You might remember Baghdad Bob, also known as Comical Ali: he was Saddam Hussein’s PR man that bleak spring of 2003, gaining global fame the day he told the press how the Iraqi army had crushed the American invader even as the goose-chasing invader was next door. Disconnects like that are the essence of PR, or propaganda–the two are identical–but rarely on that scale.
We got a Baghdad Bob moment of our own in Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman applauding herself for taking down Harvard President Claudine Gay. The focus of the Dec. 5 exchange between Stefanik and Gay has been on Gay’s (and other university presidents’) clumsy academic answers to questions about genocide, and on her use of the word “context.”
But that’s exactly what was missing from Stefanik’s rape of “moral clarity” that day, mere mascot though Stefanik is for a party that lost its moral way long before Reagan paid homage to a German cemetery full of Nazis and the two Bushes launched their latter-day crusades in oil’s name.
By that Dec. 5 hearing, Israel was in its eighth week of the most genocidal assault on Palestinians in the history of Arab-Jewish wars predating even the creation of Israel in 1948. About 15,000 Palestinians had been massacred, most of them women and children (the death toll is now past 23,000). Gaza’s 2.2 million people were already on the brink of famine. Israel’s Netanyahu was flouting every call for a cease fire, the United Nations’ included.
There has been nothing academic, nothing rhetorical, about this genocide: Palestinians were being ethnically cleansed then (to use Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s term for the 1948 Nabka on repeat), as they continue to be now, with open calls by Israeli ministers, Netanyahu among them, to expel them from Gaza. There’s been fanatical support for all of this from the totality of congressional Republicans, and the near-totality of congressional Democrats, not to mention the Commander In Chief of the Israel “Defense” Forces himself, Joe Biden.
Because when Israel is the subject matter, there are no two sides to the story. There are no interpretations. There is no discussion. None permissible, anyway. There is only dogma. Anything else is heresy. Transgress at the risk of your reputation, your job, your life.
This was the time–the context–when Elise Stefanik laid the trap for Gay about speech that calls for “the genocide of Jews and the elimination of Israel” in that congressional testimony. This was what Stefanik was concerned about: not the actual atrocities against Palestinians, but the words of a few dozen adolescent anti-Semitic cretins on campus, using them to whitewash the many more who had legitimate outrage to express about Israel’s mass killings, and using all that to whitewash the annihilation of Palestinians.
Elise Stefanik was worried about the “definition of intifada”–which she got wrong: It does not mean “to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally,” as she falsely claimed. It means uprising, as in Warsaw Ghetto uprising, for example, or for something closer to home, in the John Brown sense of the term, understanding of course that the Stefaniks of his day, and not a few of ours, called Brown a terrorist.
As our American-made 2,000-pound bombs were vaporizing Palestinian children and making Dresden of Gaza, Stefanik was worried about bullying on campus. While an actual genocide was taking place against Palestinians–and continues to take place, literally denying them the right to exist–she was worried about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment.”
Far-right and far-nut cases aside, no one was calling for the genocide of Jews. Repugnant relativists aside, no one would minimize Hamas’s atrocities of Oct. 7–and not just Oct. 7, but Hamas as an entity, as representative of so much that is wrong and regressive with nihilistic, death-cult Islamism. That list is not short.
But only the repugnant would deny Palestinians as equal a right to exist–as equal a right to a nation of their own–as is demanded for an Israel that already has that right, unquestioned and untouchable. The moral problem is that there is no such equality. Palestinians are disposable as Israelis are not. Palestinians are irrelevant. Even their suffering is unacknowledged, non-existent, the way it was as Stefanik yelled and screamed about “moral clarity” on Dec. 5. Palestinians are not the human beings that Israelis are. It’s that simple.
