The Atrocity in Israel

by

Jeffrey Herf on the ideology of mass murder.

An earlier Quillette post reviews Herf’s book Israel’s Moment.  The Palestinian Nakba narrative is discussed, along with the collaboration between the Nazi regime and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the preeminent leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the 1920s and ’30s.

CDR Salamander has a four-part post series on the situation; the first three posts are already out and are well worth reading:

Part I: 24669 Americans Murdered in One Day

Part II: Prelude to Slaughter

Part III: Gaza COA Decision Brief

The Diplomad sees an analogy with the Tet offensive of the Vietnam war.

30+ student organizations at Harvard issued a statement holding Israel “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”  See Harvard is a National Disgrace by Jacob Howland, who directs the Intellectual Foundations Program at UATX (commonly known as the University of Austin).  Some students affiliated with these organizations are now saying they didn’t know about the statement and don’t support it–and there was also a counter-statement by a number of faculty members–but overall, this level of support for such an extreme and malevolent statement says that something is seriously wrong at Harvard.

Larry Summers says: “In nearly 50 years of Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today.”

Well, Summers was President of Harvard. Doesn’t he feel some sense of responsibility for not having pushed back effectively against the politicization of the university?  Christopher Rufo says “Harvard has been promoting “decolonization,” critical race theory, and radical ethno-politics for decades. They know exactly what they’re doing—they’re just scrambling because they got caught supporting people who butcher babies.”  And maybe if student admissions and faculty hiring had focused more on excellence and less on nose-counting,  there would have not been so many people there that were eager to sign on to such a statement.

At Yale, an ‘American Studies’ professor says: “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.”

Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global and the chair of the Board of Overseers at Wharton, says:

While Hamas terrorists were slaughtering Israeli Jews, university administrators were figuring out how to spin it. Do not just take my word for it; read their statements. Across academia, administrators issued statements on behalf of their institutions expressing a repulsive moral equivalence between victims of terror and the perpetrators of that terror. The antisemitic rot in academia is unmistakable.

At the University of Pennsylvania, where I sit on the Wharton School’s Board of Overseers, leaders have for too long allowed this kind of anti-Jewish hate, which sanitizes Hamas’s atrocities, to infect their campuses. There must be consequences.

I call on all UPenn alumni and supporters who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to close their checkbooks until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok resign.

Cliff May on the role of Iran, and on the land-for-peace effort of 2005.

BLM Chicago put out a meme which strongly implies its support of the Hamas terrorism.  They have since made some attempt to walk it back.

A company founder says: “As a startup founder in 2020 I was under tremendous pressure to ‘publicly support’ BLM to appear anti-racist. I was told that “silence is violence” when I even questioned this pressure….well, the mask is finally off.”

If you’re on Twitter, you can see some of the responses she got to this post.

A thoughtful post by a Jew who has lived in Israel and who sees some responsibility on the part of Israel for the present situation. He has little to suggest in the way of practical solutions, though.

CNN’s Jake Tapper says:

“These last few days have been a real eye-opening period for a lot of people, a lot of Democrats, a lot of progressives, in terms of anti-semitism on the Left.”

…to which Glenn Reynolds notes: Well, up to now you managed to keep your eyes closed, and not without some effort.

42 thoughts on “The Atrocity in Israel”

  2. “A trial of Faith,” sayeth the Christians. I am not a Christian. Yet I feel my belief in human goodness is empty — and thus, I suspect, similar to this crisis long recognised among Christ’s followers.

  3. There are indications that prospective employers are taking note and names for future reference. While I’d like to believe this is from principal, I suspect the difference is that this time it’s more than a few dozen dead Israelis.

  4. Eye-opening…maybe, for a while. Up to now they have shown a remarkable ability to shake off the effects of any brush with reality and return to their self-imposed bubble world. Wonder what the count would be of those who continue to keep their eyes open in the face of peer pressure from the herd mentality crowd.

  7. David
    Thank you very much for calling to our attention and posting the link to the very wise and depressing post by Saul. I have been having similar inklings without his obvious firsthand knowledge and experience. Obviously, he has no solutions; but to no surprise since this intractable situation would have been solved by the actions of our “leaders” if the solution was an easy one. After the response of Israel in it’s righteous outrage to exact vengeance, the situation will carry even more baggage.

  10. Thanks for linking to Cmde, Sal, he’s been a daily read for a while. I know he’s been using all his skills as a former staff officer to squeeze a tremendous amount of info into a background summary and action options, but I’ll extend my thoughts based on what he wrote.

