Israel: Turn Right for the Abyss

[Stavros]

As if singing from the same song sheet of Hamas, here comes Netanyahu, an architect of the very hate, violence and war that we see today, confirming he is a war criminal, unfit for any public office, bereft of human decency. This is what he said

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the idea that Israel would agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, saying Monday evening that those calling for one are in effect calling for Israel to surrender to terrorism.“I want to make clear Israel’s position regarding a ceasefire. Just as the United States would not agree to a ceasefire after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas,” he said in English during a press conference for foreign media.
“After the horrific attacks of October 7, calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen,” he said."
Netanyahu dismisses calls for ceasefire, says that would be surrender to Hamas | The Times of Israel

Israel can bomb Gaza into dust any time it wants to, and he knows it. Hamas was supported by Israel when it was formed, and he knows it. Israel encouraged Hamas throughout its existence, and he knows it.

Who regarded the Treaty Rabin signed as a surrender? Netanyahu. Who took land away from the Palestinians and gave it to the Settlers? Netanyahu. Who joined Hamas to create the Strategy of Tension that has led to this slaughter of the innocents? Netanyahu.

Aided by a United States that has never, and probably never will understand the realities of the history that denied the Statehood to the successors to the Ottoman Empire, as if King-Crane never happened, the same Statehood that was conferred on those small European successors to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires after the First World War- two of which no longer exist.

A man so dedicated to violence and war that he dismisses a ceasefire as surrender? Sure. When the absolutely critical issue for Israel is the release of the hostages, and for Palestinians in Gaza access to food, water and shelter, the most basic of human rights. When the distressing footage on tv indicates an absence of care for all.

As if there were no other way of living with the realities that have been churned over in a machinery of death for more than 100 years, other than to repeat the same mistakes over, and over again. As if a Jew called Netanyahu can only sneer at what Rabbi Hillel said

'Where there are no men, be thou a man'.

Monsters came to Israel on the 7th of October, 2023. Then came Netanyahu. Just another monster.

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Hamas and Israel, eyeless in Gaza.

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him [ie, Samson]
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves

(John Milton, Samson Agonistes)

For a different view from 2008-

Zionism's 60th Celebration of a Paradise Lost - Palestine Chronicle

[Stavros]

Netanyahu, a war criminal who deserves to stand trial in The Hague. One hopes he shares the court room with any surviving leaders of HAMAS, given they supported each other from the start.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected a negotiated deal over Israeli hostages that would have seen a five-day ceasefire in Gaza, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to The Guardian.The deal would have seen the release of children, women, and elderly and sick hostages, the sources said.
Netanyahu's reported refusal of the proposed deal came soon after Hamas' initial 7 October attack on southern Israel that killed 1,400 Israelis.
Other sources had said that further negotiations had taken place for the release of a larger number of hostages prior to the ground offensive."
Netanyahu 'rejected hostages for ceasefire deal' in Gaza (newarab.com)

Netanyahu's roots on the Nationalist, occasionally Fascist right of Palestinian/Israeli politics.

Netanyahu, the godfather of modern Israeli fascism | Benjamin Netanyahu | Al Jazeera

Einstein’s nightmare: the fascist politicians wielding power in Israel - Red Pepper

From Latin Quarter to the Knesset. The History and Evolution of the Israeli Far-Right (oasiscenter.eu)

[Stavros]

An interesting perspective on what comes after Israel's demolition of Gaza, but without any smart minds in Israel to do the right thing and concede Palestinians have rights, and must also have them in practical terms.

Israel is looking to World War II in its Gaza fight, and it risks taking lessons from the wrong war (yahoo.com)

[Stavros]

The Middle East Forum and is journal is published by Daniel Pipes and like-minded American supporters of Israel who share the existential view on which Netanyahu has based his violent policy of permanent war, and no peace. It means, quite simply, that everything in the 100 year conflict is a matter of either-or. Either Israel takes the action necessary to survive Palestinian attacks, or it dies.

From this perspective, to fulfil the Likud's aim of creating an Erez Israel on both sides of the River Jordan (note that, as it is not often proclaimed, and is another reason why 'From the River to the Sea' is just an empty slogan), the 1993 Peace Treaty was a betrayal of the Zionist dream, though I think Zionism is a redundant term and what we are really talking about is Nationalism, and at that a form of Jewish Nationalism that is a form of Fascism.

