, all the way down to first-level concepts, whose referents are at the perceptual level, such as dog, bird, inch, and force (e.g., a punch in the face). In order to know what a mammal is, you must first understand a chain of more basic concepts, including fertilization, reproduction, animal, and various kinds of animals (e.g., cats, dogs, birds, fish). Without this more basic knowledge, the concept of mammal wouldn’t and couldn’t have meaning in your mind.
    "This principle of hierarchy applies to all conceptual knowledge. Higher-level (more abstract) concepts can be understood and have meaning in someone’s mind only to the extent that he grasps the lower-level (more basic) concepts that give rise to them. And there are essentially two ways people can violate this principle: via floating abstractions and via stolen concepts. 

    "When someone uses a word or phrase that is not supported in his mind by a structure of more basic ideas that are ultimately grounded in perceptual facts, he is using a floating abstraction—an abstraction disconnected from reality in his mind, disconnected from the things the idea refers to, disconnected from the facts that give 't meaning.
    "For example: 'Everyone has a right to a living wage.' If someone uses the word 'right' this way, he doesn’t know what a right is. He doesn’t know what the concept means, what it refers to in reality. He doesn’t know the facts that give rise to our need for the concept. (Or, if he does, he is committing a more grievous fallacy; see concept-stealing below.) ... 'America is a democracy.' If someone thinks or says such a thing, he doesn’t know what “democracy” means (see “democracy” as a package-deal above). The term is a floating abstraction in his mind. 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' If someone chants such nonsense, he has no idea what 'free' means. The term is a floating abstraction in his mind.
    "Floating abstractions abound. Be on the lookout for them in your own mind and in the claims of others. ...

"Now, if someone goes beyond merely using a concept that is disconnected from reality and uses a concept while denying or ignoring more basic, lower-level concepts on which it logically depends, he is committing the fallacy of concept-stealing.
    "Here, as with floating abstractions, the operative principle is the hierarchical nature of conceptual knowledge. Higher-level, more abstract knowledge is built on lower-level, more basic knowledge, all the way down to sensory perception, our direct cognitive contact with reality. Concept-stealing consists in using a higher-level concept while denying or ignoring a lower-level concept(s) on which it depends for its meaning.

    "Examples: ... When someone claims that an experiment has shown that determinism is true—that all human action is antecedently necessitated by forces beyond our control—he steals the concepts of 'experiment' and 'true.' ... When someone claims the senses are invalid, he steals the concept of 'invalid.' (Invalid, in this context, means 'incapable of delivering knowledge of reality.') ....

    "Stolen concepts are rampant in philosophic discussions. And they not only cause confusion; they also make way for much mischief and lead people to waste ungodly amounts of time pondering and debating things that don’t exist, don’t make sense, or don’t matter. Be on the lookout for them. ...

"Keeping your thinking connected to reality is essential to success in reality. And that’s the only kind of success there can be."

~ Craig Biddle from his post 'Conceptual Fallacies and How to Avoid Them'

"If you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

Pic from The Spectator

"I have in the past admired twentysomethings for their interest in politics at an age when I was mostly clueless. I still do. But if you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

~ Mary Wakefield, from her post 'No one will change their mind about Hamas'

"It is fear that drives them to seek the warmth, the protection, the 'safety' of a herd.
    "When they speak of merging their selves into a 'greater whole,' it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies. And what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance."

~ Ayn Rand, from her essay 'Apollo and Dionysus' [hat tip Hilton H.]

"In dangling this dream before Hamas, the three PMs have all but green-lighted its terrorism."

"So now we know what it takes to become a state: the murder of Jews. Rape, kill and kidnap Jews and seven months later, the leaders of Ireland, Spain and Norway will recognise your statehood. That’s the lesson of today’s coordinated spectacle of virtue-signalling in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo: pogroms work. The butchery of civilians gets results. Fascism has its rewards. This is ‘diplomacy’ at its most dangerous. ...
    "[T]he true impact of their imperious intervention will be to exacerbate hostilities. Hamas will feel emboldened. It now knows that a wonderful gift awaits it if it keeps battering Israel: a state of its own. In dangling this dream before Hamas, the three PMs have all but green-lighted its terrorism. ...
    "Perhaps we should not be surprised by the infantile posturing of the three PMs and their dearth of consideration for what might happen if we further isolate Israel and embolden Hamas. Because in a way, such self-involved moral blindness sums up the entirety of ‘Palestinian solidarity’. So much of the supposedly pro-Palestinian sentiment – in politics, on campuses, on the streets – is fundamentally a displacement activity. Politicians and activists bereft of ideas for how to improve their own societies instead seek sanctuary in the moral glow of Palestinianism. ...
    "This is what ‘Palestine’ has become for the cultural elites of the West: a moral balm, a source of fleeting meaning, a soapbox from which they can grandstand on faraway affairs, having zero vision for closer-to-home affairs. "
    "Those same countries have been silent about calling for the release of the hostages; silent instead of condemning outright Hamas. It is disgraceful that they go further and give Hamas a Palestinian state. Obscene."