    Sympathy for Israel based on the recent atrocities is a rapidly depreciating asset. If Israel was to do nothing or even just tit-for-tat, maybe it would last several weeks at best. It’s already started to weaken as there are increasing calls for caution and the subtle introduction of terminology such as “militants” or “Israel pounds” , the reporting of causalities from both sides as a sum, and re-allocation of resources reporting from reporting the Hamas atrocities to the plight of Gazans. https://apnews.com/article/gaza-rimal-israel-hamas-incursion-war-0411aa82d51fc801c117213e508a1a1d

    This is the favored strategy of the media when faced with something of this magnitude. Initial sympathy followed by blaming the victim for responding disproportionately. Read the AP article and you see use of words such as “revenge” and “collective punishment”, showing pictures of the demolished Rimal neighborhood, and implying that Israel is acting out of insane rage in destroying civilian targets and mosques. Never mind that Hamas has seeded civilian areas with military installations in order to invite such attacks; no one seems to ask what those mysterious secondary explosions are about.

    Israel’s response will generate images of devastation which the media will strip any context from in order to switch the focus from Hamas to the barbarism of Israel. I would expect in a few weeks the emergence of stories about how Israel lost the sympathy of the world.

    Btw… the same applies to the US. The Biden Administration, and indeed Biden himself, is very anti-Israel. When the time is right expect calls from Biden and the Establishment to rein in Israel. Also, why exactly are we sending a precious carrier task group, let alone a rumored second to the Eastern Med? Curious

    We were speculating the other day whether to call Israel’s response “Going Old Testament on ” or “settling all family business” with regard to Hamas. Regardless, Israel’s response will have to be calibrated within the strategic environment defined by the US and Iran and yes the Saudis (who I think are working in concert with Israel to destroy Hamas)

    The dirty secret of the past 80 years is that ethnic cleansing works. Sal used the example of Danzig/Gdansk, I would add to that of Kaliningrad which was once known as Königsberg; Poland, Russians, and Czechs solved their German problems by simply driving out millions of Germans, Also see the former Yugoslavia and the current situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, I don’t think Israel will deport the Gazans, the world is not quite ready yet for such ruthless solutions, well at least for another year or two.

    Whatever Israel does, expect the revival of the old Roman term “punitive expedition.” (northern Mexico, 2025)

  11. I have to believe that the word has gone out to places like Qatar that the clock is ticking. That they can withdraw their protection of Hamas and deliver them or become a hunting ground with all that implies in terms of possible collateral damage to bystanders.

  12. What Mike said about the media and Biden people.

    “Isaac Saul” comes across as naïve and morally confused at best. Handwringing about how Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews both have legitimate claims elides key facts: 1) that ethnic-national conflicts get settled not by kumbaya but by separating the conflicting populations, 2) that the Jews have a stronger claim to Israel than does any other group, 3) that the Arab world is big and Israel is small, 4) that Israel assimilated Jewish refugees from the Arab world while the Arabs, USSR, Iran, UN, EU et al have maintained the Palestinian refugees as a multi-generational geopolitical tool and racket, and 5) that the Israelis have made numerous unsuccessful attempts, including by dis-occupying Gaza, at accommodation with the Palestinians.

    The focus on Gaza and the Palestinians distracts from the big picture. Hamas’s Gaza border operation looks like the opening battle in the latest phase of Iran’s war on Israel and the West.

  13. One side has F=16’s and tanks and no real desire to fight, the other has a strong desire for martyrdom. One side will get its wish.

  14. Mike, that carrier group? It’s in the Med for one reason only, to restrain Israel and prevent them from striking any targets within Iran or key to Iran in Syria or Lebanon. This administration has one overriding foreign policy priority, enabling the dominance of Iran in the region at the expense of the other leading powers, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    Thinking about going after the head of the snake? Well, we have substantial naval assets in the region and we’re not going to let that happen, with the public guise of preventing the war from expanding.

  15. What Dan said. My thought exactly as soon as I head of it yesterday: they are there not to defend Israel, but threaten them not to hit their targets.

  16. Either things have changed, or they haven’t.

    If they haven’t, then Israel will listen to the endless bleating about the poor put-upon Palestinians, pull its punches, and thus inevitably give Hamas another chance to rebuild.

