Yes, they are ‘hate marches’ - "How dare you call them hate marches?! So goes the commentariat chorus this week, as London braces itself for another ‘pro-Palestine’ demonstration on Saturday, controversially coinciding with Armistice Day. With the British government keen to look tough on the capital’s now weekly anti-Israel protests, which have time and again devolved into carnivals of Jew hatred, home secretary Suella Braverman has branded them ‘hate marches’ and piled pressure on the Metropolitan Police to ban this weekend’s instalment. Cue outrage from the liberal-left, for whom opposing Suella Braverman has become a substitute for thought... I suppose they think the women sporting stickers glorifying anti-Semitic terrorists, or the men chanting Arabic war slogans about the slaughter of Jews, or the Islamists shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ all just stumbled along to the wrong protests – and will be rather embarrassed when they realise these protests are actually all about peace and harmony. Perhaps they are that dumb. But if all those ‘bad apples’ aren’t enough to turn off the great and good, they should take a look at the groups that are actually organising these demonstrations. As the Telegraph has revealed, half of the organisations behind this Saturday’s march have links to Hamas – you know, the genocidal Islamist group that butchered 1,400 people in southern Israel just over a month ago, initiating the current war that the protesters claim to be so opposed to. And we’re not talking about six degrees of separation here, either. Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, a former Hamas chief who now lives in London, co-founded one of the organisations – the Muslim Association of Britain. His son is still involved. Then there’s Zaher Birawi, a leader of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, another group organising the Armistice Day march. He has reportedly met with Hamas’s senior political leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh. As has Ismael Patel, founder and chair of Friends of al-Aqsa – another one of the groups involved in Saturday’s demo. Even the supposedly respectable Palestine Solidarity Campaign had to suspend members of its Manchester branch recently, over a blog post that described the 7 October pogrom in Israel as ‘heroic’. And the Corbynite Stop the War Coalition has, natch, been making Hamas-friendly comments for years. One of its co-founders, John Rees, once dubbed these terrorists – committed to wiping Israel off the map – a ‘legitimate resistance movement’... any peace march worth its name would surely begin by demanding that the genocidal terrorists who sparked this war lay down their arms and release the more than 200 terrified hostages they are currently holding captive in Gaza. But they won’t do that. And I think we know why. ‘Hate marches’ is almost too polite a phrase to describe the sewer that has consumed London in recent weeks."
Inc.Monocle on X - "Its #armsticeday 2023:
- Jews are staying out of London
- Poppy sellers are keeping away
- Soldiers have been told not to wear their medals/regalia
- The MET have had to draft in hundreds of officers
- The cenotaph is being guarded
- There is an exclusion zone around the US Embassy
On OUR sacred day.
We all know why.
It’s already gone too far and the day hasn’t even begun.
#RememberanceDay"
Allison Pearson on X - "The pro-Palestine/Hamas organised march has scared away poppy sellers from mainline London stations in this special week for veterans. Disgraceful. Do you see any of the march wearing poppies? Course not. They dislike our wonderful country."
GB News on X - "'Why does it feel like we're surrendering or giving in? I am speechless.' Veterans told NOT to wear their medals and regalia when travelling to Remembrance Day, to avoid being attacked. Colonel Kemp reveals horrifying reality of Britain: ‘Lost for words!’"
It must be the far right white supremacists attacking them!
Remembrance Day rocks painted over for Palestine at U Calgary - "The University of Calgary landmark rocks decorated by students for Remembrance Day have been painted over with a Palestinian flag and verses from the Quran. On Sunday afternoon, a group of about 17 students gathered to paint the rocks red and white with poppies, a Canadian flag, and a cross, as they look towards Remembrance Day coming up on Saturday. The rocks painted in honour of Canadian veterans lasted five days before painted over with celebration of pro-Hamas groups."
Hot news on X - "Female Islamic scholar: "Allah allows Muslim men to rape non-Muslim women to humiliate them." "If we fought #Israel, we can take their women and sex sIaves." For more breaking news updates, follow us at @TheNewsTrending #HamasISIS #HamasTerrorists #Gaza #Hamas"
Fred Hahn on X - "As we all think about reasons to be thankful this #thanksgiving2023, I know I'm thankful for the power of workers, the power of resistance around the globe. Because #Resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say, #Resistance brings progress, and for that, I'm thankful"
Jonathan Kay on X - "Your daily reminder that the leader of @CUPEOntario hasn't deleted his tweet celebrating the massacre of 1400 people in Israel"
Visegrád 24 on X - "BREAKING: Jihadi militias have murdered more than 800 black Africans from the Massalit tribe in Darfur, Sudan over the past few days. In this video, the Hamas-allied Jihadis film themselves capturing black Africans. Any protest march planned in London?"
