I am trying to sell a house, which means posting is a littler harder than I’d like it to be right now, but the news even over the summer holidays is unrelenting.
comments closed to subscribers only because it's not possible to have a reasonable (or in Germany, legal) discussion section on the open internet when the word "Israel" is in the headline.
That's because everyone knows there can never be a solution.
The fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Arabs are the fastest-growing demographics. There aren't any secularists on the Arab side. Jewish and Israeli leftists are hopelessly naive morons and always have been.
No Arab country wants anything to do with its purportedly "Palestinian" brethren. Christian Zionists help fund the more extreme Israelis. Dual American/Israeli citizenship means the craziest settlers never have to pay for their crazy because when things get hot they can run back to Brooklyn etc. No Israeli government has the strength of will to ensure full Army service for the ultra-Orthodox so they get away with making everyone else defend their nonsense.
Diaspora non-observant Jews can't get their heads around the basic fact that Jews are an actual ethnicity and originated in the Middle East and have the same right to acknowledgement of an ethnic homeland as the Japanese and Slovaks do. You never hear them weeping about the ethnic cleansing that created Pakistan and India and Bangladesh.
And they don't have the wit to recognize that Arabs have been the world's pre-eminent settler-colonialists.
My only stumble with what you described is that only 10% of Jews in Israel are truly “Orthodox.”
They couldn’t go to the market during Covid since this was the only group which followed the Law and wouldn’t jab. They are not warlike. They’re Torah nerds who spend their time studying. They are mostly geezers.
I suspect the group you are speaking of could be described as religious zealots or having been radicalized, following their own jihadi worldview.
Someone is warlike but not the true “orthodox.” They are religious. Duty to the state and patriotism was not enough to compel them to jab. Friends and family had to bring them groceries. Is this really your group doing surgical strikes and blowing things up? 🤔
Dear eugyppius, thank you for the wise council. I hope Germany gets on with real economic matters which affect every single citizen. Political froth is no substitute for poverty.
Of course I wish the same for the rest of the EU27 and the UK, with many states affected by internal political instability. Mr Starmer is available for employment.
I understand Albo has a very special understanding of photovoltaic power generation without light (ie, at night). Oddly, China makes no such panels. Does Albo know something nobody else knows?
It's a big ask, but if young male company from Ukraine is not possible, the 'son of a tool' could use his body mass to keep papers from blowing away in gusty conditions.
As I say, it's a big ask. Can he attain this level of skill?
Believe me, it is not possible to have a reasonable discussion in America when the word "Israel" is in the headline, even on a Subscribers only Substack.
I don't understand parliamentary government very well, so I'll ask a "for dummies" question. How can the Chancellor announce a change in policy without consultation with the members. Our President does it as the leader of the party controlling the executive branch. He almost always consults with his own party; at a minimum he leaks before doing.
In this, it's not that different from the US system. This is Merz's government, so long as he's Chancellor, and this is a decision for the executive branch which Merz controls (with many constraints). So, while it's highly advisable to discuss these things internally and secure support, because all that's needed is a majority vote of the parliament to replace Chancellor Merz with somebody else, the decision is his.
Neurological damage is a known side effect of the tiny syringes. Neurologische Schäden sind eine bekannte Nebenwirkung der winzigen Spritzen. (Microsoft translation)
I feel like a Victorian reader of Dickens must have felt after coming to the end of the latest chapter of David Copperfield being serialised in a weekly magazine: Can't wait for next week's installment of 'The Fiasco at the Bundestag'!
Support for Israel's genocidal mania is "high" in centre-right parties in Germany? Have you got polling on that because I am going to say I doubt it. Support for Israel's conduct is "high" nowhere at this point but in Israel and among the more deranged of dispensationalist evangelical Christians.
well, I'm talking specifically about party members and the politicians. as for voters, the polling data is surprisingly bad. CDU/CSU voters skew more than German average for the Israeli side, with about 20-30% rejecting the idea of pressuring Israel or favouring greater Palestinian concessions (these are the way the questions were posed in the most relevant polls).
This is the flimsiest wokery. You drink down the same swill from the media, the NGOs and the UN that you would (presumably) reject on any other issue.