On the other hand, Israel has been consecrated as infallible and immunized from accountability by equating all criticism with anti-Semitism. But criticism of Israel, even bitter, angry criticism of Israel, is not anti-Semitism any more than bitter, angry criticism of, say, Focus on the Family’s bigotry against LGBTQ people is anti-Christian (Stefanik is an advocate of LGBTQ rights, incidentally), or criticism of Egyptian torture prisons is anti-Islamic, or criticism of American policy is–what? Anti-Protestant? Anti Saxon? Anti-Nebraska? Dogmas depend on a special kind of folly.
Stefanik, who owes her education to Harvard, had reached her conclusions about Gay dishonestly, leaping from false definitions to cynical assumptions and banking on the errant vileness of a few to paint Harvard and other universities with some kind of Kristallachtian brush, as if our universities were the site of pogroms. Never mind, again, that an actual pogrom on a mass scale was ongoing against the Palestinians of Gaza.
This was the time when Stefanik chose to outdo even Baghdad Bob when she complained to Gay that “not being able to answer with moral clarity speaks volume.”
It does. But not about Gay or the universities. It speaks volumes about Stefanik’s Republican Party. At least Democrats in rare moments of lucidity can still decipher the occasional syllable in human and civil rights. The Republicans Stefanik represents seem to be openly at war on both.
Put aside the blindness on Gaza, that being more American than Republican. But to draw an abbreviated abstract of the pathological tawdriness that now defines the party: I’m not sure where was the GOP’s moral clarity when Donald Trump praised the Charlottesville hordes of bigots who chanted “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people” while complaining about non-European immigrants coming from “shithole countries.” I’m not sure where was its moral clarity when it didn’t blink an eye over a travel ban from mostly Muslim countries, or when it praised the Confederate-flag bearing insurrectionists of January 6, peddled the Big Lie about that year’s election, and rallies still behind a man whose advisers have been proponents of the white supremacist “Great Replacement theory,” who embraces dictators and winks at his own opening day of despotism. I’m not sure where is the moral clarity of a party who glorifies a man who cannot tell a truth, who cannot leave a pussy ungrabbed, who took $7.8 million in bribes from foreign governments while in office, who has been convicted of rape, been impeached twice, and faces 91 felonies. Where, in all those times, was Stefanik’s moral clarity?
That hearing, and that disconnect, sum up what this country’s values have become ahead of a 2024 election too idealistically termed decisive. Wherever we end up on Nov. 5, we are already there, even on the hail Mary chance that Biden pulls it off. We fail as a democracy–we succeed as a mobocracy–when Stefanik is a hero and Trump is not just a still-viable candidate, but a coronation in waiting.
Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece airs on WNZF.
Rick G says
Nicely done and on point Pierre.
Al says
Wow all those paragraphs to say the same thing over and over. The Palestinians cheered when hammas attacked Isreal, they wanted blood so they should be happy.
The whole problem for the Palestinians is they figured that Isreal would strike back and then the liberal press would pile on and the attack would stop only to be restarted at the time hammas chooses. They got this one wrong and I have no pity for them. They purposely killed children and teens but we should cry for one of theirs.
Maybe you can explain why no other Arab country wants these vermin to come to their land.
Ray W. says
“Vermin”, Al says, channeling the Nazi storyline that presaged the Holocaust.
The Washington Post recently filed a story about the murder of three West Bank Palestinian males, including a teenager, by Jewish settlers. The setting? A Jewish settlement in the West Bank near a Palestinian village, with an IDF outpost on either side of the village. Video cameras recorded some of the violence.
Several days after October 7th, some settlers posted comments that they intended to attack the village. Two days after posting the threat, a car occupied by four masked settlers drove by one of the two IDF outposts and initiated their attack. The recordings captured the sound of several pistols and an assault rifle. No IDF soldiers left their outposts. The Palestinians fought back with rocks. After about an hour, the settlers broke off the attack and drove past the IDF outpost to their settlement. Time passed and they returned to the Palestinian village. This time they pressed their attack home, killing two adult Palestinians. The juvenile Palestinian was found a distance from his home, face down in a field. He had been shot in the back, with an exit wound in his chest. This suggested that he was running away and was chased down and murdered. Again, zero IDF soldiers left their outposts. There remains some doubt whether they even reported the violence. The IDF collected the evidence and eventually one settler was seized and questioned. He has been released back to his settlement.
