essay on islam is a religion of peace

Islam – The Religion of Peace

(Adapted from the Review of Religions, March, 1933, Vol. XXXII, No. 3)

Islam is that religious system preached to the world by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) from the desert of Arabia in the beginning of the 7th Century of the Christian era. Islam, though presented in its most perfect form by the Prophet of Arabia (saw) , did by no means originate with him. It was the religion of all the Prophets of God from Adam (as) up to Jesus Christ (as) . It was as wide in its conception as humanity itself. In fact, any divine teaching that was given to any nation was Islam. But the teachings of the prophets before the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) , were constrained by the limitations of time and local circumstances, and were meant only for the peoples for whose spiritual growth and development they were revealed. Hence, those teachings were not given any independent name. But because the Divine teaching that was given to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) assimilated all that was imperishable in the teachings of all the prophets before him, and because it was meant for all peoples and all time, therefore God gave it a distinct name, which is Islam. The Holy Qur’an says:

…This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favour upon you and have chosen for you Islam as religion… (Ch.5:V.4)

Again it says :

Surely, the true religion with Allah is Islam (complete submission)… (Ch.3:V.20)

The word Islam indicates the very essence of the religious system known by that name. Its primary significance is the “making of peace,” and the idea of peace is the dominant idea in Islam. Islam stands for peace between man and his Creator, between man and his fellow beings and between different religions and communities. Peace is the greeting of one Muslim to another and “Peace” shall also be the greeting of those in Paradise. “The Author of peace” is one of the many names of God mentioned in the Holy Qur’an and the “Abode of Peace” is the destination and the spiritual goal of humanity. It is only natural that a religion which claims to be the Last Divine Message for mankind should offer us some basis on which inter-religious, international and inter-communal peace could be established permanently and without any fear of being disturbed.

The enormities and the most monstrous crimes that man has committed against man have been perpetrated in the fair name of religion. Innocent and honest men have been burned at the stake, stoned to death, buried alive, and drowned in the sea, in the name of religion. Nations have fought against nations to impose their own religious beliefs on their opponents. To stamp out Buddhism, the holy fathers of the so-called peaceful Hinduism sanctioned the wearing of arms against the heretics. The Romans subjected the Christians to every persecution known to man. The storm of savage fanaticism which in the annals of Christendom is called “The Holy Wars,” swept over Western Asia to serve the cause of Christianity. Some so-called Muslims have also wrongly carried fire and sword in the name of religion; Islam however has always respected the freedom of conscience:

Let religion only be for the sake of God . (Ch.2:V.194)

There should be no compulsion in religion… (Ch.2:V.257)

are the express commandments of the Holy Qur’an. The Muslims are strictly enjoined to respect and protect the places of worship of the followers of other religions, even at the cost of their lives. The Holy Qur’an says:

…And if Allah did not repel some men by means of others, there would surely have been pulled down cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft commemorated…  (Ch.22:V.41)

The inclusion by Islam of the belief in the Divine origin of all religions and the acceptance of their founders as Messengers of God, in its fundamental doctrines, is the most important and practical step that Islam has taken to remove feelings of bitterness and animosity among the followers of various faiths and to create an atmosphere of peace and goodwill among them.

That the great religions of the world are one in origin and many in form is a truth now widely recognised, but when Islam made its appearance in the world that truth was quite unknown. It was from the desert of Arabia and from the mouth of the man who could not even read and write that the great truth was promulgated that God was the Lord, not of a particular tribe or particular nations, but of all nations, nay of all the worlds. The God Whom Islam requires us to worship is the Lord of all peoples, of all ages and all countries.

He has been equally Merciful and Beneficent to all nations. If He raised Muhammad (saw) from Arabia, He raised Moses (as) from Egypt, and Jesus (as) from Judea; Zoroaster (as) from Iran, and Buddha (as) and Krishna (as) from India. These Prophets were the propagators and disseminators of the same fundamental truths, though their teachings differed in their quality and scope. Hence Islam recognised the truth that all these teachers of humanity were God’s great Messengers and it was made incumbent upon a Muslim to believe in them as he believes in Muhammad (saw) . Ransack the pages of all religious scriptures and you will not find this teaching in them. A Christian may look upon Muhammad (saw) as an imposter, and a Jew regard Jesus (as) as a false Prophet, and a Hindu who believes in the finality of the Vedic revelation may consider Moses (as) a charlatan, but a Muslim ceases to remain a Muslim the instant he ceases to revere any one of them as he reveres the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) . Consistently with these teachings, how can a Muslim adversely criticise Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism when he regards the Old and the New Testament in their original form, the Vedas and the Zend Avesta in their pristine purity as the revealed Word of God? Does not this great principle of Islam strike at the very root of all religious rancour? The Holy Qur’an says:

…there is no people to whom a Warner has not been sent.  (Ch.35:V.25)

And We did send Messengers before thee; of them are some whom We have mentioned to thee, and of them there are some whom We have not mentioned to thee…  (Ch.40:V.79)

According to these verses all great Prophets of God are the spiritual ancestors of a Muslim and their followers his brothers in faith.

Peace between Labour and Capital

The other great problem which is seriously undermining the peace of the world is the discontent prevailing in the working class against the capitalists. Islam claiming to bring about harmony and peace among warring interests has not failed to solve this baffling question also. On the one hand it recognises private ownership because there is no spirit of competition and incentive to progress left without the recognition of this fact, because if those who work harder than others or can bring a superior intellect or higher business capacity into the conduct of their affairs are to be deprived of the just rewards of their labour, all this competition and striving after better results would cease and the world would come to a standstill. On the other, Islam recognises in principle the right of the poor in the wealth of the rich. The Holy Qur’an says that in the wealth of the rich, those who can and who cannot ask have a right.

Islam suggests three remedies to remove the vast disparities of wealth and poverty. Firstly, it enjoins the distribution of inheritance. No man has the power to bequeath the whole of his property to one man, so as to promote its accumulation in a few hands. Under the Islamic Law of inheritance and succession, a man’s property must be distributed among his parents, all his children, his widows, brothers, sisters, and nobody can interfere with or divert this mode of distribution.

Secondly, Islam prohibits the giving and taking of interest. The possibility of being able to raise loans on interest enables people with established credit, to enhance it to any extent they please by borrowing. The huge trusts and syndicates which at present monopolise the sources of the national wealth would not be possible without interest, and wealth would be more evenly distributed among the people.

Thirdly is the institution of Zakat. Zakat is a charge of two and a half percent levied by the Government on all capital, money, precious metals, and merchandise, etc., which a person has been in possession of for one year or over. It is not a tax on income, but is a tax on capital. The proceeds of this tax may be provided to those who possess the necessary business capacity, but who are unable to make a start owing to want of funds. By this institution of Zakat, Islam provides for the discharge of all those rights that the poor have in the wealth of the rich, and thus brings about reconciliation between the haves and the have-nots.

International Peace

The third problem which is destroying the peace of the world is the unsatisfactory condition of the international relations. For the settlement of international disputes Islam lays down rules for Muslim states which contemplate a body like the present League of Nations [replaced later by the United Nations – Editor]. The Holy Qur’an says:

And if two parties of believers fight against each other , make peace between them; then if after that one of them transgresses against the other, fight the party that transgresses until it returns to the command of Allah. Then if it returns, make peace between them with equity, and act justly. Verily, Allah loves the just.  (Ch.49:V.10)

This verse lays down the following principle for the maintenance of international peace: as soon as there are indications of disagreement between two Muslim nations, the other Muslim nations, instead of taking sides with one or the other of them, should at once serve a notice upon them to submit their differences to the ‘peace makers’ for settlement. But if one of them refuses to submit to the League, or having submitted refuses to accept the award of the ‘peace makers’, and prepares to make war, the other nations should all fight it. It is apparent, however, that one nation, however strong, cannot withstand the united forces of all other nations and is bound to make a speedy submission.

Peace between the Rulers and the Ruled

The strained relations of the rulers and the ruled is another factor disturbing the world’s peace. Islam prefers a democratic government but does not preclude any form of government. The Holy Qur’an has used the word Amanat (trust) in describing the Islamic concept of Government.

For a full appreciation, however, of the Islamic concept of the State, it is necessary to quote the verse, which in brief but comprehensive terms, describes the nature and duties of the rulers and the ruled. The Holy Qur’an says:

Verily, Allah commands you to make over the trusts to those entitled to them, and that, when you judge between men, you judge with justice. And surely excellent is that with which Allah admonishes you! Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing.  (Ch.4:V.59)

According to this verse, government is a trust, and not in the nature of property, and the rulers are required to rule justly. And another verse of the Holy Qur’an states:

O ye who believe! obey Allah, and obey His Messenger and those who are in authority among you…  (Ch.4:V.60)

enjoins all men to obey those who are in authority over them and thus cuts at the root of all kinds of rebellion and anarchy.

Peace in the Family

By recognising the social status of woman and securing her rights in inheritance, in the guardianship of the children, in the management of the affairs of the family and in worship (in short, in Church and State), Islam has established peace in the family on a firm basis. If men have rights over women, women according to the Qur’an, likewise, have rights over men. According to Islam, women are the keystone of the arch of family life. Unity in the family is essential to a progressive state. Let it not be forgotten that of all religions, Islam alone has accorded woman status which after thirteen centuries of progressive development, working with the legacy of a prior civilisation, under the most favourable circumstances, the most civilised country in the world has not given her. By raising women from the condition of a mere chattel in which they were held before the advent of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) , and giving women their rightful place in society, Islam settled those knotty family problems 1300 years ago which in the present progressive state of woman have wrecked many homes.

Peace among Individuals

Islam has laid down detailed injunctions which regulate the relations of individuals towards one another:

God commandeth you to do justice, beneficence and kindness to kith and kin.  (Ch.16:V.91)

In this verse of the Holy Qur’an God has set forth three injunctions. The first step is the step of justice. A Muslim is enjoined to discharge his duty and obligations quite faithfully and honestly and in the best way he can. No violation of the rights of others is permitted. When justice becomes to him a matter of course, he is required to do more than mere justice. He should be beneficent to others. When beneficence begins to appear to him not a very high stage of morals, he should be kind to his fellow people as a mother is kind to her son.

The first stage of morals is of doing good in proportion to the good received; the second stage is of doing more good than the good received; and the third and the highest stage of morals consists in doing good to others, not in return of a good received, nor in doing more good than the good received, but in doing good as prompted by natural impulse without the expectation of any reward or even any appreciation or acknowledgment.

Nothing seems more ironical than that the religion of which the very name signifies peace, which stands for freedom of conscience, which has enjoined upon its followers to respect the religious beliefs of other peoples and to protect their places of worship even at the risk of their own lives, a religion which has struck at the very root of religious acrimony by requiring its followers to believe in the missions of all the Prophets of God and in the Divine origin of their teachings, a religion which has laid down teachings that if fully acted upon would bring about an era of perpetual peace, should be looked upon as a religion breathing war and preaching hatred and a religion propagated at the point of the sword.

But such really is the prevailing view about Islam. Let there remain no doubt about it that Islam positively forbids the use of force for the propagation of its teachings.

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The truth about whether Islam is a religion of violence or peace

Lecturer, History and Political Thought, Western Sydney University

Disclosure statement

Milad Milani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Western Sydney University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Islam has a history of violence. Muslims can be violent. Denying this is not at all different to denying that Islam is peaceful and that all Muslims are pacifists. The dichotomy is simply false.

The Qur’an contains injunctions that call both for peace and for violence. The problem is not that they are there; the difficulty is that non-violent and militant Muslims appear equally justified. For some, the peace of God is through his sword; for others, it is found in his unbounded mercy. For example:

The servants of the All-merciful are those who walk in the earth modestly and who, when the ignorant address them, say, ‘Peace’. (Q 25:63) Fight them, and God will chastise them at your hands and degrade them, and He will help you against them, and bring healing to the breasts of a people who believe. (Q 9:14)

Part of the problem is that there are concerns about religious content that are not dealt with openly. And there are just too many hard conclusions made about religious texts, often made by those who know less than they claim.

Looking at the three major religious traditions that believe in one God (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), all three make reference in their religious texts to both violence and peace.

So the fact that a religious text contains violent verses doesn’t make it a violent religion. But it’s also a fact that a religious text containing peaceful verses doesn’t make that religion peaceful either.

‘By their fruit you will recognise them’

Violence is not new to the history of religions, nor is it a phenomenon solely attached to the history of Islam.

Christians and Buddhists also have a track record of fanaticism, such as the bombing of abortion clinics and hardliner Buddhists in Myanmar .

Religious content may be a catalyst for violent action, but it should be remembered that its reading relies heavily on human interpretation. To put it mildly, “ The world is bleeding to death through misunderstanding .”

Of course “ it can never be right to kill in the name of God ”, but it should also be dawning on all peoples that it is time to let go of pretensions that anyone knows the will of God.

This point directly underlines Darren Aronofky’s recent film portrayal of the biblical story of Noah. Whether you like the movie or not, it communicates an important message: the absolute silence of God.

In the film, Noah is forced to wrestle with his deepest, darkest self to understand and make decisions that will affect the lives of others. When Noah, played by Russell Crowe (and shown in the clip below), is about to kill the twin daughters born to his daughter-in-law – because he thinks it is the will of God – at length he cannot. He cannot find it in himself to perform such an act.

The film is a timely reminder that sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes we make the right choices. And that is what is at the heart of any debate on religion, religious content and its interpretation: the choices we make.

Rather than listening to the claims and counter-claims about what “authentic” Islam really stands for, we might be better to pay more attention to how advocates of their faith choose to live their lives.

That way, it might be easier to avoid making assumptions about what the religion might mean, and instead focus more on how the faithful live.

The enemy of peace is not religion, but those who pursue acts of terror and violence against the innocent in the name of religion.

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NEW SENIOR STUDY GROUR REPORT: CRITICAL MINERALS IN AFRICA

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Islam Is a Religion of Violence

Monday, November 9, 2015 / By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Publication Type: Analysis

Can the wave of violence sweeping the Islamic world be traced back to the religion's core teachings? A USIP-FP Peace Channel debate about the roots of extremism.

In the 14 years since the attacks of 9/11 brought Islamic terrorism to the forefront of American and Western awareness and then-President George W. Bush launched the “Global War on Terror,” the violent strain of Islam appears to have metastasized. With tracts of Syria and Iraq in the hands of the self-styled Islamic State, Libya and Somalia engulfed in anarchy, Yemen being torn apart by civil war, the Taliban resurging in Afghanistan, and Boko Haram terrorizing Nigeria, policymakers are farther away from eliminating the threat of violent Islamism than they were when they began the effort. In fact, Western countries are increasingly witnessing domestic attacks such as the murder of British military drummer Lee Rigby and the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the shootings at Parliament Hill in Canada in 2014, the attacks at satirical newspaper  Charlie Hebdo  and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris this past January, and most recently the terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a military recruiting center and Naval compound.

But does this violent extremism stem from Islam’s sacred texts? Or is it the product of circumstance, which has twisted and contorted Islam’s foundations?

To answer this, it’s worth first drawing the important distinction between Islam as a set of ideas and Muslims as adherents. The socio-economic, political, and cultural circumstances of Muslims are varied across the globe, but I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims in the world today based on how they envision and practice their faith.

The first group is the most problematic — the fundamentalists who envision a regime based on sharia, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version and take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else. I call them “Medina Muslims,” in that they see the  forcible  imposition of sharia as their religious duty, following the example of the Prophet Mohammed when he was based in Medina. They exploit their fellow Muslims’ respect for sharia law as a divine code that takes precedence over civil laws. It is only after they have laid this foundation that they are able to persuade their recruits to engage in jihad.

The second group — and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world — consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence or even intolerance towards non-Muslims. I call this group “mecca Muslims.” The fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts.

More recently, and corresponding with the rise of Islamic terrorism, a third group is emerging within Islam — Muslim reformers or, as I call them, “modifying Muslims” — who promote the separation of religion from politics and other reforms. Although some are apostates, the majority of dissidents are believers, among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.

The future of Islam and the world’s relationship with Muslims will be decided by which of the two minority groups — the Medina Muslims and the reformers — wins the support of the meccan majority. That is why focusing on “violent extremism” is to focus on a symptom of a much more profound ideological epidemic that has its root causes in Islamic doctrine.

To understand whether violence is inherent in the doctrine of Islam, it is important to look at the example of the founding father of Islam, Mohammed, and the passages in the Quran and Islamic jurisprudence used to justify the violence we currently see in so many parts of the Muslim world. In Mecca, Mohammed preached to his fellow tribesmen to abandon their gods and accept his. He preached about charity and the conditions of widows and orphans. (This method of proselytizing or persuasion, called  dawa  in Arabic, remains an important component of Islam to this day.) However, during his time in Mecca, Mohammed and his small band of believers had little success in converting others to this new religion. So, a decade after Mohammed first began preaching, he fled to Medina. Over time he cobbled together a militia and began to wage wars.

Anyone seeking support for armed jihad in the name of Allah will find ample support in the passages in the Quran and Hadith that relate to Mohammed’s Medina period. For example, Q4:95 states, “Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home).” Q8:60 advises Muslims “to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Finally, Q9:29 instructs Muslims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the  Jizya  with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Mainstream Islamic jurisprudence continues to maintain that the so-called “sword verses” (9:5 and 9:29) have “abrogated, canceled, and replaced” those verses in the Quran that call for “tolerance, compassion, and peace.”

As for the example of Mohammed, Sahih Muslim, one of the six major authoritative Hadith collections, claims the Prophet Mohammed undertook no fewer than 19 military expeditions, personally fighting in eight of them. In the aftermath of the 627 Battle of the Trench, “Mohammed felt free to deal harshly with the Banu Qurayza, executing their men and selling their women and children into slavery,” according to Yale Professor of Religious Studies Gerhard Bowering in his book  Islamic Political Thought . As the Princeton scholar Michael Cook observed in his book  Ancient Religions, Modern Politics , “the historical salience of warfare against unbelievers … was thus written into the foundational texts” of Islam.

There lies the duality within Islam. It’s possible to claim, following Mohammed’s example in Mecca, that Islam is a religion of peace. But it’s also possible to claim, as the Islamic State does, that a revelation was sent to Mohammed commanding Muslims to wage jihad until every human being on the planet accepts Islam or a state of subservience, on the basis of his legacy in Medina. 

The key question is not whether Islam is a religion of peace, but rather, whether Muslims follow the Mohammed of Medina, regardless of whether they are Sunni or Shiite.

Today, the West is still struggling to understand the religious justification for the Medina ideology, which is growing, and the links between nonviolence and violence within it. Two main viewpoints have emerged in the debate on the causes of violent extremism in Islam. The difference between them is reflected in the different terminology used by proponents of the rival views.

Popular academics such as John Esposito at Georgetown and author Karen Armstrong believe that religion — Islam, in this case — is the “circumstantial” bit and that the real causes of Islamist violence are poverty, political marginalization, cultural isolation, and other forms of alienation, including real or perceived discrimination against Muslims. These apologists for Islam use words such as “radicalism,” “violent extremism,” and “terrorism” to describe the various attacks around the world committed in the name of Islam. If Islam is mentioned at all, it is to say that Islam is being perverted, or hijacked. They are quick to assert that Islam is no different from any other religion, that there are terrible aspects to other religions, and that Islam is in no way unique. That view is more or less the “official” view of policymakers, not only of the U.S. government, but also of most Western countries (though policy changes are beginning to appear on this front in some countries such as the U.K., Canada, and Australia).

But the apologists’ position has been a complete policy failure because it denies the religious justifications the Quran and the Hadith provide for violence, gender inequality, and discrimination against other religions.

Proponents of the alternative view, such as the late academic Patricia Crone and author Paul Berman, rely on different terms such as “political Islam,” Islamism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and Jihadism. All of these terms are designed to convey the religious basis of the phenomenon. The argument is that an ideological movement to impose sharia law, by force if necessary, is gaining ground across the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and even in Europe. In a  speech  this past July, British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “[S]imply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work, because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims. The fact is from Woolwich to Tunisia, from Ottawa to Bali, these murderers all spout the same twisted narrative, one that claims to be based on a particular faith. Now it is an exercise in futility to deny that.” I agree.

The view that the ideology of radical Islam is rooted in Islamic scripture understands fully the cause of terrorism; it takes religious arguments seriously, and does not view them as a mere smokescreen for underlying “real” motivations, such as socio-economic grievances. This school of thought understands that the problem of radicalization begins long before a suicide bomber straps on his vest or a militant picks up his machine gun; it begins in mosques and schools where imams preach hate, intolerance, and adherence to Medina Islam.

Western governments have tried to engage with “moderate Muslims”: imams and community leaders who denounce terrorist attacks and claim to represent the true, peaceful Islam. But this has not amounted to meaningful ideological engagement. These so-called moderate representatives of Islam insist that violence has  nothing  to do with Islam and as a result the intolerant and violent aspects of the Quran and the Hadith are never acknowledged or rejected. There is never any discussion about change within Islam to bring the morally outdated parts of the religion in line with modernity or genuine tolerance for those who believe differently.

Despotic governments, civil war, anarchy, economic despair — all of these factors doubtless contribute to the spread of the Islamist movement. But it is only after the West and, more importantly, Muslims themselves recognize and defeat the religious ideology on which this movement rests that its spread will be arrested. And if we are to defeat the ideology we cannot focus only on violent extremism. We need to confront the  non-violent preaching  of sharia and martyrdom that precedes all acts of jihad.

We will not win against the Medina ideology by stopping the suicide bomber just before he detonates himself, wherever he may be; another will soon take his (or her) place. We will not win by stamping out the Islamic State or al Qaeda or Boko Haram or al-Shabab; a new radical group will just pop up somewhere else. We will win only if we engage with the ideology of Islamist extremism, and counter the message of death, intolerance, and the pursuit of the afterlife with our own far preferable message of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Read Manal Omar’s piece  here .

