Hamas and Israel and Endless War for Profit

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Re the student Gaza protests and takeovers of the universities.

Back when there were sit-ins etc. against the Vietnam war, Ayn Rand had plenty to say. She ended up publishing a book of essays featuring it (The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, which was republished after her death under the title Return of the Primitive.)

I want to compare the modern Gaza protests with back then, but there is so much dumbassery today, it's hard to make the comparison.

For instance, check this out.

 

The students who took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University didn't worry about basic survival supplies. Now they are asking the public for food and guarantees they can send people out for food.

 

If I wanted to make this up, this scene would be a pretty good turning point in a comedy about dumbasses.

And, after seeing that, I don't think Ayn Rand--if she were alive today--would bother writing about it like she did back in the 60s.

At that level, who are those dumbasses going to threaten for real? What philosophical principles are they challenging? They all have plenty of money and can't even feed themselves. They forgot to plan for it while staging a pretend-violent takeover of a building. 

 

Michael

[Marc]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Re the student Gaza protests and takeovers of the universities.

Back when there were sit-ins etc. against the Vietnam war, Ayn Rand had plenty to say. She ended up publishing a book of essays featuring it (The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, which was republished after her death under the title Return of the Primitive.)

I want to compare the modern Gaza protests with back then, but there is so much dumbassery today, it's hard to make the comparison.

For instance, check this out.

 

The students who took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University didn't worry about basic survival supplies. Now they are asking the public for food and guarantees they can send people out for food.

 

If I wanted to make this up, this scene would be a pretty good turning point in a comedy about dumbasses.

And, after seeing that, I don't think Ayn Rand--if she were alive today--would bother writing about it like she did back in the 60s.

At that level, who are those dumbasses going to threaten for real? What philosophical principles are they challenging? They all have plenty of money and can't even feed themselves. They forgot to plan for it while staging a pretend-violent takeover of a building. 

 

Michael

Saul Alinsky is rolling in his grave.

[tmj]

Do they have mullahs like in 79 in Tehran?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Trump is no friend of Bibi Netanyahu ever since he pulled Israel out at the last minute of killing Iranian general Qassam Soleimani. That was supposed to have been a joint operation. Then Netanyahu was quick to congratulate Biden of his win even while accusations of fraud were flying all over the place.

Even with all that, though, the following statement by Trump is probably the most important aspect of the Hamas-Israel hostilities that has happened recently.

Trump said a two-state solution is tough due to the Palestinians indoctrinating their children to hate Jews.

Trump Casts Doubt on Palestinian State, Given 'Hatred' Against Jews

WWW.BREITBART.COM

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Trump cast doubt on the possibility of a Palestinian state, given the hatred that Palestinians have displayed against Israel and Jews.

There you have it.

One state or two states?

Predicting what is going to happen is not hard in this case.

 

 

Once Trump is back in power, he will move all the backstage people and interests around, then there will be no Palestinian state or even a promise of one. And the Palestinians may bitch, but they will be isolated and without money. And they will be living under Israeli rule.

Then, finally all that killing can stop.

Michael

[Peter]

Hamas not only commits “war crimes” in a broader definition but they are the Hannibal Lecter’s of current reality. They are monsters who need to be eradicated and America needs to do more to assist Israel and to bring all of the hostages, and not just Americans, back home. And then Hamas, wherever it roams, needs to vanish from existence. We and Israel, do not need or deserve, another 9/11.  Peter

From Wikipedia. A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.

[Mark]

On 5/5/2024 at 1:43 PM, Peter said:

Hamas not only commits “war crimes” in a broader definition but they are the Hannibal Lecter’s of current reality. They are monsters who need to be eradicated and America needs to do more to assist Israel and to bring all of the hostages, and not just Americans, back home. And then Hamas, wherever it roams, needs to vanish from existence. We and Israel, do not need or deserve, another 9/11.  Peter

Hamas was not responsible for 9/11, good grief.  I'm reminded of the Neocons back in 2002-2003 claiming that the president of Iraq was responsible for 9/11, to get people to support the U.S. invading Iraq.