    Eventually, there will be 4 million residents in Gaza- or 6 million- or more- who will still be bitterly resentful that they have to share a planet with Jews. Eventually, Israel will lose their military superiority in the region, which will include the ability to prevent Hamas from importing heavy weapons. Eventually, that will mean lights out for Israel, forever.

    If things have changed, then Israel will shortly erase Hamas from existence, perhaps attack Iran, even if “world opinion” doesn’t like it, even if the cabal that is making decisions for the US doesn’t want it to happen, even if they send an aircraft carrier to sit off the coast as a threat.

    Israel isn’t just at war with the relatively few Gazans who manage to pick up a rifle and shoot a baby or two. They’re at war with all of them, the entire society, men and women, young and old. Hamas plainly understands this logic.

    Does Israel? Does the US? Europe?

    One of the things I always found especially loathsome about the so-called “war on terror” was the insane rules of engagement American troops were forced to operate under. For example, there was an occasion when a helicopter full of SEALs was shot down because they were refused permission to shoot at the people firing at them. All the SEALs were killed. Somehow the US military and government were fine with this. End result, the Taliban are back in control in Afghanistan, Iraq is an Iranian satellite, and the US is poorer, less free, and every bit as vulnerable to another 9/11-style attack or worse.

    Does this look like success? Not to me. Can it go on forever? Nope.

    Either the West figures out that it needs to kill enough of the people who want to destroy it to make them want to stop, or the West itself will be destroyed.

    It’s that simple, if still ugly.

  18. As the man said; “War is Hell.”. If you could interrogate the shades of Dresden, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nanjing; you’d hear from hundreds of thousands of housewives, children and pensioners that had already endured years of personal loss, shortages and malnutrition; who’s only possible sin was to have voted, long ago, for the wrong person. Yet here they are, the victim of “bad luck”. Wrong place, wrong time. Many died because, for all the talk of pickle barrels, the state of the art didn’t allow hitting a target smaller than a city from 20,00 feet, others, at the end of a Japanese bayonet, simply because that’s the way Japan had always fought her wars. I leave as an exercise for the reader, the working out of all the hundreds of thousands that had a hand in this, just who and to what extent they may be culpable.

    Is the soldier bayoneting babies worse than the bombardier dropping the bombs to incinerate them? What about the waist gunner that never shot at anything that wasn’t shooting at him, the weather man, the mechanic that never shot at anyone at all? What about the “Masters of the Universe”, who, at the end of WWII decided that they should parcel out the world as they saw fit? And hasn’t that worked out just dandy? Would it have been any better if they hadn’t?

    There are philosophies that put starting a war on the same level as refusing to instantly capitulate. We did what we had to to end WWII, time will tell if Israel will do, or be allowed to do, what it takes to end this one. We see that as the accuracy of the weapons has improved, it has increased the illusion of control without actually doing so. There are no attractive options left, all are dark and ugly. One only offers the hope of an end rather than a respite, albeit in Gaza only. The man also said; “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”.

  22. Like a stopped clock, he may be right this time. It will certainly be bloody and costly and anybody that claims to know just how bloody and costly or how long it will take is lying. The question is will they, can they, stay long enough, do what’s necessary to end this. I don’t see how this ends with palestinians in Gaza.

    Trying to teach another lesson would be a mistake.

  23. Having seen the Tet comparison, along with 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, I still think that the best comparison in many ways is actually Sarajevo (1914). As Israel is a democracy, the murder of its citizenry is a modern proxy for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, but the real parallels are political. A long simmering fight over territory annexed from the failing Ottoman Empire. Still greater powers lining up behind both sides, with the weaker power receiving critical support from larger powers (including Russia in both cases). A terrorist attack on a stronger power by agents certainly armed and funded by agents of a smaller power, but perhaps without the actual approval of the political government. A initial outpouring of sympathy from across the globe, but with reservations almost immediately attached by the powers aligned against the victim.

    The one parallel that I think is particularly relevant today is that time is not on the Israeli’s side. My sense of the historical view of Sarajevo is that if the Austro-Hungarians had launched a punitive war against Serbia within a week or so of the assassination they probably would have had a free hand (and with Belgrade right on the border a decisive battle would have been in play almost immediately). But for many reasons, some structural in the government of the Empire, others tactical such as the fact that most of the Army was on leave to collect the harvest, they dithered for over a month and allowed their great power enemies time to mobilize both their forces and their publics.