Reposted with permission from  ForeignPolicy.com , Source: “ Islam Is a Religion of Violence "

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Is Islam a religion of peace?

By William Hamblin and Daniel Peterson , Daniel Peterson, Bill Hamblin, For the Deseret News

There is an ongoing political and religious debate in the Western media about the true nature of Islam. Many today claim the word “Islam” means “peace,” and that Islam is therefore a religion of peace. This claim, however, is based on a misunderstanding.

In Arabic, the word for “peace” is “salam,” which is cognate with the Hebrew “shalom.” The word “islam” is a Form IV verbal noun from the same root (SLM), meaning, more technically, to “create peace through surrender or submission” — in the religious context, submission to the will of God. A Muslim is one who has surrendered or submitted to God and therefore found true peace. So when we hear from commentators that “Islam” means “peace,” it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the term.

Does the term “Islam” refer to inner peace obtained through personal submission to God? Or peace through political submission to God’s kingdom on earth, ideally the Islamic caliphate? Or both? Those who personally submit to God find inner peace, while political peace and the end of war will come only when all mankind has surrendered to the will of God.

One of the vexing questions in Quranic interpretation is understanding the context and meaning of the “verses of the sword,” most specifically the notorious verse 9:5, which is undoubtedly the passage most widely quoted to justify (and condemn) extremist Muslim violence. The passage reads: “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them.” (“Polytheists” here translates “mushrikun,” literally “associators” — that is, those who worship more than one God.) (See also 2:190-192.)

As with most scripture, questions of interpretation immediately arise. First, the historical context: Most Western scholars agree the passage refers specifically to an ongoing war between the polytheist Arabs of Mecca and the Muslim Arabs of Medina, probably in A.D. 631. It encourages the Muslims to attack the Meccan Arabs after a specific sacred month of truce has expired (9:4). Furthermore, verse 3 also explicitly excludes fighting those polytheists who have a peace treaty (’ahad) with the Muslims. Thus, in its original historical context, the verse refers to fighting a specific enemy (polytheist Arabs of Mecca who have no peace treaty with Muslims), in a specific historical situation (an ongoing war with Mecca), at a specific time (after the holy month in A.D. 631).

Extremist jihadists, on the other hand, believe the verse applies universally to all times and places, telling all Muslims to fight all non-Muslims everywhere and always. Thus, from their view, the Quran not only justifies holy war, it demands it. It means nothing to extremists that Western scholars agree that their interpretation has been taken out of context and isn’t what the Quran originally meant. (For that matter, it seems to make no difference to anti-Muslim propagandists, either.)

There are, of course, also dozens of verses in the Quran advocating peace. For example: “If they (your enemies) make peace (salam), then you make it (with them)” (8:61), and “God guides those who do his will to the way of peace (salam)” (5:16). So should you make peace with those who try to make peace with you? Or should you kill non-Muslims wherever you find them?

When verses in the Quran seem to contradict each other, Muslims sometimes invoke the concept of “abrogation,” the idea that one verse is of limited application while another is more universal. In part, this is a chronological question of later verses abrogating earlier verses. Unfortunately, the precise date or even order of many passages in the Quran is unknown. More generally, the question is which Quranic passage was intended by God to be applied universally, in all times and places, and which was of limited application to specific historical circumstances.

Westerners and Muslims, on both right and left, tend to focus on the violent or peaceful aspects of Islam for their own contemporary political purposes, rather than trying to deepen their understanding of the nature of Islam and the beliefs of Muslims. As with any religion, the reality of peace and violence in Islam is complex, requiring nuanced and contextual understanding.

So, is Islam a peaceful religion? Yes, because there are peace-loving Muslims who interpret the Quran and Islam from the perspective of peace. Is Islam a violent religion? Yes, because there are also violent Muslims who find justification for their violence in the Quran and Islamic tradition. Islam raises the same types of interpretative questions that we find in most of the world’s great religions.

Daniel Peterson founded BYU's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, chairs The Interpreter Foundation and blogs on Patheos. William Hamblin is the author of several books on premodern history. They speak only for themselves.

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Intelligence Squared U.S.

Is islam a religion of peace, the broadcast version of the debate.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left) and Douglas Murray argue against the motion "Islam Is a Religion of Peace" in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate on Oct. 6 at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Chris Vultaggio hide caption

Hear The Debate

The full audio of the debate.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush characterized Islam as a religion of peace. Many people agree with that belief, saying the vast majority of Muslims live peaceful lives.

But others counter that the roots of Islam include violent leaders, teachings and scripture.

A team of experts argued both sides of the motion "Islam Is a Religion of Peace" in a recent Intelligence Squared U.S. debate. Two argued in favor and two against.

Before the Oxford-style debate at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, the audience voted 41 percent in favor of the motion and 25 percent against. Thirty-four percent were undecided. After the debate, however, 55 percent disagreed that "Islam Is a Religion of Peace," 36 percent supported the motion and 9 percent were still unsure.

John Donvan, correspondent for ABC News' Nightline, moderated the Oct. 6 debate. Those debating were:

FOR THE MOTION

On Oct. 26, a group of experts will debate the motion "Big Government Is Stifling The American Spirit."

Maajid Nawaz is director of the Quilliam Foundation. Formerly, Nawaz served in the U.K. national leadership for the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir and was involved in HT for almost 14 years. He was a founding member of HT in Denmark and Pakistan. He eventually served four years in an Egyptian prison and was adopted by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience." In prison, Maajid gradually began changing his views until he finally renounced the Islamist ideology for traditional Islam and inclusive politics. He now engages in counter-Islamist thought-generating, writing and debating.

Zeba Khan is a writer and advocate for Muslim-American civic engagement. Born and raised in Ohio by devout Muslim parents, she attended Hebrew school for nine years while actively participating in her local Muslim community. In 2008, she launched Muslim-Americans for Obama, an online network to mobilize Muslim-American voters in support of the Obama presidential campaign. Since then, she continues to work on issues of Muslim-American civic engagement and was recognized for her work by the American Society for Muslim Advancement as a 2009 Muslim Leader of Tomorrow.

Maajid Nawaz (left) participates in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate with moderator John Donvan of ABC News. Nawaz argued in favor of the motion "Islam Is a Religion of Peace," along with Zeba Khan. Chris Vultaggio hide caption

AGAINST THE MOTION

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim. She escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992 and served as a member of the Dutch parliament for three years. She has since become an active critic of fundamentalist Islam, an advocate for women's rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam. She has also become a target of death threats by Islamic extremists. Hirsi Ali is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Caged Virgin (2006), Infidel (2007) and Nomad (2010). She is the founder of the AHA Foundation, whose mission is to defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam and tribal custom.

Douglas Murray is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. He is also founder and director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a nonpartisan think-tank in Westminster, London, that focuses on radicalization and has published work on both Islamist and far-right extremism. Murray is a columnist for Standpoint magazine and writes for many other publications. In 2005, he published the critically acclaimed Neoconservatism: Why We Need It , which Christopher Hitchens praised as "a very cool but devastating analysis." He is a co-author of the NATO strategy report, "Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership."

Is Islam a religion of peace?

The model world according to Islam is a world of peace. Islam in itself means a religion of peace. The Quran says: And God calls to the home of peace. (10:25) This is the message of Islam to mankind. It means that ‘Build a world of peace on earth so that you may be granted a world of peace in your eternal life in the Hereafter’.

Now what are the basic elements of building of a culture of peace, according to Islam? To be brief, these are three: compassion, forgiveness and respect for all.

Let us take compassion first. If you go through the Quran and Hadith, you will find many verses in the Quran and Hadith, which lay great stress on compassion. For instance, the Prophet of Islam said: O people, be compassionate to others so that you may be granted compassion by God.

Thus Islam makes compassion a matter of self-interest for every man. As one’s own future depends on one’s compassionate behaviour to other fellowmen. In this way Islam motivates us to be compassionate in our dealing with each other. One who wants to receive God’s grace will have to show compassion to others.

Then, let us take forgiveness. The Quran has to say this in this regard “when they are angered, they forgive.” There are a number of verses in the Quran which promote forgiveness.

Then there is a hadith. Once a person came to the Prophet and asked him, “O Prophet, give me a master advice by which I may be able to manage all the affairs of my life.” The Prophet replied: “Don’t be angry.” It means that ‘forgive people even at provocation.’ That is, adopt forgiveness as your behaviour at all times.

Now let’s take the third principle—Respect for all. There is a very interesting story, recorded by al-Bukhari in this regard.

The Prophet of Islam once saw a funeral procession passing by a street in Madina. The Prophet was seated at that time. On seeing the funeral the Prophet stood up in respect. At this one of his companions said: ‘O Prophet, it was the funeral of a Jew (not a Muslim). The Prophet replied: ‘Was he not a human being?’ What it meant was that every human being is worthy of respect. There may be differences among people regarding religion and culture, but everyone has to respect the other. For, according to Islam, all men and women are blood brothers and blood sisters. And all are creatures of one and the same God.

These three principles are the basic pillars to form a peaceful society. Wherever these three values are to be found the result no doubt will be a society of peace and harmony.

The above references are enough to show that Islam is a culture of peace. It is true that some Muslims are engaged in violence in the name of Islam. But you will have to differentiate between Islam and Muslims. You have to see Muslims in the light of Islam and not vice versa.

Source: Principles of Islam

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• Islam: Religion of Peace

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Is Islam a religion of peace?

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Since the appearance on the world stage of the Islamic State - also known as ISIS - a debate has been raging. One side claims that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, while the other side argues that ISIS is an expression of a religion that is inherently violent - a "motherlode of bad ideas", to quote the best-selling author and philosopher Sam Harris. 

Michael talks to Mohammed Fadel  about whether ISIS represents a perversion of Islam, and why conflict in the Middle East gives rise to such extremism. Mr. Fadel is an associate professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, with cross appointments to U of T's Departments of Religion, and of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. Professor Fadel is also Canada Research Chair for the Law and Economics of Islamic Law; he had a successful career as a lawyer in the United States, before turning his talents to academia. 

More from this episode

• Maybe the organizers of the Munk Debates just don't know it's 2015? - Michael's essay
• The refugee crisis is Europe's moral obligation
• Do trigger warnings create a safe space for students, or coddle them? - a Frank Faulk documentary
• African women are on the frontlines of the fight against HIV/AIDS
• FULL EPISODE: Is Islam a religion of peace? Europe's moral obligation to refugees; Trigger warnings; HIV/AIDS in Africa

Tuesday 16 October 2018

Islam, a religion of peace english essay for matric, fa, ba, bsc, css classes.

•  All the religions and laws give the message of peace. 
• People of all the religions have committed terrorism. 
• Miss-interpretation of Islam. 
• Like all the other religions of the world, Islam promotes peace, love and harmony. 
• Islam forbids killing of innocent people.
• Acts of different terrorist groups do not represent Islam.
• Conclusion.

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About Maher Afrasiab

Hello, I am Maher Afrasiab a founder of Ratta.pk and some other websites. I have created ratta.pk to promote the eductaion in Pakistan. And to help the students in their studies. Find me on Facebook: @Maher Afrasiab

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Is this the end of Israel? Six months on, Jews are starting to lose faith

'I’m not sure what’s left.' (SERGEI GAPON/AFP via Getty Images)

Howard Jacobson

April 6, 2024   6 mins.

So have we reached the end of the line? Do the latest failures and miscalculations — the relentless assault on the al-Shifa Hospital, the fatal airstrike on aid-workers, the targeting of an Iranian General in Damascus, while Hamas’s hostages languish God knows where — mark a turning point in Israel’s relations with the world? Is this the hour when its most understanding allies call time on the killing and even a fervent believer in Israel’s cause, such as I am, begins to waver?

What are we seeing? Are the terrible scenes from Gaza the projections on a bloody screen of one brutal and clumsy man’s baffled obstinacy — the last days of a demented Roman Emperor — or do they show, as anti-Zionists would have it, indeed as anti-Zionists have had it ever since the Jewish longing to return to Zion gave itself a name and the anti-Zionists called it colonialism, that something is rotten in the soul of Israel?

It’s hard right now, if you are a Jew who has always believed the founding of Israel to have been necessary and in many ways miraculous, to hold your nerve. Jews are a contradictory people, at once certain of themselves and faint-hearted. “The Jewish ability to internalise any critical and condemnatory remark and castigate themselves”, said the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in an interview with Philip Roth, “is one of the marvels of human nature”. We can outface so much criticism and then no more. Will the gathering storm of rage be too much for us this time? Or will we feel obliged to go on salvaging the truth from the noise and cacophony of war, even as those who don’t want to hear us — the libellous, the malevolent, the misinformed and now the usually friendly who are running out of patience — grow in number and in volume?

Some truths aren’t hard to save from the moral fog that fell on southern Israel six months ago, a six months that have been like no other, collapsing a half year into a seeming sleepless day and night, not simply because shock unravels time, but because along with the horror of the massacre itself came the horror of its delighted reception. King Duncan’s horses were said to have eaten one another the night Macbeth had their master murdered. It was nature’s way of telling us that something unfathomably horrible had happened. The cries of “Kill Jews!” that were heard around the world in the aftermath of the murder of more than 1,000 Jews on October 7 exceeded in unfathomable horror the cannibalism of Duncan’s horses. Did we know that humans could openly rejoice in the rape and murder of people they did not know? Isn’t dancing in the blood of others itself a species of cannibalism?

To borrow from Macbeth again, tears were meant to drown the wind. But all we heard was cheering. The Hamas massacre inverted the norms of pity.

And here is another of the truths we save from that most terrible event. That we do our humanity a great wrong when we let theories of power rule our politics and politics rule our hearts. Nothing that Zionism had done or ever could do would justify this glorying in the torture of individual Israelis. That so many of those doing the glorying were, on the face of it, highly educated put paid to our sentimental faith in education as our final and most reliable bulwark against the hysteria of race-hatred. Voice for voice, the educated out-sang the ignorant in bigotry and bloodlust. As did the highly principled out-sing the more ideologically easy-going when it came to such causes as the inviolability of a woman’s body.

Hadn’t the teaching of the past half-century warned against even tentative intrusion into a woman’s space? Yet here, confronted by the grossest intrusion of them all, rape — brutal rape — the same preachers against the most micro of microaggressions refused to voice even the faintest disapprobation. Some, high up in the world’s great universities, wanted to “contextualise” what had happened. Others, wary of falling into that absurdity, asked for more proof, though had any woman other than an Israeli Jew so much as cried foul, they would have been believed because the prevailing ideology holds that to doubt a rape is to violate a woman a second time.

Let’s not beat about the bush — Israeli-Jew hate trumped all other academic considerations. When all was said and done, the great absolutes of the gender-playbook turned out to be contingent and crawled under the desks of the committed like dormice.

In the long sleepless day and night following the massacre, in which Jews of different nationalities and political persuasions, orthodox and unorthodox, tried to make sense of what had happened, the terrible realisation, that “Never Again” meant nothing, dawned. There would never be a “Never Again”. Those we imagined would be our allies — the informed, the progressive, the liberal — were not progressive when it came to us.

Ironically, it was Israel — our bolthole, the country that gave us the stability of self-worth, our old, all-embracing home — that now felt insecure. With uncanny prescience, Hamas understood that to make Jews feel unsafe in Israel was to weaken them in their own and in others’ eyes. More than ever now, it seemed to me, was it imperative to reaffirm the founding necessity of Zionism. The more empowered the lettered illiterate felt to trash Zionism, the more important was it to wrest the story back from them. A great lie had been allowed to prevail for too long. The lie that Israel had no legitimate rights or ties to the Holy Land. The lie that Zionists had stolen it from defenceless Palestinians. The lie that Zionists had turned up not as refugees from the pogroms of eastern Europe but as colonist-settlers hell-bent on getting every Palestinian out.

Is that to say I understand nothing of Palestinian forebodings in those early years as Jews continued to arrive? No. And while I think history bears out good and even utopian intentions on the part of the first Zionists, pioneers who wanted only peace and safety, without doubt there were also those who dealt less than even-handedly with their neighbours. Whether in sufficient quantity to justify Palestinian fears that a takeover was imminent, and that their Holy Places were soon to be over-run, history cannot decide. But, with whatever justification, Palestinians could not let the new arrivals live in peace. There were raids and counter-raids, running battles and massacres. The 1929 massacre by Palestinians of pre-Zionist, scholarly Jews, long resident in Hebron, was not a blueprint for the massacre of nearly 100 years later, but it was, by all official accounts, brutal.

I don’t want to be sentimental about Israel, but it’s enjoyed no peace from the beginning. It is a country that has lived under arms since before its declaration of independence. And on the very day independence was granted it was attacked once more. No, no, and no again. No to Jews. Not here. Not ever. No, no, no.

For Israel to have thrived in the face of a hostility with no end is remarkable. But there can be no denying that the fighting, the conscription of almost all its citizens, the having to live cheek by jowl with a people who cannot and will not accept its presence anywhere “between the river and the sea” has been a toughening, not to say desensitising, experience.

In defence of last year’s massacre, it was argued that it could not be understood independently of the circumstances that led to it. Hamas’s attack, its apologists insisted, was the child of the Israeli occupation. I have always resisted the word “occupation” because it suggests a pre-planned policy, rather than — as I see it — the consequence of all the wars between the two people, most of them instigated by the Palestinians, after which Israel found itself with territory it needed to demilitarise for its own safety. But alright — an occupation it became. After which, what were Palestinians expected to do?

Jerusalem is Israel's future

By Ben Judah

The elusive two-state solution was presented to them several times. Not equitable enough, they said, even when it was the United Nations that had done the divvying up. “Don’t accept,” the cosmopolitan Palestinian writer Edward Said urged from the comfort of his home in North America. “Demand more.” Was he right? Wouldn’t an inequitable divvying up have given Palestinians better if not perfect lives? Well, it’s not for one person to tell another what’s fair. But right or wrong, there was to be no deal.

And so the bloody impasse — a tragedy, as Amos Oz saw it, of two rights. Later, a tragedy of two wrongs. For calling it a tragedy, Oz’s erstwhile Palestinian supporters deserted him. Tragedy meant there was no villain. And the Palestinians needed a villain.

Netanyahu fitted the bill. Netanyahu put his hand out and took. In retaliation for which — though nothing in the history of the two people would ever justify its extreme and twisted violence — the massacre of October 7. But if Israel must take some blame for the massacre, the Palestinians must, by the same token, take some blame for Netanyahu, the lumbering, unsubtle child of unrelenting war, a man hardened in suspicion and fear who does not know the difference between justice and revenge.

The self-delusion of secular Jews

By David Mamet

To hold out against the Palestinian narrative of dispossession, while allowing that not all of it is fantasy or self-pity, has necessitated, these last few years, more flexibility of mind than dedicated anti-Zionists are willing to try. That’s how we know they are wrong: they do not attempt to understand their enemy and do not cry for him. Did Gazans — educated in their schoolbooks to loathe Jews — dance in the streets on October 7? Whatever the truth, may Israelis never dance the dance of blood.

The heart breaks, seeing the destruction of Gaza. But seeing the destruction of Tel Aviv will hurt no less. Do I fear that? Yes. I sense a change of mood. The constant chanting on the streets of London and elsewhere has, to a degree, contributed to that change. One lie, endlessly retold, can weaken the cause of truth eventually.

But, all on his own, Netanyahu is enough to try the patience of the West whose leaders have little appetite for sticking to a mission. There is a flaw in our natures that leads to our growing bored with even the noblest causes, let alone those grown stale in their own complacency. Oh, what the hell. Enough of them. So those are swastikas. So what? It’s all just a matter of context.

I fear they — papers and commentators and politicians — are losing interest and sympathy at the same rate. They’ve heard it all before. We Jews need to find other ways to make our harrowing history compelling. We’ve tried losing. We’ve tried winning. I’m not sure what’s left.

Howard Jacobson  is a Booker Prize-winning novelist.

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“Voice for voice, the educated out-sang the ignorant in bigotry and bloodlust.” I get what the writer is trying to say, but this isn’t quite right. Better would have been if he’d written

“Voice for voice, the *university indoctrinated* out-sang the *naturally intelligent* in bigotry and bloodlust.”

The efficacy of Hamas propaganda on the university indoctrinated has been astounding. But it’s worth keeping in mind that the university indoctrinated are hellbent across the whole cultural field on a social revolution that only they see merit in. They, perhaps just 10% of any Western country’s population, plus another 20% or so who follow them cluelessly, have captured all our social and cultural institutions. They are people dedicated to inverting all order, sense and morality. Because that’s what universities, as they followed their institutional logic to its reductio ad absurdum, have taught them to do.

The pity is, elite cultural inversion and abandoning of common sense hasn’t led to new universal truths, but a childish black-and-white morality, absolutism, an attraction to simplified narratives lacking in nuance or any kind of multi-factor complexity, ideological incoherence and intellectual intolerance.

In these dire circumstances, bad faith actors such as Hamas have figured out how to take advantage of elite derangement.

All that I would say to Israelis is, you must survive this.

it would greatly help the Israelis survive if they could get on and complete what they’re seeking to do in Gaza – if that’s possible. It’s taking too long. Yes, the logistics are against them but every week that passes, the support they’ve required becomes a little less sure. The result is essays such as this – asking the existential question that would’ve been unthinkable for Jews to be asking themselves only a short while ago. Where are the updates, against particular goals to be achieved in Gaza? This could provide a narrative which is sorely lacking. A major aspect of the conflict is the information war and Israel is losing; not because they’re incapable of winning but they’re just not going about it the right way, in seeking to get those who might normally be sympathetic on board and keeping them onboard with what’s happening on the ground in Gaza. In the absence of such, people will see only an endless campaign and ultimately, a void.

