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Thursday, October 26, 2023

Links - 26th October 2023 (Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Thread by @EconTalker on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The aftermath of October 7 is a test for the West and for all open societies—societies that purport to tolerate and even embrace diversity of opinion, culture, and political opinion. Societies that nominally believe in freedom of speech and the press. Such societies are now at a crossroads and must think about the direction they wish to head. Reasonable people can disagree about who is responsible and in what amounts for the quality of civilian life in Gaza before October 7. Reasonable people can disagree about whether pressure should be put on Israel to temper its military response to the pogrom of October 7.  Debates over these questions happen here in Israel and they happen in other open societies around the world.  But what do you do about Jew-hatred? What do you do when anti-Zionism is clearly not merely a disagreement with Israeli policy but comes in a flavor that is about Jews and not just Israelis? An open society believes in freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. But how does an open society like Australia’s deal with a crowd of hundreds if not thousands who chant not just “F**k the Jews” but “Gas the Jews” on the steps of the Sydney Opera House? The police discouraged Jews from coming to that rally. Is that the right response? Is there an alternative? How does an open society like England’s deal with 100,000 people marching in the streets chanting “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea” in the aftermath of the October 7th pogrom? Those two slogans are a demand for ethnic cleansing—an Israel without Jews. People at that rally waved flags of Jihad—religious war. The police struggled to respond and ultimately did nothing in the moment to the flag waver. Should they have?  A friend of mine told me last night that an identifiably Jewish man—he was dressed in traditional Hasidic clothing—was assaulted in Heathrow Airport. He didn’t die. I don’t know how badly he was hurt. Open societies typically call this a “hate crime.” Is that enough? The man who was hurt went to the police but there is little they offered to be able to do. One answer is to stop being identifiably Jewish, and many Jews, fearful of violence, have lowered their profile. On the Global Day of Rage that Hamas proclaimed in the aftermath of the October 7 pogrom, Jewish children attending Jewish schools were told not to wear their school uniforms. Some schools canceled classes on that Friday. Is that the right way for an open society to respond-- for Jews to avoid being publicly Jewish—an inversion of sorts of requiring Jews to wear a yellow star in Nazi Germany?  Last night, at George Washington University, someone projected giant signs on the sides of buildings saying “Glory to the Martyrs” and “From the river to the sea.” Should celebrating the murder of Jews be protected speech in an open society?  And then there are the people tearing down the posters about the kidnapped adults and children in Gaza. Such actions are at least a tacit endorsement of child abduction. Is that free speech? Hate speech? Or a legitimate political protest?  Political disagreement is at the heart of an open society. Celebrating the deaths of your political opponents seems like something different. I don’t think an open society can survive if some of its members use violence or the threat of violence to silence their opponents.  How does an open society cope with the reality that some of its members do not believe in an open society?  I recently read Stefan Zweig’s memoir, The World of Yesterday. It’s a masterpiece describing Zweig’s intellectual and cultural world in Vienna and the rest of Europe before and after World War I. He struggles to explain the rise of Hitler but ex post, he understands that part of Hitler’s success was due to how his supporters used violence and intimidation to silence his opponents and to and to raise the cost of their meeting and gathering publicly. We’re getting a small taste of that now in America and elsewhere. Two nights ago in Skokie Illinois there was a pro-Israel rally and some Jews gathered for an impromptu evening prayer service. Nearby, maybe twenty yards away, a crowd of dozens, held back by barriers, screamed “Allahu Akbar” at them. Police were there, too, restraining them. But what if such disrupters come into the synagogues and elsewhere, with disruptive tactics and implicit threat of violence? Who will stop them? Will the Jews fight back or lower their profile?  There are lots of videos online of people gleefully pulling down those posters of kidnapped children and adults. Sometimes people watching nearby ask them not to do it. They beg those tearing down the posters for an explanation. No one steps in their way, though. No one fights them or tries to keep the despoilers from hiding the victims. I get it. We’re all afraid of people who seem willing to do violence to us. But how can an open society tolerate this? What does an open society do when some of its members are happy to use violence or the threat of violence to curtail the freedom of other members of that society? Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute once told me that there should be free speech for everyone except those who hold ideologies that do not believe in free speech. I was offended. Free speech should have no exceptions based on political grounds, I argued. I’ve since changed my mind. Tom was right. Someone who hates Jews or any other group and supports their murder or abuse and who uses violence or the threat of violence to silence those who disagree cannot be tolerated in an open society. But how to implement that intolerance of intolerance?  We now have the unbearable audio of one of the murderers on October 7th calling his parents and proudly declaring that he killed 10 Jews. Not ten Israelis. Not ten Zionists. Not ten white colonialists. Not 10 settlers. Ten Jews. Here in Israel, we have no illusions about what we’re up against. We know there are people who don’t just want our land. They want to kill us along the way. And they seem to enjoy it.  There’s a genuine debate here in Israel about whether a ground offensive in Gaza will be worth the lives of the soldiers and the Gazan civilians who will die. But no one is debating whether it’s a good idea to kidnap children or kill their parents in front of them before abducting them. We know what we’re up against. Old-fashioned Jew-hatred. And we’re not going to hope it goes away. We’re going to fight.  The open societies in the West elsewhere are going to have to come to terms with the reality that some of its citizens want to live in a very different kind of kind of society and are willing to use violence and the threat of violence to intimidate and harm people they disagree with. There is no simple answer to coping with this reality. It is easy to say that you’re against it—all the right people have said all the right things. But soon the West and the open societies may have to do the right thing. Deciding what that is and how to implement that decision is the terrible dilemma facing the West right now."