Christina Hoff Sommers on X - "Oh look. An assistant professor at UCLA calling the footage of slaughtered Israelis “propaganda.” Never mind that it was filmed by HAMAS killers themselves. I shudder to think what she teaches in her classes."
Bilahari Kausikan | Facebook - "my attention was drawn to the argument made by a Malaysian ex-diplomat that the ‘root cause’ of the current violence must be addressed. This is not a new argument — it inevitably surfaces when conflict over Gaza or Palestine generally — erupts, and unfortunately, is shared by too many Singaporeans. At a superfical level, it has a certain plausibility, but is nevertheless bullshit... Hamas has a long-standing relationship with Malaysia and recieves training there which cannot happen unless the political authorities at least instruct the security agencies to look the other way. Former PM Najib visited Gaza in 2013 and met Hamas leaders. Hamas maintains an office in Malaysia under the innocuous sounding title of Palestinian Cultural Organisation Malaysia. The logic of the ‘root cause’ argument about Palestine or terrorism in general is fundamentally flawed. Just because one party commits injustices does not justify injustice by another party and this is really just an excuse for terrorism masquerading as an ‘explanation’. The Palestinian issue is such a tangled mess of competing nationalisms wrapped up in too much imperfectly understood and deliberately distorted history in which ‘justice’ for one necessarily entails ‘injustice’ for the other. It is a fool’s errand to try and draw up a balance sheet of ‘injustices’ or assign responsibility. We may have an opinion about this issue, as we have views about other international issues. But don’t forget ultimately these competing nationalisms have nothing to do with us. Under these circumstances to call for ‘root causes’ to be addressed is just another way of saying Israel should not exist, particularly since Hamas’ declared purpose is to destroy Israel. It delegitimises the right to self-defence. Imagine if someone fired thousands of rockets at us, gunned down 200+ of our young people attending a music festival, as well as murdering scores of other civilians and kidnapped others including young children and old people. Would we pontificate about ‘root causes’? The atrocities Hamas has committed go well beyond any reasonable conception of legitimate Palestinian self-defence no matter what Israel may have done. Israel is now going to fight a war of annihilation against Hamas and we should not blame them. As an IDF spokesman has made clear, the paradigm has changed. I don’t think, as some have speculated, Israel will be deterred by the hostages. To expect so misunderstands the psychology of Israel’s existential condition: the Israelis will spare no effort to retrieve one hostage or even the corpses of a few hostages, but hundreds of hostages are casualties of war and tragic though it may be, most Israelis instinctively understand this and accept that this is a price that must be paid. This is the signifiance of declaring war against Hamas, a war that given the scale of the atrocities Hamas committed, most Israelis accept, however reluctantly, and regardless of their other political disagreements, know and agree must be fought because containment of Hamas has clearly failed and there is no other choice... It will be very difficult and costly but I think most israelis understand that a war of annihilation against Hamas must be fought regardless of the cost in blood and treasure to restore deterrence. There will never be a clear ‘win’ or ‘lose’ in such a situation: the objective is to restore deterrence but they know that after some time it will erode again and will need to be restored. I have never forgotten what a senior IDF friend of mine told me years ago when we were discussing deterrence. He said Singapore was fortunate that we could maintain deterrence by signalling. But Israel, he continued, had to periodically spill blood to remind its enemies not to go too far. Tragically, that is almost the existential condition of being Israeli. The political situation in israel — not just the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations over the last several months, but going back at least 3-5 years, led Israel to be distracted from this harsh reality and that is why the current situation arose... I think many of us have seen videos of Malaysians waving Palestinian flags on KL streets and celebrating Israeli deaths. I don’t think this represents the majority view of decent Malaysians. But I hope no Singaporean will ever celebrate atrocities. And it is not in our essential national interest to let terrorists anywhere believe that they can act with impunity. It is in our national interest that israel responds decisively to this terror attack. It was not so long ago that a plot by a Jihadist group — no doubt inspired by Hamas’ earlier attacks on Israel — to shoot rockets at Singapore from Batam was foiled."
Rise in antisemitic, Islamophobic threats has Canadians 'scared in our own streets,' PM says
All Lives Matter is only bad when BLM is concerned. Considering that even the left media don't report cases of Islamophobia, this is another classic case of pandering
Ottawa plays down British travel advisory that says terror attack attempt in Canada is ‘very likely’ - The Globe and Mail - "Britain has the same warning level on its travel advisories for the United States and some Western European countries, including France, Spain and Germany. But the British safety and security advice does not apply to all of North America – its assessment of Mexico only says “terrorist attacks in Mexico cannot be ruled out.”"