My concern is that they have no idea how to “finish the job.” They have gone off half-cocked in a rage, and levelled most of Gaza. They are now predictably confronted with over a million people in one spot with no way of getting at the terrorists hiding amongst them without mass casualties on hither too unseen scale. I do understand on a human level that the way they have gone about it is pretty much the natural response. Kill the bastards, let God sort them out. I do understand. But now they have got themselves in a trap and it is difficult to see what they can do to get out. Can’t back out, can’t move forward.

Gone off in a rage? Completely the opposite of the truth. You sir have been infected by Hamas propaganda

Yeh exactly – Netanyahu’s is only a government which has  helped create Hamas , is  losing popularity in Israel , that makes no secret of the fact it intends to shrink Gaza, which it sees as populated by ‘ human animals ,’ and which makes war announcements citing  genocidal passages from the Bible . If a terrorist attack of the kind that happened to Israel happened to the UK I would not want the whole population of their country of origin to be collectively punished (just as I don’t like that Britain committed war crimes against Dresden which were not necessary to achieving its military aims against Hitler) and every hospital razed to the ground. I would want a solution that best brings about peace, whether that’s a prisoner swap, population exchange or a special operation to free the prisoners. Of course people on here will be right to retort that Hamas is deeply entrenched and that makes a special operation difficult. That doesn’t mean  American  and  Israeli  military strategists are not considering this option – they’re not saying it’s ‘impossible.’ The more I read about the possible solutions, the clearer it seems that in the ‘realistic’ world, which most readers on here condescendingly claim I am divorced from, an invasion of Gaza is no likelier to end the evil of  Hamas  (it will likely create something worse) than peace proposals. As it stands there’s of course little we can do, besides hoping that the  US  will keep curbing Netanyahu’s bloodlust, and standing up for Palestinians wherever they are experiencing more undefendable acts of violence (incidentally where do we stand on the growing settler attacks on Palestinians in the  West Bank ?) This seems to be a war with lots of ordinary people on either side who are furious with their leaders’ pursuit of destruction, fuelled by people who say that no other option but blind acceptance of Netanyahu’s invasion plans are permissible (and those who protest otherwise should be branded as  hateful  or even  arrested ), when there are clearly other positions to take. The Gazans’ thin complicity in the actions of their government (which a majority were  not happy  with), does not mark them out as an evil hoard to be  crushed .

Have you wondered why most people on here think you’re divorced from reality?

It might be because you use extraordinarily selective items to back up a set of points which range from absurd (you cite a single biblical qoute that was not really about genocide whilst not unpacking (like the whole world fails to) why the ACTUAL genocide hasn’t happened when the Israelis could kill every Palestinian in about 18 minutes and their population has boomed for decades) they to being what appears basic anti Israel propaganda – your special operation is what they’re trying to achieve but they use humans, usually old women, as shields. Literally as shields.

Hospitals have been razed because they’ve been used as military command centres for years.

Your comments are mostly a shambles, think why most people say that?

Tell me why your more realistic approach will work out. And tell me why the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank are justified.

What is the foundation (of military knowledge/ strategy) upon which you make your claims about WW2? And what would something ‘worse’ than Hamas look like to you?

So assuming that by this question you think that the allied bombing of Germany is comparable to Israel’s bombing of Gaza as necessary to achieve a widely accepted military goal… The jury seems to be out on whether the allies’ intense bombing of civilian targets in WWII paid off , with one report claiming that beyond a certain level it was futile and a case of war crime (source 1), while others like Peter Hitchens (writing for Unherd, source 2) and the historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook (also writers for unherd, source 3) have also shown how the UK and the USA deserve less moral credit for WWII than we give them as we see in their antisemitic disinterest in bombing the railway lines to German concentration camps, despite knowing the location of some of them at least as early as 1944 (see also source 4). All this amounts to the possible irony that in debating me (considered on here some kind of anti-semite) you’ve (no doubt unwittingly) favourably deployed an example of a country whose military priorities revealed clear anti-semitism. source 1: https://aoav.org.uk/2020/the-effects-of-strategic-bombing-in-wwii-on-german-morale/ source 2: https://unherd.com/2019/11/the-war-was-not-our-finest-hour/ source 3: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-man-who-escaped-auschwitz/id1537788786?i=1000591854991 source 4 Y. Bauer (1980), ‘Genocide: Was It the Nazis’ Original Plan?’ in  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science  pp. 35-45 Add to this the fact that peace with Germany was ensured by immediately adopting Germany as a friend after WWII without proper de-Nazification because of the Soviet threat, (which Israel will never do with Gaza and Hamas), and the comparing of this ‘war’ and its chances of success with that of the allies against Germany becomes even more stupid. And something worse than Hamas? How about a Hamas which has broad rather than narrow support from the Gazan population now that upwards of 30,000 parents have lost their children in this destruction?

Problem with your outline of history is that: 1) Germany unconditionally surrendered. They knew they were defeated. 2) There were people in Germany like Adenauer who ware capable of outlining and implementing better path to German future prosperity. Yes, clearly Soviet threat and takeover od Eastern Europe made implementation of Morgentau plan impossible.

None of the above applies to Hamas situation. They want destruction of Israel and genocide of Jews.

You have no realistic proposal for dealing with this conflict apart from wanting ceasefire, so Hams can regroup and attack again.

No possible Israeli government would ever allow it.

Responded almost as soon as you posted this, but it’s still being held up by the unherd censor.

simply untrue ..The Gazans’ thin complicity in the actions of their government (which a majority were  not happy  with), does not mark them out as an evil hoard to be  crushed …….they were happy with the massacre & the majority are happy with Hammas

Evidence please

Indeed. If the IDF really wanted to lash out they would have flatted Gaza to rubble in a week. Instead they are conducting a very strategic war with much greater concern for the civilians of their enemy than their enemy has of their own, let alone any semblance of international laws, treaties, or rules of engagement. And yet the world still condemns Israel — as it always has — for continuing to survive. How dare they!

John is right. The real problem was that the goals were unrealistic (namely, the destruction of Hamas) and now the sad irony is that the IDF has created a new generation of Hamas supporters, most of whom will harbor eternal hatred in their hearts for Israel because of what the IDF has done.

They were always going to hate the Jews no matter what happened. If it were Arab on Arab violence, the Palestinians could have disappeared and no one would really bat an eye. No Jews, no news.

I disagree. Despite the tremendous clout of the Hamas lobby, Hamas’s few battalions in Rafah can be defeated. If they fall and the two intact battalions in central Gaza are dismantled as well, Hamas will cease to exist as an organized military force in Gaza. As for the eternal hatred, I’m not too worried about that. The Palestinians already have major issues as a result of living under Hamas’s totalitarian rule since 2007. A vast majority of them supported the slaughter of October 7 and the taking of hostages. The way to deal with their issues is to get another Arab country to oversee education in Gaza so that Gazans understand that Hamas—together with Iran, Qatar, and the British left—are responsible for everything that has happened to them.

Sounds like the US in 1967, talking about the Viet Cong. In the Real World, it takes a ratio of 10:1 to defeat guerrillas. When the IDF also has simmering conflicts in Southern Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank, where is it going to get that number of troops??? The war is lost. Admit it. You’ll sleep better…

That’s not a good analogy. By your reasoning, Hamas’s effective fighting force would never have been reduced from the 35-40k it had on October 7 to the 10-12k it still has in commission. The other theaters may buy the Hamas forces some time in their tunnels, but they can be dismantled.

They’ll demand conscription off us,that seems to be a reality in waiting for us,out grandsons,my great nephews,but chillingly girls too. And our governments will be only too happy to.comply because it’s so obvious,they are itching to have a good pretext to bring in CONSCRIPTION on. But don’t think being an Oldie will let you off. They are also using the weasel word.”mobilisation” so the too young ,+ too old will get “mobilized” – I don’t want to work in a munitions factory making shells larks a mussy wot a lucky break for me ma’am I ain’t gotta be your parlour maid no more,I gotta job! Sorry I’m one of the few people who know it’s not 1914 OR 1939.

This war is existential for Israel. They need to win it. They will. They have nukes….

A vast majority of them supported the slaughter of October 7 and the taking of hostages.  Majority of Gazans Were Against Breaking Ceasefire; Hamas and Hezbollah Unpopular Among Key Arab Publics

The IDF? LOL – Try searching out the Youtube video of the Hamas Women telling the world that they breed their children to rejoice in meeting their maker by scattering their bones and blood via bombs, as long as it kills Jews. She also went on to say that the mothers of the sons who were so bestial on Oct 7th rejoiced in the success of their sons AND if they were to be chosen as a suicide bomber, they would be happy to join them and so meet their God having killed Jews. Islam is only EVER safe when it’s madmen are held in check by the likes of Saadam, Assad, Gadafi, Putin, the CCP or the hardmen leaders such as the Sheiks of the Oil States. IF Israel loses this war, or it is ever overrun,then the West is next because they see us as decadent (Curiously, that’s probably the one thing they and I agree on)

For now perhaps. Maintain your endorsement of autocrats and warlords and you’ll find more overlap soon. Curious that you place Saddam, Assad, Gaddafi, and Putin in contrast with “madmen”. Whose your favorite?

To be fair, Saddam, Assad, Gaddafi, and Putin aren’t actually mad. They are/were in many respects hyper-rational but happen to be ruthless at a level that conflicts with Western norms of acceptable behaviour. I’m not saying that makes what they did acceptable, merely that they were products of insane and broken societies where violence is the norm and the rule of law counts for nothing. Who would want to live under such a brutal oppressor? Nobody who had a better alternative. But if you don’t have that alternative, but the alternative is that you’re in the realistic danger of being stoned to death by an enraged mob on the basis of nothing more than your embittered neighbour’s word just because you looked at him in a way he didn’t like last week, yes, you’d prefer the dictator.

I understand the argument but to me that moral sickness and runaway hubris is indeed a form of madness, one far more dangerous than that of 999 out of 1,000 raving lunatics. While I accept that the times and cultural norms provide a large part of the explanation for their dictatorial rise, we can agree that those conditions don’t amount to a justification of their methods or overreach. Nor was there nothing better available, though nothing of sufficient strength, courage, and determination emerged at the crucial pivot point. There are less bloody and cruel counterfactuals that could have emerged, not that speculating about them until our figurative cows return will do us much good. I also think you’re indulging in an overbroad pathologisation of whole societies. I think your characterisation of societies where ‘you’re in the realistic danger of being stoned to death by an enraged mob on the basis of nothing more than your embittered neighbour’s word just because you looked at him in a way he didn’t like last week’ refers to Islamic theocracies and communist tyrannies, and quite fairly so. But Syria was a notorious police state for decades before the more recent ‘troubles’–just about as right wing a power structure as they come. I’m sure the rule of law was not evenly or humanely applied in any reliable way, but some must have preferred that level of Law & Order, especially compared to the New & Enhanced warzone police state that followed. Syria has a de facto aristocracy and Assad is comparable to an hereditary monarch–one with actual, sweeping powers. Meeting extremes with extremes may indeed provide temporary improvement in living conditions, even a reduction in rampant societal madness, but not in the long run. Attempts at moderation and sanity may fail, but they are worth the attempt. Why do I have to choose my favourite form of moral insanity or state tyranny? For complex ‘reasons’ I don’t pretend to fully understand, East Germany chose one path after the war, West Germany another. I do not accept that as the mere product of the environment or social conditions, on either side of what became the Berlin Wall.

Islam has undergone various alterations. The Muslim Brotherhood was created in 1924 to reject Western cultural influences. Qutb went to Califoria in the late 1940s and saw men and women dancing together and provided further theological justification of rejection of western culture due to emancipation of women. Abul Madaudi had similar views in India. The MB received little support in the 1940s and 1950s. In the late 1930s the rise of Pan Arabic Nationalism such as the Baath Party ( founded by a Christian) grew in power. PAN united Arab countries in order to destroy Israel in 1948: they failed. PAN inspired Nasser who overthrow King Farouk of Egypt in 1952. The Baath Party overtrew the King in Iraq in 1958 and Ghadafi overthrew King Idris in Libya in 1968. PAN was supported by the USSR. The defeat of Syria and Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur led the MB to state that both Capitalism and Communism are products of The West and should be rejected. The rise of Saudi money post 1979, success of Khomeini in Iran USSR; invasion of Afghanistan; in Pakistan Zia al Haq coming to power pushing Deobandi/ WahabiIslam, influence of Pakistan ISI has pushed the Muslim World away from secular nationlism towards Salaafi /Bin Laden Sunni Islam who take their spiritual guidance from Wahab of the 1750s and Ibn Tamiyya of the late 13th- early 14th centuries . The MB murdered Sadat in 1981. al Assad senior murdered 20,000 MB supporters in Hama in 1982 If one looks at newsreel of Cairo, Beirut and Kabul from late 1960s one sees women wearing mini skirts. The rise of violent Salaafi Sunni terrrorism is due to the failure of the more secular Pan Arabic Nationalism. Muslim monarchies who rule through consulation of tribal leaders have remained in power, Morocco and Jordan for example. What we are witnessing is a conflict between Muslims who wish to reject Western Culture and return to pre 14 century World and those who wish to absorb aspects of Western culture while keeping various aspects of Islam. A major aspect is the massive growth in the Muslim population, limited resources, corruption, lack of consultation between rulers and ruled, massive variations in wealth with the wealthy enjoying western culture which appears decadent and anti Muslim to the middle classes. Look at how Imran Khan has had to alter his image to keep support. The support for MB/Salaafi/ Wahabi view of Islam largely comes from disaffected lower middle class, very similar to those who supported French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Nazis and Mao. HAMAS though a MB offshoot is heavily influenced by Iran which reduces it’s support amongst Sunni nations.

*another quarantined reply pending (this gets a bit silly when nothing incendiary or rude has even been typed–unlike my riled-up response to Bill Bailey, which posted instantly) wrong place.

If you really believe that East Germany “chose one path” etc, you must know some alternative history of Europe. Path for them and the rest of Soviet Block was chosen by Stalin. Berlin Wall came much later, when outflow of young Germans from communist paradise would result in only pensioners and Stasis left.

Thanks for clearly-stated, thought-provoking reply. My response has been auto-quarantined, probably for some multiple of 6 hours. “Spoiler alert”: I disagree, in major part, with most of your premises as I perceive them. *18 hours

Correct, you understood what I was saying. Islam is worse than Putin, Saddam and ALL the other ‘hard men’. There are people in the UK who thought ISIS and their Caliphate were preferable to UK democracy!

They all posed a challenge to USA supremacy,political and dollar and for goodness sake they.expected ‘Muricans” to PAY MONEY for their commodities….talk about uppity n…..s. We showed the way via the Indian people with cotton and the Chinese.with tea. That’s what you do. You put the natives IN THEIR PLACE and steal their stuff. And God says it’s ok.

I’ve not endorsed or supported them, I’m telling you facts. Real Politik. Here’s a quote attributed to George Orwell or Kipling perhaps. But you may like to think on it as you go to bed tonight. People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf

To me, your “realism” is damn near indistinguishable from viciousness and bloodthirst. Whatever lets you sleep at night. * Your interest in Reality and Facts is far more selective and pre-determined than you admit.

The quote is from Orwell and Kipling said something similar about mocking soldiers who protect you. When Churchill set up the Commandos he based them on a butcher and bolt principle. The SOE was set up to set Europe ablaze. When Nancy Wake GM was asked if she had any regrets ” Yes, I did not kill enough Nazis “. The training the Commandos and SOE went through was very effective, it was also brutal. Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife (youtube.com) Jeremy Clarkson’s the Greatest Raid of All – the FULL documentary | North One (youtube.com) The important question is how does one select, train and put people through combat but without them becoming a threat outside of war? Britain and the Commonwealth have been successful, other countries less so. When it comes to Islam it is worthing studying Indian history from 750 to 1750AD. Sandeep Balakrishna on Brutal Mughal Rule & Destruction of India | Abhijit Chavda Podcast 32 (youtube.com)

I understand the basic import of the quote, and it’s rough validity. And I get that we can’t go around removing dictators when their own people won’t remove them–that has proven disastrous in all but the most dire historical circumstances. I just don’t buy that dictators and megalomaniacs improve our world, or that they are inextricably or interchangeably linked with the violence-ready rough men one needs in every war, perhaps every neighborhood. Roughness doesn’t need to be vicious or vengeful. A thorny problem indeed: What do we do with those who return from war, often more-or-less physically intact, but shellshocked or deranged by their war experiences? In the States, many end up homeless, on a police force, or dead by their own hands. Our training methods might be too brutal, our breadth and frequency of global “wargames” excessive. You’ve frequently talked about the rough and ready, anti-fragile men who were forged by the 2nd World War, expressing your sincere admiration for them. I share some of that admiration for those types of warrior patriots. But there another part of that population, likelier to hold a begging cup than a power saw or fireman’s axe, or rarely leave the house at all. I’ll click your link soon.

*another quarantined reply pending (this gets a bit silly when nothing incendiary or rude has even been typed–unlike my riled-up response to Bill Bailey, which posted instantly) * this needed to be sectioned for 18 hours?!

Well on the radio I heard that Hamas have refused this latest.offer of a ceasefire and negotiations and all my sympathy has flown away. You can’t cure stupid. Yes,the Jews are brutal in their psychopathic determination of Never Again. Do you realise that in the 1930s our British Parliament passed NUMEROUS laws to STOP Jewish refugees from coming here. They could all have got in leaky boats off friesland and been at the Suffolk coast in. 2 hours but that didn’t happen. Why not? Research that.If the Jews of Germany,Holland + Belgium had shown armed resistance,refused to comply,and kicked off,like we all should do nowadays our Government would.have been the loudest in condemnation of them. In the 1930s the British population,the working class and the Aristos were deeply anti-semitic,and most posh young ladies really fancied Nazi officers in those cool Hugo Boss uniforms. Sexy.or what. The workers didn’t want any Ikey Mo’s living next door (pal of Ally Sloper). Oh I forgot,more then 5 years ago,”before my time”. (Said on every tv quiz show going – by people with jobs!).

When you say ‘eternal hated of Jews”and then blame that on the IDF’s response to an horrific massacre of civilians I think you rather miss the point.

The vast majority of’ Palestinians’ already eternally hate the Jews, support their terrorist leaders who have the annihilation of Israel and death to all Jews as their charter/aim, and the specific reason we are discussing this today is due to their actions from that hate.

Were somewhat passed the point you think we just arrived at. Hamas must be destroyed

The IDF didn’t create the new generation of Jew haters, they learn it from a very early age in their schools. Did the IDF also create the hatred exemplified in our horribly corrupted colleges and Universities worldwide?

Their horrible fat,legs wide open Mothers start to inculcate violence into them even while they’re emerging from the birth passage. They worship their sons who got themselves blown up and teach the younger ones to emulate. And as they pop out a baby every other month it seems there is always plenty more. My sympathy for that side has dissipated on hearing them refuse the latest ceasefire offer and negotiations. The Jews have been under.such.international pressure this could have been a turning point but the Pallies right from 1947 onwards have proved obdurately stupid and incapable of negotiating a good deal or at least a “good enough” deal and building on that. Right from the start I’ve said two things. The October 7th atrocity was planned and funded by the CIA in order to.create a suitable pretext.for The Yahoo to go on this killing spree. The Yahoo,like me,knows where Hamas comes from,the uterus and vaginas of Pally women. So he’s going for the source. But not saying that of course. I would do that if I was in a parallel situation to him. It’s the most logical and intelligent thing to do. Most people think “eradicating Hamas” means locating and “cleanly and surgically” removing ie killing fighting age young men,the rest is collateral damage. No, the rest is the actual target.

I don’t think you can credibly claim to have ever had much sympathy for the “horrible fat-legs wide open Mothers” who “pop out a baby every other month”. Not for a good while since anyway. You’re in flat-out genocidal territory now–on virtuous pretenses, of course. You encourage as much violence as the Mothers you condemn, “lady”.

The IDF has not created any. They were already primed by a Jew hating school currículum for children and iron fist control of adults to go along with the Hamas narrative. If you didn’t agree with Hamas and made that public, expect to end up dead.

I agree with you and have wondered whether the Israelis should kill as many Palestinian children as possible before they grow up into fighters. This is the awful logic of genocide. In c16 many Elizabethians took such a view of the Irish

The actual “we can’t say it plain” PLAN. In a way,now they HAVE TO

In no way true. People need to reject evil- for-evil escalations, whatever their bloodthirsty or lurid appeal.

Which is why The Yahoo now has to kill every last one. Of course there.are some in other countries,didn’t they.bomb a camp in Lebanon -.,but it was a “mistake”?

You grow sicker in the head and heart with each lunar cycle.

When the UN aid staff are involved in the pogrom of October 7th and the photos of the defiled body of the young Israeli girl (probably a concert goer) are applauded and cheered by the population, AND a Hamas mother actually broadcasts that Hamas Women are bred to die by suicide IF it kills Jews AND they prefer that martydom to life AND they’d accompany their sons on such missions given the choice. Then I’m prepared to cause shock and horror to say perhaps 32,000 of the Hamas ‘claimed’ dead are terrorists? Or does a mother, young girl, wired up to kill not count as a Terrorist?

Perhaps you’ve converted your militant worldview into a speculative number, extrapolated from the comment of one mother and a handful of others.