The only starving people in Gaza are Israeli hostages. Look at the pictures of plump terrorist humiliating their emaciated hostages on the few occasions when they've deigned to return a few. Oh but what about the starving children? Again, look at the photos. Starving children have starving mothers, not well-fed mothers. In any part of the world, there are children to be found with wasting diseases. Outside of war, Israel received such children into its hospitals.
Gaza during the whole of this conflict, has been provided with more food than it can actually eat. The current upside-down world propaganda that you so credulously accept is precisely because over 90% of the aid was stolen by Hamas, which then sold it on to its citizens at high prices, in order to fund Hamas's continued terrorism. The US and Israel finally organized a way of distributing aid without it falling into Hamas's hands first. This meant that Hamas had a funding crisis, hence the current pretense that Gazans are starving. The mainstream media that you wouldn't normally trust readily complies with this propaganda campaign and you believe it - because Israel.
Can you name another conflict where one side provided electricity, and allowed for its enemy to remain well fed and supplied with medication? There are indeed people in Gaza who don't receive adequate food and medication, and those are the hostages that Hamas took on October 7, 2023.
It is one of the defining characteristics of wokery to allow yourself to be pumped up with emotion to accept a politically useful narrative, until you are primed to think that anyone who talks about evidence and statistics undermining the narrative must be evil. Ask yourself: what did you think of people who behaved this way in 2020 over masks and 2021 over the "vaccines"? Why are you behaving the same way a few years later?
I accept that you wrote this in good faith, and I am honestly curious as to your sources of information. Really very very genuinely, what are you reading that has lead you to the series of assertions you make here? I’m not asking to have a fight or be dismissive, I am quite sincerely interested in your news diet if you don’t find that an impertinent question.
You make it clear that your only interest in what I have written here is to pathologize it. It is kind of you to attribute to me "good faith" rather than malice, but you are hoping I will offer a source that you can dismiss as "Zionist propaganda".
I read widely, and change my reading often. When I find a source is lying, I ditch it. When I find a source changes its opions substantially or even contradicts what it said previously without any explanation, I ditch it. I do not hold an opinion because I think it will look good to someone else. If I have some evidence for an opinion, but not enough, I hold it tentatively, and keep an eye out for counter-evidence.
If I find someone disagrees with me, there are two common possibilites: they know something I don't know; or I know something they don't know. It can easily be put to the test (one can ask questions of the other). I find, on the subject of Gaza, for example, that those who disagree are unaware of basic recent history of the territory. On any political issue, those lacking knowledge of the relevant basic history are leaving themselves open to manipulation - even to the stage when they believe in a complete inversion of the reality, and close themselves off to anyone offering counterevidence or counterarguments.
I will put a few such questions to you. Do you know what authority was in charge of Gaza between Israel's independence and 1967? Can you explain why there was not a word about Palestinians suffering the occupation of a foreign power during those two decades. Similarly, what entity occupied the "West Bank" during the same period? And again, why was there not a word about Palestinian land begin occupied?
On a related issue, can you find any sentence mentioning a Palestinian nation in UN documents prior to 1969? Even a hint? The UN, after all, has been more industrious in issuing condemnations of Israel than any other country. If you can't answer these, then you have indeed left yourself open to manipulation
Lastly, can you give me a reasoned refutation of a single point I have made in my several comments here. If you have no idea (before consulting the internet) how to answer the questions above, it is unlikely that you will make much headway here.
I didn't dodge it. Everything I have written this evening is off the top of my head because I've been immersed in the subject for years, and have professional historical knowledge of the Soviet Union, which has great relevance to the subject. This is not an assemblage of Wiki-facts picked up in the last five minutes. So I have thousands of sources, which I'm not going to try to list here.
I'm not sure that you even know what it would mean to be immersed for years in anything. Is there any field you know well? If your knowledge of Israel and Middle East conflict comes from doing the rounds of a few favored substacks or YouTube channels, then you probably imagine that I can simply list half a dozen such sources, from which you can pick one or two that "only a Zionist shill would read". I'm not Jewish, and I've never even been to Israel. I'm Catholic, and have no partisan or pecuniary reason for writing. It just saddens me to see the bold 2020-21 skeptics of Eugyppius's readership turn into keffiyeh-wearing NPCs (or if not keffiyah wearing, then at least the equivocating hand-wringers of the globalist institutions).