I am well aware of the existence of the pitiless among us. Al is among the worst of them. I spent over thirty years prosecuting and defending the pitiless among us. I know that Al is not alone in his failed state of being. I will continue to focus on Ryszard Kapuscinski’s description of the three plagues of mankind, to-wit: nationalism, racism, and religious extremism. People like Al are a plague upon us all. Hamas is a plague upon us all. Murderous Jewish settlers are a plague upon us all.
Please understand just how wrong Al is. Neighboring Arab states will not accept Palestinians because they know that the right-wing terrorists that now control the Jewish state have known for decades that forcing Palestinians out of the promised land means that Israel can and will stop them from ever returning to Palestine. It is exactly the opposite of what Al says. Once Israel ever ethnically cleanses the promised land, the ultraorthodox Jewish settler movement will never allow a single Palestinian to ever return to their indigenous Palestinian homeland.
Ed P says
Is an editorial correction adding that a plagiarism scandal was also involved in Claudine Gay’s downfall? Is it true that she only published 11 articles and there were nearly 50 instances of problems in her dissertation and 5 of those article?
Did Hamas become the de facto governing body of Palestine in 2007 by outing the legitimate authority? Had Hamas been designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 by the United States?
Did Hamas launch over 4000 rockets at Israel during 11 days in May 2021? A more measured response by Israel did kill 260 Palestinians.
Did Hamas launch the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023?
Just a bit of history, and since I can’t speak to the solution, may I pose the question?
Pierre,
Just how would you end this 17 year war?
Pierre Tristam says
75-year war. But here’s how. Two states. 1967 borders as defined in UN Resolution 242. No conditions or restrictions on Palestinian state, including corridor between Gaza and West Bank. No bullshit “Area A, B, C” and the rest of those cynical Israeli schemes in the West Bank. Settlements can stay in exchange for equivalent land swaps as long as the settlements aren’t means of preventing Palestinian cohesion, as they are now. Jerusalem, open city under UN administration. It’s not complicated. Palestinians would accept. Israel would not, because its end game is what it’s always been: denying Palestine and Palestinians the right to exist, and imprison, expel or exterminate them at every chance meanwhile.
jake says
Not going to happen.
ASF says
The Palestinians have been offered no less than five very viable two state solutions, starting with the 1947/8 Partition Plan. They rejected every single one of them, out of hand, followed by cries (on their part) for war/Intifada/throwing Jews into the Sea/claiming the whole she-bang “from the river to the sea.”
Under pressure from conveniently a-historical western powers, Israel ceded control of the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinians in 2005–that was after the Palestinians had already walked away from one of the above-mentioned two state scenarios which (in 2000) whould have given them over 95% of the disputed territories and control over parts of Jerusalem.
Given the conduct of the Pakesitnians since Gaza was turned over to them in 2005, why anyone would imagine that the Israelis would be eager to risk and repeat the saem or worse now is truly mind-boggling.
The Israeli are fully accountable for their choices but so are the Palesitnians. Both are are responsible for the way they govern themselves and how they conduct regional affairs.
Ray W. says
Maybe its time for ASF to try to be a little more honest with FlaglerLive readers.
Israel has never offered a “viable two-state solution.” Israel has repeatedly offered a “framework” for future discussions about a viable two-state solution. Eventually, the framework fails, and both sides accuse each other of undermining the process. Unfortunately, right wing elements within Israeli society prevent Israel from ever actually offering a viable two-state solution.
Perhaps an analogy is in order. Over a roughly 35-year period I engaged in thousands of negotiations with hundreds of prosecutors and defense attorneys (I have prosecuted and defended over the decades). In time, I came to understand that there is a vast difference between plea negotiations and plea takings. For example, if the State charges a man with sale of cocaine, the statutory upper limit is 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. If the defendant is a first-time offender, a common offer involves either some jail time or a limited amount of prison time, followed by probation. If a prosecutor were to offer one of my clients 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for a first offense, I would tell my client that the state is not engaging in plea bargaining; it is taking everything. I would advise my client to go to trial. If the state intends to take everything, then make them work for it. If my client were to tell me that the only thing he would accept would be a dropping of the charge and an apology from the state, I would tell him that he is engaging in a plea taking, not a plea bargaining. Bargaining infers that both sides are willing to give up something in exchange for something else.
