I did not attend, opting instead to turn up for a local rally in Drogheda. There were around one hundred people gathered in front of the Cathedral to listen to speakers arrayed across its steps. It was small but many of those who could be expected to appear at those events had gone off to Dublin. My own view was that while the Dublin rally was crucial, small local events visible to the footfall in the town's main street are valuable. Without that presence, Droghedians who do not catch the evening news would not be reminded of the ongoing horrors that Israel is perpetrating against civilians, many of them children.
I often wonder how Jewish parents felt when they were unable to protect their children at the ravine of Babi Yar, a Nazi murder site in Ukraine where thousands of innocent Jews were massacred. That atrocity is one of the stand out events of the Holocaust. It is being repeated in Gaza. We get an idea from the faces of anguished parents rushing their children to hospital with injuries sustained after the Infant Destruction Force tried to murder them. Anguish even more pronounced when the parents are faced with the finality that their children have been murdered and will never return.
In those hospitals children are having limbs amputated without anesthetic in a bid to save their lives. It is reminiscent of scenes from a movie about the battle of Stalingrad. Children are the real target in Israel's war. The strategic logic of the Israeli war criminals directing the infanticide seems to be one of crushing a people by murdering its children. It is a terror tactic favoured by Mexican drug cartels.
Rarely have we seen a war in which children have become the main prey, not in Ukraine, not in Vietnam or El Salvador, where war crimes were an every day occurrence. That Israeli lust for child murder propelled itself to the centre of an exchange between Medhi Hasan and Mark Regev, a person who unfailingly reminds me of Boris Johnson or Donald Trump due to the ease with which he lies.
Rarely have we seen a war in which children have become the main prey, not in Ukraine, not in Vietnam or El Salvador, where war crimes were an every day occurrence. That Israeli lust for child murder propelled itself to the centre of an exchange between Medhi Hasan and Mark Regev, a person who unfailingly reminds me of Boris Johnson or Donald Trump due to the ease with which he lies.
Hasan made Regev look ridiculous. Despite Gaza being turned into a graveyard for children the Israeli Goebbels was reduced to denying that his government had killed children in its Gazacide. All five thousand of them were either killed by Hamas or committed suicide to give a bad name to the world's most moral army. If ever 'Israel had immensely civilised Israeli soldiers', as suggest by Max Hastings, it was a long time ago. Hastings suggests half a century past. If one Israeli military official has the integrity or human decency of Wehrmacht officer Helmuth Groscurth who objected to the Jewish children of Bjelaja-Zerkow being murdered by the SS we have yet to see it. So much for the 'world's most moral army' when it has failed to come close to the ethical standards enunciated by a single officer in the Wehrmacht.
Regev was not alone in facing a hard time from his interlocuter. Owen Jones had Piers Morgan on the ropes when Morgan denied that Israel was committing genocide but insisted that what Putin was doing in Ukraine amounted to genocide. In fairness to Morgan, he has brought to the fore a lot of anti-Israeli genocide voices that have been much more muted elsewhere in the mainstream media. That did not save him from the remorseless logic of Jones.
Israel, knowing how revolted most people but governments in the West are by the Massacre of the Innocent, has to lie about child murder. Usually, it's first response:
to accusations of atrocities is denial. When that fails, the second strategy is to blame Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups for Palestinian deaths.
On November 11, the official Arabic account run by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video of a nurse, apparently agitated, talking about Hamas overrunning the al-Shifa Hospital, and taking all the fuel and morphine. She claimed that because Hamas had stolen morphine, she couldn’t use it on a five-year-old with a fracture.
The video, which was retweeted thousands of times, was a clear fake. No staff in the vicinity appear to recognise the individual featured, casting doubt on her identity and role. Robert Mackey, a journalist with the research agency Forensic Architecture, spoke to three Doctors Without Borders staff members working at the al-Shifa Hospital, none of whom recognised her.
The video was almost comic in its absurdity. The nurse spoke with a non-Palestinian accent, and her dialogue seemed to perfectly echo Israeli military talking points about Hamas stealing all the fuel from hospitals.
Moreover, the strategic placement of a Palestinian Health Ministry logo was a contrived attempt to mislead or create a ‘honeytrap’ for open-source intelligence. Adding to the suspicion were the stock audio-sounding bombing effects, and her immaculately clean white coat and perfect makeup, all of which seemed out of place in a supposedly dire setting.
The purpose of the video was clear, to blame Hamas for the suffering of children and legitimise the Israeli military’s claims that Hamas is using civilians and children as human shields.