~ Brendan O'Neill from his post 'Rewarding Fascism' [final paragraph from commenter Lala Holland on the video 'Palestinians Slaughter, Europe Rewards: How Hamas Won a State']

"Horrendously, anti-Semitism comes to be seen as a morally virtuous position."

 

"First it was Columbia, now anti-Israel protests have spread across America. ... The ‘rage of the privileged against the world’s only Jewish nation’ ... now rings out on leafy campuses from California to Boston.
    "In these ostensibly ‘anti-war’ protests, students have demanded the total destruction of Israel, while waving placards in support of Hamas and singling out Jewish professors and students for abuse. The terrifying orgy of anti-Semitism that has been unleashed in America’s top universities should disturb everyone. ...
    "Since the start of their education, today’s students have imbibed a crude understanding that people can be sorted into different groups according to skin colour, gender and sexuality ... indoctrinated into a view that the world can be divided between oppressors and the oppressed. ... taught to loathe their own country and made defensive of their privilege ...
    " In this context, aligning with Palestinians and demonstrating hostility to Israel makes perfect sense. It allows students to identify with an oppressed group and distance themselves from their own nation and culture. That such sentiment can so easily tip over into anti-Semitism is unsurprising. Students have been deluded into thinking that the more extreme their demands for the abolition of Israel, and the more vile their targeting of Jews, the better they show their own virtue.
    "Horrendously, anti-Semitism comes to be seen as a morally virtuous position."

~ Joanna Williams, from her op-ed 'How anti-Semitism became a virtue on American campuses'

Israel + Gaza: What Would Thatcher Do Today? (WWTDT?)

"For a party that has failed to escape [Margaret] Thatcher’s long shadow, ... perhaps what is most remarkable is how far the current [U.K.] Conservative Party’s aspiring populist wing diverges from Thatcher’s own approach to the conflict. Following [Israel']s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a disaster that she correctly foresaw would birth new and harder threats to both the Western order and Israel’s own security, Thatcher placed an embargo on British weapons sales to Israel, a policy that was not lifted until 1994. Her rationale, as she told ITN, was that Israeli troops had 'gone across the borders of Israel, [to] a totally independent country, which is not a party to the hostility and there are very very great hostilities, bombing, terrible things happening there. Of course one has to condemn them. It is someone else’s country. You must condemn that. After all, that is why we have gone to the Falklands, to repossess our country which has been taken by someone else.'...
    "For Thatcher — perhaps counterintuitively, viewed through the prism of today’s Conservative party — the 'plight of the landless Palestinians' was a major foreign-policy concern. ... Striving to find a workable peace, Thatcher asserted the only possible solution to the conflict was an approach which balanced 'the right of all the states in the region — including Israel — to existence and security, but also demanded justice for all peoples, which implied recognition of of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.' Writing of her visit to Israel in 1986, the first by a British prime minister, Thatcher remarked that 'The Israelis knew… that they were dealing with someone who harboured no lurking hostility towards them, who understood their anxieties, but who was not going to pursue an unqualified Zionist approach.' Instead, she 'believed that the real challenge was to strengthen moderate Palestinians, probably in association with Jordan, who would eventually push aside the… extremists. But this would never happen if Israel did not encourage it; and the miserable conditions under which Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza were having to live only made things worse.' ...
    "To Thatcher, peace would entail not an independent Palestinian state — she thought this unviable, and most probably undesirable — but the incorporation of the West Bank and Gaza under the rule of Jordan’s Anglophile King Hussein. Yet when Thatcher signed on to an European Community declaration of support for Palestinian statehood, just days after the PLO confirmed its commitment to the destruction of Israel, and was condemned for this by the Labour leader Jim Callaghan — British attitudes on the conflict were yet to assume their present form — Thatcher responded in robust terms. “The words in the communiqué I support entirely,” she told the House. “They concern the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own future. If one wishes to call that ‘self- determination’, I shall not quarrel with it. I am interested that the Right Hon. Gentleman appears to be attempting to deny that right. I do not understand how anyone can demand a right for people on one side of a boundary and deny it to people on the other side of that boundary. That seems to deny certain rights, or to allocate them with discrimination from one person to another.”
    "Strikingly, Thatcher condemned Israel for its annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, for its attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear power plant, and for its seizure of Palestinian land for settlements, including the housing of Soviet Jewish refugees: as she told the House in 1990, 'Soviet Jews who leave the Soviet Union – and we have urged for years that they should be allowed to leave – should not be settled in the Occupied Territories or in East Jerusalem. It undermines our position when those people are settled in land that really belongs to others.' Indeed, as she later remarked in her memoirs, 'I only wished that Israeli emphasis on the human rights of the Russian refuseniks was matched by proper appreciation of the plight of landless and stateless Palestinians.' With such sentiments, it is doubtful that today’s self-proclaimed Thatcherites would find a prominent place for Thatcher herself in their nascent faction."