I've challenged you to give a reasoned refutation of any single point I've made in this evening's comments. There's nothing to stop you from giving that a go.
No one (or at least you) heard about dissatisfaction with foreign occupation of the West Bank and Gaza prior to 67 because despite riots and demonstrations it was ignored because it was an *Arab thing.* When Israel took over, all of a sudden for some reason people from all over the world became concerned with much indignation and self righteousness on both sides.
You only have to look at entire districts in Gaza with every building destroyed by bunker busting bombs to get at tunnels underneath to see for yourself that there is no running water for sanitation and consumption. No one is walking around well fed with nutritious food in Gaza because the physical conditions of living in rubble make food preparation and health care impossible. Whatever electricity is offered to Gaza, it can't possibly reach the residents in the shattered remains of buildings that constitute entire neighborhoods.
There are no electricians available because they are all Hamas and Israel is claiming great success in killing Hamas. There are no carpenters, no building contractors, no plumbers, no medical people, no sewage workers, no organization of any kind. That is because they are all part of or get paid indirectly by Hamas. Hamas controls everything. That is how it works in a war time setting.
Even if a technician is willing to risk his life looking or acting for all the world like he is a Hamas agent furthering Hamas objectives by getting things running again, he can't get the tools or materials to do his job.
You just have to look at things in the background of every visual thing that comes out of Gaza to know that things are not as you describe them. The morality of what is happening there is a separate issue.
You're welcome. I'd have been happy discussing the situation in Germany today if the keffiyah-wearing NPCs hadn't parascended over the wall. This is Eugyppius's site - people don't come here unless they were among the skeptics of 2020-21. What is it about this one issue that brings them into line with all the most powerful and shameless liars?
I likewise would like your source material if you really hope to enlighten minds.
I didn’t, “believe the science” and I don’t simply accept words simply because they are pretty, emotional, or forceful.
I was not the subject of your last batch of ire but I found it “dismissive” of you to preemptively assume that a person you do not personally know, K Lowrey, would herself be automatically “dismissive” of your supposed Zionist sources.
Your offhanded, accusatory attitude resembles the times I was inanely boxed in as being a “science denier” or “killing grandma” (or some such nonsense) out of hand by the 2021 zealots of scientism.
You are acting the part 💯 of what Eugyppius was warning about. As you are a part of this community, I suggest you try to think more empirically and contain your irrational emotion. IMO you owe KL an apology.
Normally I would not recommend normie MSM Piers Morgan but this interview is really important for understand some of the Israeli mindset of expansionism.
Stop with the hyperbole. There is no genocide happening. If Israel wanted to exterminate the Palestinians, they could have floored the whole place already. So why didn't they, because they will be accused of genocide either way?
Agreed. I thought I'd try to answer your parting question:
"So why didn't they, because they will be accused of genocide either way?"
It's in the nature of acting morally that the person (or group) will act this way whatever others say. Certainly, it's a good byproduct if people think better of you that you've done the right thing. But even if they pretend you're doing the opposite, and dishonestly denounce you for this (falsehood), you continue doing the right thing.
The Geneva Convention documents permit siege warfare - there isn't a separate paragraph on the topic, but it is mentioned twice, with guidance on how it should be conducted (i.e. the purpose is not to condemn it categorically). So here, Israel is actually going far beyond what is required for the just conduct of war.
Just War theory (as formulated in the Geneva Convention) also requires that a combatant party should not only never target non-combatants, but should also attempt to mimize the death of non-combatants. In the current conflict, the IDF has sent out millions of SMS messages to Gazans, telling them that a certain building or block will be attacked, and also telling them which nearby area will be safest for them. Additionally, it has been standard practice for the Israeli airforce to drop a warning on the roof of such a building (a non-explosive device that creates a loud noise), so that any remaining non-combatants still have time to clear the building. This, of course, means that Hamas missile crews also have time to descend to safety into their tunnel complex. Again, this is far beyond any measures required by the Geneva Conventions.
Please watch this interview of a former mayor of Israel, Daniella Weiss. Time will tell if this plan comes to fruition. Expansion of Israel far to the east.
there are also divisions within AfD, but as you move away from the Union in either direction (left or right) you will find more Israel-critical voices.