Peter Whittle on X - "The fact is : there are barely 300k Jewish people in the UK. There are nearly 4 million Muslims. The police fear the latter, due to their numbers and the fact that they could get violent, whereas they know the Jews will be law abiding and non-violent. This accounts for them sucking up to the demonstrators and tolerating the intolerable."

Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 on X - ""The people of the Bronx are oppressed by the occupying force of the NYPD—just like the Palestinians are occupied & oppressed by the Israeli occupation forces." Far-left protesters surround the office of @RepRitchie to protest his support for Israel."

Sonam Mahajan on X - "Meet violent radical Islamist Mohammed Hijab, who was invited to speak at several events in Canada, including universities, recently. He has organised multiple attacks on the British Hindu and Jewish communities in the recent past. This is what Canada is enabling in the name of freedom of expression and religion."

Kurt Schlichter on X - "I was against canceling students, but students decided canceling was a thing so now I feel that it needs to be inserted in their collective rectum, and they need to suffer."
Megan McArdle on X - "I am against cancelling students who issued tone-deaf statements downplaying Hamas atrocities. But I am also goggling at the assumption that what protects them is not free speech norms, but the scandalous impossibility of firing too many Harvard alums."

Gabe Stutman on X - "Ethnic studies faculty in the University of California system sent a scathing letter to UC administrators condemning the use of the word "terrorism" to describe the Hamas attacks saying it contributes "to a climate that has made Palestinian students and community members unsafe""
Yair Rosenberg on X- "-Worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, children slaughtered and kidnapped
-University calls this "terrorism"
-Faculty members with a straight face say the use of this word is making people feel "unsafe"
"Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals believe them.""
Anything liberals disagree with makes them feel "unsafe", which is why you can't take their talk about "safety" seriously. But of course, they threaten those they disagree with, and their safety doesn't matter

Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza - "As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don’t take them in.  The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.  Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.  Jordan’s King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.” Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty...   El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region.” He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now... Egypt’s military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.  Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.  With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” Fabiani said."
Damn Zionists!
Western countries should have rejected Syrian refugees, since depriving Assad of opposition cements his power
Weird. Why doesn't El-Sissi support "resistance"?