Broken Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions - "On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions. What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically. Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali... Interestingly, the names of the photographers, which appear on other sources, have been removed from some of the photos on AP’s database. Perhaps someone at the agency realized it posed serious questions regarding their journalistic ethics... Either way, when international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it. And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism."
The memory-holed massacre - "while 7 October remains raw in Israel, here in the UK the atrocities are already starting to fade from view. Turn on the television, open up a newspaper or scroll through social media and you will see endless condemnation and vilification – not of Hamas and its barbarism, but of Israel and its attempts to defend itself... You could be forgiven for forgetting why this conflict even started. You might even have the impression that Israel is attacking Gaza because… well, that’s just what evil old Israel does. What we are witnessing right now is the memory-holing of the 7 October massacre. This memory-holing takes many forms. Some Hamas spokespeople and their useful idiots continue to actively deny the atrocities. Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas figure, told the BBC this week that ‘women, children and civilians were exempt’ from the 7 October violence, even though civilians were Hamas’s primary targets. Then there are the legions of online cranks, Islamists and anti-Semites who say the worst of 7 October, from the butchering of babies to the rapes of young women, did not actually happen – despite the vast documentary evidence of these crimes, most of it filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves. It’s a kind of ‘Holocaust denial in real time’, as journalist Bari Weiss has described it. Then there are those who seek to violently erase the memory of the attacks. In New York and London, posters of Israeli hostages have been defaced and torn down. One man scrawled the word ‘coloniser’ over the faces of kidnapped children. So intense is these people’s loathing of Israel, so unhinged is their anti-Semitism, that they cannot bear to be confronted with Jewish suffering, even that endured by children. What happened on 7 October must be forgotten and suppressed, it seems, so that these activists might once again feel at home on the ‘right side of history’. Others try to reframe the slaughter as a righteous act of resistance. 7 October was ‘a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human-rights worldwide’, according to one pseudo-radical journalist. It has been celebrated as a blow for ‘decolonisation’ by academics the world over. Before the bodies were even cold, a joint statement was issued by 31 social-justice campaign groups at Harvard University, insisting that Israel’s ‘apartheid regime’ be held ‘entirely responsible’ for the unfolding violence. In other words, forget Hamas’s decision to wage a genocidal campaign against Israel’s Jews – Israel is the aggressor here. Massacres like that on 7 October apparently cannot be allowed to intrude on this simplistic identitarian worldview, of colonised against coloniser. And so the grotesque anti-Semitic savagery of Hamas is, at best, excused. At worst, it is rebranded and transformed into a progressive struggle for justice. Finally, there are those who were unmoved by 7 October, but have leapt at the chance to condemn Israel’s response. Artists for Palestine UK, a group including Tilda Swinton, Steve Coogan and Maxine Peake, has produced an open letter denouncing Western governments for supporting Israel. It makes no mention of Hamas, 7 October or the deaths of 1,400 Israelis. The likes of Swinton or Coogan are far from alone. Centrist dads, woke celebs and leftish politicians are all keen to lecture Israel to lay down its weapons. To render itself defenceless against its tormentors. To surrender its civilian hostages to the enemy. To give free rein to Hamas’s genocidal hostility."
Anne Frank kindergarten in Germany discusses changing name, sparking uproar - "A German kindergarten’s longstanding discussion around changing its name from “Anne Frank” to “World Explorer” was criticized by Jewish community members and local politicians in recent days amid the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war... some parents and employees requested to the change the name. The daycare center manager Linda Schichor said that children struggle to understand the name, while parents with a migration background often don’t relate to Anne Frank, German media Volksstimme first reported over the weekend. “We wanted something without a political background,” Schichor said... Local politicians also have reacted, promising to stop a possible name change. “On Wednesday, the town council will unanimously position itself against the proposal to rename the daycare center,” Werner Jacob (CDU), chairman of the town council, told German news outlet WELT. “The reference to parents with a migration background, who often can’t relate to Anne Frank’s name, is the best argument against the name change in particular,” Privorozki said."
AOC: 'Anti-Semitic' Christian Fundamentalism Driving Israeli Conflict
Uhh...