The famed Oslo Accords never got past the stage of Israel recognizing the right of the PLO to negotiate and the PLO recognizing the right of Israel to negotiate. They did agree to a five-year plan to negotiate further. The issue: Territorial boundaries. Settlers. The extent of Israeli control over Palestinian lands. The right of return. The status of Jerusalem. Israel always starts with trying to take everything and give nothing. The Palestinians know this. The talks fail. A leader is assassinated. A government is voted out of power. The new government gives lip services to the prior talks but does nothing. Then everything starts over with the same “take everything and give nothing” approach. Only each time there are more settlers, less Palestinian land, no offer on Jerusalem. No offer on the right to return.
ASF boldly calls this approach a “viable two-state solution.” Wow! At the time of the Camp David Accords, there were a reported 7400 settlers in the West Bank. Today? Over 500,000 West Bank settlers, not counting those who live in over 100 illegal settlements. This doesn’t even count the over 220,000 settlers who have forcefully moved into occupied Jerusalem.
ASF says
It’s not complicated, indeed. The Palestinians have been on the receiving end of at least five two-state offers since 1948. They rejected every single one of them out of hand and have responded each time with uptakes in violence and repeated calls for Israel’s destruction. Thats not soemthing anybody should just try to dismiss with a backwards wave of their hand.
The Palestinians were handed control of the Gaza Strip in 2005 and what they done with it since then is a matter of record that no “Anti-Zionist” rhetoric can cancel. The Palestinians own negative choices are their responsibility. They must take concrete meaningful steps to change their own conduct for the better, just as much as the Israelis are called upon to do. Blaming Israel for the Palestinians’ insistence on priortizing their hatred of Jews over peace, prosperity and statehood is not only not helpful, it contnues to stand in the way of any meaningful long-lasting resolution of conflicts.
To negotiate anything of any worth, there has to be a motivated and willing partner at the other side of the table. Since Palestinian forces continue to violate every ceasefire they enter into (most notably, on October 7th, when a ceasefire was already in place, as well as multiple times since then by Hamas violating the terms of negotiated “humanitarian pauses”), it makes sense that the onus be placed on the Palestinians to show that they can be trusted to act in good faith. That would entail Hamas releasing the hostages (and that the PA take an active role in leading those efforts) as well as stopping their terror attacks–which have continued apace–as well as their daily rocket barrages into Israel’s population centers. That also goes for the violence perpetrated by their tag-team in-house terror partners like the Islamic Jihad.
It should be noted that the afore-mentioned rocket fire kills and injures untold numbers of Palestinian civilians, when many (if not most) of those missiles misfire and fall back into the Palesitnians’ own backyards. That rocket fire continues, even while Palestinian advocates complain bitterly about the lack of fuel supplies for other humanitarian needs for the civilians of Gaza. Such complaints should be directed where they most belong–on Hamas and its partners.
Deborah Coffey says
Spot on, Pierre. And, aside from the ridiculous political side show, we should concern ourselves with the bird’s eye view of Nazis like Stefanik…take over all education in the country in order to indoctrinate and train youth in our White Supremacist ideals for a perfect nation…one over which the Nazis will have complete control.
Chip D says
Your extreme rhetoric (Nazi’s, Hitler, white Supremisists) when referring to anyone who doesn’t agree with you is problematic. Where do you go from there? Saten? Worse than Saten? I think that you lefties have overplayed your rhetorical hand.
Eva says
Chip, it is not about disagreeing, it is about stating the reality of what is happening to us here. Deborah describes the end game of these power-hungry extremists perfectly. Signed, a horrified conservative.