The numbers weren’t mine. Perhaps you believed all the numbers Ukraine reported on Russia’s casualties and the MSM that Russia was collapsing under the sanctions, that Western Armour would roll over the Russian Army? My world view is to observe, and generally be very ‘untrusting’ of the Western MSM. I wasn’t involved in rolling into Israel and murdering, raping, kidnapping and abusing. That would be the bunch that you are telling me are driven to hate by the IDF. My ‘militarised view’ of the world is because that’s how it is. Show me the evidence that Islam isn’t at war in virtually every continent on the planet. AND that their war is nothing more than a desire to make the likes of you and everyone else worship their God. In fact show me where the religion of peace is actually at peace? They aren’t even at peace with their own people!. Oh for a new camera to turn up in Gaza with the ‘Queers for Islam’ – how do you think that would work out? You live in a bubble, I hope it is never burst, for your sake.

Haha! *You arrogant fool. **The original number wasn’t yours but the nasty calculation most certainly was. “Perhaps” the tens of thousands of dead are, conveniently for your troubled sleep, “all terrorists”, in your own darkly-opinionated claim. At least own it. ***you confuse meanspiritedness with realism ****I have quite a varied media diet. Check your bubble dude.

The Pallies are very stupid. Since 1947 they’ve proved useless at negotiating any deal let alone a “good enough” one. I was angry and outraged at how their land was stolen(even if paid for in money,) but now since they refused the latest ceasefire offer only put out by huge international pressure on the Jews,to me,they have proved how stupid they are. They are so stupid they don’t even recognize that the fact no other neighbouring Arab country will let them in shows their standing up for Islam or whatever they think they’re doing is a waste of time. The two countries Lebanon and Jordan who have let some in make them live in permanent refugee camps they must never leave.

How long has it been since you regarded the civilians there as fully human, and not a contagion to be exterminated en masse ?

The Saudis and Emiratis are waiting in the wings to be at the forefront of any Gazan rebuilding project. They just need someone to do the dirty work of destroying Hamas. After Oct 7th Israel was left with no choice but to undertake this task by itself. Even after all the visible and violent destruction Israel unleashed on Gaza, the Abraham accords are still very much intact. This speaks volumes.

Agreed. this is one of the few comments I’ve read anywhere that is both sensible and forward-thinking. The Arab states are beginning to come around to the idea that Israel is not going anywhere and peace is far more profitable than war. The coast of Gaza will be fabulously valuable real estate one day and it won’t be Palestinian fishermen who get rich on it. And there’s the opportunity for these oil-states to diversify their economies; especially since the Palestinians are known to be smart and industrious. My fingers are crossed for the Abraham accords.

Stupid is as stupid does. Stupid gets handed a valuable piece of real estate,it immediately blows up the infrastructure to happy partying then spends years digging stupid tunnels. Intelligent would set up ice cream.stalls at the fabulous beach and invite Europeans to visit in order to fleece them.

This is nonsense, sorry. The Israeli attack on Gaza, despite the admittedly enormous collateral costs, has been governed from the start by the primary objective of minimising civilian casualties. It is of course impossible to minimise them below a regrettably high threshold, but that is simply because Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, not because Israeli forces care nothing for civilian casualties and press on regardless.

You presumably don’t agree with this: well fine, whatever. But nevertheless, a clear-eyed look at how Israel is prosecuting this offensive will show that its slow pace of progress, fighting hand-to-hand and taking urban territory tactically, is the direct consequence of refusing to take a scorched earth approach to Palestine: something it has the power to do if it so wished.

The enemy of every civilised principle is Hamas, not Israel, and only a fool thinks otherwise.

The Yahoo is actually doing WHAT I WOULD DO,he is going for the SOURCE of Hamas. That source is WOMBS. Every time a whole lot of women and children get killed and the western media tell us it was a horrible mistake,it was a dreadful accident. OF COURSE IT WAS. (NOT. But got to keep the “sheeple” compliant). It’s better and easier on us to be able to believe it’s messy “collateral damage” than that they were the actual target.

I think you are falling into the trap Jacobson spelled out: ‘We do our humanity a great wrong when we let theories of power rule our politics and politics rule our hearts’.

Ignore world opinion. It didn’t do much for us for 2000 yrs. We can never please them unless we vanish. And if we did, they’d complain that we left them troubles they can’t solve. Jewish law: have no gods before Yahewh. That includes international farce law

JM, I’m impressed with John Riordan’s reply to you, the one beginning: “This is nonsense, sorry. The Israeli attack on Gaza, despite the admittedly enormous collateral costs, has been governed from the start by the primary objective of minimising civilian casualties.”

The whole of his post wins the argument.

Hamas know how to exploit cognitive biases, use Takiya on clueless Westerners. They know how to hide what they do, making their opponents appear as monsters.

Israel is losing information war? Explain me, how Israel could win against all the MSM full of reporters with modern West universities background? The war is too long? Maybe, you know the magic tool to destroy 400 miles of tunnels in two days. I am amazed by thoughtful remarks of this quality.

How did the US Army deal with the tunnels in Vietnam?

With great difficulty, which is why the Americans finally resorted to napalm and then agent orange.

The Vietnamese also dug covered bear pits filled with sharpened bamboo spikes, and when one GI fell in, skewered himself and started screaming, others would come to help them and they could all be killed.

Given the population density in Gaza and the strategy of Hamas quite happily using them as human shields, the IDF have an almost impossible task.

The concert goers who met the Palestinians were, according to the MSM ‘peace supporters’. They didn’t get much peace from Hamas.

The Manchester Arena was NOT full of IDF it was full of young girls and their mothers.

Forget our MSM or the mobs who freely roam the UK streets protesting. There is a large silent majority NOT of the Elite, who have experience of Islam on the streets of Britain. They know that one day, Islam is going to have to be faced. The protesters on that day may be very grateful to the white, working class males they so despise now. Because when that reckoning comes, it will be such boys and men that we turn to. It was ever thus.

I am one of the ‘Silent Majority’ – silent because of my job, which I would like to keep. I agree completely with what Bill is saying. It is a very difficult path to tread to educate small children when the majority of them you face across the classroom everyday are indoctrinated from a very young age to despise the white working class. One just has to hope that things will work out somehow?

….”God will know his own”…

With difficulty. It would destroy individual tunnels when it found them (using CS gas and explosives), but the network was so extensive that many remained undetected. Many more were destroyed through their location being betrayed to the ARVN/US forces via the Phoenix programme, and B52 carpet bombing from high altitude was perhaps the major destroyer. The sprawling US/ARVN base camp at Cu Chi was actually built (unwittingly) on top of a huge 200-mile network of tunnels! See Tom Mangold & John Penycate, The Tunnels of Cu Chi. Mike: I believe both napalm and Agent Orange weren’t very effective against tunnels, as they are “surface weapons”. The B52 bombs could blast craters that were up to 30 feet deep – tunnels couldn’t withstand that kind of penetration.

Perhaps the US could lend the IDF a few B52s.

Despite first entering service in 1955 I gather ‘they’ still have quite a few left..

To save embarrassment they could be flown from RAF Fairford, Glos.

Given the tunnels are under refugee camps and hospitals, I suspect the IDF wouldn’t gain that much benefit from the change of tactics. As it stands they seem to be doing so good a job the allies of Hamas in the West are desperate to bring the war to a close.

Tunnel rats. Recruited small men and trained them to fight in tunnels. Several years ago I heard an Israeli say he considered the IDF had lost it’s toughness. Has Israel relied too much on technology and lost it’s close quarter combat skills ? As Lt Col Peter Walter MC and Bar ( ex SAS and Parachute regiment ) said “Any bloody fool can run and everybody can run like rabbits when under fire. It is whether a soldier can march long distances, carrying all his kit, across all terrains, in all weathers … and still be fit to fight. That is the mark of a good soldier.” Lieutenant Colonel Peter Walter (MC & Bar, Malaya & Aden; SAS & Parachute Regiment) – British Militaria Forums (tapatalk.com)

Has anyone tried Malinois dogs. I gather the ‘Special Forces’ are quite fond of them.

I saw video of an IDF Malinois dog in tunnel. Perhaps they need more of them.

Definitely.

The Israelis already use dogs. There are videos from cameras attached to the dogs available, in fact I watched some months ago. It seems their enemy aren’t that keen on dogs. My personal view is that the better the Israelis and the IDF perform, the more the West demands a ceasefire. I’d suggest that the IDF are doing fine, but don’t brag about it. Then as pointed out elsewhere, Western MSM are never going to support them, as they are ‘agin’ us as well as Jews. Where ‘us’ are the plebs of the UK. Still, we have a vote (for how long?) – use it well. Vote Reform that way we can bin both Labour and Tory and even if Reform is useless, they won’t be pushing Net Zero. Which is going to destroy any economy that suffers it.

The next (golden mythic)General Election is going to be …um ..er ( the ONE man who has TOTAL power of yay or nay on this ,how is that democratic) is prevaricating. It’s going to be in May declares the media enthusiastically. Well I’m still thinking about it says The Man,maybe later in the summer. By late October the media will be saying..oh it’s going to be November,have to be late.November,not too close to.Xmas. Close to Christmas a slightly puzzled media is saying “there’s only January left” so it’s got to be January. After New Year 2025 The Man,that one or a successor one,says ” what an.election,don’t think we’ll bother,they’re so time wasting and have you seen how much they cost? You do know our Treasury’s empty and There’s a War on. Anyway we passed a law the other afternoon,you know one of the many we just knock off on a quiet sleepy afternoon that the media never tells you about and Labour don’t bother either. So no more energy sapping,time wasting ,money frittering elections. See if I’m not right. If you were them,would you?

My Korean friends tell me that they go very well with chips.

Poorly it would seem.

Can you read? I was suggesting that Israel confirm where they were up to, so those in the West who support them (such as myself) can see where the campaign is going against the constant barrage of anti-Israeli propaganda. Failing to do so is losing them the propaganda war. So if you can read, i’ll put it down to a failure of comprehension on your part.

Edward Teller knew the magic tool

1200 2000 lb bunker busting bombs have not done the job, which does make one again query whether the IDF strategy is sound. The problem is that they are fighting a guerilla insurgency in a dense area without a viable strategy (unless you think the Carthaginian strategy is a sound one). One hears the complaints, “Citizens are being killed because Hamas continues to hide amongst the citzenry! Or in the tunnels”. In other words, they are deploying classic 4G warfare insurgency tactics, while the Israelis complain that they are not coming out to fight in a straight 2G style war where they would almost certainly be annihilated.

Israel’s goal is to defeat Hamas and get the hostages back. Now you know.

Inane comments such as this will further Israel’s cause not one inch. And now you know.

The inanity is people like you expecting Israel to lay out its battle plans in the main stream media. They are at war, not in a reality show

But again, you’re lacking in comprehension. No-one is asking Israel to “lay out battle plans”, During conflicts such as WW2 the allied powers scored major propaganda victories following D-day by making clear what had been gained. That’s very different from a battle plan and it’s what Israel is failing to do

Similarly, with the African campaign led by Montgomery. If you don’t know history, you’ll continue with misapprehensions.

“Where are the updates, against particular goals to be achieved in Gaza?”

Yes, I’m sure Hamas would like to receive updates about Israel’s goals.

He said Israel should be more vocal about the progress they make towards broad goals that everyone is aware of, not to share specific intelligence for specific goals that rely on the secrecy of that intelligence to be achieved.

They’re broad goal is to kill every single Palestinian person and not leave one alive. The Yahoo told us that right at the very start or did you not recognize the significance of his using the word “Amalek” in reference to them. A lot of people got it right away.

My comment higher up the page (5th comment) is very clear about the genocidal language. I was just correcting RIL because it seemed they did not get the basic (and fair I thought) point LL was making about Israel needing to be clearer about what positive progress they’re making (though I agree with you that it has mainly been unncecessary destruction)

All these “mistakes” in which women and children are killed They’re not mistakes. But you have to think like me to recognise that. And if you think like me you’ve got no friends Ha ha.

Until recently Eylon Levy was doing a really good job of providing updates. Caroline Glick also has IDF military experts on her show from time to time who provide info on the ground. There are other people too but you have to trawl YouTube because MSM is captured

Israel is fighting our, as in the West’s, war. The ‘university’ Woke crowd aren’t worth worrying about. The streets of the West where the working class reside and who are increasingly aware of Islam, if asked, would probably accept that one day Islam is going to have to be faced down.

One intriguing article I read this week is about how Islam has taken over the UK prison system from the ‘crime’ gangs. It makes a worrying read. BUT the type of People Gordon Brown famously described as ‘bigoted’ know the reality on the ground.

Our ruling Elites do not appear to have ANYTHING right. I suppose the only comfort is that Net Zero is likely to destroy the UK quicker than Islam, but make no mistake, Islam is not our friend. Failure to back Israel and confront Iran may (assuming the Iranian people don’t get rid of their Religious Rulers) end up with Iranian Nuclear weapons detonated in Western Cities by Iranian proxies.

Look around the world, Islam is at war with many non-islamic populations in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Caucasus and Europe. IF Israel is abandoned, then the Islamic Jihad will come to our comfortable (assuming the morons who rules us scrap Net Zero in time) homes far sooner than anyone would wish.

When we are struggling to contain Russia and China, the Israeli sideshow will just bankrupt us, to no purpose. Israel shames us every day, and makes a mockery of our defense of genuine democracies in Ukraine and Taiwan. All we can and should do now is defend the Gulf states and the Red Sea routes. Let Israel fight it out with Iran, Syria and Russia on its own. As clueless allies of a nation clearly engaged in war crimes and land theft on the West Bank, this shames us every day.

…Oh, right, so I must be antisemitic!? If you consider only one explanation for everything, it usually turns out to be true. Funny thing that…

I think Israel goal in Gaza was clearly articulated: Total destruction of Hamas.

Problem is that many people in the West, never mind Muslims and other 3rd world savages, want complete opposite: Total destruction of Israel. Somehow, Israel is less keen on the 2nd option. I wonder why?

Eloquently and accurately put. Thank you.

Interesting perspective. The problem is that you can’t live by the principles of ongoing educative, human progress and then undermine them when they advance to the point of eroding the long-held advantages of some members of your own tribe. Only yesterday I was yelled at hysterically in the street by an elderly neighbour here in Paignton I’ve been on friendly terms with for over a decade. Apparently, my university education and latent civil service occupation has suddenly caused her some discomfort and offence. So we all need to be careful about this sudden tendency to castigate those who’ve equipped themselves with a university degree as indoctrinated fools intent on our collective cultural annihilation. May I suggest that one of the reasons it ‘appears’ that the indoctrinated educationalists of the world are uniting against tyranny and backwardness is, well, because WE ARE! And a bleddy bout time too, to coin a common, local colloquial expression. What do you expect when the offspring of the British middle-classes are throwing their toys out of the classroom window and not even bothering to study beyond high school level any more? Few engage with the news media and spend their time with decadent trivia of one kind or another. Why should they bother when they’ve been told they’ll inherit grandmothers house and assets in return for turning their back on Enlightenment values? Is it any wonder university professors focus primarily on those who actually wish to be educated and who value the concept? And if they are increasingly from overseas, so be it, frankly. The other road will only bring even worse misery and destruction, let’s face it… Like Howard, I have always been vehemently pro-Jewish here in the UK. Indeed, a quick perusal of my book shelf at home will reveal that the majority of my cultural influences have been of Jewish descent. There have been the odd occasion when I’ve encountered a bad un, but sadly – like Private Benjamin – Jewish culture isn’t sufficiently sanitised against misogynistic oppression and abuse yet. And UK law has historically created structural inequalities that make the lives of private tenants – even university-educated civil servants – a wretched form of modern-day slavery. Unfortunately, I am English so cannot attribute these things to race and ethnicity alone, but I do find myself increasingly having more common ground with those who can than those who peddle ignorance and intolerance to maintain the rural status quo. Hey Howard, we once discussed your novel, The Finckler Question, at Paignton Book Club. It caused such a monumental fall out among friends that the group was disbanded shortly afterwards. I always remember the comments from the Booker Prize Judges that year when they virtually apologised for giving you the award, lol. It was a good book, though, even if it gave me a headache for weeks while I was trapped in Finckler’s mind and I wanted to be let out screaming. As an aside, as someone who was pointlessly mutilated as a young infant in the 1960s due to some ill-judged ‘social planning’ decision, I do rather think the legacy of this latest AI-led error we are currently observing is not going to go away any time soon. If nothing else, perhaps Israel’s monumental strategic error is going to be a game changer, whichever way you look at things… Shalom

“So we all need to be careful about this sudden tendency to castigate those who’ve equipped themselves with a university degree as indoctrinated fools intent on our collective cultural annihilation.”

I think it’s a deserved reaction. And I say that as an academic, PhD in an extremely woke humanities area, having read all the right French theorists (or pretended to, if they were particularly obtuse). I drank the Kool Aid too, but the excesses of woke unravelled the illusion “gradually, then suddenly”. The misgivings began many years ago with the obtuse theory (“cmon, that was a page of totally meaningless waffle”), and blew up about four years ago with certain high-profile woke cr*p that made a mockery of my discipline. It’s a story for another time.

The massive expansion of education post 1960s has lowered standards. Up to 1920 one had to pass a paper in Greek to go up to Oxford. Consequently, education no longer can be correlated with intelligence only in duration spent in education. People I know who obtained Ordinary Leaving Certificates in the 1940s are far more educated than many graduates. The The Inquisition was full of educated people. Educated people in France caused The Terror after The Revolution; the Dean of Canterbury supported Stalin , Hewlett Johnson – Wikipedia Three Nobel Prize winners ( 2 physics , 1 literature) supported Hitler, JGoebbels had a doctorate, M Heidegger supported Hitler and Sartre supported Mao. Highly educated people have supported blood thirsty tyrants; they appear to worship power . As Orwell said ” I d not fear the dictatorship of the proletariat,only the intellectuals “. Orwell put his trust in the common decency of the ordinary man because they do not like bullies or worship power. Intellectuals since the French Revolution ( Goebels was an intellectual and 14 % of the SD – intelligence branch of the SS had doctorates in Law ) have supported violence if it suits their purpose. Ever since the 1960s, universities have banned people from speaking they dislike. Enightenment values are largely Continental. In Britain we had Beef and Liberty( Wilkes ). J Bronowski said the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions were our Enlightenment. The problem with intellectuals is they live in a world of ideas with little physical contact with reality. Newcomen, Brindley, A Darby,Watt etc, did far more for the poor than any intellectual. They literally created light. Brindley’s canals reduced price of coal by 75% and reduced humans dependence on labour by animals. They freed us from the reality that two bad harvests would cause mass hunger.

I’ve come to the conclusion we need to make British university degrees more elite once again. I say this having lectured in the sector for 20 years, trying to ‘widen participation’ myself. Many of my current MA students can’t write as well as my 11 year old. Aiming to get 50% of the population into uni was never ever going to be a good idea. The money should be spent on making state & secondary education good for ALL. The combination of intellectual zealots as lecturers – outlined by Charles above – & not especially bright masses has led to what we’re witnessing today: cries like ‘queers for Palestine’, ‘Yemen yemen make us proud’ etc as the Houthis bring back slavery…

EC, so true. I’d add to your point from something I read by Yascha Mounk in the Spectator a few days ago, which I’ll riff on. The riff is that for mediocre uni students, a good strategy is to write revolutionary rants as essays. Indulgent leftist lecturers forgive all sins of logical incoherence, poor spelling and grammar, and the many other expectations of academic writing because “the student’s heart is in the right place”. This goes back to the reductio ad absurdum aspect of modern humanities, which is that it’s easier to (or even an expectation that you should) jump on the next ideological novelty which incrementally extends “radical thought”, and/or shout down something you don’t fully understand in the name of “critique”, than to thoughtfully deepen accumulated wisdom.

It is difficult to prove a decline in standards outside of Maths, perhaps in languages. There used to be separate A Levels in Pure and Applied Maths which became Maths and Further Maths. There were also S Level Papers. In 1988, wWhen O Levels and CSEs were combined to form GSCEs standard were reduced by about a year. Compare someone who obtained S Level in Pure Maths or Further Maths of pre 1988 and A Level Maths of today. The S Level is about two years in advance of present day Maths A Level. Someone whom a Maths Scholarship to Cambridge /Imperial of say pre 1980 is probably second year Maths degree standard today or very close to it. Once the standard of maths declines so does all engineering, physics, chemistry and economics. Compare French Ordinary Leaving Certificate of 1940s to todays GSCE.

It was always obvious that you can not sent 50% of given cohort to university unless: 1) You lower standards of even STEM subjects. 2) create Mickey Mouse courses like gender studies or make basic nursing into degree. That is because to graduate in serious academic subjects you need IQ of about 115 and it is statistically impossible for 50% of the cohort.

“All that I would say to Israelis is, you must survive this.” ‘For Israel to have thrived in the face of a hostility with no end is remarkable.’ ? Rather, this traumatic existential questioning suggests the Israel we know is going nowhere, and will survive even the annihilation of all its enemies. Don’t worry!

Well, I like your optimism. But if it’s to survive and go nowhere, it will be by the hand of man, not God alone. We still need to engage in all aspects of defence.

Telling Israel that it must survive is a really great idea. Except, if it actually gets to that point, I’m not sure how it will do so.

Everyone ignoring the elephant in the room …Islam. So much failure, bloodshed and carnage and they want another state.

Good luck with that !

The brutal barbarity of the Japanese empire was ended with a couple of ‘never again’ deterrents in 1945. The 1400 year brutal barbarity of the Islamic empire will only be likewise ended.

I agree with autodreams that the “elephant in the room” is Islam. [Perhaps it would be beneficial for more people to read Tom Holland’s “In The Shadow Of The Sword” to get a handle upon Islam]. But as a practical solution to the present impasse, it would be beneficial to press the Egyptians to allow the inhabitants of Gaza to pass into Egypt. And to press the rich oil sheiks to provide the funding.

