‘Nuther day, ‘nuther few morgue loads in Gaza. It has become almost boring: 25,000 dead and counting. Should we go for a record?
But questions do arise to reinvigorate flagging interest. What kind of human will intentionally bomb a hospital? Or a refugee camp? Is there nothing so foul that an Israeli pilot will not do it? What could be more cowardly? What would it take to get you, the reader, to bomb a hospital?
Of course it is not the scale of what Israel is doing, but the dogged, unrelenting coldbloodedness of it, its shamelessness. It would never occur to a military man, Israeli or otherwise, to say, “No, I won’t do that.” In my decades of covering the armed forces I found officers often to be long on physical courage but almost always to lack moral courage. Soldiers pride themselves on following orders, and if the orders are to bomb a refugee camp, well, the pilot was just following orders. This is what Eichmann said, though he wasn’t a soldier. The cult of obedience removes all moral responsibility.
Note that Washington is as culpable as Israel for the slaughter in Gaza. Israel depends utterly for its survival on American support. If Washington told the Israelis to stand on their heads buck naked and sing “Yankee Doodle” in three-part harmony, or lose all American support, in two minutes they would be upside down and wailing. The killing continues because Washington wants it to continue.
The historically literate will note that the mass, deliberate bombing of civilians is not particularly Israeli, but an invention largely made and certainly perfected by the United States. The British-American air war against Germany targeted civilians. Everyone knows about the firestorms in Hamburg and Dresden, and for that matter Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though countless other German and Japanese cities were so targeted, with Tokyo being firebombed to burn thousands to death. Germans who lived through this tell of exactly the same results seen in Gaza: rubble, fire, dead and dying children. Plus ca change, plus ca doesn’t.
The eternal cry of the Jew: “The whole world hates me. What’s wrong with the whole world?” Well, here is an answer that will serve for a few decades. Before Gaza, there was around the Web the usual low-key hostility to Jews, like the 4K background radiation. Now nice liberals make venomous comments about how Hitler should have finished, etc. For all I know, 90% of American Jews may oppose the killing, and certainly many do, but this doesn’t seem to matter. Selling the Holocaust will be harder for a few years. It will make no practical difference.
It is easy to see why. A friend, conservative, by no means a milquetoast, for a while watched videos from Gaza. He saw a little girl, horribly hurt, legs gone but still alive, with adults, apparently her family, going stark, bugfuck crazy. The child would not live for more than a minute or two, massive femoral bleeding being of short duration. My friend began sobbing, not his style. Never an anti-Semite, he is now.
This is what America supports, does, is. Tell me why it isn’t so. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, now Gaza, Yemen, shortly China.
The truculent buffoon in the White House and his ventriloquists speak of “American values.” But America, as distinct from Americans, has no values other than money, power, and empire. This is not dorm-room cynicism. It is fact. Individual Americans may believe in kindness, truth, human rights, and peace, but to Washington these words are empty bottles to be filled with whatever meaning will best serve to shoo the sheep in the desired direction. And anyway Americans have no influence over what their country does.
In geopolitics, only the enforceable matters. Endless talk of violations of international law is merely tedious. Law is pointless if not enforced. It isn’t. Repetitive mooing about human rights is equally meaningless. Any attempt to impose such rights would mean war with both Israel and the United States. Do you see any takers?
The “law of war” is equally a silly notion. No warring party will put itself at a disadvantage by declining to use some prohibited weapon, such as white phosphorous, or doing something disapproved, such as bombing civilians. The United States has never paid attention to the law of war. Neither has Israel. Or, probably, anybody else. When I was in Marine infantry training at Camp Lejeune during Vietnam, we learned to use grenades of white phosphorous, known colloquially as Willy Peter.
The United Nations has all the import of a high-school debate club in Arkansas but less backbone, producing much noise but no results. It is an obstacle to the most important things it is supposed to promote, and should be disbanded. It serves chiefly as a means of imposing American hegemony. For example, the entire planet except the US and Israel votes to end a pointless blockade of Cuba. Washington vetoed this. Most of the world wants a ceasefire in Gaza. America vetoes it. Instead of being a forum in which the nations of the world can decide on joint policies, it serves to prevent precisely this.