NYU Law Student Lost Job Offer After Blaming Israel for Hamas Attacks - "A New York University law student who published a statement condemning Israel for Hamas' attacks has lost their job offer at Winston & Strawn, the law firm said on Tuesday. "Today, Winston & Strawn learned that a former summer associate published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas' recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Student Bar Association"... a Monday newsletter message from the president of the NYU Student Bar Association, Ryna Workman, went viral for blaming Israel for the October 7 attacks. "Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life," Workman wrote. "This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary. I will not condemn Palestinian resistance." The bar association president continued on to condemn apartheid, settler colonialism, military occupation, and "the violence of obfuscating genocide as a 'complex issue.'" "Palestine will be free," the letter said at the end. Workman's LinkedIn account, which is now deleted, listed experience as a summer associate at Winston & Strawn"
3 Harvard, Columbia Law Students Lost Job Offers for Israel Statements - "The law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell has rescinded job offers to three students from Harvard University and Columbia University, saying they were involved in student organizations whose statements on the Israel-Hamas war countered the firm's values... Several tech leaders have pulled out of a top industry conference in Europe after the CEO of the summit criticized Israel."
Actress Tara Strong Fired From Show After X Posts on Israel-Hamas War - "Successful voice actress Tara Strong was fired from the upcoming animated indie TV show "Boxtown" due to posts she shared about the Israel-Hamas war... Strong responded to the initial post about her character being recast, writing on X that she "Just found out on twitter!" and that she was, "Fired for being Jewish." In response to that comment, the show shared a post by one of its writers pointing out they were Jewish too and that another main actor on the show is also Jewish. It's unclear what posts prompted Strong's firing, but X users accused her of making posts, and liking and un-liking posts by others, that were Islamophobic or critical of pro-Palestinian demonstrations happening around the world. Strong appeared to acknowledge liking a post that said Islam is a threat but said she un-liked it when she read it in full."
Meme - "History of Conflict in the Land of Israel Since 1948
Year - Conflict Name - Who Started it? - Who Was Attacked?
1948 - Arab-lsrael War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1948-1967 - Fedayeen - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1967 - Six Day War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1967-1970 - War of Attrition - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1973 - Yom Kippur War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1971-1982 - Palestinian Insurgency in South Lebanon - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1985-2000 - South Lebanon Conflict - *Arabs* - *Israel*
1987-1993 - First Intifada - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2000-2005 - Second Intifada - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2006 - Lebanon War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2008 - Gaza War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2012 - Israeli Gaza Operation - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2014 - Gaza War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2021 - Israel Palestine Crisis - *Arabs* - *Israel*
2023 - Israel Hamas War - *Arabs* - *Israel*
Source: Wikipedia"
Damn Israel making peace impossible!
Meme - AG @AGHamilton29: "WTF kind of description is this, @AP? You have a blood thirsty mob checking for passports and searching for Jews, and you describe it as "a protest"?"
"Crowd storms Russian airport to protest flight from Israel"
Meme - Michael Dickson: "Peaceful pro-Israel rally in London. Spot the difference?"
Hayat: "yeah, everyone is white af
i know it smells crazy in there"
Ironic.
Wars of Necessity, and Wars of Choice - "Over the last few centuries, powerful states have been getting worse at winning wars against weaker adversaries... At one point, Western nations ruled over the vast majority of the world’s surface area. Today, the US can struggle for decades to impose its will on one poor nation on the other side of the globe and end up leaving in disgrace. It seems unlikely that there’s a technological reason for this change. If anything, strong countries should be getting better at accomplishing their objectives. Sure, insurgents now have things like cellphones and IEDs, but that’s unlikely to be as important as new tools primarily available to rich states like nuclear weapons, precision bombs, and advanced satellite and surveillance technology. The mention of nuclear weapons in the last sentence should provide a clue as to where I’m going with this. The use of nukes in a conflict like Afghanistan or Iraq is unthinkable. This provides a clear example of how new humanitarian ideas make it more difficult to fight and win wars. Looking at the US and Israeli wars in the Middle East of the last several decades, it’s remarkable how few people have been directly killed by the stronger side... Western countries used to be a lot more willing to commit atrocities when putting down insurgencies... It would be nice to believe that there isn’t a tradeoff between protecting innocent life and winning wars. My theory of the origins of counterinsurgency doctrine is that it emerged in the late 2000s as a way to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear, which is that you defeat an enemy and develop a stable state primarily by winning civilians over to your side, and you win civilians to your side by looking out for their objective interests. Yet this would be quite amazing if it were true. Given that insurgents hide among civilians and live off the local economy and infrastructure, there will often be times when killing them or otherwise hindering their operations will require risking harm being done to the broader public. How much harm one is willing to inflict on