11 October 2023

The attack on Israel -- mini-round-up


Most of my internet time since Saturday has been focused on news from the war (yes, this is a war) in southern Israel.  The parallels with Putin's invasion of Ukraine are astonishingly close.  In both cases a genocidal, totalitarian force (Russia, Islamism) has invaded a relatively small democracy whose very right to exist it explicitly denies.  Even the details of the vile atrocities committed by the invaders are startlingly similar.  In both cases most of the West has rallied to support the target of the aggression, while the most foul and depraved elements in our societies have slimed out from under their rocks to blame the victim and make excuses for the butchers and rapists.  And in both cases those butchers and rapists have bitten off a lot more than they can chew.

This is in no way a war of "liberation".  Israel withdrew its occupation and control of the Gaza Strip in 2005; the following year the people of Gaza elected Hamas to rule the area.  Nor is there any truth to the cliché of it being an "open-air prison".  The Gaza Strip is not part of Israel, nor claimed as such.  Israel restricting entry from there is no different than any country limiting migration from outside its borders (Egypt, which also shares a border with the Gaza Strip, also restricts entry from it).  Liberation movements do not massacre children or gang-rape women.  Barbarians do that.

Biden gets it.  His statement yesterday spoke of "pure, unadulterated evil", and the US has already begun delivering military help.  Zelensky understands the parallel between Israel's situation and that of Ukraine (here is his initial statement), as do many Ukrainians.

The Hamas barbarians' blood-lust was such that they even shot bodies that were already dead.  According to one report, they have beheaded infants.  This is an apparent hostage-taking or killing as it happened (audio only).  Here is a family being held hostage after one child was killed, though it's not clear to me whether the terrorists are actually in the room with them.  The repeated reports of women hostages being paraded around bleeding from the groin make it clear enough what else has been going on.  And don't forget those monsters chanting "Allahu akbar" over the desecrated corpse of Shani Louk, or the abduction of Noa Argamani at the music festival (where, so far, two hundred and sixty corpses have been found).  Some argue that such graphic imagery should not be spread around -- on the contrary, it needs to be spread as far and wide as possible.  Let no one escape the reality of what these savages have been doing (and rejoicing over), and of what the both-sidesers and excuse-makers are de facto defending.  The atrocities evoke the Holocaust itself.

This one mocks the tears of the bereaved.

Anti-Israel "progressives" in the West are revealing themselves for the anti-Semitic vermin that they are.  To me, those who can look at the horrors of the last few days and still both-sides this conflict or make excuses or moral equivalences or "yes but what about" or any of that shit are simply not fellow human beings any more.  I want nothing to do with them, ever again.  Such depths of moral depravity I cannot fathom.

Most Israel-haters know hardly anything about the country.  This blogger does know.  Note also that Arab citizens of Israel can vote and Arab parties hold seats in the Knesset, making nonsense of the drivel about "apartheid".

There are claims that the Iranian and Russian regimes helped or even partially orchestrated the invasion (the references to Iran originate here).  Personally I'm cautious -- some involvement does seem likely, especially from Iran which has a long-standing relationship with the anti-Israel terror groups, but it will take a while for its exact extent to be definitely known.

Reporting on this war demands honest language.

Here is a list of the filth in Congress who, in 2021, voted against aid for Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system (a purely defensive system).  One, at least, has now reacted to Hamas's new atrocities by blatantly displaying support for the savages.

Do not underestimate Israelis, who will do whatever it takes to make an end to Hamas once and for all.  We must stand with them.  The forces of democracy and civilization must resolve to defeat all these terrorist fanatics and gangster regimes which cause only war and destruction and misery.

Elder of Ziyon blog has a huge collection of further links, images, and excerpts on the invasion.

As for Hamas, its final legacy to the people of the Gaza Strip will be nothing but defeat, humiliation, and the stench of unburied death.

18 Comments:

Blogger NickM said...

Oh, the images need to be distributed.

