If the world’s powerful nations had not so brazenly shrugged off three-quarters of a million Palestinians being driven from their homes 76 years ago, accompanied by an estimated 15,000 suffering violent deaths, the seeds of today’s bitter harvest would not have been planted.
Because the invaders – all the Arab nations that could get troops to the area – told the Palestinians to leave so they could slaughter all the Jews. Who, unfortunately for the invaders, decided not to die and fought back.
Then, a piece of truly abject fuckwittery. Instead of that displaced population dispersing around the wrold so that the call for the river to the sea became as politically important at the 15 nutters who march each year for the return of the Sudeten (and I’ve been there and seen them doing so) it was maintained as a seething mass in Gaza.
But, you know, history doesn’t exist for polemecists, does it?
As to what’s really happening here. Hamas fucked about and now it’s finding out. Vile, terrible and awful though it is, that’s what’s happening.
I can answer the boy Jones’ question on “What is the value of a Palestinian life?”. A lot less than an Israeli one. Probably 30 times less looking at the numbers of casualtites.
Why? Because the evil Jooz aren’t a bunch of whining backwards Muslim permanent victims. They have a net value in the world that consist of more than enriching the Hamas leadership.
Hamas was abandoned by its allies. The Iranians never showed up. I can only think that it was the Ayatollahs who pushed Hanas into something so suicidal.
I just saw a video of some chap who said that the Houthis have achieved the impossible by enacting a naval blockade without a navy.
The Turks managed it in 1915. They just mines the Dardanelles using fishing boats. The Allies just put a boom across the Straits of Otranto. Narrow seas are easy to blockade with any weapons that can get halfway across.
The west’s complete contempt for the lives of Palestinians will not be forgotten
Good. Make Palestine Jewish Again.
With the money the west has poured into Gaza in aid, the place should be a paradise. The fact that it isn’t is down to whom, exactly?
Not the west. Not the Israelis. Spare me the Palestinian victimhood. They don’t deserve a state.
There’s a few commentators saying ‘why are Muslim and Gazan lives valued less than others?’ as if it’s a gotcha and that somehow the UK should do-oo something. Like what, step in and level up the body count.
Who’s doing these valuations anyway?
No marches in the street for Rohningyas, Yemenis, Sudan, or Nagorno-Karabakh, but now that Gazan lives are being lost it’s protests in support of a ceasefire in Westminster every weekend. No-one is even marching for a truce in Ukraine even though that would be a blooming good plan. Gazan lives are worth more then.
This might be the first time I’ve ever been a bit cynical about a comment by Julia, but all I can see in aid is $40 billion. And they still don’t have enough camels? It’s not a lot for an advanced high-tech society, is it?
Oh, wait…
“But little thought has been given to how political and media elites in western nations have torched their moral authority, leaving it to fester alongside thousands of unidentified Palestinian corpses buried under the rubble. A turning point, to be sure, with consequences that will only be understood when it is much too late.”
Ah, yes. My side have got less money, fewer weapons, no technology, no natural resources, no ideas, no working political institutions, and no cultural achievements. But at university I read that the bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers, so you guys had better look out when the dialectic turns nasty.
The real problem is UNRRA. If the Palestinians ever left the concrete shacks that is all they are allowed to build in the Arab states that actually allow them to stay, without any rights, what would all those UN officials do?
Bongo – No-one is even marching for a truce in Ukraine
Something I’ve wondered about for a couple of years now. Remember “Stop the War”? We now have a massive war in Europe and nobody seems interested in stopping it. The hard Left: not useful even once.
‘The real problem is UNRRA.’
Yeah Diogenes. If we hadn’t wasted our money supporting these Palestinians since 1948 (?), they’d have had to earn a living or starve. And they wouldn’t be bothering us now with their whinges.
But of course it’s also us who’re supporting the Houthis. Indeed the taxes we pay them for the food we donate are what allow them to keep going.
But being selfish, I wouldn’t give them any of my money no matter what their situation was.
Prior to overstepping the mark the leaders of Hamas lived a cushy life in their beachfront developments while the real top dogs were cosseted at a safe distance* from the consequences of their actions by the likes of Qatar.