noncombatants is a political and moral question. The basic idea behind COIN was that third world populations will like you if you’re nice to them and hate you if you’re mean to them, and you need to do things to make them like you. This isn’t completely crazy, as all else being equal it is much better to have the people on your side. But insurgents usually have few qualms about killing collaborators, and sometimes even their families, which shapes the incentive structure that civilians face when deciding which side to support. A better model is that some places produce movements that dislike invaders and occupiers no matter what, and the only question is whether you frighten or kill enough of them to get them to do what you want, or otherwise neutralize the threat that they pose. Conflict is generally caused by opportunity, not grievance, which is why I’ve been saying for years that people predicting an American civil war don’t know what they’re talking about... Bringing enough force to overthrow a government but not enough to create order can give you the worst of all worlds. The US can of course afford to fight with one hand tied behind its back. None of these places actually matter to us, and terrorism has always been such a small risk that one can treat it as a completely fake problem. It is actually an interesting moral question whether it would be worth forcing third world nations to accept Western institutions at the point of a gun, which would clearly be better for them in the long run, but the point is moot if we’re not willing to use the means to do so. The delusion of neocons and COIN types was that this could be accomplished just by spending a lot of money rather than utilizing the kinds of tactics that Western leaders deployed when they used to actually win their wars. Israel is a different story though. Its opponents pose an existential threat to its way of life. Despite this, the country has been remarkably restrained. All of the Palestinian civilians killed in the last fifty years don’t even come close to the number of lives lost in the US war on ISIS, much less the Second World War. This is primarily due to Israel facing a lot more scrutiny than most other nations would under similar circumstances. That being said, Israel does not strike me as suicidal. The recent attack by Hamas has shocked the current conflict out of the now default war of choice framework and made it clearly a war of necessity. I expect Israel to do whatever it takes to at the very least either dismantle Hamas or establish a buffer zone between itself and the people of Gaza. If it does not, the problem will fester, and the Israelis will find themselves in the exact same position a few years down the line. It would be nice to believe that the Palestinian conflict could be solved by the stronger side being more accommodating towards its enemy. But there is little in the history of warfare, and certainly nothing in the doctrine of Hamas, to suggest this is a viable path forward. The choice faced by Israel is a tragic one, no matter how much in denial those currently calling for restraint are about this fact. "
Israel's two wars - "Israel fundamentally is pursuing a just cause, though this is not to endorse all of their tactics. They were attacked by a violent Islamist movement whose stated goal is the eradication of their country and its replacement by an autocratic Islamist regime. The leaders of this movement based themselves in a dense urban area such that the only possible way of counterattacking them will generate massive collateral damage. That’s incredibly sad, but fundamentally says more about the irresponsibility of Hamas than about the irresponsibility of the IDF. One cannot simply impute guilt for Hamas’ crimes to every Palestinian. But I do think it’s not well understood in the US that the group was acting broadly in line with the preferences of Gaza’s population. Polling from June by Dr. Khalil Shikaki of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that most Gazans wanted a return to armed struggle... it underscores that, in Gaza, Israel’s goals are broadly consistent with normal wartime activity. It’s of course true that the situation in pre-war Gaza was not good. But nothing was stopping Hamas from articulating a set of demands for improving conditions in the Gaza Strip or even asking the international community to support the creation of an independent Republic of Gaza. Unlike in the West Bank, Israel was not trying to poach land in Gaza. And in fact, because Gaza has no particular religious significance, I think even the most right-wing Israelis have barely expressed interest in this territory qua land. The significance of Gaza to Israel is good-faith national security concerns (they don’t want it used as a base for military attacks on Israel) and a question of population counts, since the existence of millions of Palestinians in Gaza undermines a Jewish majority. But precisely for that reason, if Egypt had asked for Gaza during Jimmy Carter’s administration, they almost certainly could have gotten it. Even the idea that pre-war Gaza was an “open air prison,” while not totally wrong, begs the question of why Egypt is collaborating in keeping the doors locked. And the answer is the Egyptians don’t want Hamas running around the Sinai Peninsula any more than the Israelis want them running around the Negev. As I said in my free speech post, I believe in generally taking people at their word and presuming good faith. So when anti-Israel protestors say they are not pro-Hamas and when people who chant “from the river to the sea” say they favor the creation of a secular democracy with equal rights for all, I think that we should believe them. But strong critics of Israel and Israeli policy are letting their subjective sentiments about this cloud their analysis of the Hamas problem. After all, Hamas does not favor the creation of a secular democracy with equal rights for all. That’s not how they run the Gaza Strip, and it’s not their stated aim. And even if a post-Zionist administration somehow came to power in Israel, they’d still need to deal with Hamas. Because otherwise, simply tearing down the walls around Gaza and saying “everyone gets to vote now” would be the prelude to civil war, not democracy."