Perhaps history does repeat, like a slowly executing do-loop. In 1099, the First Crusade took Jerusalem, establishing a Christian beachhead on the fringe of a sprawling Moslem world that hated them. The Christians depended crucially on Europe for men and support, and were finally vomited out after many years. Now Israel has established a Jewish beachhead on the fringes of a sprawling Moslem world that hates them, and depends crucially on the United States for support. After the current killings, the Moslem world will hate the Jews for a very long time. They will not make a nice distinction between Zionists and Jews.
Perhaps the Jews will fare better than the Christians. It is not easy to see how. Israel’s population will always be minuscule in comparison with that of the Moslem world, or even of the nearby Moslem countries. The current Israeli pogrom will provide Moslems with the equivalent of the Holocaust, a multigenerational repository of hatred. This, too, will make no difference as long as the US supports Israel and, Congress being a subcommittee of the Knesset, this support is not in immediate danger.
But the Empire declines and Asia rises. In two decades the world will be a different place. Should local Moslem nations get the Bomb, whether by purchase or development, Israel’s options, as we say, will be limited. The two-state solution, now apparently forever impossible, may once seem to have been a good idea.
The Israeli approach to geopolitics has been to do anything it wants, brazen it out, and rely on America for protection. The American approach is to do anything it wants and dare anyone to do anything about it. But America is now like the aging tough in a mountain bar who once said, “I can llickany man in this bar.” Now, getting on in years and putting on weight, he says, “I can lick everybody in the bar at once.” Iraq, Iran, Russia, China, Yemen, Syria. Maybe this will have a happy ending, but outside the bar, a cold wind is blowing.
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21 comments
Excellent points as always Fred. You served at Camp Lejeune? Living in Mexico you may not be aware that you may be entitled to compensation from drinking the water at Camp Lejeune. So says some law firms ad every time I flip on TV. Get it while you can.
I agree with the disgrace of the UN, but it should be more empowered not eliminated. 150 votes for ceasefire versus 10 US pawns should initiate the dispatch of 150 naval warships from all over the world to the coast of Gaza, immediately. (Surely Ukraine would have voted for it experiencing its own siege were it not desperate for dollars,, and why would we allow 1 US veto to prevent intervention in this and the Rwandan genocide)
“Democracy is a regime nominally without a King, but it is ruled by many kings — more absolute, tyrannical and ruinous than one sole king, even though a tyrant”- Mussolini
“Our attitude is also shifty and lackadaisical in our promises or agreements. On the subject of Palestine we agree on the past Oslo accords, UN decisions or compromises and then fall short of supporting them, we attack the other party for reacting to our short fall and blame them for breaking peace agreements, and then we use our media’s power to broadcast only our own view, or both views with our spin included to the observing and usually ignorant viewer. We stall and procrastinate and work toward a new agreement, pushing forward time and an immediate peace while simultaneously plundering the other party of their land and innocence and heaping fault until they can’t find the strength and self-respect to crawl back to the negotiating table. Our president demanded a new Palestinian leadership, defiling our democratic virtues and those of Palestine, whose old leader (Arafat) was elected democratically. We then supported an Israeli leader like Ariel Sharon whose tactics are archived as no less destructive to human life as those of Milosevic, for his actions in Lebanon, having once lost his office in his own country for this action (and now Netanyahu) . This all happening in a land called Palestine ~ or is it Israel, which remains disputed and whose warring leaders remain unchallenged or perhaps even staged by outside governments.” (Reflection by Guzziferno)
I worked for a decade in the Med as representative for the DoD, our international statecraft polity and protocol is very malicious.
“The trick is that we have always practiced more patience in gradual provocation allowing the other players at the table to lose composure and control first under duress and commit the first act of aggression, but we are no less involved or complicit in the cause of that aggression or outcome.”