I don't like the Palestinians (and certainly don't want them relocated to the USA).  That said, what Israel is doing in Gaza is insane.

Ron Unz of The Unz Review has been writing valuable articles on the war since the beginning.  His latest is about the campus protests:

Israel/Gaza: The Masks Come Off in American Society

More articles referenced here.

[anthony]

Ron Unz writes Leftist sophistry, on 'facts' straight out of the Al Jazeera propaganda network. One can (e.g). be sure those casualty figures are bogus, they are anything up to doubled by Hamas' 'Health Ministry' who know - from prior wars - that "innocent" deaths are their biggest weapon in the gullible West. Get their people killed - there is their strategy. While the IDF tries not to. As for Israel murdering, occupying and driving out Gazans, etc,etc, I don't think he mentions that Israel had already lightly occupied Gaza since its loss by Egypt; the meagre 9000 Israeli settlers were pulled out in 2005 by the govt. Gaza was left to self-determine their future...(under a blockade - naturally - because they continued personnel and rocket attacks on Israel)

These distortions and inversions of truth. Like, the horribly unjust treatment to Jewish college students - made to be the aggressors!? As always the strong are necessarily the evil and the (not so) weak are innocent good peoples, to socialists.

("A remarkably daring surprise raid by the Hamas militants" tells you his premises -and-  "[Israel] "intending to kill large numbers of them..." Yeah? He knows, does he?  However, up to 15,000 of the "34,000" (exaggerated) deaths were of Hamas militants, by IDF sources. But rather believe a terrorist government. "Instead of attacking Hamas" - one of his bigger lies among many.

Hamas' political arm knows its audience.  Capture hostages, commit murderous attacks. The threefold plan: 1. they know the Israelis are guaranteed to come in hard to rescue hostages. Good. The trap is set. 2. the hostages serve as protective shields 3. hostages can be negotiated as leverage for a ceasefire. Objective achieved: Plenty of their own Gazan civilians die and the world turns on Israel and pulls support, and they buy time to reorganize, re-equip and to do it again. 

I've seen it before.

I could not read much of Mr Unz's sophistry and inversions. Don't misunderstand these folk, they delight in seeing Israelis killed, the country brought low, and even eradicated as Hamas promises. .

"... Then within weeks, a remarkably daring surprise raid by the Hamas militants of long-besieged Gaza caught the Israelis napping and surmounted the high-tech defenses that had cost perhaps a half-billion dollars to construct. Many hundreds of Israeli soldiers and security officers were killed along with similar numbers of civilians, with most of the latter probably dying from the friendly-fire of Israel’s own panic-stricken and trigger-happy military units. Some 240 Israeli soldiers and civilians were captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners, with Hamas hoping to exchange them for the freedom of the many thousands of Palestinian civilians who had been held for years in Israeli prisons, often under brutal conditions.

As usual, our overwhelmingly pro-Israel mainstream media portrayed the attack in extremely one-sided fashion, devoid of any historical context, a pattern that had been followed for three generations. As a result, Israel received an enormous outpouring of public and elite sympathy as it mobilized for a retaliatory attack against Gaza. Within days, our own Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Israel declaring that he came “as a Jew” and pledging America’s unwavering support in that moment of crisis, sentiments completely echoed by President Joseph Biden and his entire administration. But the Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives were hidden in a network of fortified tunnels and rooting them out might produce heavy casualties, so Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors decided upon a different strategy.

Instead of attacking Hamas, Netanyahu took advantage of the wave of global sympathy by unleashing an unprecedented military assault against Gaza’s more than two million civilians, apparently intending to kill huge numbers of them and drive the remainder into Egypt’s Sinai desert, allowing Israel to annex their territory and resettle it with Jews".