~ Aris Roussinos, from his article 'What Thatcher can teach the pro-Israel Right'

 

"The pro-Palestine movement is ... the tip of the spear for a movement that’s coming for us from within."

"And then there’s the ... useful idiots, almost exclusively from the political left. These are people who probably know very little about the particulars of the conflict. Various videos have exposed that. Students in the US, for example, were asked which sea was being referred to in the chant, ‘From the river to the sea.’ Answers varied from the Caribbean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
    "In another example, protesters were asked on video about how they felt when Hamas launched their attack on 7 October. And their response was: ‘When Hamas did what?’ These are people who see heartbreaking images of Palestinian suffering on TV and think that the Jews must be to blame.   
"[A]pologism for Hamas been so common on the political left [because w]hen it comes to the bigger picture, it’s all part of a movement that’s undermining [Western liberal society] from within. 

    "The Palestinian protesters don’t just protest about Palestine, after all. The hardcore among them also protest in favour of Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. They belong to a ‘progressive’ worldview that’s antithetical towards the values of liberalism, tolerance and free speech ... on which our society is built. Fundamentally, this isn’t just about Jews – they are simply the first in the firing line. The trajectory is to take down Western liberal society. And that’s what the pro-Palestine movement has functioned as recently. It’s acted as the tip of the spear for a movement that’s coming for us from within."

~ Jake Wallis Simons, from his interview 'The left has become Hamas’s useful idiots'

 

"Please tell me why a ceasefire is being demanded instead of that Hamas release the hostages and surrender their leaders." [updated]

 

"There are many horrific things happening in Gaza. It's called war. And it's especially awful when the combatants are not easily identified. Like any decent human being and like most if not all of my neighbours here in Israel, I want to minimise the deaths of innocents in Gaza. I want to minimise the deaths of our soldiers. At the same time, the depth of the depravity of October 7, the unhesitating publicly stated willingness of Hamas to do it again, the continued rocket attacks coming out of Gaza, the fact that they still hold over 100 of our people hostage, our willingness to accept the deaths of our soldiers rather than burn the whole thing to the ground because that would be vile and disgusting, the complicity of the UN and other international organisations in the theft and corruptions surrounding humanitarian aid ... why are we, Israel, the bad guys? Please tell me what Israel should be doing differently. And please tell me why a ceasefire is being demanded instead of demanding that Hamas release the hostages and surrender their leaders? Please explain what I'm missing."

~ Russ Roberts, from Econ Talk, from his Twitter post

UPDATE: 

 

Free Palestine. From Hamas. [updated]

 

A wounded, elderly Palestinian man at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital has an Al Jazeera camera thrust in his face.

"Over 15 or 20 houses were bombed," says the interviewer, inviting a response. "Is this a human act?" "No," says the elderly Palestinian, "this is a criminal act. 

As for the [Hamas] resistance -- they come and hide among the people. Why are they hiding among the people? They can go to hell and hide there." 

The reporter immediately turns his back on the man. This is not what he is there to report.

This is one of many small acts of resistance inside Gaza that are either suppressed, or just go mostly un-reported. 

For nearly a generation, media owned by Qatar and Iran have tag-teamed with Hamas to paint a false picture of ideological uniformity across Gaza. While Hamas quashed opposition to their rule, Al Jazeera and other mouthpieces platformed the terror group’s leaders and shills. ...
    Western media largely goes along with this programme. Judging from most reportage out of Gaza, two million Palestinian victims of Hamas tyranny and corruption can name only one oppressor: Israel.
    In 2019, brave Gazan youth tried to change all this by waging anti-Hamas street demonstrations under the banner “We Want to Live”—their way of showing that when Hamas dubs all Palestinians “lovers of death,” they lie. But as one protest veteran told us, “The movement was brutally suppressed.” He went on, “We found neither receptivity nor expressions of support from the outside world.”
    In Arab lands where terror militias rule, the world should be listening not just to the few who hold a megaphone but also to the many who can only whisper.