TREEMAN says
Visit the USS Liberty Memorial at Heroes Park, Palm Coast and notice that it does NOT state that the USS Liberty was ATTACKED by the Israel Defense Forces (Three Separate ATTACKS) in international waters! WHY?????
ASF says
Because multiple investigations found it to be a “Friendly Fire” incident that occurred in the heat of the Six Day War where mistakes were made by both the US and Israeli authorities.
TREEMAN says
True, therefore the USS Liberty Memorial should be CORRECTED to state that the IDF was the Attacking Force! Was the 3 different attacks really “Friendly Fire”?? Why did Israel NOT charge any members of IDF with the MURDER of 34 Americans???
ASF says
That’s not at all what my post very clearly stated.
To be specific, the US Had declared “Neutral Status” during the Six Days War. The US had been notified by the Israeli Naval Department to avoid sending US ships into certain precise coordinates because the Egyptian Navy was in the habit of flying the false flags of other nations in order to take pot-shots at critical Israeli defenses. Due to communication issues on both sides or because the US failed to forward that precise information onto the USS Liberty in time or at all, this unfortunate tragedy occurred. The USS Liberty was basically functioning as a “spy ship”–one might ask why, if we were so intent on remaining “neutral.” But, at that point, what was done was done.
Despite mutliple investigations finding issues on the parts of both the Israeli and American Defense Departments, Israel apologized repeatedly, offered repartions to the survivors of the incident as well as surviving family members and also compensated the US for the cost of the ship itself.
Anti Semites posing as Anti Zionists continue to use the USSLiberty tragedy as their own “false flag”. It’s notable how few complaints we hear from these supposed “USS Liberty Patriots” when it comes to the damage and death perpetrated on American targets–civilian or military–by other nations who have attacked us quite deliberately and even proudly. Compensation sought by survivors of those attacks have mostly come to naught. And some court cases that have been won as relates to terror attacks that have claimed American lives have actually been nullified by our own government, due to “political considerations.” Maybe you should consider concentrated on justice not served in THOSE cases…if justice is what you are really after.
TREEMAN says
Stop using the “anti-semite card” as you try to CHANGE the FACTS about the history of the 3 IDF Attacks against the USS Liberty! The 1st Attack by IDF Fighter airplane was maybe a “Friendly Fire” mistake. The 2nd attack with IDF Fighter-Bombers and the 3rd attack with IDF Attacks Ships was NOT “Friendly Fire”!!! If you Support America’s Veterans, it is time to correct the USS Liberty by adding that the Israel Defense Force was the Attacking Force. I also Support Israel in it’s war against Hamas.
My Two Cents says
This is genocide.
https://saturday-october-seven.com/?fbclid=IwAR3yl85Sudz5wQWTmSdTONgIke8nTO1jO-a8xPyCumozqZcWAi-ZD4gkTlE#/
Endangered species says
When the Israeli terrorist are using American weapons they are no longer terrorist right?
Sherry says
In my opinion. . . the question that Stefanik should have asked is “Is calling for GENOCIDE of “ANYONE” against the rules of any and all American universities?” The answer from any and all college presidents should be an unequivocal “YES”! All three university presidents completely missed the boat on that one. As much as I passionately disagree with her politically, Stefanik was correct when she said that calling for genocide does not require an evaluation of the context. It is WRONG, full stop!
Rita says
I was with you until you used your article to attack Trump. Biden and his boy hasn’t done such a hot job lately either you know. Some fair honest unbiased writing would be nice instead articles filled with fluffy opinionated crap that really are only written to attack someone.
citizen woke says
Stefanik, who originally ran in her New York election district as a moderate, has become a loudmouth, raucus, election denying Trump supporter. She did not deny hoping to become Trump’s vice presidential pick in a recent interview.