 

[tmj]

Neither condoning nor condemning, but isn’t that essentially the result , that Gaza will basically be leveled if Israel continues on their current course of force application?

Even if Iran is the largest backer of Hamas or all anti Israel non state military actors in the region , that Israel’s military capability will result in them acquiring full control of a decimated Gaza?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

17 hours ago, tmj said:

... that Israel’s military capability will result in them acquiring full control of a decimated Gaza?

T,

This is one of those situations where lots of people on the outside want to help, but the people on the inside do not want to solve the problem. On the surface, it looks like a fight between deadly enemies. But underneath, it's like a fight between a couple you used to see on I Love Lucy, then an outside person gets involved and tries to solve it and both members of the couple turn and start attacking him.

When I first wrote that, when it poured out of me on autopilot, I reflected and thought it was off. But the more I think about it, the more I believe there is a deep truth there.

In that region, two opposing sides have been wedded to each other and fighting each other forever. The current form goes all the way back to the Hebrews and the Canaanites in the time of Moses. They define themselves as mirror opposites of the other--just like Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight. Opposites, but halves of the same whole.

 

Now the problem has changed. The basic integration has changed. It broke.

Palestine and Israel are no longer two sides of the same whole. When Hamas parachuted murderers into Israel to kill and rape Jews at a show and drag their corpses through the streets, when it captured prisoners that it killed and raped over time because Hamas people can't live with Jews up close, that was the last straw for many Jews who live in Israel. Why do you think Netanyahu--with all his many faults (and they are many and deep)--keeps getting voted in during this time?

The answer is easy. People vote for him. Fed up Jews vote for him. They know he will do the nasty job that needs doing, then he will willingly take the fallout from it.

 

Negotiating with Hamas does not work. And since one of the main tactics of Hamas is--and has been forever--to hide behind civilians as they shoot at Jews, in this new scenario where a tipping point has been reached, where there are no longer two halves of the same whole, there is only one way to end it.

In this new scenario, there will be one winner and one loser. These peoples--these former two halves--are now deadly enemies and cannot live side by side in peace.

That is reality. Persuasion used to be reality for this problem, but not anymore. It broke. There is no amount of propaganda by anyone that will change this.

And if that means, for the fed up Jews, blasting through the civilians who are hiding the Hamas hostiles in order to weed out the Hamas fighters and kill them, then so be it. When you push someone too far, this is what happens.

In Brazil, there is an appropriate saying from country people: I would pay an entire steer to avoid getting into to a fight, but once in a fight, I would pay my entire herd to stay and finish it.

This is no longer a political thing. This is a human nature thing.

This is the stuff of war by hatred.

And it is as old as mankind.

 

For me, this ain't my fight. I just want the killing to stop.

But I know where the hatred comes from. On the Palestinian side, Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews from very young and they are taught to deceive anyone on the outside to advance that hatred. For peace to occur in a peaceful manner, that indoctrination has to stop. Children who hate Jews grow up into adults who hate Jews. Children who learn deception is good grow up into adults who deceive by second nature.

On the Jewish side, they reached a point where the last straw, the parachute attack, broke the camel's back. All their good will vanished. Only hatred remains. They don't give a fuck anymore about the moral high ground. They've had it.

That is the present scenario. There are no longer two opposing sides of the same whole. It's now two sides who are going to fight to the death. 

Everything except blind hatred can be negotiated. Hatred can't be fooled into a peaceful bad bargain. Hatred can't be deceived into not being hatred anymore. Since negotiations have not worked for decades and do not work now, it's obvious there is a lot of hatred on the table, hatred that never went away. Instead, that hatred grew and now it is boiling hot.

Hatred is the context now for interacting. Not reason.

 

One last comment. I don't believe a word the mainstream press says about any of this. Nothing. Not even "the" and "and." The mainstream press lies and I am not stupid enough to believe that, in the case of these hostilities, the press has miraculously started telling the truth. So "whataboutism" doesn't even get to my mind to consider. The press lies about it all. Then lies some more. Then lies about the lies.