Except that the Egyptians know something that the likes of Queers for Palestine don’t, which is that Palestinians are drenched in full bonkers Muslim Brotherhood hate-filled nuttery, and would rip Egyptian society apart. Arab states quietly step back from accommodating these people because they’re too dangerous. What will happen of course, is that dufus Western governments, pressured by our do-gooder elites, will lovingly accept them by the hundreds of thousands. We’ll be the ones to find out just how b*tsh*t they are, especially when they’re egged on by radical activists and left unconstrained by woke police.

(Ahh, UnHerd, what’s wrong this time?)

I guess Egyptian must know something about Gazans that make them not keen on this idea? Like in “why would you want millions of terrorists and their supporters in your country”? Unfortunately Sadiq Khan and Hamza Useless will invite them here.

Israel had about two weeks to get the job done before its ficklest of fickle allies — America’s ruling class — lost interest and turned. I’m ashamed to call them leaders. As for your last sentence, read Bernard-Henri Levy’s predictions of the fallout should Israel lose this mortal war and if the world loses Israel. https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-if-the-us-helps-hamas-win-schumer-biden-mideast-war-israel-gaza-1a6aa3c6?page=1

America’s woke ruling class won’t even fight to defend itself and Western Civilization. It actively participates in its own destruction. It would happily murder Israel to get on with its own suicide. It’s due to a combination of guilt, fear, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what implications their unbalanced values really carry.

Niall Ferguson has much to say about the ‘hellbent university educated’, at least in the ‘west’. Where else do many revolutions begin? An explosion has to be contained in order to run to completion.

One cannot blame the anti-Israel tendencies of the ICJ on some university-educated Americans. It seems that 90 percent of all nations are now condemning Israel. Apologists for Israel might do well to ask themselves what they have done wrong – like Gideon Levy is doing courageously every day. Listening to commentators who want to nuke Gaza out of existence will just harden the attitudes of those who consider Palestinians as inferior human beings.

They were born Jews ? The West is ruled by the Davos crowd, but for how much longer is moot. Net Zero and the Climate Change myth is going to produce a revolution akin to the most violent in history IF it is pursued.

The UK Grid is allegedly (not by MSM) about 18 months away from demand exceeding capacity as the morons who rule us destroy coal plants and retire nuclear plants. Once the Grid starts to fail (particularly in the UK, tho they’ll fail elsewhere too) then ALL bets are off.

Supermarkets feed the UK (In 2007 the Independent printed an article about how the Supermarket database bases (VERY BIG DATA) led them to say the population (claimed to be 65 Million) had the appetite of 77-80 Million. Perhaps we wasted food spectacularly, BUT, IF we didn’t, and those figures are true. A failing Grid is going to mean massive food spoilage, emptying supermarket shelves AND with numbers as claimed, then hunger.

That is catastrophic, BUT it may be avoided when the morons who rule us realise it’s the Green Myths or Them that have to go. (I’d opt for both going).

Assuming that catastrophe is avoided, then the next issue is going to be Islam. IF Israel loses, then the West is next in line. Why? Because Islam taking on China, Russia or India isn’t going to work! They aren’t going to listen to the MSM and they won’t knock on their targets doors saying “get your women and children out before we bomb you in 2 hours or so”

So why do China, Russia etc condemn Israel? Because like the Ukraine is used by the West to try and bleed Russia white, then Israel is a useful stick to beat the US and the West with. Just waving that stick encourages the Woke to further undermine the West and take to the streets with our enemies. So, the bad news is, the West is going to suffer a lot in the coming few years, the only question is, what from? Net Zero insanity, Islam, or both? The other question is, once the morons who rule us realise what is required, will they be able to mobilise the natives they’ve abused and maligned to save them Answers in the next ballot box perhaps?

Ironically, hours after warning above, I watched this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR2pXzdNJmI 50 minutes in and Marc Faber describes the potential consequences on food/refrigeration IF say the New York grid went down. Maybe we are wrong, BUT I lived through the UK 3 day week and power cuts. I was in Wales and we cooked breakfast on the old iron open fire range, and used candles with local shops etc to provide food. Today I suspect even that old Welsh House is heated by Gas, has no open fire or range and relies on electricity to light/cook/refrigerate food which is obtained from a local supermarket. Perhaps the farms around may be still there, but the population has soared so even they may find it hard if Supermarket JIT fails. Multi millions of UK citizens won’t be able to do that and rely on JIT supermarket deliveries in refrigerated trucks. Quite frankly it is frightening how close to the point of no return the UK is getting regarding Grid demand exceeding, by a large margin, Grid demand. BOTH UK’s leading parties are committed to Net Zero. Gold/Silver may get you food on a black-market but good-luck getting your bit-coin out with no Grid! Israel shouldn’t worry too much, Russia and China are ruled by hard, cruel men, BUT, they aren’t the fools our Western Leaders appear to be, AND realpolitik and Islam may ensure that in a Western Collapse, Russia and China turn out NOT to be so anti-Israel as anti-US. One final point, the price of Gold as I post is £1844 an Oz Someone somewhere is buying a lot of the stuff OR else wants to but can’t find any. The answer to the question ‘Why?’ – might be worthy of an Unherd article.

The threat to western lifestyle is in as much danger from kids not wanting to work hard And thanks to social media data, such as from Tik Tok and shopping site Temu, our enemies know all about our kids’ weaknesses and how to exploit them.

Yes, you also have to account for the efficacy of “Pallywood” (the particular characteristics if Hamas propaganda). This has a major influence on each country’s MSM, and therefore the opinions of the populace. The main war is the propaganda war. The ground war is just for content generation. But, my initial point was that the elites, who control governance including foreign policy, are too prone to believing this propaganda. However you are right, the effect of Pallywood is not limited to Western countries.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/pallywood-ahli-hospital

George SOROS – one of the most rabid destroyers of society ever known – is a Jewish supporter of the “Palestinian cause”. Many of the most vacuous followers of the university indoctrinated, and indeed the university indoctrinators, who conjured up/enforce the greatest insanities of the past 30-40 years are also very visibly well off, privileged Jews. Go figure.

There was an article in the same online Tablet Magazine a while ago (2002/early 2023) that tackled that very question, but I can’t recall either author or title.

This is a false dichotomy: “What are we seeing? Are the terrible scenes from Gaza the projections on a bloody screen of one brutal and clumsy man’s baffled obstinacy — the last days of a demented Roman Emperor — or do they show, as anti-Zionists would have it, indeed as anti-Zionists have had it ever since the Jewish longing to return to Zion gave itself a name and the anti-Zionists called it colonialism, that something is rotten in the soul of Israel?”

The correct answer is neither. Hamas must be destroyed as an organized fighting force. There is no alternative. That is the position Hamas and the international community have placed Israel in: eradicate the death cult, or wait for the death cult to grow back and destroy your country. The death cult cannot be allowed to prevail.

The international community has long been complicit in propping Hamas up, condoning its repression and human sacrifice, and criminalizing Israel’s self-defense. No one forced Hamas to attack when Israel withdrew in 2005, and no one forced the international community to make excuses for Hamas back then.

The Allies understood that Hitler had to be defeated. Israel’s allies have disgraced themselves by not doing more to support Israel’s just cause. That failure attests to the strength of the pro-Hamas pressure groups in the West, not to any moral weakness in Israel’s cause.

Israel is fighting for all of us who still believe in civilization, and we must all fight for Israel now in whatever way we can.

The Arabs have stood with Israel this time, and they probably want Hamas destroyed even more than Israelis themselves. That’s the factor that nobody is computing when they nod their heads over another Guardian article.

The same happened in every war. The conversation has been about how they are losing, how they must show restraint, how they are the worst on earth. Then they win and most claims vanish and nobody remembers how wrong they were.

Hamas won’t be destroyed by what Israel is doing. It is a terrorist organisation and is not influenced by the international community.

The Palestinian people are the only people who can destroy Hamas.

agreed, and it was idiotic of Israel to have historically given Hamas support, covert or otherwise, to undermine Fatah, who however corrupt and usless they have become, are prepared to work with Israel.

The sad truth is that the more Israel kills Palestinains in Gaza it’s legitimate attempt to penalise and or destroy Hamas for Oct 7th, the more it feels as if Hamas has won, that Hamas has maybe suceeded in it’s long term aim of de-legitamising Israel.

Yes, that is how it feels now. But that will change if/when Hamas forces are defeated in Rafah. At that point, its lobby in the West will lose control of the narrative.

No, Hamas won’t be destroyed. It and it’s Muslim Brotherhood forks and descendants will live on in the world, in the hearts of those who feed on hate, maybe forever. But it can be contained and suppressed. In that, it is like Islam everywhere. It erupts in violence when its adherents judge they have a chance to conquer. In most places, it can be kept in check, mostly, except for occasional maniacal attacks by its adherents. That’s the best Israel can hope for too. To achieve that though, Israel has to destroy the underground fortress, and as far as possible, continually disarm and apprehend its fanatical jihadists.

As to Hamas and the international community: Hamas is counting on its strategy of painting Israel as an amoral and unrestrained aggressor. That’s to weaken support for Israel. The more Hamas can nudge Arab and Western elites in that direction, the better for their siege of Israel. Ideally, Israel would be denied weapons and suffer economic and technology sanctions. That’s the dream. The vector for success in the West is the “decolonisation” crowd, because they have such a strong influence over Western governance, including the UN and the US Democratic party. You seemed to think I was suggesting some kind of pro-Israel activism, like maybe if we all write letters to the UN Director General or something. No. What I and perhaps Phil Re is suggesting, is to stop politely listening to Hamas drivel being repeated on campuses, in pro-Hamas street demonstrations, and — a problem for us who actually belong to professional-managerial or academic families — at the dinner table. Pro-Hamas activists don’t give a second thought to stridently ear-bashing everyone in range. And maybe we shouldn’t either — evil when good men stay silent, etc. As in so many things woke, we need to take a lead from gender critical women, the bravest people in our society. Wrest control back from the woke emotionalists and virtue seekers, so that simplistic dogmas of “decolonisation” don’t remain as the default for policy setting in international governance and foreign affairs bureaucracies, either in the UN or in national governments. That’s the cultural change in the West needed to foil Hamas’s vision of manipulating the West with their “dead bodies” propaganda.

Sorry for the long reply.

No need to apologise, it’s good to see your reasoning and i agree with a lot of your points.

I’m sure you know how hard it can be to push back against the prevailing narrative, especially when it attacks you ethically and refuses to listen. The aspect of this article that made feel so sad was the way he feels everyone is attacking him and his community, when they aren’t. But I can see why he thinks like that, those attacks are very visible.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but i can’t help thinking the way to deal with those tunnels is to treat them in the same way an opponent in a medieval castle would be treated – let them sit in them whilst you protect as best you can against their excursions. Eventually they will have to give up.

It’s very difficult for Israel to take the blows without retaliating, I realise that. Especially a blow as horrendous as Oct 7. But, putting aside the misery and death the Palestinians are suffering, Israel’s retaliation is like food for Hamas and the critical international community. And what Israel is currently doing is like providing a 10 course feast, day after day, seemingly without an achievable objective. I think you know this, but it seems Netanyahu doesn’t.

Thanks for the balanced reply. The original article, and so many commentators including ourselves, realise there’s no straightforward cost-free solution, and the situation is extremely dangerous.

Although Hamas deliberately meant to perpetrated atrocities so egregious that Israel would react, the first act in a particularly evil plot also involving the planned sacrifice of thousands of Palestinians, all for the glory of Allah, I can’t see what other realistic option Israel had. The problem really comes down to the Jewish psyche, formed from centuries of persecution. Yes, they could have turned the other cheek. Would the world have sympathy for them had they done that? Clearly, in the days after the attack but before the full Israeli response, we saw the answer: no, the elites were jubilant that Israel had been attacked — “oh please, more, more”, they yelled. Jews have learned they ultimately can only rely on themselves, and they’ve had enough of ogres set on wiping them out. Psyche is an important consideration when retrospectively looking at Israel’s military response.

The international community is Hamas’s lifeline. It calculated from the outset that international pressure would force Israel to lose yet again.

It was Obama who strong-armed Israel to keep Hamas in power in 2014, when its rule was faltering, because he was pursuing his realignment with Iran.

If Israel hangs tough and crushes Hamas’s remaining forces in Rafah, so that it’s no longer an organized fighting force, that will undercut Hamas’s support networks in the West.

I’ve replied, UnHerd have held it back. Look out for it in a few hours I suppose.

Also duplicate.

Well I fully agree with you that Hamas must be destroyed as an organised fighting force. The problem is that the ideas that drive Hamas will not be so easily destroyed. The other thing is that in order to really destroy Hamas you need to replace them with something that will actually nurture Palestinian people and give them hope because right now they really don’t have any I’m not sure that the Netanyahu government has the capacity to fill the gap It’s not so easy to destroy fundamentalist militants. Egypt is still fighting the Muslim brotherhood and Egypt will have done many atrocities. We hear about the ones against tourists, but they have done many atrocities against Christians. And of course other Muslims Egypt is totalitarian military state and even they haven’t managed to root out The brotherhood .

What the world needs is a really healthy dose of secularism. I have friends who were born and raised in Israel in secular communities that paid homage to Judaism’s religious history, but didn’t hold any candle for God-given right because of course, everybody thinks that their personal God has given them the right, and this creates all kinds of crap from crusades to what’s going on in Gaza right now. a nice healthy dose of secularism wd do the trick and an Israeli government that wasn’t dependent on extreme right wing Religious parties would be wonderful.

The success of the Hamas incursion was due to over-reliance on the high tech wall and failure to adequately defend the area attacked . So destroying Hamas is not truly an existential issue as claimed because the inconvenient but necessary deployment of soldiers to prevent such an attack was always possible and still is .

Fair point actually.

I respectfully disagree. Here’s why. If Hamas survives, it will claim a grand victory, and that claim of victory will be a huge boon to its international support networks. Those support networks will ensure that Hamas receives ample funding to begin rebuilding its infrastructure and launching fresh rocket attacks until the next major round of fighting, secure in the knowledge that the international community will once again ensure Hamas’s survival. Israel won’t make the mistake of giving Gazans work permits again, so it will be pilloried and delegitimized for the unbearable conditions in Gaza, and the next inevitable eruption of violence will be treated as resistance to that unbearable oppression. Israelis near Gaza will have to live under the shadow of Hamas’s attempt to launch another genocidal attack—in addition to living under the rocket fire—and they will have to wonder what surprise Hamas and Iran might be planning next time and when it might come. I personally don’t see how a country could function under those conditions, and if enough Israelis no longer believe they have a future in their country, Hamas will have won.

Very much a crucial point. Yes.

So you think the IDF should kill another 25k civilians ( which still wouldn’t defeat Hamas ) on the off chance of people on the Israeli side of the border getting a better night’s sleep

That aside, the main failure was the refusal to believe the women reservists manning that Hi Tech line – they repeatedly reported that Hamas was up to something.

Bibi supported and financed Hamas as an antidote against the PLO. As stupid as the US supporting the Taliban against the Russians.

The US/NATO is now supporting Nazis against the Russians. I’ve come to the conclusion the UK should travel the opposite path to Sweden. We should leave NATO, become neutral and take advantage of the historic links we forged with Empire and Trade. And no we aren’t as hated across the globe as the Wokeratii and our MSM claim. Even the French smiled and laughed with us as we headed East. ONCE we spoke to them in French. And that only last month.

Ah yes, Zelensky – leader of the Ukrainian Nazi Party…

A beautifully-written article that conveys a depth of emotion and thought that cannot be measured by a finite number of words.

Thank you, Mr Jacobson and Unherd.

Agreed – an agonisingly magnificent essay. Thank you indeed, Mr. Jacobson. I wish people in Israel and the diaspora well, yet I’m fearful that the sleep of reason (in the west) is bringing forth monsters.

Agreed. Maybe the only good thing about this past six months has been the astonishingly high quality of the many comments in the press – certainly the British press, I don’t read much foreign press – written by Jewish journalists. I’ve been missing Howard Jacobson’s more regular press columns for some years now, and it is truly sad to be catching up with him in these circumstances. Even the pop culture commentariat – people like Giles Coren in The Times – have been oustandingly thoughtful and it has been heartbreaking to see the bone-headed viciousness of Hamas supporters presented as if Hamas are the French resistance taking on the Nazis.

Sorry, I found it a difficult article to read, the language over flowery obscuring the authors intent. I found myself rereading paragraphs to understand if he was pro or anti any particular position.

What does one even do with this? I feel that something terrible is about to happen, but cannot act to stop or slow it. I have never been one for prayer, but I feel compelled to pray for the people of Israel.

Like what? Iran attacking? Israel has nukes.

While you’re at it why not pray for all humanity? It might make you feel better but it’s quite useless.

Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!

I’m getting a distinct 60’s vibe – are you a child of that era ? Were you ‘letting it all hang out? I think we should be told.

I hope Cannibals are included? I have long noticed that women are the most persistent pityers of serial rapists.

Not this one.

Not this one either!

Perhaps you believe the young girls of Telford, Rochdale and Rotheram are to blame for wanting to be loved?

Can you prove that it is useless?

Because there is a large part of Humanity that do not deserve prayer, except, perhaps, for their demise.

Support for Israel runs far deeper than the writer imagines. The march against antisemitism back in November gave an indication of this. Many have a far better grasp of the historical and current realities facing the Jewish people than the idiots currently infesting our universities, HR departments etc.

If anything, the antics of the river-to-the-sea brigade are forcing many to reconsider the point of having such a large and hostile minority here at all.

Opinion polls which show a large and growing majority of people who are opposed to what Israel is doing to Gaza contradict your claim

They also showed that we’d never vote to leave the EU. Many of us plebs lie to the opinion polls because it means the idiots who believe us are then stunned when we do the opposite. 😉

Most of The West supports Israels right to exist. Politicians need to placate Islamists who are known to get stabby when challenged. So they let the rabble protest. As The West moves to the far right these Islamists will be dealt with.

Israel’s right to exist as what?

As it is. The only country where Arabs enjoy full rights as citizens, even to the extent that one of them can send a PM to jail.

As a state.

Not as an Apartheid religious ethno-state?

Compared to who? Iran?

Your own “apartheid” is on full and ugly display.

Instead of promoting empty slogans use your time to study the reality of this conflict, unless you are biased.

He’s not biased, he’s a conspiracy theorist.

On your question of an ‘apartheid religious ethno-state?’, a few minutes of a session of the UN Human Rights Council, 20 March 2017 gives you an answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35eEljsSQfc

As does the silence that follows.

Whatever it chooses?

It’s true that politicians are venal enough to want to placate the Islamists, but I think the point raised earlier about this sort of uniform progressive enculturation of the universities is actually an issue

as a former university lecturer. I came up against these “truths” which include anti-Israeli position, vehement pro trans position, and disdain of Catholics, capitalism and straight white men . As a (cultural) Catholic, anti-Islamist, pragmatist, and frequent consort of straight white men (at the very least my dad and brother) I felt quite in the wilderness and silenced.

It will only be an issue until they face the ‘wrath of Islam’. The peace supporters in the border concert didn’t find Hamas particularly welcoming. There was also marvellous example of what Islam is in the UK, in an X video of a young Islamic preacher haranguing his male followers for protesting with women. Apparently they should have their segregated protests. Islam is at war in virtually every area of the globe. So far in the West, it is only intermittent, BUT it won’t remain so IF Israel ever ceases to exist. It wasn’t the IDF filling the Manchester Arena.

That’s a really sad read. You can feel the consequences on his mind from his sense of long-standing persecution, the offence caused by celebrations of Jewish deaths, and the apparent hopelessness he sees in the situation.

He should take heart, the West is ruled by morons, the majority of us ‘abused and maligned’ natives are more for Israel than he thinks. Possibly because we’ve experienced Islam on our streets, and I don’t mean the streets of London. Go North, Midlands etc.

A beautifully written, heartfelt essay. Thank you. Like you, I am fearful that we are all (including presidents, prime ministers and generals) being swept away by the unstoppable wave of history. As for your observation that the most apparently educated are the ones most gleefully surfing the wave, that too has always been the way. There is nothing more dangerous than a resentful person who has been taught to believe that they are smarter than everyone else.

Indeed. Look at the French Revolution.

Like the Woke, it too ate its own children.

Howard Jacobson at his best. A brilliant, thoughtful and reasoned article. But, I fear for what is next.

All decent people do.

I read yesterday that 70% of Palestinians support Hamas. Now, more than ever, Israel needs our support. Netanyahu may not be the ideal choice of leader, but the refusal of Palestinians to accept any of the various peace deals offered over the years has led to the election of his hard line government. If Israel was to lose this war due to existing allies refusing to sell arms to it, it would be a green light for antisemites all over the world to engage in persecution of Jews in their own countries, in the full knowledge that Jews would have nowhere else to go. Various governments are calling for a ceasefire so that Israeli hostages can be released, but what evidence has been provided that they are all still alive? None that I’m aware of. How and why is it that Israel is held to higher standards in time of war than any other country? I cannot find any logical reason for it, nor will the pro Palestinian supporters I have tried to discuss it with come up with any answers. They claim to be anti-Zionist not antisemitic but I’m no longer sure this is true.

it’s never been true.

99.9% of the Creggan and Bogside supported the IRA but we didn’t allow the RAF to bomb it flat, or indeed permit any form of artillery to be used.

Oh dear, you have just provided a great example of the fallacy called ‘ false equivalence ‘: look it up.

That’s because it wasn’t a war. Only the IRA claimed it was. IF it was, odd then that they didn’t travel to their bomb targets in uniform? 😉 I always wondered why the IRA whinged at the shooting of their plain clothes troops I thought plain clothes meant spies, and they could be shot.

Martin McGuiness said Roy Mason was three weeks away from destroying the PIRA. To quote Mason ” The gloves come off”.

Yet thanks to the Blair beast we threw it all away.