    The Israelis don’t share the AH Empire’s structural flaws (although the recent Supreme Court crisis is certainly a concern), and the cost to the country of calling up the reserves creates a sense of urgency that the AHE was absolutely lacking. So I have some hope that the crisis will not spiral out of control into another Great Power catastrophe. But concern certainly seems appropriate.

  26. At Yale, an ‘American Studies’ professor says: “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.”

    The Yale prof implies that because Israelis are “settlers,” they are military targets. Guess what? That Yale prof is a Palestinian, and is thus a “settler” in the United States. Because she is a “settler,” does that make HER a military target in the United States?

  27. Well we have now transitioned into the “yeah, but…” stage of the narrative regarding Israel, it took what? Nine days? https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-news-hamas-war-10-17-23/index.html

    The unquestioning reporting of causality numbers, with its not so subtle inference of “bothsideism” , as if the Gazan health ministry was an unimpeachable source. Then there is the reporting of the growing humanitarian crisis from 500,000+ Gazans leaving their homes to escape being used as human shields as Hamas. We can all see where this story is headed given the logistics involved, there will be pictures of squalor of all those hundreds of thousands who are without shelter or supplies and the media will make sure Israel owns every one of those images.

    “World opinion” isn’t directly blaming Israel, yet. That will come later but the necessary first step is to push Israel off its moral pedestal as the victim of Hamas’s outrage and then they can vilify Israel later. After all one can be anti-Hamas massacre and anti-Israel at the same time, it just takes a little bit of patience to allow the story to develop, All those kids in Harvard showed with their pro-Hamas petition is that they are impatient amateurs, the real pros at narrative manipulation know how to let the story come to them

    I am very concerned about Biden’s trip to Israel, it’s setting off all sorts of alarm bells,. At first I tried to figure out who actually invited him, but then I realized he pretty much just invited himself. Biden has proven himself to be an egotistical, anti-Israeli, incompetent and that was before he develop dementia. This is the type of man, who didn’t even have the energy to attend an all-important NATO dinner this past summer, who is going to fly half-way across the world into a war zone at the drop of a hat in order to engage in personal diplomacy with several world leaders.

    Why is he doing it? I am trying to think of anything in our history that even approaches this and I cannot. Part of why is that, yes, he is that egotistical. Also the domestic political aspect to this is that he is still fighting for his political life in terms of being on the ballot for 2024 and this stunt is designed to fight the image of him as a worn-out incompetent.

    Biden is not an honest supporter of Israel. He says he’s coming to show support but he wants to speak “…with Israeli leaders on how to prevent unnecessary civilian casualties”? This is the same man who just the other day said that Israel should not occupy Gaza. So is he coming to offer support for Israel or read Israel the riot act? After all this is the same man who blatantly interfered in Israel’s internal politics over its judicial reforms. This is also a man who refuses to acknowledge, perhaps the only person to do , that Israel’s mortal enemy was behind the Hamas attack.

    This is a gut check time for Israel, probably the first of many. The purpose of Biden’s visit it to undermine Israel’s war with Hamas, a war that Israel has declared to eradicate an existential threat, thereby separating Israel from its historic mission Israel’s historic reason for being was to provide a homeland, a safe haven for the world’s Jewish people because history had shown them that they cannot rely on anyone else to protect them. In order to fulfill it’s historic mission, its whole reason for being, Israel will have to defy Biden. Then, all hell will break loose.

    If Israel has any agents in the Hezbollah command structure, now would be a good time for them to launch a missile barrage against the Tel Aviv airport so Jerusalem could send its regrets to the White House that it isn’t safe for POTUS to come

  29. The purpose of announcing a visit by Biden is to disrupt Israel’s war plans, to buy votes, or both. Let’s see if he actually goes, or if his visit gets delayed a few times to maximize the disruption and/or maintain Biden for longer as the focus of news.

    Does the USA have the ability to remotely deactivate critical systems on Israel’s F-35s?

  30. I don’t know and I’ll bet anybody who does would go to jail (unless his name was Biden) if they said. If they can, doing so would signal the sale of the last American war plane ever.

  31. Mike
    October 17, 2023 at 10:27 am

    This is where Israel will have to decide whether to survive or not. Biden want them to die. If they fail to defy Biden, they are surely lost. Even if they do defy Biden, there is a chance that they will be lost. But there is also a chance that they will survive.

    Something else to consider. IF . . . IF something happens to Biden in the war zone, then Kamala Harris becomes president. And Biden becomes a martyr to the Left, which will be used to drown out criticism of the inevitable Leftist election fraud.