What I don’t know is how much of the aid enabling this lifestyle was given by the stinking rich fellow Muslim states and how that compared to the billions paid by mug western nations to a bunch of primitives who want to kill us.
Incidentally the entire population of Gaza could be relocated and accommodated in the 100,000 air conditioned tents (total capacity 3 million) constructed by the Saudis at Mina. But they’re not going to allow that and of course no one is bringing up the subject.
* until Mossad eventually prove yet again there is no such thing as a safe distance.
The invention of the “Palestinians” was one of the most successful reframes in recent history. When it was the great mass of Arabs assaulting a few Jews the general human sympathy for a fighting underdog applied (even the Soviets condemned the attacks in the early days before the cold war got fully rolling). By separating out and naming the few Arabs disadvantaged by Israeli resistance, a new underdog was created. Quite clever, and typical of the scheming left.
Ottokring,
“Hamas was abandoned by its allies. The Iranians never showed up. I can only think that it was the Ayatollahs who pushed Hanas into something so suicidal.”
This is what the conflict is really about. All the chuckleheads at the Guardian etc just don’t get what game was being played. Iran wanted to block the normalisation of Saudi/Israel relations. So, kill some Israelis, have Israel killing a few Arabs, the leaders in Saudi don’t want to be seen siding with them. Deal falls apart. Job done.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Iran-has-gotten-all-the-war-it-wants-in-Gaza-already
If even some worth had been attached to Palestinian life then decades of occupation, siege, illegal colonisation, apartheid, violent repression and mass slaughter might never have happened. Oppressing others becomes difficult to sustain when their humanity is accepted.
I think when Palestinians begin valuing Jewish lives rather than calling for their extermination the equation might change.
So yes, we have seen how the refusal to treat Palestinians as human beings made today’s nightmare inevitable. We can see how the moral claims used to justify western global dominance are permanently shredded. But little thought has been given to how political and media elites in western nations have torched their moral authority, leaving it to fester alongside thousands of unidentified Palestinian corpses buried under the rubble. A turning point, to be sure, with consequences that will only be understood when it is much too late.
A campaign to get him on a plane to Eastern Syria at IS’ peak didn’t yield fruit but surely he has to put his money where his mouth is and head over to Gaza and test for himself his ability to fly by being put on to a tall building like any Gazan homosexual would be?
I’d ditch the ‘Useful’ term from the ‘Useful idiot’ phrase – this column is more stupid than anything I’ve seen from Murphy.
Liam Fox MP says There needs to be a plan for a Palestinian state.
But we, the British people, are denied our own state. We’re supposed to live in a multicultural shithole country where anybody who fancies coming here to live off us is not only permitted to do so, but is also actively privileged over us by the British government.
So, no, I don’t agree that there “needs” to be a Palestinian state. The goose is saying fuck off and enjoy your sauce.
on a separate note Tim – Aliens are real, and writing in the Guardian…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/22/parents-tantrums-british-playgrounds-austerity-decline
VP – surely he has to put his money where his mouth is and head over to Gaza and test for himself his ability to fly by being put on to a tall building like any Gazan homosexual would be?
You would think a demographic that’s highly at risk from Diversity related defenestration would be less keen on Diversity. But they’re not.
Why? I think the answer might lie in the amygdala. Lefties have an underdeveloped (or worse, perverted) disgust reflex (you’d have to, to bed Dianne Abbott).
Disgust is a survival trait.
We are dealing with people who are not only mentally ill, but also effectively brain damaged. Progressives left normal humanity behind them as they evolved into some sort of hominid variant of the Dodo.
Unlike the lovely Rhiannon Lucy Corset, who is the most conservative columnist currently plying her trade in tomorrow’s British chip wrapppers.
Truce in Ukraine on the current front line?
Western aid to Ukraine stops, plans to join EU/Nato put off indefinitely or canned.
Russia has the population to rebuild its armed forces and make all kinds of weapons and ammo, this is not going to be negotiable.
When they are ready, Russia comes back. Either with some pretext or just because they can.
That is what would happen. Ukraine can’t trust Russia (or the West).
There used to be a fairly substantial Christian population in the West Bank, also southern Lebanon didn’t there?They got driven out. Do they get a ‘right of return’?