Thus, in the Fall 2023 edition of their journal, Pipes and two others responded to an article on the future of Gaza, and the point of interest is in the article by Martin Sherman, because even before the 7th October massacres and what we witness today, he reached the conclusion, as bleak as any I have read, but probably the logical position of the existentialist view, ie: the only solution to the Palestinian problem, is to remove the Palestinians! And if not by 'kinetic' means....well, read it for yourself-

"...the only way for Jerusalem to determine how Gaza is ruled—and by whom—is to rule it itself. The only way for the Israelis to rule Gaza without the blight of having to rule over "another people" is to remove that "other people" from the territory over which it is obligated to rule. The only "non-kinetic" way to remove large-scale portions of the "other people" from that territory is by financially incentivized emigration.So, as unpalatable as it might be, Jerusalem will disregard this logic at its grave peril."
Is Disarming Hamas Israel's Best Policy? :: Middle East Quarterly (meforum.org)

Imagine, if it was Northern Ireland, the UK Govt proposing to move the entire Roman Catholic population of the province south into the Republic, having first bombed half of LondonDerry and Belfast into rubble.

Hmmm...so there are alternatives? Like talking? Power sharing? What hasn't been tried so far, in 100 years? And what did they have before that?

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Joshua Leiffer has a long read on Netanyahu in today's Guardian, and is one of the best I have read. For obvious reasons he doesn't address the other side of the question -what happens to the Palestinian Authority when this crisis is over? That said, the article is worth reading as it documents how Netanyahu effectively groomed Hamas believing it could be contained. His arrogance is breathtaking, as has been the failure of his 'security state' -it is going to be some time before Israel can find a way back to whatever being normal is, if it happens at all.

The Netanyahu doctrine: how Israel’s longest-serving leader reshaped the country in his image | Benjamin Netanyahu | The Guardian

[Stavros]

Dahlia Scheindlin has written one of the most sane pieces on the conflict, which can be compared with the hysterical rubbish otherwise on offer, such as Stephen Pollard's offensive drivel in today's Telegraph.

She charts the impasse into which Hamas and Israel fell, repeating a cycle of violence without end, but argues for sane alternatives, including the concept of a Confederation which I support, even though, as she also argues, these decades of indecision and violence often seem to close off real roads to peace and co-operation, though they remain the only positive end game.

Israelis and Palestinians can no longer avoid a fateful choice about their future | Dahlia Scheindlin | The Guardian

[Stavros]

Putin on Ukraine:

"As the Russian assault on Ukraine has intensified, the Russian president and his government has escalated rhetoric falsely labeling the Ukrainian government and its leaders as “Nazis."
Why is Putin Calling the Ukrainian Government a Bunch of Nazis? | ADL

Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich:

"“There are 2 million Nazis in Judea and Samaria, who hate us exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza,”".
Smotrich defends boost in funds for settlers, saying they're used for security against 'Nazi' Palestinians | The Times of Israel

I would like to think that when the Gruesome Twosome have finished trying to destroy each other, reason make an entrance into the debate about 'what next?'. Smotrich, if there is any reason left in Israel, will lose his post as well as Neyanyahu when that day of reckoning comes to pass.

Right now, the release of hostages is welcome, but as the women and children are released, or some of the women, those adults who were in the military may be harder to release, so a lot depends on the pressure the US is putting on Israel, while one assumes Qatar is also putting pressure on HAMAS -eg, it could say 'either you release hostages or we throw you out of Qatar' -??

The sleep of Reason produces Monsters. Is anyone there awake right now?

[Stavros]

Israel ‘obtained Hamas plans for Oct 7 attack more than a year before’ (yahoo.com)

Heads will roll...sooner or later

[Stavros]

I followed the Guardian link below to this article on Israel, and it is interesting, if alarming. What the author fails to address is that in 1982 and in this latest episode, Israel's Prime Ministers were, and are Fascists. Menachem Begin's personal history is embedded in the Nationalist projects of Jabotinsky and Stern (he latter received his military training in a camp run by Mussolini's Fascists at Civitavecchia) , the Likud legacy that Netanyahu is heir to, and supports. The author thus has no time for the possibility that Israel has ever had an alternative to Nationalist violence which by definition denies the Palestinians rights or any kind, be the right to exist, or the right to political and equal representation of the kind we enjoy in Europe and North America.

He thus also tells us what Israel should do to give Palestinians the space in which to distance themselves from Hamas and the PA, to find a better alternative for themselves, but this is, yet again, an outsider telling Palestinians what decisions to make, never asking them to make the decisions on their own, which has been the fundamental insult to them since the British denied them the Statehood most other successors to Empire had after the First World War.

Israel is repeating the mistakes of the past because its present day leadership is like the one's that preceded it, but the most extreme even by Israel's low standards -until a paradigm shift creates an entirely new agenda that benefits Israelis and Palestinians, this mass murder, this addiction to violence will continue, ensuring there are no winners in this war, only losers.

The article is here-
Israel Could Lose (csis.org)

It was linked in this-
As the ceasefire ends, a question from history lingers: will Israel win the battle but lose the war against Hamas? | Israel-Hamas war | The Guardian