Major attack on Israel by Hamas

[Josh]

Right. The Israelis should be able to completely contain Hamas. They aren’t anywhere near as powerful as the PLO and in particular they aren’t in the West Bank.

They are definitely not an imminent threat to Americans or Brits, despite far-right agitators like Tommy Robinson claiming an invasion of Hamas is about to happen.

My point was that Hamas is a disruptive POLITICAL threat to the stability of the middle east. Not all geopolitical threats take the form of conventional military power.

That's true, but they're mostly a political threat because Netanyahu found them useful and did all in his power to make sure they stayed relevant, because doing so enhanced his own political career. Political cynicism at its finest.

And in that context they are an enormous concern to every country in the region as well as the US and Europe.

For example, unrest in that region has produced enormous waves of refugees flooding into Europe. And has destabilized countries like France. So yes, what Hamas does is of concern to countries beyond the borders of Israel.

One could just as well say that a right wing extremist like Netanyahui is of enormous concern to every country in the region as well as the US and Europe. (To be fair, a lot of people were criticising him before Oct. 7, and I was not entirely on board with this criticism, but I think he's proven himself to be everything they accused him of being.) Someone who sells out their own people and doesn't care about terrorism on home soil if it benefits his political career is a dangerous man indeed.

[temporal1]

If the laser-focus is not on TERRORIST acts in whatever form/setting they appear, whether STUPID teens in Columbine or organized political groups in the Middle East, HOMELAND SECURITY becomes a farce.

The biden admin contributed to the farce when referring to unarmed young mothers merely showing up at school board meetings (where they, and all taxpayers belong) as domestic terrorists (in attempt to participate in their young children’s education).

So authentic terrorists struck Israel. What to do? What to do?

Interesting to note, Netanyahu hasn’t been prancing about in snug military T-shirts demanding unending billions in support.
What he did, as far as i can tell, was to identify the culprits, Hamas, and seek to stop them, in particular ..
as-if he were a grown man taxed with defending his country. Imagine that.

He made formal effort to separate civilians - in a situation methodically staged by Hamas to make retribution as costly as possible. Godless and wily, without conscience. None of these are Anabaptist.

Hamas may be small, Iran ensures they are not insignificant. ^^(Grace isn’t ignoring Iran.)
(i wish) this were just an isolated skirmish between Hamas/Israel. It might have ended weeks ago, or not began.

(i don’t look forward to) new threats/violence to air travel and other transportation, as have happened in the past, radical individuals can cause havoc anywhere, without regard to life, their own or others’, havoc is a possibility. Activism on campuses reflects how quickly chaos can be set in motion. Harvard and Cornell are shining examples.

Excuse stupid ads:
CBS / U.S. air strikes .. Syria/Iran / 2min

[Ken]

Right. The Israelis should be able to completely contain Hamas. They aren’t anywhere near as powerful as the PLO and in particular they aren’t in the West Bank.

They are definitely not an imminent threat to Americans or Brits, despite far-right agitators like Tommy Robinson claiming an invasion of Hamas is about to happen.

My point was that Hamas is a disruptive POLITICAL threat to the stability of the middle east. Not all geopolitical threats take the form of conventional military power.

That's true, but they're mostly a political threat because Netanyahu found them useful and did all in his power to make sure they stayed relevant, because doing so enhanced his own political career. Political cynicism at its finest.

And in that context they are an enormous concern to every country in the region as well as the US and Europe.

For example, unrest in that region has produced enormous waves of refugees flooding into Europe. And has destabilized countries like France. So yes, what Hamas does is of concern to countries beyond the borders of Israel.

One could just as well say that a right wing extremist like Netanyahui is of enormous concern to every country in the region as well as the US and Europe. (To be fair, a lot of people were criticising him before Oct. 7, and I was not entirely on board with this criticism, but I think he's proven himself to be everything they accused him of being.) Someone who sells out their own people and doesn't care about terrorism on home soil if it benefits his political career is a dangerous man indeed.

I actually agree with you. Netanyahu propped up Hamas for his own political purposes. And Netanyahu's leadership failures led to the military fiasco that was 10/7 and essentially forced Israel to respond as they have done so.

So I would agree that both Hamas and Netanyahu are toxic political forces who's actions have spilled out and affected not just Israel, but the wider middle east and rest of the world.

There is also an immense amount of hypocrisy around all of this. For example, Arab militias aided by Russia and Wagner have killed thousands of non-Arab Muslims in Sudan in recent weeks and essentially engaged in genocide. And it hasn't merited mention in world news or by leftists around the planet. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/ ... nitors-say

But that is neither here nor there I suppose. This is the world that Israel lives in and fair or not, they need to learn how to deal with it.

[Ernie]

Mr. Murray is one of the few from the UK who understands the reality of this violence from Hamas.

I agree with Mr. Murray that Hamas is worse than the Nazi's in that they don't even have any shame for their atrocities against Jews. Hamas supporters gleefully and proudly showcased their immorality. If there are people in the Western world who don't understand this, then it is good that people like Mr. Murray try to help the world understand.

But Mr. Murray doesn't offer a good solution, and neither does Piers Morgan. And I'll go so far as to say that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez don't have a good solution either.