See this...

https://remember.org/facts-aft-lib-eis.html

Ike wanted everything documented and distributed because...

“Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

He said that after visiting the first camp the US Army liberated. George Patton didn't complete the tour. He didn't want to throw-up in front of the men. Yes, that noted "snowflake" Old "Blood and Guts" Patton.

The recent film and images from Israel are revolting. And that is why they need to be seen. And in particular the depraved glee the Hamas Uruk-Hai have taken in their utterly depraved rape and pillage. That they are seen by many as freedom fighters like Ghandi or Mandela or Washington is beyond reprehensible.

I guess if we don't find the truly revolting revolting we have lost all humanity.

It is the double-think that distresses me. I have seen at Manchester Pride rainbow flags with slogans like "Manchester LGBTQ for Palestine". Are these people aware of what being gay in Gaza is like? Are they aware of what Tel-Aviv is like?

https://theculturetrip.com/middle-east/israel/articles/why-tel-aviv-is-one-of-the-most-lgbt-friendly-cities-in-the-world

The cognitive dissonace is astonishing. Because this is a clear a case of day fighting with night. The BBC seems to be much more "nuanced". I would even suggest they favour the Gazan Uruks-Hai. Well, the Hell with them! There is no nuance between civilization and utter wreckless hate.

I learned my morals from JRRT. Forth Eorlingus!

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

Israel doesn't stand alone. I've had a gutfull all my life of Islamic brutality. 9/11, 7/7, Charlie Hebdo and all the rest and now this... Seventeen UK citizens are dead or missing, raped or mutilated. Hell's teeth I was born at the time of the '73 Yom-Kippur War. I have had this for half a century - my whole life. We have all had enough.

It is time to draw swords together.

11 October, 2023 06:54  
Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

I just think this is going to be really bad because neither side wants to give in at all. They are going to end up demolishing each other and the hate will still be there there. It's sad that so many innocent people and children are getting hurt and killed killed.

11 October, 2023 16:42  
Anonymous Reaganite Independent said...

Enjoyed your take, don’t think I’d change anything

possible exception being I think around and Russia’s fingerprints are all over it. This is all one war, there is a Russia Iran Hezbollah Hamas axis working together against us

Russia at minimum had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks, the disinformation campaign was all scripted and loaded ready to go, it was patently obvious

Ukrainian intelligence says their Belarusian sources named Wagner people who were shipped to Africa from Belarus and trained Hamas there in the use of drone warfare

12 October, 2023 00:03  
Anonymous Reaganite Independent said...

“According to the senior HAMAS official quoted by CNN, Ali Baraka, from October 2021 to just before the Hamas invasion the Islamist terrorists were “manufacturing [Kalashnikov] bullets with permission from the Russians”

The same Russians whose military-industrial complex the MAGA “movement” has since opted to support over America’s European allies in Ukraine and NATO?

Yes, the very same“

-Seth Abrahamsson on substack

(appears your comment section won’t allow links)

12 October, 2023 05:48  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

NickM: Exactly! Eisenhower's comment is very appropriate. It's actually the most shocking and disgusting behavior that needs to be most documented and publicized, precisely because it would otherwise be hard to believe.

I really think the people who are trying to both-sides and yes-but these atrocities have lost all humanity. They're the kind of people who would look at Auschwitz and try to spin it as "Well, yes, but the Jews did some bad things too".

The gay issue is the best evidence that these people really know nothing about the reality of the situation. I recall years ago reading an interview with a Palestinian gay man from Gaza who lived in Tel Aviv. The interviewer asked him what would happen if he went back to Gaza. He said, "The police would kill me, unless my father killed me first".

Mary K: Well, the Israelis don't want to give in because the Islamists want to kill them all, and the Islamists don't want to give in because apparently the concept of Jews still being alive anywhere is intolerable to them. It's hardly a symmetrical situation.