Hillel Neuer on X - "War has been launched against Israel today by the Palestinians from Gaza. I’m sitting now in a bomb shelter in Jerusalem, where I’ve come to visit for the High Holidays. Over 5,000 rockets were fired into Israel already this morning.   And this part is unprecedented: Palestinian terrorists from Gaza also infiltrated into Israeli towns and reportedly slaughtered civilians and abducted hostages.   Hamas and Islamic Jihad, funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, know that the world will do nothing — until Israel responds by targeting the terrorists and their infrastructure.   Then the U.N. Human Rights Council will spring into action, and accuse Israel of war crimes and racism. This incentivizes the terrorists, granting them a global propaganda victory.   It’s what they’ve done repeatedly, like after the last war in May 2021. The UNHRC created a permanent commission of inquiry to target Israel. They made Navi Pillay the chair, after she already declared Israel to be a racist and inhuman war criminal.   Sadly, Pillay is being cheered on by some in the West. On October 21st, at Fordham University in New York, she will receive an “Outstanding Achievement Award” from the American Branch of the International Law Association. Shame on you, @ABILA_official ."

leekern on X - "“Most Palestinians want peace” Yeah I’m not buying it mate There is zero Palestinian peace movement Palestinian society and its leadership is deeply toxified with Muslim supremacy and anti-Jewish racism This is a cause of the conflict - not a byproduct Call it out or sod off"

Stephen L. Miller on X - "Hamas literally murdered and then kidnapped kids and elderly out of their homes and US congressional Democrats released statements demanding Israel de-escalate. I've never seen this. Ever."

Ben M. Freeman 🇮🇱 on X - "Reports suggest Palestinians permitted to work in Israel were among those who perpetrated the massacre. The survivors recognised some of whom had worked on the Kibbutz. They were the ones leading the Pogrom."

Greg Price on X - "In the year 2023, a huge crowd of people holding Palestinian flags outside the Sydney Opera House in Australia are chanting “gas the Jews.” They’re just resisting occupation, guys!"
When leftists hate a cause, one example of someone misbehaving means all of them are deplorables. But when they love it, no amount of red flags means that there's any cause for concern

Jake Wallis Simons on X - "All this stuff about Gaza being an "open-air prison camp" and Gazans having nowhere to go to escape airstrikes once they have been warned by Israel to evacuate. Let's dispel some untruths. Firstly, Israel is unique in the emphasis it places on warning civilians to evacuate before an attack. Gazan civilians *do* have places to go, such as schools, which aren't targeted. Thousands have taken refuge there in recent days, my friend in Gaza told me. Secondly, let's talk about the fact that Israel secures its border with Gaza, and always has. The reason for this is *security*. We don't need to imagine what would happen if Israel had allowed the border to be open over the past 17 years: we saw it in gruesome reality over the weekend, with children beheaded. What should Israel do, allow its civilians to be butchered just to avoid liberal westerners accusing it of creating an "open-air prison"? This is an allegation that is designed to undermine Israel's efforts to protect its people, the soft front of the Jihadi movement, perpetrated by useful idiots. And here I come to the most important point. Everyone is criticising Israel for sealing the border with Gaza and not sending in fuel and supplies for the duration of the war. But Gaza has TWO borders, the other with Egypt. Why doesn't Egypt open its border to refugees and offer humanitarian support, as Arab countries did during the Syrian civil war? The FT reported that Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s president, said yesterday that “national security is my first responsibility and under no circumstances will there be any complacency or negligence”. In an apparent reference to talk of resettling Gazans in Egypt, he added: “We will not allow the Palestinian cause to be resolved at the expense of other parties.” Come on! So Israel must be responsible for feeding, watering, sustaining and enabling its jihadi enemies even while trying to destroy them, while Egypt can turn its back and avoid international condemnation? As the American novelist Saul Bellow put it: "[People] appear to believe that the Jews, with their precious and refining record of suffering, have a unique obligation to hold up the moral burdens everyone else has dumped.”"

Greg Price on X - "1937: Arabs reject the Peel Commission to create a Jewish and Arab state.
1947: Arabs reject the UN partition plan to create a Jewish and Arab state. Wage war against the new nation of Israel. Lose more land than the partition gave them.
1967: Israel wins yet another war against its Arab neighbors, conquering Gaza, the West Bank and Sinai in a defensive war. The Arab League declares the "three no's": No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Israel voluntarily hands control of the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism back to the Islamic Waqf, and made it illegal for Jews to pray there.
1979: Israel voluntarily hands the Sinai back to Egypt, returning land conquered in a defensive war.
1993: Israel recognizes the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Oslo Accords. Yasser Arafat uses it to support terrorism.
2000: Israel offers Yasser Arafat recognition of a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 94% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its Capital. Arafat rejects it and launches the Second Intifada.
2005: Israel pulls out of the Gaza Strip, dismantles all its settlements, and forces Jews to leave their homes. Palestinians respond by electing Hamas who turn it into a terror state.
2008: Israel offers Mahmoud Abbas once again recognition of a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 94% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its Capital and even offered to dismantle all their settlements. And once again, the Palestinians reject it.
2010-2021: Hamas launches periodic rocket attacks against the state of Israel and builds terror tunnels in order to kidnap and murder Jews while using the people of Gaza as human shields against the IDF.
2023: Hamas commits the worst act of mass murder against Jews since the Holocaust."