If I was going to look for solutions, I would want to visit a Raed Odeh (50), a Palestinian Arab barber in New Jersey.
Recently Odeh received a phone call and the caller said,

"We’re going to come burn you. We’re going to burn your family."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pa ... rcna121711

Odeh's take?

“We have lived together for thousands of years, and we can live together here,” Odeh said as he skillfully shaved a customer’s face. “This is the way it should be.”

And I would visit Jessica Murphy (27), a Jew from New York who lost her dad in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Towers.

While she [Murphy]is horrified by the violence wrought on Israelis at the hands of Hamas, she is also outraged by Israel’s heavy-handed response.
“I can't say I'm surprised at how Israel's retaliating, given the history of this long conflict and military occupation,” she says. “But I am really devastated, and I'm fearful of what's to come.”

Murphy is concerned that a false dichotomy is being created, whereby “you either support terrorism or you support the state of Israel”, she says.

“I was obviously a child when 9/11 happened, and it's only many years after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the torture and detention of many innocent people at Guantanamo Bay, that I learned about those horrors the US committed, ostensibly in the name of 9/11 victims like my dad,” she recalls.
Since then, Murphy has made a point of condemning retaliatory violence and holding the US government to a higher standard of morality and rule of law.
“I feel that Israel is making a similar mistake that the United States did,” she adds, stressing that war crimes, however horrific, do not entitle countries to commit crimes of their own.
“War crimes by one party do not justify war crimes by another,” she says. “Obviously 9/11 was a war crime. Obviously, the attacks by Hamas were a war crime. But that does not justify war crimes by the United States in Iraq or by Israel in Gaza.”

https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20 ... lestinians

[Ken]

Mr. Murray is one of the few from the UK who understands the reality of this violence from Hamas.

I agree with Mr. Murray that Hamas is worse than the Nazi's in that they don't even have any shame for their atrocities against Jews. Hamas supporters gleefully and proudly showcased their immorality. If there are people in the Western world who don't understand this, then it is good that people like Mr. Murray try to help the world understand.

This is an astonishingly bad take on the part of Mr. Murray.

In point of fact, the Holocaust was only one aspect of the Nazi regime and not even the most deadly. They waged a deliberate war of racial annihilation from the border of Germany all the way west to the gates of Moscow. And unlike Hamas which is tiny, millions of Germans were involved. Social media didn't exist in 1941 but the historical record is replete with gleeful German documentation of their actions in writing and by photograph.

For example, over twice as many Russian civilians and citizens of other Soviet Republics like Ukraine and Belarus were killed by the Germans than Jews died in the entire course of the Holocaust.

Make no mistake, what Mr. Murray is trying to do is justify genocide against Palestinians by making the absurd claim that Hamas is worse than the Nazis. For example: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/bri ... ort-hamas/

"The Israelis will respond as they see fit – it isn’t for non-Israelis to give them advice. Maybe Israel will cut off Gaza and starve Hamas out. Maybe they will have a full-scale military operation to rescue the Israeli captives. Or maybe they will finally put an end to this insoluble nightmare, raze Hamas to the ground, or clear all the Palestinians from that benighted strip. A strip which Egypt owned but nobody wants."

"clear all the Palestinians from Gaza" is ethnic cleansing and tantamount to genocide. And no different from Nazi policies to do the same in places like Ukraine.

[Josh]

There is also an immense amount of hypocrisy around all of this. For example, Arab militias aided by Russia and Wagner have killed thousands of non-Arab Muslims in Sudan in recent weeks and essentially engaged in genocide. And it hasn't merited mention in world news or by leftists around the planet. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/ ... nitors-say

But that is neither here nor there I suppose. This is the world that Israel lives in and fair or not, they need to learn how to deal with it.

I just learned about this sordid affair in Sudan when I read about complaints the U.S. was very slow to evacuate its citizens out (versus eg Canada which did so quite quickly, UK as well, etc.) It’s a huge deal that nobody’s talking about. (Well, Al-Jazeera is talking about it.)

[Josh]

It’s a terrible comparison, but Netanyahu also claimed that the current situation is as bad as or worse than the Holocaust and called it a second Holocaust. I’m not sure why they engage in this ridiculous level of hyperbole.

[Robert]

It’s a terrible comparison, but Netanyahu also claimed that the current situation is as bad as or worse than the Holocaust and called it a second Holocaust. I’m not sure why they engage in this ridiculous level of hyperbole.

I would more equate it to our 9/11. Yet, I do not think that 9/11 is justification for what the US did. I am not surprised it did it, but I never felt it was just in the actions.

[Ken]

It’s a terrible comparison, but Netanyahu also claimed that the current situation is as bad as or worse than the Holocaust and called it a second Holocaust. I’m not sure why they engage in this ridiculous level of hyperbole.

I would more equate it to our 9/11. Yet, I do not think that 9/11 is justification for what the US did. I am not surprised it did it, but I never felt it was just in the actions.

Of that we agree.

In terms of the 9-11 hijackers, 15 of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt, and one from Lebanon. The bulk of their funding and the overall funding of Al Qaeda came from Saudi Arabia.

So we invaded Iraq.

[barnhart]

That exchange between Morgan and Murray demonstrate the danger of hearing what you want to hear and downplaying the rest. Both start with positions I agree with and both go to conclusions I do not like. One could use that clip, or portions of it to bolster radically different positions.