    Subotai Bahadur

  32. Reading between the lines of this article, it seems unlikely that Israel or any other country would have accepted the F-35 if they thought there was any possibility of a software back door.

  33. Dan D, Jonathan, Mike, Subotai, and Tatyana … particularly excellent points.

    About that carrier deployment…

    I’m reminded of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s comments to Gerald Posner of the Daily Beast in 2009, pertaining to a hypothetical Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Here are quotes from Posner’s interview with that late supporter of Barack Hussein Obama II:

    Q: Is the fallout as bad if Israel preemptively strikes Iran?
    A: Absolutely. That is the way, more importantly, how the Iranians would view it. They really can’t do much to the Israelis, despite all their bluster. The only thing they can do is unify themselves, especially nationalistically, to rally against us, and the mullahs might even think of it as a blessing.

    Q: How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?
    A: We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

    Q: What if they fly over anyway?
    A: Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.

    (https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-obama-flubbed-his-missile-message)

    The purpose of the carrier deployment is a combination of persuasion and intimidation cloaked in the guise of friendship, the purpose being to dissuade the Israelis from “out of the box” thinking and independent action against Iran, or, large scale ground and air action against Hezbollah in the north.

    And now this, at TimesofIsrael.com: “Biden to ask ‘tough questions’ on wartime solidarity visit to Israel.” (Caroline Glick discusses this in her video of 10/17.)

    “Kirby says that in discussions with Israeli leaders, Biden will also discuss humanitarian aid to Gaza, which Washington has been pushing.”
    “Washington has also been pressing Israel to flesh out its strategy for the day after it completes its stated war goal of toppling Hamas.”

    (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-october-18-2023/)

    Jonathan, regarding the F-35, I’ve wondered about that myself. What good is a weapon if you don’t have the technological ability – not even considering the political wherewithal – to actually use the thing? Did the Israelis (or other users of the weapons system) think that through, prior to its acquisition?

    In a much larger sense, regarding the Obama/Biden Administration(s) and Iran, the central purpose of the JCPOA is to create a civilizational inflection point vis-à-vis Dār al-Islam (and by extension the “third world”), versus the “West”, by facilitating Iran’s ability to manufacture and deploy nuclear weapons.

    Israel is only the first of several variables in the equation, though it’ll be interesting, in the fullness of time, to hear the Obama / Khalidi tape of 2003.

    And so, here we are.

  34. I have my answer: Nothing has changed.

    I see the US and EU are both falling over themselves to resume sending tribute to the terrorist enclave of Gaza, Israel is once again blamed for an atrocity that apparently didn’t even happen, foreign mobs nowhere near the scene are protesting said non-atrocity, and the latest news I can find say nothing about any ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza.

    But Israel did drone-strike some guys firing mortars into the country from Lebanon. I’m sure that will be decisive, right?

  35. Reading between the lines of this article, it seems unlikely that Israel or any other country would have accepted the F-35 if they thought there was any possibility of a software back door.

    I respectfully disagree.

    The F-35’s interconnectedness already gives the U.S. government or Lockheed Martin an unprecedented level of export control. ALIS offers a way to cut off the distribution of software updates and important mission data to foreign operators, as well as possibly serve as an entryway for an offensive cyber attack to completely disable certain jets.

    Completely disable certain jets- they’re saying right out loud that there’s a backdoor!

    Israel is special in that it can opt out of this ALIS system- but at this point why the F should Israel trust the present American regime in any way, shape or form?

    Perhaps Japan or England can assume that their jets won’t be turned off because reasons, but Israel?

    Nope.

  36. Israel is only the first of several variables in the equation, though it’ll be interesting, in the fullness of time, to hear the Obama / Khalidi tape of 2003.

    If we haven’t heard by now why would you think we will ever hear it?

    In any case the time to make an issue about it was during the 2008 campaign.

    That didn’t happen.

    Why not? I’d like to know.

    I’ve written here many times about my contempt for the Gee Ohh Peee’s idiotic establishment. The astonishing unwillingness or inability to simply tell people what its adversaries are doing and saying is a key reason why I have so much contempt for the party.

    The public had a right to know just what candidate Obama had said, done, and believed. The GOP did nothing to ensure that happened and had nothing to say about the matter at all, ever. They still don’t.

    And, yes, here were are.