Support for Israel's war against Gaza is certainly high in centre-right mainstream publications including among user comments. Of course, these are by no means representative but they reveal that there is indeed a large number of people especially on the right (and to a lesser degree on the Left) for whom Israel can't fight brutally enough. My impression is that most of them are full of hatred against Muslims because they essentially treat them all as one. Hamas, Palestinian civilians, psychotic knife attackers in Germany, fundamentalists who fight for a global caliphate, the annoying Arab youths in their neighborhood who commit seven deadly sins before breakfast? All the same to them. And it's certainly true that the lines between Hamas and civilians is blurry but that doesn't justify a complete neglect of the latter. And given the way Israel has been conducting itself for decades and especially in the past two years, it's really not surprising that many Palestinians wished it wouldn't exist.
"And given the way Israel has been conducting itself for decades and especially in the past two years..."
How has Israel been conducting itself for decades? In the 90s, by making foolish "peace" agreements that merely facilitated Palestinian terrorist attacks. In the early 2000s by forcibly removing all Israeli citizens from the Gaza strip, and handing over the whole territory, with its infrastructure and industries intact so that they could enjoy prosperity.
So did the "Palestinians" want prosperity? No, of course not. There was no such nation before the mid 1960s, and their national identity is nothing except the eradication of Israel. After being gifted the Gaza strip, they staged a civil war which Hamas won (killing off their PLO opponents). They destroyed the industries, and lived off a global welfare scheme. The Hamas leaders took billions of $ for themselves, and instead of building up industry and tourism, they bought missiles and dug tunnels equivalent to the metro system of a major developed city, but for the purpose of terrorism only (which are indispensible to the war they are waging now, such as hiding Israeli hostages, or appearing out of nowhere to shoot Israeli soldiers).
Since you have such a dark and warped view of Israel, you will be aware that they could have turned the Gaza strip to glass in a day. Why, instead, do they provide electricity, allow in food aid and medicines. Are you even aware that Hamas takes over 90% of the aid, shooting its own people if they try to get it first. They then sell on the aid at whatever price they choose, in order to fund their continued terrorism.
Are you even aware that there was no conflict before Hamas and "Palestinian civilians" went on a rampage of gang rape, torture, burnings, beheadings and shooting. Are you even aware that Hamas has continued attacking every day since October 2023? If your country was under constant attack from an enemy sworn to your destruction, would you find yourself saying at some point "Enough is enough. This looks bad in the international media and the UN. We must surrender now, and let them massacre us."
One thing I find very curious about the "poor Palestinians" is why are no Arab countries willing to take in Palestinian refugees? If their fellow Muslims are in such dire straits, why don't Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc offer them asylum? Everyone blames Israel, but no Islamic country is willing to offer help to these supposedly starving war-torn people. A clear lack of sympathy for their Muslim brothers and sisters. Curious.
Curious indeed that our hordes of wokists (left and right varieties) conveniently overlook this.
Jordan was nearly taken over by the PLO at the beginning of the 70s, and the Jordanian monarchy's successful attempt to crush the revolt was exactly the kind of merciless massacre that Israel is always accused of carrying out (but never does).
The PLO then moved on to Lebanon, and did indeed succeed in destroying that country. Reagan foolishly allowed the PLO leadership to move into exile, and Hizballah took over the fight. Try to find old photos of Beirut - it was a truly elegant capital city once.
The wokists also failed to note Egypt's closure of the border with Gaza at the Rafah crossing (the only crossing to Egypt) at the same time that Israel closed its crossings when they realized that they had handed over control of the strip only to have Hamas take it over as a pad for launching rockets at cities and towns in Israel.
Again, they failed to note Egypt's treatment of the tunnels near its border: Egypt flooded them with sewage, doubtless drowning many Hamas terrorists in the process. Israel, of course, has never done any such thing.
Almost as if the wokists didn't actually care a jot for the "Palestinians" but only for the destruction of Israel - on the left because it is a civilized country that is presented as "colonialist" and locked unwilling in combat with the leftist's beloved Islam; and on the right because of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or some such rubbish under a politer name.
Well put. Wasn't it known as Black September, when Jordan crushed the PLO? It does help to know some history.
It amazes me how nobody on any side seems to notice the way Egypt keeps seriously blockading any Palestinians who try to flee in that direction. It's the classic Elephant In The Living Room -- Islamic countries do not want the Palestinians! We need to pay attention to that.