I sometimes wonder whether Israel should just say “fuck it, we’re buying Florida, do what you want”. Maybe that’s my Christian background talking (wherever two of you gather, I am there… I think, something like that, my theology is a bit wonky). Attachment to a place is all well and good but at some stage you have to ask is it worth it?
My wife went to Israel several years ago. It was a prayer tour so I begged off on the grounds it was cheaper for me to be a drunken mess at home. Even then there were areas they got warned off – well, a bunch of strident women insisting they wanted to pray for peace, loudly, at every border got told to keep it down. Give Mrs Ltw credit, she didn’t get into arguments with the border guards and talked her (thankfully former) friends into doing the same. And sent me daily ‘proof of life’ photos, mostly of cats. I wasn’t that worried at the time. Probably should have been.
Liam Fox MP says There needs to be a plan for a Palestinian state.
Has it escaped his notice that the Arabs have been offered such a state on several occasions? Each time they’ve rejected the offer because it didn’t feature the Jewish genocide they were hoping for.
There used to be a fairly substantial Christian population in the West Bank, also southern Lebanon didn’t there?
Arent they all in Australia now? I think they quite like it there.
Diogenes mentions “Arab states that actually allow them to stay” earlier. And this is just the problem. No one wants them, certainly not Egypt and Jordan. They are simply a good stick with which to beat the Israelis. For their part the Jews, in the eyes of the Left, ceased to be the good guys, when they stopped voting Labour and started to go on the offensive
@Ottokring – I’ve never met a Palestinian Christian. I’m sure there are a few around. I do know an Iranian who left there 30 years ago, now a successful dentist, a very black African named Moses who joked that Moses and Luke were both biblical names but he got into Bible first, and of course Mrs Ltw is half Filipino (her mother was a nurse here for 40 years). So I think it’s fair to say we’re a welcoming society. Also, good point on the comment I missed.
Diogenes, Jordan gave the West Bank political rights and ended up with an attempted coup. No Arab country will go anywhere near them, or accept them, apart from whining. They’re perfectly content to leave the problem, and the blame, to Israel.
3/4 million Arabs left what is now Israel and want a right of return, so they. What about the 3/4 million Jews who had to flee the Arab states at the same time, do they get a right of return?
Also, see Karelian Finns, Sudeten and Baltic Germans, not to mention Indians and Pakistanis, all chucked out from their homes at about the same time. Right of return is a lovely concept but losing a war has consequences.
ltw
I really meant Lebanese. There are enough there in Australia to form their own international Rugby League team.
We’ve already had a two state solution. The Arabs got all the land to the east of the river Jordan and the Jews got the land to the west. The Arabs were quite happy with their end of the deal but still would not tolerate Jews having any of the pie, so first opportunity they got, attempted to annihilate the Jews. They lost.
The very first thing Algerians did on achieving independence was to chase 1.2 million white people and Jews out of the country on pain of death.
Being born in Algeria bought them no consideration. But naturally, Algerians can and do move to European countries whenever they want.
It’s as if our Muslim friends keep trying to tell us something – but what?
How do you put a value on “moral authority”? A fiver anyone? 4:50? Three quid? Do I hear two? Come on. Someone here must have 50 pence…
Sorry, Otto, I misunderstood. Yep, no shortage.
You’re right about aliens, V_P.
The state of your playground is a political question, too. Their quality depends on the proper funding and functioning of local government.
Anyone but an alien or possibly Rhiannon Loose Corset (if they’re not the same thing) would know that the state of a kid’s playground depends on the ability of the local oiks to trash it. And no amount of funding or function of local government can overcome this evident truth.
I just can’t understand the requirements people are putting on Israel when they don’t put those on Russia or China (or any country in Africa for that matter). Even the US hasn’t lived up to the ‘ethical warfare’ bullshit these people expect the Israelis to abide by.
Nobody bats an eye at the Chinese enslaving Uighyrs or the Russians shelling apartment blocks – but let the Israelis attack actual, no-shit, military targets and they’re considered war criminals.
Even the US hasn’t lived up to the ‘ethical warfare’ bullshit these people expect the Israelis to abide by.
I doubt the Yanks would have had much truck with people demanding a ‘proportionate response’ if something similar had happened on US soil. Esp bearing in mind for similar impact in the US, it would have to be 30,000 victims.
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