  37. I wrote that it seems unlikely, because who would be so stupid. But maybe someone was that stupid. Maybe things looked different a few years ago when Israel decided on the F-35. Mistakes, overconfidence, disregard of low-probability risks are features of human behavior. The F-35 system is revolutionary. Maybe the Israelis thought the risk justified. Maybe they overrode the back doors. Maybe one day we’ll learn what happened.

  39. So I’m looking for information regarding the explosion at the hospital and can’t find it so I’ll make a general call to people here….

    Can anybody point me to pictures that show actual damage to the hospital building as opposed to a parking lot? It seems every story I read about this show pictures only of the parking lot https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-hospital-explosion-israel-wwk-explainer-intl/index.html

    In fact does anybody know of any actual media types who have even gone to the actual site and inspected it for themselves?

  40. Mike,
    The reason that all you can find is pictures of the parking lot is that that’s where the missile actually landed. The 500 dead is completely unsupported by evidence, parroted by the utterly worthless media.

  41. If I may, I would like to ask the indulgence of the CHICAGO BOYZ, in that a couple of things I wrote at another blog [Legal Insurrection] especially today’s after Biden’s visit to Israel are very much on point and harder to rephrase better. If that indulgence is not granted I understand and have no problem with y’all deleting it at your discretion.

    From yesterday:
    Subotai Bahadur | October 18, 2023 at 6:42 pm

    We have two CVBG’s [aircraft carrier battle groups] and an amphibious assault group either off of Israel or en-route. They are under the command of Biden and whichever Leftists are controlling Biden.

    Which of these two missions do you think that Biden has in mind for them given his demands on Israel?

    a) Protecting Israel from HAMAS and Hezbollah attack?

    b) Preventing Israel from successfully defending itself from HAMAS and Hezbollah attacks, while reinforcing and financing HAMAS and Hezbollah with American tax dollars?

    When we forced Israel to turn the water back on to Gaza a few days ago, just before it would have become critical enough to affect HAMAS control of Gaza; I was pretty sure which of the two was American policy.

    I don’t think Israel will give in, and so interesting times are upon us.

    Subotai Bahadur

    And from today:
    Subotai Bahadur in reply to Subotai Bahadur. | October 19, 2023 at 2:35 pm

    UPDATE: 10-19-23 1222 hrs.

    We now can be sure of which mission is the real one. On the noon news just a few minutes ago, back in DC Biden said that he had instructed Israel to end the blockade of supplies to Gaza for “humanitarian reasons”. Israel has obeyed and lifted the blockade at the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza. A lot of trucks of what I assume are US and Iranian paid for aid are lined up on the Egyptian side of the border there [I am also assuming including a lot of 7.62 Russian and 5.56 Nato (all those US weapons abandoned in Afghanistan)], however they cannot move yet because the roadway had been interdicted since early in the war and has to be repaired. Biden says he also told Israel not to do anything that could widen the conflict.

    Israel’s prospects of surviving by conventional means are being deliberately foreclosed.

    Subotai Bahadur

    Subotai Bahadur

  42. I should admit that I knew that to be the case, I’m just still amazed (naive) that the media would still be basing their reporting on Hamas press releases (essentially just replacing the bylines) especially after getting slapped down just a few days before. It’s not just a lack of pictures of the actual “damaged” hospital, but also showing pictures of supposed victims of the blast and interviews of people who viewed the “carnage”

    Basically of the initial story that the NY Times, CNN, and others ran with, an Israeli strike on a hospital that killed 500+, not one part of it is true and it could have been proven untrue by a simple visit to the hospital by an honest reporter. However it is a good piece of informational war by Hamas. During the 2021 Gazan war, there were stories about how media outlets were housed in the same buildings as various terrorist groups. Perhaps the arrangement was more than coincidental.

    The people I’m most disappointed with is our side, after all what the media is doing is just int heir nature. Why aren’t we aggressively dealing with this? I keep coming back to the publication by 2 ASU journalism professors, former WP executive editor and CBS News president, that basically trashed objectivity (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/newsrooms-news-reporting-objectivity-diversity/) . This is their new approach to rely on “stories” that have no basis in actual reporting. If we don’t get ahead of this we are going to get slammed real hard next year during the Election.

    Maybe we should take a page from the Left’s playbook. Identify the reporters and their editors who pushed this crap, have one of our bigger outlets write a hit piece on not only what worthless shills they are but on the schools they got their degrees from, and then in true hit-piece fashion give them a few hours before publication to respond. Identify, mock, and isolate… and then go after those who try and defend them

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