For instance, the word "genocide" now gets thrown about in the press against Israel, but as far as I can tell, there are plenty of Palestinians alive. And, like all hostilities, there will be a time when all of this is over and lots of Palestinians will be alive at the time. I don't see any effort by Israel to kill off Palestinian bloodlines as a final solution like what was done to Jews by Nazis.

Genocide is a lie right from the start.

So I can't use the words in the press to correspond to anything in reality. I have to use my own brain to identify and evaluate this mess--and I have to do it from a distance at that. At least I have been observing from a distance for a long time, enough to see that a lot of the bullshit thrown around these days is bullshit.

In this war, we will only find out for real what is going on after it is over and the rebuilding starts. And even then, it will take a long time for the true facts to emerge.

 

So I am rooting for Israel to finish their war plans as quickly as possible and may the rebuilding start.

I don't like what is going on, not on any side. But I am beyond persuasion right now.

Reality cannot be negotiated by words. Reality just is. And there is a new scenario of deadly enemies killing each other. That is reality.

From what I see with my own eyes, all the rest is not reality and not even rooted in reality.

It's rooted in hatred.

 

And there's this. Don't get me started on that goddam endless war for profit machine. They make their money off this hatred and killing. At least hatred in its current form, with it's binary outcome where only one side will prevail, will now kill the crony golden goose in Israel that has been laying golden eggs for the Military Industrial Complex.

Michael

[anthony]

On 5/10/2024 at 4:24 AM, tmj said:

Neither condoning nor condemning, but isn’t that essentially the result , that Gaza will basically be leveled if Israel continues on their current course of force application?

Even if Iran is the largest backer of Hamas or all anti Israel non state military actors in the region , that Israel’s military capability will result in them acquiring full control of a decimated Gaza?

This is not anything which may be easily perceived of from an American perspective. A tiny land with under 10 mil people including about half the remaining Jews in the world, with fanatic foes on every side, only a few miles away.

The first war Israel loses will be their last. They do not have the luxury to just pull out and go home.

A fight to the finish.

(don't be taken in by the terrible scenes of devastation. Associations with "Dresden" I keep hearing - a much different war in range and scope - are invalid. Viewers imagine many thousands killed under the rubble. False. There are and were minimal casualties this way, and some heart-rending rescue scenes were "staged" by Hamas for the cameras. Most Gazans were well advance-warned to get out (by the IDF, some ordered to stay in place, by Hamas). But certain civilian areas and buildings had to be flattened for tactical reasons, most destroyed buildings the IDF Intel knew, contained arms caches, tunnel entrances, militant ambushes, missile launchers, booby traps and so on. For all that, the IDF is losing men through its policy of holding fire until certain of enemy targets, to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas asked for what they got. Any who try - e.g. Ron Unz - to claim Israel wanted - planned - this conflict for gain are as vicious as their claims. 

[anthony]

4 minutes ago, anthony said:

This is not anything which may be easily perceived of from an American perspective. A tiny land with under 10 mil people including about half the remaining Jews in the world, with foes on every side a few miles away.

The first war Israel loses will be their last.

A fight to the finish.

(oh, and don't be taken in by the terrible scenes of devastation. Associations with "Dresden" - a different war - I keep hearing, are invalid. There are and were few casualties lying under the rubble, and some heart-rending rescue scenes were staged by Hamas for the cameras. Most people were well-warned to get out (by the IDF). But certain civilian buildings had to be flattened, many contain arms caches, tunnel entrances, militant ambushes, missile launchers and booby traps. Hamas asked for what they got. Any who try, like Ron Unz to claim Israel wanted - planned - this are as vicious as their claims. 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

The first war Israel loses will be their last.

Tony,

No matter what side one is on, this is a fact.

Those who don't see it are not looking at reality for their evaluations.