I fear for the future of Israel. Our Foreign Secretary, Dave, is no friend of Israel, and our politicians are weak and shortsighted. Biden is a particularly piece of work and a friend of no one. If the West fails to support Israel we shall follow them into oblivion, and it will serve us right.

Dave is no friend of the UK. BUT he’s not going to be in any position of power come the next GE. Mind you, I’d urge everyone to vote Reform. Brexiteers alone could send Reform into Westminster with over 400 seats IF they all voted Reform. That based on the Brexit votes by constituency as published by the BBC – 410 constituencies had a Brexit majority. Some small, but a majority nonetheless. Whereas the fewer Remain constituencies had large remain majorities. Now are Reform any good? Who cares? They aren’t Tory or Labour AND both of those are set to destroy the UK economy with Net Zero insanity. So even if Reform were as useless as the Tories, 5 years on we would (assuming Reform defeated both Tory and Labour) have parties more accurately reflecting the voters. I can’t see either Labour or Tory surviving a GE defeat this time around. Then again, what a surprise it would be if we actually got a decent Government after all those decades with morons in charge?

Have courage. Israel is on the front line of Islam’s war on the non-Muslim world, and must not lose. Islam is digging ‘tunnels’ below the fabric of democracy; the fiction of ‘Islamophobia’, that Muslims are a ‘race’, Scotland’s Hate Crime Bill, a back door blasphemy law, all intended to disarm any examination or criticism of what Islam really is and intends to achieve. Its propaganda organs relentlessly playing the victim card, while smokescreening, dissembling, misdirecting, and lying to cover the activities of the ideologues and apologists. Islam knows that it faces an existential battle of its own. Exposed to the hard glare of reality, its claims of being the perfect, unalterable, and final word of a one-and-only god are immediately exposed as being false. Its answer is to control reality, and suppress any exposure to it. We can’t let that happen.

Many good and true things in this essay. And many gaps. I’m speaking for the position of somebody who doesn’t have a horse in this race. I’m neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim nor am I a believer in anybody’s got given right to any part of the earths territory. But I’m a pragmatist, and I find that the most horrible part of this whole saga is the idealism. Zionism is an ideal and a very great and noble one. Unfortunately, it was executed in the aftermath of a particularly bloody war when the already colonised Palestinians (colonised by the Ottoman, Empire, of course), were recolonised by Britain, which they didn’t want, and in their mind, although not in the mind of those arriving, they were re colonised yet again by a group of Europeans. . To the Palestinians watching other countries getting independence. This was a bitter blow. it is no wonder that the idealism of Israel met a bitter anti colonialism of Palestine and sadly- both sides reluctant to see each other’s point of view- meant that this horror has been going on long before I was born, and I hate to imagine that will be going on longer after I die, but I am I suppose it probably will

The second idealism is the worst, one of course, which is an upsurge of religious fundamentalism among Muslims worldwide, and in a certain subset of Jews, who formed the religious settler movement. What is particularly interesting is the west tolerates Islamic fundamentalism – even encourages it through DEI and other things while looking at askance at the religious settler movement, although it comes from the same rooot

Really some massive imbalance, because this fundamentalism has afflicted Islamic countries all across the world . when I accidentally, and in a state of absolute terror, stumbled across the Palestine March last Saturday in central, London, noticed how the most vehement appeared to have roots nowhere whatsoever in the Levant, but appeared to be south Asians, namely Pakistani Masked up in Keffiyah and calling for the destruction of Israel. why on earth with somebody from Pakistan give a toss about Israel you might ask well it’s not about the shared religion it’s about a shared fundamentalism

The fundamentalist religious are the actual enemies of Israeli and British and Palestinians and Egyptians (Egyptians, know this very well by the way) and everybody else on the planet. They are a breed apart. They are idealists with no humanity whatsoever

when Israel formed in 1948 it was, a nation who gained sympathy through guilt, but to my mind. It doesn’t really matter how Israel started

speaking to Egyptian friends (sensible ones, and by the way there are many Egyptians, who feel this way) they say “it’s pragmatic. Israel is a country it has many generations born and live there. It doesn’t matter that some Israeli claim they are entitled to it because 2000 years ago they live there , the point is that Israel is here now, and we have to respect that .” This is why Egypt has held the peace with Israel, but even they are worried that they will be forced to admit the Gazans into Egypt, for the same reason that Israel is afraid of the Gazans, because iGaza is a hot bed of Muslim brotherhood activity. This is the problem: it is the fundamentalism that frightens governments in Jerusalem and in Cairo.

It should frighten governments in London and Washington and everywhere else too, but somehow we “tolerate” it.

If you have a dictionary handy look up the meaning of colonisation, and then apply that to the British Mandate in Palestine.

It may come as a surprise to you but we (British) held that Mandate in trust for the League of Nations. Palestine was NOT, and never was a British Colony.

Your ignorance on this matter rather makes me discount much of what you say.

Except that the British administrators did not spring spontaneously from the ground, they were the product of a culture long steeped in imperialism and colonialism. It was all they knew, for the most part.

Other than the many errors regarding Britiain’s role. Other errors include no mention of the “Palestinian’ lands are now know by names such as Jordan, Syria. The original borders for the Jewish State were reduced time and time again by the League of Nations so that the Israel of now is a rump of what was proposed.

Or how, curiously the ‘West Bank’ Palestinians were thrown out of ‘Palestine’ aka Jordan and Lebanon by force – and certainly in the case of Jordan, it wasn’t Israeli force. Why doesn’t Egypt let the Palestinian innocent civilians move out into Sinai and leave Hamas to do what they claim to want – die fighting Israel? Perhaps the EU should have sent contractors not cash to Gaza and built the facilties that the money was intended for. Though I suspect now they’d struggle fit trains into the Hamas Underground.

What is so special about Palestinians? Kurds don’t have their own state. What about independence for Tibet? Do you recall demonstrations against Rwanda genocide? Or Christians being killed in Sudan and Nigeria? East Timor? The only common link between people supporting Palestinians but ignoring much greater crimes against other groups is antisemitism.

Fabulous fine article Mr Jacobson. And not only ‘you Jews’ You are NOT alone. But the prevalence of ignorance, sheer sadism and antisemitism in this country is truly shocking.

A thoughtful, and affecting piece that movingly articulates the terrible stalemate that mires Gaza. We all know there will be no solution even when the war ends.

As the noble Roman Publius Cornelius TACITUS put it so beautifully “make a desert and call it peace “.

It worked for Rome.

As someone else mentioned on this thread, Israel is a nuclear power, possessing an estimated 75-400 warheads. Think about that…only 9 countries in the world possess nuclear weapons, and Israel is one of them. Their arsenal, dispersed on land and sea, is unstoppable if unleashed, and all of its enemies in the Middle East know this…which is why military powerhouse Iran isn’t flying sorties using its own bombers into Israeli airspace. As a last resort, as a deterrent against annihilation by its enemies, Israel will deploy what they’ve termed “The Samson Option”, which is the massive unleashing of nuclear weapons against any country that invades it, and is threatening its very existence. Imagine a contemporary world trying to survive without any access to Middle Eastern oil & gas…because that would be the legacy offered up by Israel while in its death throes. Even if you’re a hardcore antisemite and/or anti-Zionist, pray that Israel destroys Hamas and brings peace to Gaza, even if it means that too many Palestinian civilian lives are lost. Gaza can be quickly rebuilt with assistance…just like the post-WWII reconstruction of Europe, England and Japan.

No doubt some of those ‘Operation SAMSON’ nukes would be targeted on various European cities?

Only God and Israel knows. It’s not something the world would ever want the answer to. So, respect Israel as a sovereign nation and don’t challenge their right to exist. The consequences of an attempt to exterminate the Jewish homeland would be unimaginable.

But you know the Arabs will never give up.

Didn’t Ben Gurion say “never expect THEM to give up, WE wouldn’t “.

POSTED AT 11.13 GMT and immediately SIN BINNED.

Vera’s comments are those of a clown. Bright red nose and oversized shoes not required.

“The Japanese are fanatical, suicidal, will bravely fight to the last man and will never ever give up” ….. but they did.

Only after two A bombs Two, not one!

In which case you better start worrying, because they tried taking Europe a few hundred years back and Don Jon and the Hapsburgs aren’t around to save us this time. Though Hungary does seem to upset the EU by not keeping in step , so maybe they’ll be there when it matters after all?

In other words, you should cower before the terrorist who threatens you with with his suicide vest. Yeah, right. Israel gets a pass because the US gives it cover. The US gives Israel cover because Zionists are very influential in US foreign policy. Zionists are influential because a large number of the world’s Jews live in the US and many (not all) are Zionist. Also, there are many Christian Zionists in the US — more in fact than Jewish Zionists. But that can change. And when it does, Israel will suffer the consequences of its terrorism. Just as the US will suffer consequences when its empire fails. Zionists may pull Israel down onto their own heads, but the rest of the world is not going with it.

A “pass” is what the people who’ve pushed October 7 down the memory hole want and are getting. Attacks provoke responses. Hamas knows this even its fan boys don’t.

We in the UK know this phenomenon as ‘Kosher Nostra’ for short.

Alan Duncan getting flak for stating the bleedin’ obvious re. the CFI

But don’t you know that it’s anti-semitic to state that Jews exert influence on Governments to gain favour for Israel?

Ok, and if you’ve been following these UnHerd articles, you’d see I’m a vocal supporter of Israel, but I don’t think that this is what the enemy is thinking of doing (waves of bomber aircraft, full ground invasion, ballistic missile attacks). What they’re up to is “death by stoning” or “death by a thousand cuts”. It’s to surround Israel as far as possible, and use proxy militias to fire many relatively small rockets and use small arms to constantly kill and maim small numbers of Israelis over years and decades. One example of its efficacy is the evacuation of northern Israel because of Hezbollah attacks. They’re relying on asymmetric tactics — terrorism — to generate fear and chaos, not full army state-on-state war like in Ukraine. There’s never enough in it to go nuclear. There’s a lot more to discuss about the strategy the Islamists have developed, and what Israel’s best global and regional responses might be. But I’ll end here.

Look back in history, in 1948 the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia invaded newly formed Israel, and they were repelled, without the help of the United States. In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel…and lost. In 1973 Egypt and Syria again launched attacks on the IDF in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, in another losing effort. This new version of war, using proxies being funded by Israel’s enemies, is just another form of Arab assault against the Jewish homeland. I wouldn’t bet on Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, or any other well funded Islamic terrorist group capturing the territory ” from the river to the sea”. Look at a map…Israel is already surrounded by its enemies, and has been since 1948.

Support Iranian opposition groups – the Ayatollah’s aren’t exactly popular.

Paired with the soft tactics of Kitman, Murana, Taqiyya and Tawriya to infiltrate the west & spread the rabid antisemitism we already fought once on the continent of Europe. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Minus Najmi, Yasmine Mohammed & others are revelatory about this.

Nah, the Iranian Suitcase ones already have their Railway Storage lockers booked.

If it’s the end for Israel, it is the end for the West also….and certainly for Europe. This is a clash of civilizations

Which is why it must not be the end for Israel. They are fighting our war against Islam.

I pray for Israel. It’s not just a fight for the survival of Israel. It’s a fight for the soul of Western civilization in the US and Europe as well. Our culture was built on Judeo-Christian ethics. We have lost sight of that at our own peril, bowing to secularism and moral relativism. Make no mistake. Given the chance, other faiths will gladly impose theocracy on us. As a woman, I refuse to let that happen.

Christopher Hitchens predicted all of this. Somewhere on the web is a video where he also points out that it will be the leaders of other, Christian, faiths who will introduce Islam into our midst under the guise of peace/multi-culturalism and once it is here Islam will destroy us. It’s well on its way. The day Iran gets a second bomb, is the day the Ayatollahs (assuming their people haven’t managed to throw off that yoke) start planning which Western City gets it in a suitcase, c/o of some Jihadist they can claim was ‘nothing to do with us Guv’. For all the talk about MAD – the Maddest aspect is that the Islamists actually WANT to die to meet their God. MAD won’t stop them using a nuke IF they think it will further their cause. So perhaps London or Washington are at the top of the list rather than Tel Aviv?

The myth of the Judeo-Christian hegemony. Christian ethics spawned the expulsion of the Jews from Iberia, the pogroms and the Holocaust. There is nothing about Judaism that is relevant to the free Christian West, other than the fact that Jesus Christ and the early apostles were Jews; and even they wanted out. Judaism is closer to Islam than to Christianity, ethnically, theologically and culturally

The main problem the Jews,and Israelis, have is that antisemitism never died. According to a German study of 2012, the areas of Germany in which Jews were burned during the Black Death period (15th century) were more inclined to vote for the Nazis in the 20th century, 600 years later. Do we realize what this means ? Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are exploiting this in their deceitful propaganda. I understand the disappointment of Mr Jacobson in this excellent writing, but the Israelis have a reisilience he cannot imagine. For Jews these are very trying times but compared to many centuries of disasters, today they can fight. And that is a lot, to say the least.

I am reading the comments. Mr. Jacobson, I linked another of your recent essays on my FB page. I don’t have thousands of “friends” but among my friends are Jews. Not one “like.” The Jews including my brother don’t respond. My “secular gentile Zionist” friend is one of the few people who routinely posts about Israel. I am left feeling that the atrocities of Oct. 7th get perhaps a head wag. The war being conducted some more tsking about Israel’s “revenge.” The convoy of aid workers…well Mr. Andres isn’t waiting for investigation…he knows that this was deliberate. And I would wager that others… Jew and non Jews are also not waiting. As they didn’t wait for the false hospital bombing report. The British writers…Jews and non Jews who are well disposed to Israel have been the most eloquent. A tiny population of barely over a quarter of a million Jews. And Jonathan Glazer. And Miriam Margolies. Here we have the voice of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible …or so he imagines…Senator Schumer. I volunteered on a kibbutz barely a mile from Gaza directly after the Yom Kippur War. Sacred Yom Kippur. I note that the WCK site makes much of “Sacred Ramadan.” I’m a senior now. Even now some of my age are volunteering. My heart is with them. I visited Israel in 2022 and had a reunion with my now 80 something Ulpan teacher. And stayed at a kibbutz a few more safe miles from Gaza….but Israel is tiny. My heart is with this nation. I pray that a few people who are waving Palestine flags and chanting “river to sea” would read this….I doubt it. I pray for Israel into the latter half of the 21st Century and beyond. Thank you Mr. Jacobson for your eloquence. And Mr. Bernard Henri Levi. Mr. Brendan O’Brien. Mr. Douglas Murray. Ms M. Phillips Ms B. Weiss. You help give me courage.

RE: Brendan O’Brien. That would be Brendan O’Neill, who has been fierce and eloquent in his defence of Israel. James O’Brien, on the other hand, is an Israel-hater first class who never gives it the benefit of the doubt.

Imagining living in a country that a substantial part of the world wants to eradicate. We have no such concern in the west. Israelis live with that reality daily.

Clearly you don’t live in many a Northern/Midlands English City.

Eradication of the cult is the only thing left. This will take a strength of mind only Jews possess . The west , as so accurately described in the article, has not the strength of purpose, until it is attacked. This ‘thing’ we all seek has to come, if it does not, the ‘west ‘ is , as a Liberal entity , finished. Dark clouds are gathering, our only saviour is the cults failure to see and act on facts, as opposed to religious written doctrine. Once their fighting mechanisms are dismantled, the ideological claptrap will follow. These people have to be subjugated forcefully, as they would you. That much is self evident…..

The great error is in the violent massacring of innocent Palestinians and the violent massacring of innocent Israelis have sown new and generational seeds of hatred for years to come.Peace cannot be achieved against such a mindset

Yes. For Hamas leaders as the Gaza body count rises ever higher, this becomes a bigger and bigger ‘victory’ as support for Israel plummets, rightly or wrongly. It feels ore and more that they fell for a classic provocation, a particularly horrific one, but where they must have known the reaction from Israel and knew that for them in the long term that would be a win.

I wouldn’t believe Hamas any more than I believe our political leaders.

Hamas kindergartens taught hatred of Jews in the cradle according to an Hamas women/mother shown on video on X. She went on to explain that young girls were so desirous of meeting their maker that they would sacrifice their blood and bones via suicide bombs to do so. Quite an eye-opener. A bit like the videos showing Gaza women and children cheering and photographing the defiled, semi-naked body of the young Israeli girl butchered at the festival on the 7th October. The IDF are unlikely to be anywhere near as effective as those Hamas kindergarten mothers at inspiring hatred. What is it with Islam that it hates Women and young girls? Manchester Arena was no suburb of Tel Aviv.

Yes, lots of negatives for Israel from the war, but here are a few positives: 1. The IDF now controls about 80% of Gaza and missiles shot at Israel from Gaza are reduced significantly. The remaining Rafah area in the south is isolated. Even if IDF just surrounds Rafah and puts off going in for a few months, this is progress. 2. Hezbolah in the North has so far been deterred from major attack. 3. The political center in Israel, and maybe even the center left, now understand more clearly that no matter what autonomy arrangements are made with the Palestinians on the West Bank, the IDF cannot leave the area. One of the attractions of Likud Party over the years is they understood IDF can’t and shouldn’t leave WB, so many of their voters put up with Likud’s ultra- religious and other right wing coalition partners. Now Centrist political leaders are all against IDF leaving WB, so they are likely to win next election as many Likud voters will move to the Center. 4. The pro-Hamas mobs in the west have re- focused Western nations on the threat of having Radical Islamists and their supporters living in their country. Which hopefully will produce political backlash. .

All understandable sentiments. But all I can say is STAY THE COURSE. Stay strong. Stand with Israel. There is a time to understand the enemy and. A time to defeat it. This is the time for the latter. Israel’s biggest mistake was thinking it was a normal country like the US or Britain rather than a tiny country under never ending siege and not allowed to end the threats to it by the rest of the world. If the end of all this is the 10/6 status quo Israel will be finished.

Forgive me for tagging this comment on to yours, I am not able to comment other than in a reply. A beautiful and moving essay. My support for Israel is not about to evaporate, it is steady and will remain so. My main worry since the beginning of the war has been that the pathological compassion that so afflicts the West at present might make Israel too cautious to win. Wars are always terrible and innocents always suffer but sometimes war is necessary, and this is one of those times. What matters is to win and win as quickly as possible, I hope Israel can do that.

A beautiful, heartbreaking and profound essay. It’s consoling somehow to share the doubts, fears and suffering of this inspired mind. Still, it’s hard to face up to the fact that it’s gentiles like me who’ve put the Jews, once again, in a terrible, seemingly impossible trap, to witness our cacophony and poison penetrating ever deeper.

The same people who are protesting about the Jews and Israel, protest at their own countrymen. The West in general, and the UK in particular (the particularly introduced because it is my main concern, because I live here) is heading for a cataclysm caused by religion. Ironically the most immediate and the one most likely to destroy the UK, via destroying its Grid and so its economy and hence the ability to feed the millions of us who live here thanks to Industry and Fossil/Nuclear energy, is the Green Cult and Net Zero.

BUT even IF we abandon that but continue with our Tory/Labour Uniparty Governments then it will be Islam.

Islam isn’t simply waiting in the wings, it is actively working to undermine/ sideline our society with a view to taking it over. Ironically, it is in the Prisons where it has its first major success IF the article I read last week is to be believed.

Eh at least the Jews here have a bolt hole in Israel . Gentiles like you have made the self – endangering mistake of allowing liberal progressives , very much including Jewish liberal progressives , to open the country up to Muslim settlement on s massive scale , Spare a thought for your own children and grandchildren .

The time bomb for Israel is not what’s happening in Gaza, even if the military strategy is clearly not working anymore. Bombing Gaza into dust has not destroyed Hamas. As the Americans learnt in Vietnam mistaking the Viet Cong as not integral to the Vietnamese. The problem for Israel’s future is the colonialisation of the West Bank by state backed settlers -against the opinion and votes of all nations of the world, including the USA and UK. Israel has suceeded having a relatively accepting Arab minority of citizens, but the continued assault on West Bank Arabs, usually by American born settlers is a time bomb set to go off, whose consequences will be worse than that of the assault on Hamas in Gaza, which as even Jacobsen admits has tried the patience of even Israels stauncest supporters. Israel can not exist under attack from all sides. It has to make compromises just as the Palestinians must. Most civil wars end this way.

Islam does NOT make compromises, a bit like Western Politicians, they just pretend they do. The big difference being that most Westerners aren’t impressed by such behaviour and it will backfire. Islam, on the other hand states that such behaviour is necessary to further their cause. At least I was informed that was the case by what was in my experience a reputable source. Perhaps someone may know differently and correct me?

On the contrary, the explosion of civic engagement in Israel after Oct 7 epitomized by the 130% response to the military call up (people not called up showing up in uniform demanding to be drafted) shows Israel is stronger than most other Western societies.

The scenes of Gaza are nothing compared to the scenes of Hamburg in 1943 but are widespread in the Arab world. Thus a senior Hezbollah official Wafiq Safa in the UAE offering to create a demilitarized zone in Lebanon:

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/voices-from-the-arab-press-lebanon-immediate-ceasefire-or-inevitable-disaster-795350

It means Israel has, at long last, graduated into the ranks of powers that focus on their national interest, avoid hand-wrigging and will impress upon their neighbors their determination to defend themselves. The fixation with Netanyahu is parallel to the claims of anti-Semites that they are “only” against Israel, not Jews. Whatever his many failings, most of Israel agrees with Netanyahu that the war must end with the destruction of Hamas and a completely sealed border with Israel. Gaza can get its imports, exports, medical help, etc from Egypt or get none at all.

I would suggest the country who has benefited most is Iran. Iran has persuaded Hamas, an nominally Sunni group to attack Israel. Hamas will be severely damaged militarily, Israel will have it’s reputation damaged and not a single Iranian RG person hurt for the expenditure of a $100Ms given to them by Biden. No wonder the Persian invented chess.