As fake as Holocaust denial.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
What's so depressing to me is that for Western countries there appears to be no point where they insist Israel must cease, or face a withdrawal of political and moral support. I thought such a moment was in sight about two weeks into Israel's revenge campaign, but that drawing of a line never happened, even as the death toll mounted.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much willful blindness, even wanton cruelty, in those excusing Israel's actions. I'm not a bleeding heart leftie stereotype or dogmatic pro-Palestinian activist. Yet there are many like me horrified at what's taking place.
In the 1980s Ronald Reagan (of all people) was willing and able to order Israel to cease or desist from particularly brutal operations in Lebanon. Notably, Israel intended to strike the hotel in Beiruit where foreign journalists were staying because they disliked the globally negative coverage of Israeli actions.
Yet in 2023, Joe Biden is unwilling or incapable of placing such restraints on the IDF. He failed to even condemn, let alone stop, the Israeli destruction of a12-storey building housing Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.
What's happening in the Middle East is yet another blow to the already tarnished moral authority of the West, and like Iraq in 2003 will be remembered by historians as a critical juncture in the US-centric West's decline. Anthony Blinken bringing himself to tears in speaking about Russia's atrocities in Ukraine is just nauseating now.
@ Bleakley
DeletePerhaps it is because who is lining up to condemn Israel. Putin, Assad, Xi, the Iranian Ayatollah's and Saudi's MBS and various other despots are all criticizing Israel.
Makes you wonder when dictators are against someone.
@Steve R
ReplyDeleteRussia, Iran etc. are simply jumping on the propaganda opportunity so graciously gifted by the West. Unlike the US and UK vis-à-vis Israel, Russia is not providing materiel support to Palestinians.
Russia and Iran hold up occasions where the West fails to live up to the values it promotes (at least rhetorically) as proof of the hypocrisy of the West, and of the obsolescence of the US-dominated world. Yet their alternative is not to hold everyone to account but instead to create a world where there are no universal values, and thus no hypocrisy.
Right now that sort of vision does seem be material, with Russia's brutal, imperialist invasion of Ukraine being condemned by US+EU only for the roles to be reversed a year later with regards to Israel's brutal, colonial war against Palestinians.
Meanwhile, here are quotes from an article published today in an Israeli newspaper, penned by retired senior IDF general and former head of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland:
'...who are the "poor" women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that supports the organization, and on the other hand, if they experience a humanitarian disaster, then it can be assumed that some of the Hamas fighters and the more junior commanders will begin to understand that the war is futile and that it is better to prevent irreversible harm to their families.
The way to win the war faster and at a lower cost for us requires a system collapse on the other side and not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters. The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers...
When senior Israeli figures say in the media "It's either us or them" we should clarify the question of who is "them". "They" are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the "civilian" officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population who enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th.'
Sadistic cruelty violating all the laws of war, given unqualified moral and materiel support from the US, UK, and EU.
Bleakley - good reference to Giora Eiland. He sounds so much like Himmler in the following extract from his speech:
ReplyDeletewe had the toughness (resolve) to exterminate the Jews in our sphere (area). Don’t ask how difficult it was. As soldiers, try to understand how difficult it is to execute such an order. The order was necessary...I told them: First, there is the order, and second, our conscience tells us to carry on ruthlessly with this cleansing process. And if anyone comes along and says: ‘Well, you know, I understand very well your killing grown-up Jews, but how can you kill women and children?’, I say this: ‘These children will grow up one day....
And the IHRA along with its fellow travellers has the chutzpah to accuse people of anti-Semitism when they flag up these similarities.
Did Hamas behead babies?
ReplyDeleteNo, this video does not show Israeli children held hostage by Hamas in cages • FRANCE 24 English
How Israel created a water crisis for Palestinians ...........Not fake news
No matter which side one might favour in this conflict I think all of us, even if only in our private moments, would agree with the old saw that 'truth is the first casualty of war'.
ReplyDeleteTestimonyfrom survivors of Oct. 7 suggests an alternative explanation—that in its zeal to defeat Hamas, Israeli commanders may have willingly targeted and sacrificed Israeli soldiers and civilians in the crossfire.
Henyjoy.....
DeleteIsraeli commanders may have willingly targeted and sacrificed Israeli soldiers and civilians in the crossfire.
It's called Israel’s Hannibal Directive (Al-Jazeera)
“You will open fire without constraints, in order to prevent the abduction,” he said, adding that the use of force is carried out even at the risk of killing a captive soldier.
Not Fake News.............
ReplyDeleteUN figures show that since the 7th October, daily attacks by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian population there have more than doubled, forcing more than a thousand off their land.
When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants’ deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank.
Since Oct7th Israeli forces have killed at least 237 Palestinians, including 52 children, in the occupied West Bank, while arresting more than 3,000 people, as it intensified raids in the West Bank since launching its military offensive on Gaza.
ReplyDeleteWatch the first 2mins...for more real news ....It's a 7minJimmy Dore video .