Michael

[tmj]

I think the leading export , or at least pretty high on the charts for Haiti is/was gravel. It looks like a sizable portion of Gazan infrastructure is pretty broken , so after the war will their export restrictions be lifted so they can export recycled concrete , it’s way greener! 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

People take pictures of the building razed in Gaza.

But nobody is taking pictures of the damage the IDF did to the massive number of tunnels the Palestinians built under Gaza and Israel.

Especially the entry and exit points.

I wonder why, I wonder...

(Why does the phrase "controlling the narrative" keep coming unbidden?  )

 

Like it or not, that tunnel network is part of reality.

And it needs the same construction elements as buildings do, except maybe windows.

 

I heard a while back the IDF was pumping them full of sea water. Is that true?

Michael

[Marc]

In Israel the borders are so tight and protected that they would know if a mouse or a cockroach or even a mosquito crossed the border yet in October everyone came across at will with no IDF soldiers anywhere for hours.

Riddle me that Batman.

That is the $64,000 question.

[anthony]

The upstanding Hamas Ministry of Health, um, 'over-estimated' its innocent casualties?

Never!

Out of the UN, most unexpectedly (and 15,000 of these revised figures were combatants--some 'genocide').

UN halves estimates of women and children killed in Gaza

WWW.JPOST.COM

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The UN  also highlighted that the plurality of identified fatalities were men (40%), while children were (32%) and women (20%).

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Marc said:

In Israel the borders are so tight and protected that they would know if a mouse or a cockroach or even a mosquito crossed the border yet in October everyone came across at will with no IDF soldiers anywhere for hours.

Riddle me that Batman.

That is the $64,000 question.

In the midst of metaphors, I sense reality in this observation.

I don't play the Team Israel versus Team Palestine game.

I play on Team Reality.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a little fun with this mess.

LOL...

 

Michael

[Peter]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I don't play the Team Israel versus Team Palestine game.

I play on Team Reality.

Fox quoted Hillary Clinton around 1 PM today. She was referring to anti-Israel student protests in Brooklyn, as saying something like, “Young people don’t know history.”

It is odd (and not right,) that I have not seen any “student protests” against the killing, raping, kidnapping or the burning alive, of Jews, recently done by Hamas let alone, nothing about the Holocaust.  I remember the student rebellion mainly against The Viet Nam War that Ayn Rand talked about in the sixties. Do todays, anti- Semites carry over the traits she mentioned? Are they todays, “Left?” Peter      

From IMPACT TODAY: . . . First, if you are interested in understanding the left today, the collection of essays contained in Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution is essential reading. The book (originally published as The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution) contains a number of essays written by Rand in the 1960s that analyzed various aspects of the new left’s philosophy along with a new introduction and several additional essays by Peter Schwartz. 

Turning to particular essays, the best overall for understanding the situation on America’s campuses right now is Rand’s “The Cashing in: The Student Rebellion.” Rand analyses the student rebellion that started on Berkeley’s campus in the mid 1960’s and the so-called Free Speech Movement that went along with it, the philosophical character of the movement, its goals and why it started. The title hints at her explanation of this latter point: what the students were “cashing in” on were the dominant trends in philosophy — “epistemological agnosticism, avowed irrationalism, ethical subjectivism” — which they were absorbing in the very schools against which they were rebelling. One can see these same ideas at the core of today’s student radicals, although it is becoming a bit clearer where they lead . . . .

[Peter]

Warning Will Robertson! I was looking for AR quotes and typed in The Ayn Rand Lexicon and scrolled down and clicked on a site which gave one. Then my computer was hacked and a female voice said do not shut down your computer and call this number. So, I shut it down, rebooted, and I seem to be OK. Scary! 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Trump has a way of saying something that cuts through the propaganda and the bullshit.

Donald Trump: 'I Support Israel's Right to Win Its War on Terror'

WWW.BREITBART.COM

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Former President Donald Trump criticized President Joe Biden, adding that he supported "Israel's right to win its war on terror."

 

Michael