Thank you for this soul-searching lament. Sincere; passionate, fittingly so. I was particularly struck by the characterization of Netanyahu as a “lumbering, unsubtle child of unrelenting war, a man hardened in suspicion and fear who does not know the difference between justice and revenge”. I also see substantial truth in Steve Carr’s comment: “The Palestinian people are the only people who can destroy Hamas”. They certainly need to take a primary role and mount a more determined opposition to their largely self-appointed rulers. *To the Clickbait Headline Team: Please dial it back a notch or two.

I agree Howard’s article speaks powerfully with authority and authenticity, so much so his voice needs wider prominence; thank you UnHerd. In fact he said much the same thing months ago on BBC Newsnight … of course it fell on deaf ears; what is the point of broadcasting this prescient message on the Holy Cow that is the current BBC.

The Jews are intelligent and resourceful people. The Palestinians illiterate subsistance farmers labouring under a cruel and unchanging law. There was only ever going to be one winner. The Palestinians like peasants everywhere are unshakeably attached to their land and also never forget and never forgive. Anyone who has seen the Duellists knows this will never end.

The Palestinians will end up like the Native Americans…….in a Reservation. (If they’re lucky.)

I doubt it and you might want to check your hate.

They’re half way there already, or hadn’t you noticed?

“check your hate”.

Is that an Americanism? And if so do you have the misfortune to be one?

The town dwelling arabs of the area have alienated supporters in neighbouring countries since when they murdered King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951. Hamas being founded by the Mslim Bretheren and then taking money and weapons from Iran, whose former leader Khomeini threatend all Sunni Nations, has only alienated them further. Arab nations have provided minimal support to the people of Gaza and Hamas. Arafat supporting S Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 caused Palestinians to be expelled from GCC countries and greatly reduced funds from these countries. Even the Saudis stopped funding the PLO due to corruption. The greatest threat to Israel would be a flourishing corrupt free competent Palestinian administration. There are many very skilled Palestinians but they appear to have no influence on administration. Consolidated Contractors Company – Wikipedia

Nah, they’ll end up in Europe, and we’ll be in reservations, or long gone IF we are lucky.

Possibly the most racist comment I have ever read on Unherd – and that is saying something!

Strange how people like you dismiss as racist, comments that have some truth in them. Perhaps you can answer the following questions, but I’m not holding my breath…. Why have Gazan people remained impoverished despite all the aid that has been sent to them over the years? Why – after all the battles against Israel over the years which they have lost – have the Palestinians not seen sense and accepted one of the peace deals offered? Why do they allow Hamas to run riot in their name and allow their civilians to be used as human shields against Israeli attacks? One has to question the intelligence of people who submit to the above conditions.

All they know and teach is hate. They are like children.

Yes. They have allowed themselves to become infantilised by the Islamists. And nothing is more dangerous than an adult with the mind and emotions of a child.

As we in the West know, they are now churned out by the hundreds maybe thousands by our education system. Still, it only takes one shock to the system to let reality in.

But is he right?

Culture matters. Gazans have a medieval mindset. Like much of the Islamic world. Israel has a modern mindset and their advanced economy is the evidence.

That is offensive and untrue. Palestinians are as diverse as anyone else in their abilities and culture. I fully disagree with Hamas etc but I would never describe Palestinians thus. For shame. It’s also ridiculous. What do you know about “peasants everywhere?!”

“The Palestinians are as diverse as anyone else in their abilities and culture.”

Really? The historical record does NOT support such a preposterous notion.

Who won in Algeria?

It is said that people with 30+ IQ point differences cant communicate with each other. Seems about right.

Probably by those who think they know best and get frustrated when the plebs disagree.

So you agree it’s “their land’ they’re unshakeably attached to?

Howard, as Jews we can bend down and take it like victims or we can tell our enemies to come at us at their own damn risk. I know which path I choose.

I don’t understand this requirement of Israel to win the PR game.

It’s war. The aim is to destroy the opponents of Hamas and Hezbollah.

My recommendation would be to ignore Western moral preening. Their decadence will be their undoing. Oct 7th proved to Israelis that freedom lies in the capability and willingness to fight against those who wish to destroy you. Everything else is for the birds.

The problem is that western countries supply the weapons for this war you evidently love fighting so much from your arm chair, and if western publics force their governments to stop arming Israel then it will all be over pretty quickly

“Those we imagined would be our allies — the informed, the progressive, the liberal — were not progressive when it came to us.” As I recall in the people you wrote about you did not make that mistake when you wrote your book on Australia. ‘There’s none so blind as those who will not see.’

The Muslim diaspora has been allowed unfettered immigration into every country in the West, so that the Governments of those countries allow themselves to be swayed by the number of voters who may punish them for supporting the Jewish state. The home countries of Islam are vast, numerous and monotheocratic and yet one tiny piece of land belonging to ‘others’ is enough to set all their insecurities gangling and must not be allowed to exist. As a Christian I too have skin in the Israeli game and am sick of the useful idiots in my own society selling us out to the Islamic hysteria. The civilised countries of the World must stand up for Jews and Israel, if we fail them Muslims will see that as another capitulation and a further inch taken on their quest of world domination. All those trend lead lefties will be sorry if Islam achieves the huge influence it wants, they will be some of the first infidels hanging from lampposts.

Humans are tribalists. “My tribe first”. There’s no way out of this, it’s just a fact of life. Attempts at rising above it – like the ‘world’ religions, or communism – just result in super-tribalism followed by a fracturing into further tribes. Even if we did manage to wipe out 99.9% of humanity (much liklier than ever before) you can bet your bippy that the few humans who survive will be blaming ‘foreigners’.

The basic truth is that ALL Ethno-nationalist enterprises end in tragedy. Upwards of 100 million died last century because of it. Israel certainly could have been made into a REFUGE for displaced Jews. But making it into an overtly Zionist-nationalist state automatically makes any Arabs second class. And any Arabs residing in Israel’s area of control, but without citizenship into third class citizens. Jacobson shares with Palestinians one overwhelming trait: he only sees the wrongs done to his own ethnic group. Not those his group has done to others. Until that changes, there can be no peace for Israel.

No, this is not the end of Israel.

Why my comment below does not have the usual-like, dislike symbols ?- Unherd can you please clarify ?

Cowardly. Stand up straight and face the haters, you snivelling wimp!

“We Jews need to find other ways to make our harrowing history compelling. We’ve tried losing. We’ve tried winning. I’m not sure what’s left.” Who is “we”? There are 9.73 million Israelis and 21% of them aren’t Jews. They are identified as Arab-Israelis and they fight and die in the IDF for Israel. Zionism set out to make a new Jew, distinct from the old diaspora Jew and to make a radically rupture with the diaspora Jew’s “harrowing history”. Israel is compelling, not because of its Jewishness, but because it is a successful, culturally vibrant, open, democratic nation with a powerful, nuclear armed military. What’s left for Howard Jacobsen? Israel would not exist if not for the support of the British Empire in its genesis (uneven though this was). So as a Brit he can advocate for his nation’s ongoing alliance with Israel to affirm the two nation’s common values. Or he can become an Israeli citizen and assimilate to noble Israeliness. But the old Jew is surely disappearing.

I feel an impotent fury right now at my feeling of uselessness and silence. Impotence of the total erasure of women. I feel that what is currently happening in Israel is a reflection of this. The further erasure of women and women’s rights. The further silencing and turning away from a the unspeakable horror visited upon women’s and girls bodies in the most obscene acts of sadistic animal brutality. I’m not forgetting the men also. Isn’t it time, we as the so called silent majority stopped being quiet and stand up for something we believe in? For all of us, in some way, shape or form. I believe now is a time. I cannot be silent any more. I have been thinking of how we could make the largest statement in the most peaceful, silent way possible, to send a collective statement en-masse – what the Jews and Israelis so desperately need to hear – what our governments need to hear. What our politicians need to hear. What we need to hear – a collective voice that stands for something more. We stand for a woman’s right to her biological reality. We need all men and women who believe this to stand also. Standing for women, means standing for family. Means standing for Motherhood. For children. For men – for it is your mothers, your wives, your children…….. Would we not do the same for our own? For every women who has ever been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, make a stand for this freedom. Sympathy Cards. Which is really an empathy card showing support. What if we could collectively send one each to a one – point destination. If every single person who stands for the rights of women and against the brutality of rape and total women erasure, for our total liberty as a Western democracy, t sends a sympathy card and it gains momentum en-masse – it will send a message. One idea I had was to get into contact with the National Jewry Association of my country to ask where to send them. Then write to as many people and outlets as possible. Post it on social media. It wont take a ‘leader’ but a joint collective effort and spreading of the word. I say lets do it. I’m not on social media but in this case, for this effort I will open all accounts. Who’s in with me?

“We’ve tried loosing. We’ve tried winning. I’m not sure what’s left”. How about compromise and cooperation?

Is that the policy you would have recommended to the Allies in 1942?

I suspect what we are witnessing is the rise of Islam rather than the fall of Israel though the fall of Israel (and the West) may be a consequence.

Jacobson’s essay and as many of the comments as I could stomach reading are the most extraordinary narcissistic drivel. Great admiration for Jews’ marvelous, self-tormenting, oversensitive conscience, of which the Jew-hating world is of course oblivious. Do you and the Israelis really think that, having stolen most of the Palestinians’ land, displaced millions of them and refused them the universally recognized right to return to their homeland, killed orders of magnitude more Palestinians in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank than Palestinians have killed Israelis, stonewalled one round after another of “negotiations,” and treated their Palestinian subjects so shabbily that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even B’Tselem have issued lengthy reports condemning Israel as an apartheid state — after all this, and after responding to Hamas’s horrific massacre by killing 50 times as many Palestinians civilians and 500 times as many Palestinian children, you still proclaim Israel a light unto the nations, universally misunderstood and loathed by the Gentiles and especially university-trained Gentiles. Will you please come off it and start demanding that Israel begin to remedy the massive and long-lasting injustices is has inflicted on the Palestinians. It’s the only way Israel will ever achieve security.

Starting from the premise that anti-Zionism is just another irrational ideological movement shuts down all debate. Can Israel change its ways? Why should it? It is all the fault of anti-Semites. Will Israelis, apart from Gideon Levy, admit to any mistakes?

I can feel author pain, but I am amazed that he is surprised by response of so many credentialed people (because they are clearly miseducated) to Hamas attack and Israel response. In early 20th century, if I recall, Germans were winning 30% of Nobel prizes. Not so much later we had Hitler and Holocaust. So, it looks, that culture might be just thin veneer covering basic bestiality of so many humans. It was obvious that after failure of communism Neo-Marxists needed to find another way of undermining the West. So wokeness, gender and global boiling nonsense are tools. If alliance with Islamofascists helps here, so be it. Add antisemitism into the mix and current situation was entirely predictable. Still, our so called leaders in the West are in denial and keep importing Muslim savages in huge numbers. Anyone who believes that Islam belongs in the West and can be managed and integrated is clearly mad.

If you start your essay by calling successful and legitimate military operations such as the Al Shifah and Damascus strikes failures and mistakes, hard to take the rest of the argument seriously.

“We Jews need to find other ways to make our harrowing history compelling. We’ve tried losing. We’ve tried winning. I’m not sure what’s left.”

There is another tradition in Jewish history that is neither about winning nor losing on the battlefield, and that is the one represented by figures from Victor Klemperer and Albert Einstein to Tony Judt and Noam Chomsky: a principled dedication to Israeli-Arab coexistence and an opposition to violence and criminality, even when it is supposedly carried out in the name of the Jewish people. It’s not too late for Howard Jacobson to discover basic morality and join that tradition.

Great piece by HJ .. thank you. It is not all down to Netanyahu, and sadly most in the West do NOT know the complex history.

YouTub 2009 ‘best speech given by an Israeli diplomat’ is a good start !

Those loud voices against Israel are borne from antisemitism, ignorance, stupidity, fashion or a combo.

The dysfunctional Arab world, the Palestinian leaders and the biased UN / UNWRA have all failed the plight of the Palestinians.

When they succeed in killing the last Jew, all hope for the human race will be lost.

Soaring rhetoricappropriate to a cosmic unusual catastrophe here is rather unnecessary. Jews forgot their burden on Earth to lead humanity to receive the messages of Eternity remain. Never let the watchmen leave the walls. The black mist returns as regularly as the stellar cycles. Smite them and trust in Yahweh.

This is a beautifully written, balanced analysis of the situation in the Holy Land. It’s chilling in it’s final paragraph – for it declares no hope. I hope that’s wrong.

I’ve travelled the Middle East and Israel. My sympathies lie with innocents on both sides, but I can only admire Israelis for making the only thriving democracy in the region out of a desert wasteland that thousands of years of Arab dwellers didn’t manage.

There can’t be a two state solution if Palestinian Arabs won’t tolerate Israeli rights to a share of the Holy Land.

Apartheid state described as a “thriving democracy” ?

NB. – Sorry if this is double-posted — thought I’d posted it earlier but couldn’t find it when I came back. Jacobson’s essay and as many of the comments as I could stomach reading are the most extraordinary narcissistic drivel. Great admiration for Jews’ marvelous, self-tormenting, oversensitive conscience, of which the Jew-hating world is of course oblivious. Do you and the Israelis really think that, having stolen most of the Palestinians’ land, displaced millions of them and refused them the universally recognized right to return to their homeland, killed orders of magnitude more Palestinians in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank than Palestinians have killed Israelis, stonewalled one round after another of “negotiations,” and treated their Palestinian subjects so shabbily that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even B’Tselem have issued lengthy reports condemning Israel as an apartheid state — after all this, and after responding to Hamas’s horrific massacre by killing 50 times as many Palestinians civilians and 500 times as many Palestinian children, you still proclaim Israel a light unto the nations, universally misunderstood and loathed by the Gentiles and especially university-trained Gentiles. Will you please come off it and start demanding that Israel begin to remedy the massive and long-lasting injustices is has inflicted on the Palestinians. It’s the only way Israel will ever achieve security.

As the writer paraphrases Shakespeare with – ‘something is rotten in the soul of Israel?’, here might have been the Bard’s response: …’grief softens the mind, And makes it fearful and degenerate; Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep’.

A good try by Howard Jacobson but he fails to address the last 70 years of Israeli misdeeds. It’s not enough to say they they tried to bring about peace when what was on offer was pitiable. Just get your heads around half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank with no legitimacy. A bit like Russians in occupied Ukraine.

On the Creation of Israel: On November 29, 1947 the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948 when the British mandate was scheduled to end. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-israel#:~:text=On%20November%2029%2C%201947%20the,mandate%20was%20scheduled%20to%20end .

This is all following a script listed in the Bible ending in the return of Jesus. When the Church is raptured to Heaven and the Antichrist rules the Jewish stumbling stone will be removed. The Jews will realize that Christ is their King, and 144000 Jewish male virgins will be sealed to witness for Christ during the 7-year tribulation.

“…. the Antichrist rules ….” Slow down! Donald Trump isn’t back in the White House yet!

Is not wars central tenant propaganda in and of itself? One of it’s, particularly in our global tech times, biggest competition’s – who ‘wins’ the narrative for the support of the people? On what grounds is the war being fought and what does it actually stand for? Which right now means, what does the west actually stand for? I believe this is what we are all asking right now? We also have to stop being so starry eyed and virtuous when we in the west view it all from the comfort of our armchairs and with a roof over our heads with minimal risk of someone coming into our homes with the intent of sadistically and brutally kidnapping, gang raping, mutilating innocent women and children. We also are not at risk (perhaps yet) of being bombed or killed. I believe we are all in need of looking deeper than the rhetoric, and decide what it is we all really stand for. For those that celebrated in the streets within 24 hrs of this act, are in fact the anti-thesis of what all western liberal values stand for.

“Did Gazans — educated in their schoolbooks to loathe Jews — dance in the streets on October 7? Whatever the truth, may Israelis never dance the dance of blood.“

Except the IDF regularly post videos of themselves dancing in the underwear of their victims. These videos aren’t leaked documents. They’re literally posted by Israel. So who is it that loathes who?

Mr. Jacobson is right to see a sea-change that is, more than probably ever in the history of Israel, threatening to Israel’s continuation as a religion-grounded Jewish state. For the first time, three strands are converging: The genocidal rantings of Jewish extremists, now no longer at the fringes, but in high office and purporting to speak for Israel; the appalling horror of the Israeli army’s actions on the ground; and the long-standing memes of Israel’s enemies. Unfortunately for Mr. Jacobson, the convergence of these three strands into one consistent story are drowning out the arguments Mr. Jacobson offers, and on which Israel has been able to capitalise for so long. Israel’s friends cannot support Israel’s efforts to cling to a narrative self-image that is belied by the statements of Israeli officials and Israel’s actions. Israel has no choice but to confront reality – deflecting the argument, as Israel attempted to do in front of the ICJ and as Mr. Jacobson is doing, and never mind how valid it is, no longer cuts it. If Israel does not, the risk is that the anti-Israeli narrative wins out. And that is in no-one’s interest.

True, I find it shocking that the IDF basically tell people to get out of the way, they should behave like every other army and carry on then call the dead ‘Collateral Damage’.

October 7 revealed not just the naive exceptionalism of sections of the Jewish population of Israel but the depth of disfigurement of human nature on the other side. Both certainly appear to be fuelled by religious narratives, half myth half justification for some present ambition. I was just reading a National Geographic article on birds. Bird-brains are not to be underestimated – they are much more densely wired than ours. Yet the author points out: “The stories we tell about the past and imagine for the future are mental constructions that birds can do without. Birds live squarely in the present” [Jonathan Franzen]. Would that we could do the same. Another thread that just crossed my path concerns the Andaman Islands. India wishes to build a ‘new Hong Kong’ on the southernmost island Great Nicobar. This is naturally being resisted on the ground that it would wipe out the indigenous culture and ecology. But why should India, 1500 km away across an ocean, ‘own’ islands that are part of the geographical-Indonesian island arc and have their own ethnicity and culture? Why should conquest by a mediaeval Indian adventurer, or a document written by a British bureaucrat, decide their status and future? I have no doubt that India and Britain both fiercely maintain their right to self-determination, even if in the latter’s case it seems an act of self-harm. The birds are right in one respect: past and future do not exist. The past is just an impression on the present, strong as it may be, and the future is determined only to the extent that there has to be a physical path to it from the present. The ability to question its actions and motives – even castigate itself – is essential to any rational society. I don’t think the State of Israel has to end, it just has to stop doing certain things – stealing other people’s land for one – and above all believing its myths, which is something that, unlike the other side, it may actually be capable of.

One BIG problem, the Palestinians presumably stole it from the Ottomans, who stole it from ? All the way back to Moses stealing it from whoever it was that had stolen it from someone else earlier. 😉

Unfortunately unlike other “normal “ states , Israel and Zionist myth is the same. Eliminate Zionist myth is to eliminate Israel and most likely its population. And even worse is that it will be done in the name of another myth of Palestinian nationhood

What nonsense are you spouting?Why do Britain or France have archipelagos in the Carribbean or the Indian Ocean or the Pacific? And if you go by ‘stealing ” tropes large parts of the USA is then Mexico’s. Ridiculous statement.

Israel lost this war six months ago, with the dropping of the first 2000 lb dumb bomb on civilians. And much of the defeat lies with the nature of the IDF itself. 1) The IDF still does not realize that this is a guerrilla war. Instead of holding territory to split the population from the terrorists, it stays in a few small enclaves, then sallies out to mete indiscriminate violence on Gazans–and now foreign aid workers. So Hamas still controls the population, just as the Viet Cong and Taliban did. 2) Even its “flat” command structure mandates atrocities. Since discipline in the IDF is far less than in western armies, ordinary soldiers can shoot Gazans–and Israeli hostages–more or less with impunity. Again, no way to win a guerrilla war. So, at six months, Israel is no closer to victory–or even peace–than on 7 Oct. And its frustration will likely lead it to far worse war crimes in future. All we can do is NOT be a part of their genocide…

It was educating to hear Ilan Pappe ( anti-Zionist historian essentially expelled from Israel ) saying that he finds it easier to talk to Israeli nationalists than liberals. The former don’t dispute the reality of segregation and occupation unlike the latter. But they, of course, see it as the only possible way for Israel to exist. And they don’t care a bit about the Arabs, so don’t talk to them about injustice and downright crime they are supporting. It’s a jungle ( the word Ehud barak once used) out there, not a sentimental liberal paradise. If you don’t rule “them” with iron fist, you’re the victim. Simple as that. And it was all by design from the very beginning of Zionism ( see “righteous victims” by Benny morris). One state solution equals bloodshed, two state solution is humiliation for Palestinians and no safety improvement for Israel. The Zionist myth had a head start of about 25 years before Palestinian national myth started to emerge, now the question is which one expires first.

Quoting Ilan Pappe, the historian who said that facts don’t matter, doesn’t exactly support your ridiculous argument.

Yep, that’s the quality of discussion, suck it up ( I’m saying to myself)

Islam is fighting everyone everywhere, we in the West just ignore it because, so far, they are only abusing young working class/in care white girls and they only blow up middle class young girls once every decade. But once they’re powerful enough, then they’ll be more open about threatening school teachers with beheading for showing pictures of …. hmm maybe self-censorship is survival in the UK now? 😉

I tried to comment on AD Kent, but since he is unapproved I cannot! Good God, one cannot make this up. Anyway this is what I wanted to say (and enjoy the Zionist echo chamber). ‘Glad you still have the courage to take on the ever so victimised. I posted on a previous Zionist piece and much of what I said has been deleted (I just checked). This included the references for my sources. So all that is left are a bunch of NPCs calling opposing voices “trolls”. So much for free speech.’