Henry Kissinger on Hamas attacks fallout: Germany let in too many foreigners - "Hamas’ attack against Israel being celebrated on the streets of Berlin indicates that Germany has let too many foreigners into the country, according to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  “It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that,” the 100-year-old ex-top American diplomat said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner for Germany’s Welt TV"

Libs of TikTok on X - "WATCH: A woman in Chestnut Hill, MA, which has a large Jewish population, was filmed tearing down pictures of the women and children who Hamas terrorists took hostage. She then turns to the camera and smiles before walking away."
Darren Grimes on X - "The way they remove the photographs of those held hostage and laugh as they do it, it’s the sheer unadulterated pleasure they receive from doing it that’s most troubling. Grim."

Roo Barker - "Poll is from June 2023 70% of Palestinians in Gaza and 48% of Palestinians in the West Bank support "armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel" If you were wondering whether Hamas represents Palestinians or not"
Palestinian Center for POLICY and SURVEY RESEARCH: Public Opinion Poll No (88)
I see people claiming that Hamas doesn't represent Palestinians, and it is important to make a distinction. Well...
Meanwhile, 71% of Palestinians support the formation of paramilitary groups and 86% say the PA does not have the right to arrest those groups' members. Clearly all this shows that a vast majority of Palestinians are determined to pursue peace through non-violent means, which is why Israel is guilty of genocide when it kills terrorists Half think the Palestinians would benefit if the PA collapsed, even while half think this will strengthen armed groups in the West Bank, 70% of Palestinians oppose the two-state solution, and 53% want a "Return to the armed intifada and confrontations". 52% support "armed action" for their political goals
Interestingly, a plurality blame the Arabs for the Nakba. A plurality think the best thing that's happened to the Palestinians since 1948 has been "The rise of the Islamic movement such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad"

Debra Lea on X - "Gaza was given to the Palestinians in 1994 in hopes of peace under the Oslo Accords. The PA has used the land NOT to enrich their own peoples lives, but rather to spend every dollar and resource on murdering Jews in their homes. They started this & we will finish it. Israel CAPTURED Gaza during the Six-Day War in 1967. After 25+ years of building up the land and making it habitable, Israel uprooted its citizens and gifted the land to Palestinians.   What did they do? Burn down all of the greenhouses and brought the land back to the Stone Age. Every attempt by Palestinians to destroy the Jewish State has resulted and will result in destroying the quality of life for their own people.   Palestinians are SOLELY to blame for the treatment of their own people.   Elect leaders who aren’t terrorists."
"Resistance" means no peace deal will ever be acceptable, and Israel will always be to blame until it is destroyed

NY Times admits its coverage of Gaza hospital blast relied too heavily on Hamas claims - "The New York Times, which repeatedly and prominently featured Hamas’s claim that the blast last week at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was caused by an Israeli airstrike, published an editors’ note Monday acknowledging that its coverage should have been more journalistically rigorous...   The Israeli military presented an intercepted conversation between Hamas officials saying the explosion was caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad projectile that fell short inside Gaza...   In Britain, the BBC and other local outlets have been criticized by government lawmakers for rushing to report the Hamas version of events."
AP visual analysis: Rocket from Gaza appeared to go astray, likely caused deadly hospital explosion
Look what Israel made them do!
This doesn't stop the "anti-Zionists" from claiming the New York Times (and all media who don't unconditionally support "resistance") is biased for Israel