As for the Israeli and Palestinian war, I find it difficult to pick a “right” side when you have Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing Israelis assaulting and killing Palestinians versus Palestinians who cheered Hamas dragging visibly sexually assaulted Israeli women through Palestinian streets. The two-state solution is a viable solution, but rejected by Netanyahu because the only thing keeping him in office and out of jail is his catering to his extremist rightwing block and by Hamas who want to kill all Jews. US MAGA Republican Stefanik seized the opportunity to gain support and didn’t care how she got it, it meant shouting down the academically astute but not politically astute university presidents, whom she rolled over with her vitriolic questioning.
If Stefanik really cared about our country and finding real solutions, she would stand behind Secretary of State Blinken’s efforts. But I suppose that’s too much to ask of a MAGA Republican.
Edith Campins says
There is no question that the carnage taking place in the Middle East is a horrific tragedy but “On October 7, approximately 3,000 Hamas terrorists entered Israel from Gaza by land, air and sea and carried out well-planned, well-coordinated, massive massacres of Jews; burning babies to death; engaging in mass rapes; executing parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. More than 1,200 Jews were killed, and at least 3,300 maimed or injured that day, with more than 200, including babies, young children and the elderly, abducted and taken hostage. Many Israeli Arabs, US citizens, and citizens of Thailand and several other countries were also murdered, injured or kidnapped that day.”
What did Hamas and the Palestinians think they could possibly gain by this attack?
Pogo says
@Edith Campins
Sadly, outrageously — Hamas, and some Palestinians (some, not all, not most) have gotten everything they wanted: chaos, destruction and (redundantly) martyrdom. There is no there there, they blew themselves up — again. October 7 was a giant suicide bomb. And Israel’s inept, arrogant, nihilist criminal leader, and his partners, are bathing in the blood of all and splashing the blood into the eyes of the rest of the world — while Putin, and the other murderers in his sphere grin.
Let’s not forget to give the credit due to the Christian Taliban, and their Republican Party messiah leading in the Iowa polls — while monkey wrenching our own armed forces and government, in this country that invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress to undermine our president, disregarded all precedent with the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved our embassy there, etc., etc.
So, here we are staring into the abyss, passengers on a ship on fire and listing sharply to starboard — with a dozen captains trying to strangle each other.
“I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.”
― W.H. Auden
Sherry says
@ Pogo. . . an accurate and eloquent response. Thank you!
I would only add 23,000 Palestinians dead, and counting! “I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen” indeed! There is “ZERO” honor in this war by any stretch of the imagination. . . BOTH sides are “terrorists”!
Pogo says
@Sherry
I respectfully disagree with you, which is to say there are terrorists on both sides, not, as you’ve put it.
Moreover, I would point out that you cite, “… 23,000 Palestinians dead, and counting…” I’m certain you would join me in also condemning the near total destruction of the entirety of Gaza, almost all the survivors in Gaza living like people do in the wake of a total catastrophe, but aid arriving in a spoon instead of the needed pipeline; all that — with the glaring exception of Hamas in Gaza.
Now, imagine if Netanyahu was dealing with Donald and Jared — which is an actual possibility; a possibility that is likely motivating, even inspiring, Netanyahu to continue his rampage — with 8 billion lives hanging in the balance.
ASF says
It should be noted that the Palestinian casualty numbers noted above come from the Hamas Ministry and other entities it controls. Given Hamas’s documented hsitory of dumping in their militant death count with their civilian death count, their insistence on atributing all Palestinian deaths and injuries incurred as a result of misfired Palestinian rockets to “Israeli air strikes” and their refusal to admit that they deliberate exploit their own population–especially women and children–as Human Shields, I would take some of the above quoted information with a serious grain of salt.
FlaglerLive says
Not only denying Palestinians the right to exist, but now even denying them as corpses. The morbidity of Israel’s massacre-apologists is beyond belief. Then again, there’s nothing beyond the ken of mass killers, apologists especially.
ASF says
I never denied the fact that Palesitnians are dying (although I would note that both Palestiniians and Israelis are currently dying in great numbers because of a conflagration started by their own elected government’s actions on October 7th…in the modst of a pre-existing ceasefire) What I did was state is that there is good reason to doubt the veracity of the casualty numbers being quoted by Hamas. And I stand by that statement.