Here’s one you’ll hate, but it’s probably closer to the truth about the aid killings than your opportunistic Hamas-NGO narrative:

https://redstate.com/streiff/2024/04/05/idf-preliminary-investigation-in-aid-worker-deaths-shows-a-cascade-of-errors-and-confusion-n2172380

No use smearing this as “far right wing” and dismissing it. It’s a centre-right liberal publication and author. Anyway, it’s looking like the preview of what everyone will find out soon enough (except progressives of course).

I”m still waiting for Hamas to explain October 7th was an mistake, they mistook the festival for an IDF invasion force and the bomber thought Manchester Arena was full of IDF troops, his geography education being so poor he thought Manchester a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Of course they could have planned both.

Thanks Edwin – seems my comment has only one response right now (about 8 hours after I initially made it, which itself was when there were only 2 to Jacobson’s post). I think there’s a hair-trigger when it comes to removing some posts, which turn up later well down the list. This may be related to posts being reported – something I wouldn’t put past the snow-flake Zionists around here (you can never completely rule out Hasbara either).

It was a very helpul list documenting the many instances where Israel has lied in conflicts. The complaints on here about Hamas figures being taken at face value seem valid (although do we need them to know the indiscriminate nature of the destruction when it is apparently visible from space? ), but it does not seem clear to me that the Israeli government lies any less (as the many Israelis who oppose it might well also think). I also have a comment set to appear (probably sometime tomorrow evening) higher up the page. It has about 10 in-text links documenting the rhetoric of the government, Netanyahu’s role in creating Hamas, the range of options available to Israel besides wholesale destruction, the point that criticising Israel for war crimes is not holding double standards when you also criticise Britain for Iraq or over Dresden against Germany, the unpopularity of both Netanyahu and Hamas within their respective countries, the utterly indefensible persecution of those on the West Bank, and the demonisation and heavy handed treatment of those protesting the war in places like France. Controversial stuff apparently… PS the rise in antisemitism in the UK is also horrific. If only more anger was directed at the governments of both sides rather than the people who have the misfortune to be served by them.

You ought to explain who on the West Bank persecutes whom. It is a capital offence for a Palestinian in the West Bank to sell land to a Jew – don’t hear much about that OR the shocking case where a Jewish Liberal tried to set up a Palestinian who did sell, for the West Bank authorities caught him. But then again, you don’t hear anything much from the MSM that they don’t want you to hear.

The Israelis don’t just bomb civilians handing out food: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident . Another case of “mistaken identity” according to the official reports, however the actual survivors begged to differ. Unfortunately for WCK (and fortunately for the IDF), there were no survivors to share their side of the story. A pack of lies told by a pack of liars.

There’s never been peace in the region because you can’t eliminate one injustice (i.e. the Holocaust) by creating another. Perhaps the Jews did have historic ties to the Holy Land. So did the Palestinians. Imagine the global chaos that would ensue if all peoples were to base their territorial claims on the back of a book that is 2000 years old. We have a war in Ukraine based on territorial claims that date from a mere 30 years ago. The other uncomfortable paradox: the violence being done to Judaism in the name of upholding a Zionist state that is increasingly radical and neo-fascist.

I haven’t really read much of anything from Hamas, but I do know that the Israeli and the American governments have consistently lied about aspects of the genocide in Gaza, and those lies are promulgated by the mainstream media in the U.S. Educated people in the U.S. don’t speak about the horror that is occurring in Israel now, or the apartheid rule that has been adopted in Israel for the past 40 years, for fear of being accused of antisemitism, which is a very powerful tool. The many comments that I have read here, as well as the article which led to them, are mainly supportive of Israel and equating the Palestinians w Hamas, perhaps as justification for the actions of Israel. Maybe we should all return to the history of when the Zionist movement began in Palestine, and with the support of which governments, and for what reasons, and carry that investigation through to the present day.

you are spectacularly uninformed (or perhaps, informed by wildly propagandistic anti-Israeli sources); on top of which, you really ought to look up the definition of ‘genocide’ somewhere reputable.

Wow! “Spectacularly uninformed.” I guess only Israel apologists are to be considered among the truly informed. I have checked the definition of “genocide,” per your suggestion: “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” While I do think the Israeli government would have been quite satisfied with ethnically cleansing Israel of the Palestinians, Egypt and the Arab nations were not so accommodating in this respect, despite appeals by both Israelis and Americans. Hence, the resort to genocide. No possibility for a 2-state solution, which Israel had ruled out for years and encouraged settlers to establish themselves in the West Bank, and it seems unlikely that either either Israelis or Palestinians will be able to forget the horror that has transpired over the last 6 mos to be able to live together as citizens of one country. Hence, a truly just solution would be for the U.S. to allow the Palestinians to enter here and to cease sending aid to Israel.

Wow! “Spectacularly uninformed”. Hm, I guess only Israel apologists are truly informed. And the definition of genocide is “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group”. I think Israel would have been quite satisfied with ethnically cleansing Israel of Palestinians; however, neither Egypt nor any of the other Arab nations seem willing to take them. Hence, the solution the Israeli government decided upon was genocide. In a just world, the U.S. could take the Palestinians and stop sending aid to Israel.

Memo to the Israel lobby: your “Oh, that’s just Hamas propaganda” defence has become ridiculously inadequate (and inaccurate). It means that every single government in the world -apart from Israel – is wrong about what is happening in Gaza. As is international legal opinion, the UN and the disaster relief charities.

It’s also an easy-to-read No Entry sign, informing us that Israel and its fellow-travellers are still not ready to listen to their critical friends. Isolation, and an apartheid South Africa – like pariah status in the world, beckons. Think about that, and stop insulting our intelligence.

It will be interesting to watch in the coming weeks and months as all those like Howard Jacobson who supported Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza pivot towards blaming Netanyahu for the crimes they themselves fully incited and endorsed from day 1. In this article Jacobson floats that idea before getting tangled up in the contradictions of his own position and doubling down on support for the annihilation of Gaza. He, like many others, will in the end be damned by his own words.

Which words? It is very unlikely he will be damned by his own words but I would be interested in this article to know which ones.

In history’s reckoning, he will be condemned by this article and others in which he has supported Israel’s ongoing crimes

Ah! So no particular words to hook him, just ‘history’s reckoning’. Hat tip Churchill, it will depend who writes it.

Saintly Hamas meanwhile just got a little carried away at the pop concert on Oct 7th I suppose?

Sometimes are one can say is; F off. You know nothing.

Genocidal? The Humpty Dumpty Dictionary Definition I imagine?

Please stop using long word like ‘genocidal’ if you don’t know what they mean

This is not the Jews, this is not Netanyahu, this is Israel. The last six months are just a crystalisation of what they’ve been up to for 70 years.

They do what they do, lie about it, and do it again.

Scepticism of the claims of Israel (including those of rape made here) have to be seen in the context of this (very far from comprehensive) list of their falsehoods, not your tired ‘me too’ carpings.

2006 – Cluster munition slaughter in Lebanon – Israel lied. 2014 – The ‘boys on the beach’ – Israel lied. 2014 – Al Wafa Hospital bombing – Israel lied. 2018-19 – Sniper murders in the Grand March of Return – Israel lied. 2021 – Designation of 6 Palestinian human rights groups as terrorists – Israel lied (proved by CIA report). 2022 – Bombing of Jalaliya Refugee Camp (5 teenagers killed) – Israel lied. 2022 – Murder of US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh – Israel lied. The murders of Muhammad al-Durrah (2000), Rachel Corrie (2003), James Miller (2003), Tom Hurndall (2004), Iain Hook – every time Israel lied. Oh, and never forget the murder of 34 US sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 – Israel lied, lied and lied again.

You can find links to proof of the facts behind some of the lies Jacobson claims have been made about Israel here. https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/18/chris-hedges-israels-culture-of-deceit/

Don’t forget the atrocities inflicted on HM Forces between 1945-48.

And also, lest we forget, had Palestine NOT been conquered by General Allenby and the British Army from the Ottoman Turk in 1917, there would be NO Israel today.

Who are the ungrateful toads who downvoted this? As @ 20.24 GMT?

(* At a cost of about 17,000 casualties.)

What about the atrocity, no, moral obscenity of not letting holocaust survivors into British-controlled Palestine?

They were obviously a menace, or do you deny that?

You are beyond the pale

It would have been an atrocity had something not been done for the holocaust survivors, e.g., reparations to them, but a more just solution than creating a Jewish state in Palestine would have been to force Germany to relinquish Bavaria as a homeland for those people who had been persecuted and murdered because of Germany’s aggression.

If the town arabs had risen with the Hashemites in 1915 and taken Jerusalem there would no Israel. The Hashemites took Damascus with the help of T E Lawrence. There were more Jews fighting with Allenby than Arabs. Arabs had been selling land to Jewish settlers since the late 19th century. If the Arabs had risen with the Bulgars in the 1870s against Ottoman rule they would have a country similar to that prior to any Turkish conquest. To quote Abba Eban. The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. If the Palestinians had been led by someone of Abba Eban’s ability , Israel would be in a difficult position.

no mention of course of all the lies and atrocities the Arabs/Palestinians have inflicted on Jews/Israelis since the 1920s, of course. They far far outweigh your very selective list.

I provided a list – perhaps you could provide us with one of your own? Cross reference it with the Chris Hedges article I linked to first though.

Why not list those lies w dates and circumstances, so that the rest of us an be informed.

I haven’t yet seen Jews cheering and photographing the semi-naked defiled body of a young girl. Nor, so far, has any Jew as far as I’m aware bombed a concert hall full of young girls*, as for Rotheram, Telford and Rochdale Zionism wasn’t a factor. Even Big Cyril wasn’t a Zionist (tho’ I can’t swear for sure), though he preferred boys.

Whatever hangups Christian and Jews have over women/girls isn’t a patch on Islam – even Trans ideology isn’t as obscene respecting women and girls.

I assume the 57 varieties of IRA were all NOT Jewish.

Israel’s supporters are of course well practiced in hurling the antisemitism smear at anyone who so much as questions its behaviour. This article is just that same crude smear dressed up in a fancy prose style.

Unfortunately the currency of that smear is thoroughly debased when it has been hurled at everyone from the UN to Amnesty International to Jewish academics and Holocaust survivors. Even Churchill’s grandson and Nancy Pelosi have joined the ranks of the antisemites in the last couples of days. It just won’t wash anymore, and desperate articles like this prove it.

Israel’s problem is that, far from losing interest, the world is watching all too intently exactly what it is doing in Gaza.

And unfortunately for Israel and Howard Jacobson, there are many people in the world who won’t just sit by and do nothing while the annihilation of a society of 2 million people is live-streamed on our phones.

Any fond thoughts for the hostages? Is this not a war crime?

Yes, Hamas’s taking of hostages and killing of civilians were war crimes, just as Israel’s taking of thousands of Palestinian hostages and its killings of civilians are war crimes. See, moral consistency isn’t so difficult.

Quid pro quo, Israel is squeaky clean?

WERE? Love your use of the past tense! They STILL hold approx 150 people- god knows how many of which haven’t been tortured/ raped to death.

Nobody here, nor Jacobson, has said anything about antisemitism. That slur you just delivered rests solely in your addled brain.

Try reading the article again

But would they if it was the other side heading from the River to the Sea?

This literally reads like Cecil Rhodes wrote it.

You must know of a different Cecil Rhodes to me then.

What an extraordinary polemic! From England’s octogenarian version of Philip Roth no less.

Has it not occurred to Mr Jacobson that many find it quite astonishing that a group of people/tribe can turn up in an obscure spot in the Middle East and say:-

“Two thousand years ago we owned this place, we left of our own volition but now we want it back again, so move over. ps. There has been a terrible tragedy far away in Germany where we were virtually exterminated, and guess what….you are going to pay the bill!”

As Mr Jacobson says :- “I fear they — papers and commentators and politicians — are losing interest and sympathy at the same rate.” Well that certainly isn’t the case with UnHerd where we have been inundated with essays on the vexed subject for sometime now. However if Mr Jacobson fears are correct is it really that surprising?

ps. Incidentally I for one was expecting something on the simply appalling behaviour of Tory MP Willian Wragg, but perhaps that is beyond the Pale for UnHerd.

Err…Timothy Roth? As in Tim Roth the actor?

My apologies! No the late Philip, I seem to have got my Roths muddled up.

Where’s Willy ? (or should that be Wally?).

Indeed, you couldn’t ‘make it up’! But sadly we won’t have the opportunity to go there today!

Left of their own volition? Are you mad?

No, are you?

Even after Hadrian founded the Roman Colony of Aelia Capitolina* on the site of Hebrew Jerusalem, Jews were still permitted to enter the city on ONE day in the year.

That rather presupposes that there were still Jews around to take advantage of this remarkable act of generosity, does it not?

(* 130 AD or 883 AUC for purists.)

So they all just upped and left of their own accord once the followers of Islam arrived to take charge? Or perhaps it was the Christians of Europe?

People move around; it doesn’t mean they’re entitled to go and make a 2000 year old retrospective land-grab. Maybe I should go and stake a claim for a piece of Norway given that some of my (fairly recent: 200 years go) ancestors emigrated from there?

(Yes he is)

“Two thousand years ago we owned this place, we left of our own volition but now we want it back again, so move over.” You haven’t read much about Jewish history, culture, languages, civilization, have you? I suppose ignorance is its own reward, like when you get to write extraordinarily revealing and ignorant sentences like this. Or did you set out to illustrate some of what Mr. Jacobson was warning us against? In which case, I apologize and congratulate you on your success.

Well then please feel free to correct me as to my interpretation of the so called Diaspora.

You are obviously a self styled expert on the subject, so I await your response with interest.

another knownothing response from vera.

Really? Oh genius please enlighten me.

“… a group of people/tribe can turn up in an obscure spot in the Middle East and say:-

“Two thousand years ago we owned this place, we left of our own volition but now we want it back again, so move over.”

Unless you’re a febrile keffir-wearing hysteric, this is a completely unconvincing effort to frame the situation. You insinuate it’s just a random group who wander in (rather than a dispossessed indigenous group), you try to and reduce autochthonous origin with merely “owning land” like a commodity bought and sold, and you airbrush away the complex history of the diaspora. 3/10 Charles, do better next time.

Thank you for such a sarcastic reply, you only demean yourself, and frankly I’m very disappointed and surprised that you stooped so low.

However perhaps you would like to explain the so called Diaspora for me?

As you have remained silent for three hours Perhaps I may use an analogy?

The Zionist case would be rather like that of Boudicea* and her Iceni thugs turning up today in East Anglia and claiming it as theirs, based on prior tenure some two thousand years ago.

The Jews being a clever and commercial people, highly skilled in art of money making etc, abandoned their homeland two thousand years ago, in substantial numbers to take advantage of that remarkable ‘trading block’ normally referred to as The Roman Empire, and they flourished. There was NO Roman deportation!

Those who remained, At a guess 60% of the original population remained on the coast or in well watered Galilee where ‘stuff’ actually grew.

These then probably converted to Islam after the conquest of the place in 636 AD, and thus remain as West Bank Palestinians. Perhaps modern DNA profiling will soon confirm/sort this out.

Thus by the Ottoman census of about 1907(?) a mere 10% of the population claimed to be practicing Jews.

(* Sometimes now referred to as Boudicca.) (** 1389 AUC for the purist.)

IF she came armed and willing to fight to stay and won, would you object?

I prepared most of an answer but had to sleep. I’m back but you added on. I’ll just paste in my reply to your original message.

I think my last line was too strong, sorry about that. But you were trying it on with too much rhetorical sleight of hand.

Here are some points to demonstrate the the Israelites and the Jews were indigenous people of the land of Israel and Judea. Although vast cultural changes occurred after early civilisation, so that these cultures can’t claim to be “unchanged” and therefore the classic stone-age indigenous people imagined by Rousseauians and the woke, they arose from within the region as much as anyone else can claim indigeneity, assuming all human populations actually originated in Africa in earliest times. At the other end of the timeline I’ve given below, I’ve indicated that the Jewish diaspora was not that the wandered off “of their own volition” as you put it, but was the result of conquest, war, revolt and empire.

Rise of neolithic civilizations in the Levant, based on early agriculture and initial urbanisation, including the Canaanites began around 14,000 years ago. Distinct Canaanite culture began about 6000 years ago. They were pantheists (polytheistic). Between 4000 and 3000 years ago, some Canaanites emerged (from within the Canaanite population, not as a separate immigrant population) as Israelites, who in that transformation developed a belief in one primary god. Around 3000 years ago the United Monarchy formed, but after death of King Solomon, fractured into separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah, based in Samaria and Jerusalem respectively. About 2700 years ago the Assyrians conquered Israel, and deported a large part of the population. About 2600 years ago, the Neo-Babylonian empire conquered Judah, destroyed their homeland and forced the population into Babylon. This was the first diaspora of the Jews. Around 60 years later, Judeans began to return from Babylon and built the second temple. This lasted until 70 AD, when in the first Jewish-Roman war, the temple was destroyed, and the population either killed, enslaved or fled Judea. 50 years later was the Bar Kokhba revolt, which failed. Emperor Hadrian banned Jews from Jerusalem, the effect lasting for centuries, although a small, minority, Jewish presence re-emerged.

more anti-jew rantings from vera that of course go back to before the founding of the state.

Oh dear, do calm down and have a cup of tea.

For someone so clued up on History ,you seem to be a little peeved at the Jews. Ok, maybe you lost relatives in 1948 etc, but at least the Jews initially got the League of Nations to back them. Any other examples you can think of where land is still in the possession of the people who inhabited it 2000 years ago and who have never set foot outside of said borders before or since on any pretext?

Personally I’m relieved Israel exists, it keeps Islamists here occupied, when they aren’t occupied by Israel they turn to abusing or bombing young English girls.

Unfortunately Israel doesn’t stop Islam being at war, kidnapping, bombing etc in virtually every continent on the planet barring Antarctica and perhaps South America. In fact the Islamists are at war in more places than NATO – which is really impressive.

Removed this comment as it was a repeat of another post that disappeared, but has subsequently (at least for now) reappeared. The other post has a list of israeli lies that seemed rather pertinent in response to an article wondering why some of us might not believe their narrative without question.

But I assume you take everything a terrorist organisation says at face value ?

of course he does. The entire, ‘israeli lies’ brigade takes whatever Hamas the terrorist organization says at face value, even after al-Ahli hospital and the years of lying about everything that preceded it. i’ve even seen clips of Hamas officials saying civilians weren’t targeted on Oct. 7. No doubt this fool believes that too.

There are no lies told more smoothly, evilly and effectively than by Hamas and its Islamic brethren.

Time to reread Primo Levi “If this is a man (1947 and “If Not Now, When” 1984 “To survive is to defy those who would wish to see you erased from existence.”

Perhaps you should also pay attention to what Primo Levi said about Israel as he watched with horror its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the atrocities it committed there:

“Israel is rapidly falling into total isolation … We must choke off the impulses towards emotional solidarity with Israel”

Islam says lying to the rest of the world is good. It also seems to think murder, kidnap, rape and war are too. If not then why are they doing so much of all of them on virtually every continent on the planet?

If wherever you go you find people hate you, in the end you have to ask yourself why.

The roots of hatred lie within the hater.The pure and unabashed anti-semitic nature of your post does not even allow for a moment of self reflection, or shame.

Go on then, tell us why Jews are hated?

Does that actually happen if you have written The Bible?

Surely just the Old Testament?

Great advice. You should take it yourself.

Or look at those who hate you and understand why. 😉

I can answer that regarding the Palestinians, they’ve abused the hospitality of every Arab country that has housed them, so that they’ve been thrown out violently from all surrounding Israel. If they continue as they are in the West, we’ll eventually have to throw them out too. As for the Jews, they’re just smarter, and often richer and that’s all the dumb and uneducated need to hate someone.

I posted a little list of some of the more recent lies of Israel that give some of us reason to be sceptical of their October 7th claims, but it has disappeared. I’ll see if it comes back, but in the meantime I’d note regarding Jacobson’s ‘me too’ assertions about the October 7th rape claims – one of the main reasons some of us don’t automatically accept the claims of systematic rape and sexual abuse is that there haven’t been as many of those claims actually made as the systematic allegations would suggest. Beyond that, many of the alleged witnessed events don’t stand up to much scrutiny (see for example the Woman in The Black Dress claims which have been debunked by the family of the alleged victim).

David Irving, is that you?

No. I’m just someone who has been paying attention for the last few decades.

As opposed to those of us who understand the often brutal existential discrimination Jews have faced for the past couple few millennia.

Your myopic short-termism says it all

You are too generous. Even specsavers wouldn’t help him at all.

obviously ‘paying attention’ and “understanding what’s going on’ are two different things in your case.

Unfortunately, Jacobson makes the claim of systematic rape central to his article, and it’s been debunked, specifically the exposé in the NY Times. It hasn’t been proven that rape occurred at all , let alone that it was widespread or systematic. If there were compelling evidence one assumes Israel, being strongly motivated to do so, would produce it. The fact that it hasn’t strongly suggests such evidence doesn’t exist. Also, Jacobson takes the most outrageous views of anti-Israel activists to represent all opposition. This is easy to do, since critical social justice activists (and Hamas apologists) have taken over academia—and that is indeed problematic. However, it’s a bit too convenient. Many actual liberals not in the thrall of CSJ are also horrified by Israel’s actions, as well as those of Hamas. It seems more a distraction, a ploy to avoid having to deal with what Israel is actually doing. “We Jews need to find other ways to make our harrowing history compelling. We’ve tried losing. We’ve tried winning. I’m not sure what’s left.” An honest retelling of that harrowing history would include the injustice done to the Palestinians, which is at the heart of the current catastrophe. I think that’s what’s left.