How the Media Got the Hospital Explosion Wrong - The Atlantic - "some of the most reputable names in news media sent push alerts that broadcast Hamas’s claims far and wide... Both talked about “Israeli” air strikes. Both uncritically reported that many hundreds had died. Neither explained in their push alerts that the health  authorities—and all other authorities—in Gaza are controlled by Hamas, the Islamist organization that had brutally killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, in a recent surprise attack on Israel... Even the death toll itself has come to be in doubt: U.S. intelligence agencies now estimate that 100 to 300 people died—a horrific loss but one that is inconsistent with the claims made by Hamas... the Palestinians who died at the hospital in Gaza should be added to the already grim death toll for which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad bear responsibility since the surprise attack on Israeli civilians. That judgment also makes the misleading reporting by the world’s most influential journalistic outlets one of the most consequential media failures in recent history. As Ted Lieu, a progressive member of the House of Representatives, posted on X, the “news organizations not only got it wrong” in spectacular fashion, but in “their rush to judgment caused other nations to wrongly interpret the hospital blast.” Such a glaring example of major outlets messing up on a very consequential event helps explain why trust in traditional news media has been falling fast. As recently as 2003, eight out of 10 British respondents said that they “trust BBC journalists to tell the truth.” By 2020, the share of respondents who said that they trust the BBC had fallen to fewer than one in two. Americans have been mistrustful of media for longer, but here, too, the share of respondents who say that they trust mass media to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has fallen to a near-record low.  Journalists and media executives understandably tend to apportion blame for their failings elsewhere. If people no longer trust quality outlets, the fault must lie with the “misinformation” they encounter on social media. But such an easy allocation of responsibility won’t work when, marching in unison, major news organizations seem to have fouled up in as blatant a way as they have over this past week."
Clearly, Fox News and the Daily Mail are unreliable, and anyone who criticises the liberal media or says they spread fake news is a danger to democracy and pro-fascism. If you don't believe the numbers trotted by by anti-Israel activists, you're a hypocrite who supports Palestinian "genocide"

Revered peace activist is missing after sending harrowing text message during Hamas assault - "[Vivian] Silver is among those feared to have been killed on the spot or abducted by the militants and taken to Gaza, a place she knows well.  For nearly 50 years, Silver has worked to improve the plight of Palestinians and create a shared society between Jews and Arabs, having gone so far as to meet cancer-stricken Gaza residents at the border crossing and drive them to Jerusalem for treatment... “I’ve talked to Palestinians who feel completely devastated, like it was a family member who was taken,” said Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian American who operates MEJDI Tours, which offers trips to Israel led by guides from both sides of the conflict... Three days before the Hamas assault, Silver led a rally in Jerusalem where thousands of women — Jews and Arabs, secular and religious — marched shoulder to shoulder"
It's all Israel's fault for forcing Hamas to do this!

What did you think they meant by ‘decolonization’ anyway? - The Hub - "there is a smaller group for whom the idea of “decolonization” has a harder edge. They welcome it as a chance to turn the tables on our country’s historically-dominant European majority, not by supplementing our traditional symbols with new ones but by disparaging them as shameful and displacing them. These are the people who saw the burning of churches two summers ago and took pains to explain why the (often Indigenous) congregations had it coming. They are motivated by a retributive impulse that is often indistinguishable from revenge (or in the case of the white progressives who make up much of this class, masochistic self-flagellation). Unfortunately, this group is the movement’s avant-garde. Their energy and ideas drive and direct the policies in practice, while the well-meaning are carried along because they don’t have the words or courage to distinguish their good intentions from this destructive agenda.  But as we learned this week, there is buried within this last group a hardcore faction that would go even further. When they talk about decolonization, they mean it literally, with all its blood-soaked consequences. Symbolic change won’t cut it for them; they want action. They are the ones who read Frantz Fanon’s Damnés de la terre (and Sartre’s revolting introduction) not with the detached pose of most Western progressives but with lurid visions of incarnadine vengeance. They read things like “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect” and they don’t just believe it intellectually, they howl for it viscerally, palpably, urgently. Twitter has exposed them as cheerleaders of rape and infanticide, of “literal racism,” and “literal hate.” Sure, they were tweeting from the safety of their faculty lounges with the security of tenure and they might not be so sanguine about murder when it isn’t mediated through a small screen, but this much was clear: they saw the same images that sickened and revolted normal people and their first reaction was to justify and celebrate them. They rushed into the digital public square to explain that the shooting of young people attending a “peace” concert was an act of “anticolonial resistance,” they denied that settlers were “civilians” (and so off-limits for targeted killing), and they wondered, rhetorically, what everyone thought the words “[p]ostcolonial, anticolonial, and decolonial” meant? It’s a question their colleagues should be thinking hard about today, especially those with “settler” in their bios.  It was a revelatory moment. Perhaps these armchair Amins and tenured Tourés have spent so long insisting that “words are violence” that they can no longer tell the difference between a micro-aggression and a massacre. Perhaps they have spent so much time in a world of relative truths that they can’t bring themselves to accept the objective reality of evil when it bares its fangs. And perhaps we collectively bear some of the blame for this. Our schools, businesses, and governments have ignored or indulged them for so long that they may have believed, with good reason, that there would be no consequences for airing their zealotry this time too. But now that we’ve seen it, we should not forget it"