Thank you so much for mentioning the atrocities of Slobodan Milosevic..! To facilitate their ludicrous & age-old pursuit of “Greater Serbia”, the Serbians attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and later they would have of absorbed Montenegro and Macedonia! The torture & atrocities that the Serbian Chetniks perpetrated against the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovar populace would do Genghis Kahn mighty proud! Bill Clinton and the American allies, put a stop to these with their recognition of Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and militarily supported them against Serbian aggression, so why Mr. Reed’s sympathy for the Devil? And as for Joe Biden, his support for Ukraine is commendable , as they are fighting for their very survival..
as they are fighting for their very survival..
Yes, but anyway this war, the actual Third World war, was provoked and sparked by Boris Johnson (like all World Wars before, since the Napoleon Wars and untill now were provoked by the UK). Zelensky was ready to some kind of agreement, but Johnson forbade him this. The war is still Putin’s fault, because it was his aggression, but we cannot be blind to the guilt of another actors.
K. Bori;
There is a tendency to classify all authoritarian states as evil despite their many political differences). As a past commentator on C.C. said, “Libertarians would watch one man walk up a hill and another walk into a lake, and proclaim walking to be the problem instead of the direction one picks to walk in”, it’s the same when it comes to Statism.
As for Britain’s evolutionary governing system since the end of monarchy;
“The English system of government which was controlled [East India Co. among others] by corporate powers (unlike France under Napoleon) had been prioritizing the advancement of the wealthy class for centuries over all its subjugated people and its very own people. Having enslaved its own increasing poor urban masses since the 16th century through property confiscations and new legislation, and selling its increased urban populations in work houses of white Englishmen, woman, and children to the America’s as indentured workers,, here the prioritized goal of capitalist run governments has always been clear. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but be clear that it does not have to be defined in the form of a dictator of socialist principles,,,, And, as a wealthy oligarchy it has cruelly ruled for a much longer chronological period of time in our combined western European or Anglo American history – (Reflection, Guzziferno).
In England it was also capitalist controlled governments that controlled decisions regarding markets, economies and war.
Joe Biden is seen as savior in Ukraine, but he is acting as a Putin in Israel. Our actions as a government are driven by pure interests in finance, there are no qualities of humane justice involved, which is only used when supporting the primary motive.
Pakistan and N. Korea already have nuclear weapons.
As for big brothers, Cuba suffers since the wall fell and is now tortured with sanctions and boycotts as is Venezuela (whose refugees now flock to our borders). In time Israel will also lose its big brother who is now struggling and unlike Cuba will not have a sea to isolate and protect it.
Pardon my ignorance on this issue, but I don’t understand why they use the term “Semitic’ for both Jews and Arabs, or at least this is what I have heard both peoples called. I thought that Jews and most Islamic tribes were both labeled ‘Semitic’.
I mostly studied Russian history as well as European Art History in college, so I have no real understanding of their problems. I gather that Mohammed introduced “the Koran’ around 600 A.D., and gathered myriad desert tribes into one belief system, though it seems split up a lot now, into Sunni and Shia, and there are myriad squabbles among these tribes. But both the Jews and Moslems have their “Holy Books” — the Torah and the Koran — each of which slam the other relentlessly, as well as us White folks up in Europe, as Infidels, etc. And they have been at it for nearly 2000 years now, and I see this insanity in Israel and Palestine as just another episode among people who will never stop with this nonsense.
As an American woman, I do feel horribly sad over the terrible loss of lives, especially children, women and all innocent civilians. on both sides. But I see no change whatsoever for the next century, and “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.” And I really feel no care for either side.
I have been reading books on finance and see the extent of Jewish involvement in banking worldwide, which makes a lot of people angry — enough said.
Alexandra; It has been my understanding that you are correct in that all people of this region were identified as Semitic. Like Nordic, Latins, African and Asian, identifying indigenous of the region.
“But like the titles of political systems, these old political titles or classifications are now just slogans (many intentionally redefined with new significance to symbolize only “good or evil”), and insofar as that they are each trees of accumulated wisdom or identities of regional cultures, they are also epistemological weapons, so choose carefully how you read those who use them”
“Semitic” means descended of Shem, one of Noah’s sons, and therefore neither the synagogue of Satan nor Arabs are actually Semites.