Ray W. says
When in doubt, always go to Churchill.
What if the extremist and murderous elements in both Israeli and Palestinean society are both right and wrong at the same time?
Churchill made this very point when explaining the extreme violence that was unfolding during the Spanish Civil War:
“The worst quarrels only arise when both sides are equally in the right and in the wrong. Here, on the one hand, the passions of a poverty stricken and backward proletariat demand the overthrow of Church, State, and property, and the inauguration of a Communist regime. On the other hand, the patriotic, religious, and bourgeois forces, under the leadership of the Army, and sustained by the countryside in many provinces, are marching to re-establish order by setting up a military dictatorship. The cruelties and ruthless executions extorted by the desperation of both sides, the appalling hatreds unloosed, the clash of creed and interest, make it only too probable that victory will be followed by the merciless extermination of the active elements of the vanquished and by a prolonged period of iron rule.”
Far too many FlaglerLive commenters have argued that one side or the other is “right” and that the other side is “wrong.” I have been arguing that both sides are wrong, because the underlying motivations mandated by a culture based on the “debt of blood vengeance.” What if I have overlooked the possibility that each side has also been “right” and “wrong” at the same time?
Does the Churchill scenario offer an explanation why ASF fails so miserably over and over in her comments? Is this why ASF lacks the capacity to be more intellectually honest in her comments?
Sherry says
@ Pogo. . . Thank you for correcting my statement. . . yes, there are terrorists on BOTH sides! And of course I certainly agree with the rest of your statement, as well! These are indeed terrible times in too many ways! Thank you for all the lessons!
Ray W. says
Your final sentence presumes that Hamas even considered “gain” or loss as a goal. When revenge itself is the unending desire, gain and loss never enters into the picture.
You are the one who is taking the irrational step of thinking in terms of gain or loss.
I continue to stand by the theme that religious extremists in both the West Bank and Gaza and also in Israel are a plague upon the world. Neither side cares whether there is something to be gained or lost. They simply want to be left alone so as to better thrash each other until the end of time.
Ray W. says
I ask all FlaglerLive readers to reread the many comments posted above by the several short-sighted commenters among us. A 17-year war. Hamas bears all responsibility for the current situation in Gaza. On and on, ad nauseum.
The Times recently linked a current article to an article originally published in May 2021. Much of the source material for the 2021 article, as it pertained to events in 1948, came from books and articles published by Jewish historians.
The impetus for the 2021 article was a series of protests in various villages, towns and cities across Israel and the West Bank.
After Israel announced the planned eviction of a number of East Jerusalem families from their homes, so that Jewish settlers could move into the homes, Palestinian residents of Lod, a small town in central eastern Israel, protested in support of the soon to be displaced Palestinians. Jewish religious extremists soon arrived. Alongside Israeli police officers, the extremists and the protesting Palestinians soon devolved into violent mob activity, with “lynchings” on both sides. The Lod mayor, citing to “civil war” and “a complete loss of control”, placed the city under lockdown. Soon afterwards, yet another Hamas uprising began, with, as Ed P puts it, 4000 missiles fired into Israel.
Why would the author of the Times article, in 2021, focus on events in Lod, when protests occurred all over Palestine?
In 1948, when Israel declared itself an independent state, Lod was known as “Lydda.” The town sits on a plain between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, now some five miles north of Israel’s only international airport. Today, it is a manufacturing and repair hub for military and civilian aircraft, among other industrial activities. In 1945, according to census records, 14,910 Muslims called Lydda home, alongside 1,840 Christians, 20 Jews and 10 “others”.
Two months after five neighboring Arab armies attacked Israel in the strategic catastrophe known to Palestinians today as the Nakba, at least two IDF regiments were ordered to attack Lydda. The commanding officer of the IDF force later told a Jewish historian of his belief at that time that Israel would not survive “if it did not first rid itself of the Palestinian population that endangered it from within.”