The Center for Peace Communications has been trying to change that, one piece of reportage at a time. And it's now launched a video series Voices from Gaza, to give a platform on the current war to the many Gazans who do not support Hamas.

They include:

• a resident of Khan Younis describing how locals in a bakery spontaneously attacked a Hamas member who had come to buy bread
• a day after scores of civilians died in an Israeli air strike on a market in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, an eyewitness to the tragedy explained that hile Hamas and its allies persist in charging that Israel targets innocents, Gazans pin their own survival strategy on the understanding that innocents serve Hamas as human shields -- and their best methid of survival is to block their streets fom Hamas
• a Gazan woman who fears that this misery will needlessly be prolonged by Westerners who strive, in effect, to perpetuate Hamas rule
• another patient at al-Shifa hospital who explains “Every Palestinian knows Shifa hospital is full of [Hamas fighters], but nobody can talk: death by the Jews is better than death by ISIS”
• a resident of Gaza City who explains that when Hamas distributes the aid that does get in, "only Hamas members get the aid.” The same applies to Gaza’s healthcare system, where “Hamas families get preferential treatment” and even the most urgent needs of others “could be delayed for a long time so that Hamas loyalists are treated first.”

The stories are heart-breaking, and never-ending. And they give the lie to idea that Hamas speaks for these poor folk.

Free Palestine. From Hamas.

UPDATE: Following on from Liberty Scott's comment below, Robert Tracinski posts this morning on how their support for Hamas's war "exposes the 'woke' movement's reactionary progressives."

There has been a lot of speculation that the “woke” fad may already be fading, that it has reached its peak and even its own supporters or fellow travelers on the centre-left are getting sick of it. There is some evidence that this is true in academia. But if we’re looking for a moment that could mark a definitive turn away from wokeness in the culture at large, the Hamas war just might be it....
    The left’s reaction—its defence and even outright celebration of a terrorist group’s campaign of mass murder—puts a giant asterisk in front of everything they ever said about “marginalised” people, about how “silence is violence,” and any rhetoric they have ever used about “liberation” or “justice.” That asterisk stands for the proviso: “Except for the Jews.”
    This is not mere hypocrisy but reflects and reveals the tribalist ideology behind the contemporary “woke” left.

"Attempting to defend Israel on ancestral or biblical grounds will not work...."

"The right of Jewish people to establish and maintain the state of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is based not on their ancestral roots in the region—nor on the story of God granting the land to Abraham—but on the fact that Israel is essentially a rights-respecting nation. 

    "This is what legitimises Israel’s existence. This is what justifies its use of retaliatory force against those who attack its citizens and residents. This is the principle by which Israel and its supporters are morally good, and Hamas and its supporters are evil. 

    "Attempting to defend Israel on ancestral or biblical grounds will not work. Why? Because collectivism—including racism—is false, and because God doesn’t exist and thus can’t grant anything to anyone. 

    "Why make a big deal of this? Because human lives and the existence of Israel are at stake, and because facts are stronger than falsehoods and fiction."

~ Craig Biddle

RELATED:

17 questions for those protesting for Palestine, including:

1. Do you think Israel has the right to exist?

3. If so, what is the right response of any sovereign state to being invaded by a group that engages in a sadistic slaughter of your people and takes hostages?

4. If [not], what do you want done to the people in Israel who live within those boundaries?

8. Do you believe Hamas will miraculously abide by the ceasefire you are now calling for, when the last time it was under a ceasefire, it invaded Israel and slaughtered over 1,000 civilians? If so, why?

9. When Hamas next breaks a ceasefire, what should Israel do in response?

10. When Hamas shelters underneath hospitals, schools and homes, and uses those shelters to prepare munitions, to plan further attacks and hold hostages, what should be the right response to it?

11. If Israel withdrew (again) from Gaza, and opened the sea and airspace to Hamas, do you think it would build Gaza into a city of peace and prosperity where Palestinians could thrive, or would it use it as a staging post to wage war against Israel? What has history taught about this since 2007?

                                                    >>READ MORE

 

"There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred—than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes"

"There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred—than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes. If a man believes that his own character is determined at birth in some unknown, ineffable way, and that the characters of all strangers are determined in the same way — then no communication, no understanding, no persuasion is possible among them, only mutual fear, suspicion, and hatred. Tribal or ethnic rule has existed, at some time, in every part of the world, and, in some country, in every period of mankind’s history. The record of hatred [and its result] is always the same."

~ Ayn Rand, from her 1977 lecture 'Global Balkanisation,' examining the meaning of “ethnicity” and the consequences of “modern tribalism” in politics -- quoted in Tom Bowden's post 'Tribalism Divides Us — Only Individualism Can Unite Us'