Reaganite: It seems very likely that the Russian and Iranian regimes were involved, but I'm waiting to see what conclusions our and Israel's intelligence people come to. So far they evidently don't believe they have enough evidence to make a call on it. Certainly the Iranian regime's enthusiastic support for the atrocities is disgusting, but not all that surprising -- they commit plenty of murder and beatings and rape against their own political dissidents.

There shouldn't be a problem with posting links in the comments. Were you not able to do so? I think this is the one your quote is from.

12 October, 2023 10:37  
Anonymous Reaganite Independent said...

Get a load of this, been reading the Russians may have been more directly involved in Iran (!):

‘Russian-Speaking Instructors WITHIN HAMAS Gave Orders + Coordinated Mercenaries During Attack on Israel ‘

The link to the video is on my blog,
can’t post it here it seems

As for Tehran, there would be no Hamas if they hadn’t been nurturing them for decades, I don’t know how one can separate them & their intentions from their proxies

13 October, 2023 02:44  
Blogger Les Carpenter said...

Out of sheer ignorance humankind will eventually destroy itself.

13 October, 2023 14:01  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Reaganite: I did see that on your blog, but I don't see what it has to do with Iran specifically, nor could I hear anything that sounded like Russian (my hearing isn't good, though).

Again, there shouldn't be a problem with posting links in my comments. People do it all the time.

Les: Sorry, but that's just silly. Ignorance isn't a major cause of the current conflict, nor does that conflict represent a threat of destroying humankind as a whole.

13 October, 2023 14:55  
Blogger Les Carpenter said...

It's the root cause of all violence and destructon.

Self defense is understandable, and neccessary. And everyone when attacked has the right to self defense, defense of their famlies, community, and nation.

Violence, war, and it's destruction IS a display of human ignorance at it's core.

My use of ignorance in not meant in the way i suspect you think i mean it Infidel763

13 October, 2023 17:10  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

It's the root cause of all violence and destructon

No, most violence and destruction stems from things that have very little to do with ignorance.

My use of ignorance in not meant in the way i suspect you think i mean it Infidel763

I assumed you meant the word to mean what it actually means. If you meant something else, you should have used a different word that means whatever you actually were referring to. If a writer uses the word "hedgehog" to mean "opera", then it's his fault, not the reader's, if the reader assumed he actually meant a hedgehog. I have zero patience with people being deliberately cryptic. Or cynical.

13 October, 2023 22:07  
Blogger Dave Dubya said...

I'm still waiting to hear from a friend in Israel.

My heart aches for the slaughtering and suffering of all innocents. Hamas is entirely responsible for the bloodshed, along with their enablers from Putin to Iran. They are the face of evil.

Authoritarian/racist nationalism, tribalism, and religion are the human inventions that doom humanity to countless deaths and immeasurable suffering. The truth is we ALL share the same humanity, ancestry and evolution. Our younger generations will share the future and the planet. I'm thinking this may be the ignorance that Les is suggesting.

And speaking of ignorance.

We have a MAGA cult that is fostering this kind of madness, murder, and mayhem here at home. I dread what Trump might order his cult to do if Biden wins reelection. Too many of them WANT a dictatorship or civil war.

In the US Blacks, Jews, and even progressive Unitarians have been murdered in their places of worship by radical Right racists and bigots.

I earnestly hope our younger people can find a way past all this so they can find some peace in their future.

14 October, 2023 17:19  
Anonymous Annie said...

Although "moral clarity" is being overused already, I appreciate that it comes through loud and clear in your coverage, Infidel.

I was honestly taken aback by the amount of hatred and ignorance demonstrated on American college campuses. It's clear that knowledge of the Middle East is absent, and the depiction of Hamas as anything other than Isis-level terrorists is sickening and saddening--and frightening. I saw an interview with Jeremy Bash, who worked for the CIA and Department of Defense during the Obama administration, in which he said that his daughter asked him if she should remove the Star of David she wears around her neck. It is appalling that a young girl in the United States in 2023 should have such a fear.