Labour MPs are terrified of telling the truth about Hamas - "The outburst of high profile support for the terrorist group Hamas on London’s streets in the last week and for its appalling savagery against innocent Israelis should have provoked universal condemnation from Labour MPs. Yet aside from the virtually lone and courageous voice of Steve McCabe MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel, almost all the condemnation of the weekend’s scenes has been expressed by politicians and commentators on the political Right. How many Labour MPs condemned the foolish behaviour of the London Tube driver who led a chorus of “Free Palestine” on Saturday? Even if some in the cheering crowd aboard the train were not explicit supporters of Hamas, it was woeful to see a publicly-paid employee use his position to take a side in this dreadful conflict.  It was right that he was suspended pending an investigation. So what if he’s a member of a trade union that may or may not be affiliated to the Labour Party? Why on earth would that impact on anyone’s natural outrage at such appalling behaviour? Hamas, let us remember, is an Islamist organisation whose views are identical to those of the 7/7 bombers who murdered 52 innocent Londoners when they bombed the capital’s transport system in 2005. So why have demands for a tightening of anti-terrorist laws not come from Labour MPs? Are they content that demonstrators can chant “From the river to the sea” – a none-too-subtle demand for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state – or call for a “jihad” against Israel without fear of arrest by the police? On Saturday Met officers stood by like amused spectators and actually held onto protesters’ Palestinian flags for them, politely handing them back when they had returned to the ground after climbing some scaffolding as part of their demonstration... It’s not that Labour MPs are supporters of such people – far from it. The truth is much, much worse: they’re scared. They’re scared of offending that section of their electorate who might disagree with them on Palestine. They’re scared, perhaps not of losing an election – which other party are such voters likely to support? – but they are nervous about defending their positions when it comes to reselection battles. Many local parties have many Muslim members who might be persuaded to vote against an incumbent MP who expresses too much solidarity with what Islamists slanderously label “the Zionist entity”. This is the party, remember, that tolerated Jeremy Corbyn as leader despite his “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah. It is a party that tried – twice – to make Corbyn prime minister, knowing he would be a disaster for the country. They could have refused to serve. They could have quit the party, as a few, decent, brave individuals did. Instead they capitulated to the bullies within their local parties."
Clearly only racist far right extremists condemn support for Hamas

Hamas Attack Draws Cheers from Extremists, Spurs Antisemitism and Conspiracies Online | ADL
Never waste a good crisis, since you can always use it to attack white people

France reports dozens of antisemitic acts since Hamas attack
Antisemitic incidents 'quadruple in UK' since Hamas attack in Israel
Clearly just "anti-Zionism". Or you can just blame the "far right"

Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 on X - ""Hitler should have eradicated all of you" Sarah Chowdhury, a lawyer who worked in the Illinois comptroller’s office @ILComptroller & was the president of the South Asian Bar Assoc. of Chicago @ChicagoSABA, has been removed from both positions after expressing extreme antisemitic views in support of Palestine."

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

On getting what you want

"He was crying. I don’t understand him at all. On one hand, he worked so hard for merger. Having gotten the cupful, he shattered it. And then cried over it."
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