On the first day of the breech into the town, according to IDF records, nine IDF soldiers died. Over 100 Palestinians were killed, including children and the elderly, alongside some militiamen. On the second day, two Jordanian APC’s, separated from their unit, wandered into the town. The arrival set anew the fighting. On this day, IDF soldiers went from home to home, throwing grenades into Palestinian refuges. Anti-tank missiles were fired into a mosque crowded with refugees. IDF records show the death of more than 200 Palestinians.
Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurien, then ordered the expulsion of Palestinians from Lydda. Over 10,000 were marched to Jordan and expelled from Israel. Some 1000 Palestinians survived the fighting and remained in Lydda.
The similarities between July 1948 in Lydda and October 7, 2023, are many. First and foremost, an overwhelming force was sent without warning into the enemy’s homeland. Indiscriminate slaughter of children and the elderly then took place. The killers will try to forget their actions. The survivors will never forget. And the historians will do the best they can to accurately recount what happened.
I denounce and abhor the violence and slaughter in the kibbutzim and villages surrounding Gaza in 2023. I denounce and abhor the violence and slaughter in Lydda in July 1948. I have long taken the position that elements of societies founded on the law of blood vengeance are compelled to attack and slaughter the “enemy” wherever the enemy can be found. The only request made by such vengeful elements is that outsiders need to leave them alone, so that they can better thrash their enemy. I repeatedly refer to Kapuscinski’s three plagues upon mankind: nationalism, racism, and religious extremism. Neither side can be trusted to ever tell the truth about what they are doing to the enemy, as to do so would be to accept a partial measure of the blame for the slaughter visited on the enemy. Each side is compelled to lie in order to mythologize the justice of their actions, when justice isn’t even a tiny part of the equation. Vengeance does not bother itself with justice. It never ends. It never achieves anything other than destruction and despair. No one ever wins.
Palestinian villagers know who married outside the faith 2000 years ago. They know who broke bread with the enemy 100 years ago. They know who killed whom 10 years ago. Such is the oral history of the village. There can be no forgiveness for those who act against their faith.
Jewish rabbinical courts recognize the validity of records kept in synagogues, some being thousands of years old. The ultraorthodox know who married whom 1000 years ago. They know who broke bread with the enemy 100 years ago. They know who killed whom 10 years ago. There can be no forgiveness for those who act against their faith.
Sherry says
Thank you, Ray W., for his valuable lesson. There is no honor in this “holy”‘ war on either side! The death of even ONE innocent child should be unacceptable and inexcusable!
ASF says
There is no honor in demanding that the one majority Jewish nation in existence on the entire planet (which happens to be 22% Arab–no “apartheid”; sorry folks, the facts/numbers don’t support that) stop defending its people after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust–an event which Hamas swears to repeat as many times as it sees fit.
Andl lest we forget, Abbas has very recently stated that any coalition government he forms in the future to govern the Palestinian territories or new Palestinian state” will be a coalition government that will include Hamas.
Pierre Tristam says
Reading a book by Robert Fisk yesterday I came across a passage that bears adding here, to contrast with the flippancy of the reference to Baghdad Bob in the opening paragraph. Fisk is referring to the early days of the Saddam Hussein regime in the 1970s: “In the early days of the regime, the names of newly executed Iraqis would be read on state television every afternoon at 4 p.m. An old Iraqi friend of mine would recall for me in 2003 how her relatives were imprisoned and how, each afternoon, she would dose herself with morphine before sitting down in front of the television screen. “I don’t know how I survived those broadcasts,” she said. “The man who read the names had a thin face and sharp eyes and he read them out in a very harsh way. His name was Mohamed al-Sahhaf.” This was the same Mohamed al-Sahhaf who, grey-haired and humorous, was minister of information during the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, the “Comical Ali” who provoked President George W. Bush to laugh at his claims that U.S. forces had not reached Baghdad when their tanks were crossing the Tigris River. From brutal apparatchik to friendly buffoon in just thirty years. He was later to record his memories for Al-Arabia satellite television—without recalling his days as spokesman for the hangman of Baghdad.”