I am very proud of President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin for their strong public statements and actions. We must hope that most Americans are not swayed by the lies on social media and elsewhere--and realize that both our humanity and our commitment to democracy mean that we must support Israel and Ukraine, rather than pitting one against the other as the Putin-loving House Republicans are doing.

15 October, 2023 13:59  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Dave: I hope your friend turns out to be all right.

While the MAGA cult can be assholes, they aren't the primary supporters of this particular genocidal madness, murder and mayhem in the US right now. It's not the MAGA cultists who are out there marching around with Palestinian flags, chanting slogans for the destruction of Israel, and declaring the ghastly mass slaughter in Israel to be a war of "liberation". It wasn't a MAGA Republican who put up a Palestinian flag outside her office after the atrocities, thus clearly signaling support for those atrocities. After decades of people absurdly throwing around the word "Nazi" whenever anyone even mildly disagrees with them, the actual, literal Nazis have shown up at last -- and they're mostly people who consider themselves to be on the left.

Annie: Thanks. I've been using language here more intemperate than I usually do, but that moral clarity is exactly what requires it. There is no way to discuss this as if it were a normal political disagreement. We're dealing with monsters here.

I hope it's ignorance that plays the major role in the hatred. The ignorance is very visible to me, since the Middle East was my area of specialization when I was in academia, and it's the part of the world I know the most about. I fear it's something worse, though, especially since this unexpected neo-Nazi eruption is happening mostly among younger people. It may be that, as the Holocaust passes out of living memory, the West's centuries-old traditional anti-Semitism, the madness of the pogroms and blood libels, is re-emerging. I really never thought this could happen here. But that's what they thought in Germany before 1933.

Biden's handling of this crisis has been outstanding so far. I shudder to think what would be happening if Trump were still in power.

15 October, 2023 21:15  
Blogger NickM said...

But Trump is the King of Israel! He would get in his chariot and mighty will be his smiting of the Hamasites...

https://news.sky.com/story/king-of-israel-donald-trump-i-am-the-chosen-one-11790898

16 October, 2023 10:26  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Trump is an irrelevant jackass. He changes sides every five minutes depending on whichever random vendetta floats to the surface of his decaying brain at a given moment. One minute he's the king of Israel and the next Hezbollah is "very smart". He's a toddler.

16 October, 2023 10:53  
Blogger NickM said...

Must disagree. Toddlers eventually grow-up. Must also disagree that he is irrelevant. He could be the next POTUS. If you ask me - nothing against Biden - but he's too old and Trump has a fan base who are loyaler than Taylor Swift's (I'm a bit of a Swiftian myself). He could do anything and the Trumpsters would give him six out of six...

16 October, 2023 11:11  
Blogger Darrell Michaels said...

Infidel, I want to thank you for a very direct and much-needed take on this war without resorting to nuance on equivocation. I find myself in complete and unequivocal agreement with your posting here. Thanks for having the courage and moral integrity to call out the evil and inhumanity from those that might otherwise share some common political views here in the U.S. and around the world with progressives. It is refreshing and altogether uncommon these days for someone to call out evil and wrong-doing when it is displayed by erstwhile fellow political travelers. It is one more reason why I might not always agree with your take on things politically or religiously, but I greatly respect your integrity and willing to call BS regardless of the person spewing evil. Thank you.

16 October, 2023 11:45  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

NickM: Well, he's irrelevant to this particular situation, anyway. Nobody on either side has any interest in listening to him. This mess should be over, one way or another, long before the US election.

Darrell: Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it.

I'm certainly not here to march in lockstep with any one party or ideology, ignoring anything it does wrong. I call 'em as I see 'em, every time. And the behavior of Hamas and the depravity of its defenders here are too horrifying to ignore.

Glad to see you commenting -- I was wondering if you'd dropped off the internet entirely.

17 October, 2023 06:30  

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