Semitic is just a linguistic term, but not racial one. Just as Indogerman and Türkic are now simply lingistic terms. So if a Jew speaks English or German or Afrikaans only, he belongs to Indogerman language family, not to Semitic one. A Russian propagandist Solovyov is Jewish, but he speaks Russian, and not Hebrew, so he belongs linguistically to Slavs. Just like a Black from Harlem, NY, who speaks English, belongs to Indogermans, also linguistically, but not racially. Thats why linguistic criteria are not enough to define a nation.
You’re correct, Semitic refers to a cultural and linguistic family of nations. The Jewish versus Arab conflict within it goes way back, which in the Bible is described in the semi-mythological story of Jacob and Esau.
As for the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the way I see it is that both sides are wrong. I feel bad for the decent people on both sides who are caught up in it through no fault of their own, but I can’t do anything about it.
Beau;
I agree, trouble is we are doing something and it’s always been one sided. If 2 brothers are bent on destroying each other, a loving parent would come between them, and not just arm one to the hilt. As outsiders it would be best to pull out and leave them to their fate but,,, we, or should I say our powers in government have other devious motives.
But do dissident right types really care about dead dying Palestinians? If you had to chose between them being migrated to European countries or the Jews/Israelis going full Old Testament ethnic cleansing on them which would you chose? Perhaps I am being over simplistic here but the fact remains that I think the Israel has more in common with whitey on this one. This is a mirror image of the many examples of Indian raids on white settlements. Lest we forget what Hamas did on October the 7th. Hamas is to the Indians as white people are to Jews. The so called “far-right” can only dream of doing a fraction, let’s say deport all migrants who have committed a crime, of what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. I think the mutual loathing between Jews and far-white whites derives from the fact that they in certain respects see each other. Far-white whites loathe Jews out of envy for hyper-ethnocentrism being kosher for Jews/Israelis but the taboo of taboos for whites. For Jews deep down they know that they themselves are guilty of the very things they accuse of far-right whites.
Hello Fred, always glad to hear from you. That old bully in the bar recently got his ass kicked by some Afghan guy. Now he’s trying to pick a fight with this Chinese bloke, the same one who fixes his smart phone and sells him his electronics. The fellow also owns a karate studio down the road, but I don’t think our belligerent pal knows it. That’s going to really sting.
A more succinct way of putting it is, from an old Russian proverb, “When three people tell you you’re drunk, it’s time to go home and go to bed.”
“In life, every once in a while, you’re gonna run into somebody who’s a real a**hole. But if you keep runnin’ into a**holes everywhere you go, all the live-long day, well… that’s because you are an a**hole.”
I don’t know who first told that joke — Will Rogers, maybe? — but I’ve always enjoyed it and have consistently found it to be especially applicable to the JQ.
Thank you to all the replies above attempting to sort out the definition of “Semitic”.
Now, I think I’ll move to Tasmania and take up “Saving the Tasmanian Devil”.
too late, bugs bunny blew him up too
Neither Israel or Palestine have behaved saintly and it has been that way awhile. Israel gets plenty of US cash to beefen up their military. Palestine gets help from a variety of Arab nations. Many youngsters are unaware of the 1970s oil crises, the first when Arab cartels got pissed at Israel’s allies after the Jews were demolishing Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur war. The second when Iran decreased production during their own revolution. These led to recessions and inflation. It’s not surprising the US tried to stay on the good side of Saudi Arabia since then, even quickly ushering out prominent Saudis after the 911 attacks (the bulk of the hijackers were Saudi radical fanatics).
The US is 2% Jewish and 1.3% Muslim, though the Muslims are a younger demographic who will grow. Is the presence of Chuck Schumer or Ilhan Omar a greater vexation (and I’m not Jewish).
I’m fine with the UK and US taking some heat for the 1945 bombing of Dresden and its 25,000 casualties. But the Germans were no innocent choirboys to civilians. The Blitz bombing campaign of 1940-41 alone killed over 28,000 English civilians. It led to the Second Great Fire of London, the First being way back in 1666. Way to contribute to UK history! For every time one watches La Grande Illusion, they ought also view The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
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