Yes, and as a result, Arafat's Fatah organization, the leading faction of the PLO, organized a new front organization, called Black September. They assassinated the Jordanian prime minister, failed to assassinate the King, but their best known terrorist action was the torture and murder of the Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics of 1972. Fatah used these "more extreme" organizations partly to cultivate plausible deniability, but also to stop the PLO from splitting, or from overthrowing Fatah leadership. The hottest of the hotheads could be transferred over to the latest front organization, which in this instance was Black September.
Fatah closed Black September down the following year, which is an interesting example of the dynamics of Palestinian terrorism. The Soviet Union agreed to mentor, train and arm the PLO (and later offshoots) because 1967 had proven that several Arab countries under Soviet sponsorship were unable to defeat Israel militarily, even when their attacks were simultaneous and co-ordinated.
As a result, the KGB, with Andropov in charge, formulated a program of terrorism combined with propaganda. The first end other countries' co-operation with Israel. The second was to be attuned to the weaknesses of the Western liberal elites, so that they would gradually see their capitulations to terrorism as a highly moral act.
After Munich in 1972, the terror campaign abroad was proving counter-productive to "Palestinian" and Soviet interests, so Black September in particular was closed down, and terrorist activities were confined to Middle Eastern theatres - chiefly the "West Bank" and Lebanon.
As Ben Shapiro likes to say, “Two things can be true at once.”
The Zionist State of Israel could have been started because of British occupation and subsequent colonization. AND Hamas and Hezbollah can be terrorist organizations.
AND, USA funds all 3. So BS was wrong. 3 things can be true at once. It’s not an either/or situation.
AIPAC still oversees and contributes to almost every single American lawmaker, media group, and University.
I believe they are sometimes of different sects. The same reason why Iran and Saudis had a problem with each other. FYI: Iran just kicked out a large group of Afghanis. It’s a cultural mismatch.
Also, they don’t want to inadvertently bring terrorists and dependent, poverty stricken populations into their midst which they then have to sort out.
There are so many factions among the Muslims, just as with every other human group, I guess. Shitte, Sunni, who knows what all. I keep hearing that Syria and Iran have now been killing groups of people within their countries that they don't like -- Muslims of different political or religious factions, Christians, Druze...taking advantage of the recent upheavals to do some slaughtering. So it goes...
It’s ramping up that Israel will take one part of Syria and Turkey the other. There goes the remnant of one of the very oldest civilizations going back to the time of Assad and Hammurabi.
I'm not saying Israel is the only bad actor here and I'm certainly not condoning Hamas terrorism. But your comment does not address anything that happened before the Oslo agreement and paints a very one-sided picture of what happened after. The territory that increasingly many states recognise as Palestine is only a small part of what the original UN partition plan of 1947 assigned to the Arabs. Both Gaza and the West Bank were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967. That Israel returned it (under limited sovereignty) in the 90s may deserve some praise, but ultimately it would be as if Trump and Putin signed a peace deal and Russia returns some of the occupied land, while still controlling the borders and protecting Russian settlers. Just look at how Israel has grown since 1948.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Israel is committing genocide. Maybe what they are doing qualifies as such, but I'm not convinced. Given the power imbalance, they could easily flatten all of Gaza but they don't. Yet, they have restricted food aid again and again, and there are many quotes of Israeli politicians that do sound like they have zero empathy for Palestinan civilians and would be willing to starve them to death. I'm sure Hamas is partly responsible for the famine in Gaza, but Israel also bears responsibility, certainly morally, but even legally as an occupying force. There would be no hunger if they dropped the same amount of food as they dropped bombs.
I've addressed earlier decades in some other comments here. You can look around for them ... or not, as you please. There is one comment that asks about the occupations of Gaza prior to 1967, and why there was not the slightest hint of protest at foreign occupation for two decades? How could it be that the ancient and brave Palestinian nation that you believe in was so little worried by foreign occupation, so long as the foreigners weren't Jews? You can also do a little homework on what happened in 1948. Who accepted the partition, and who rejected it? Which countries launched an attack, and which country had to defend itself? Who was told to flee because the other armies would soon defeat the Jews? Why should they be allowed back? How do you account for the many Arab communities who didn't flee, and who not only weren't massacred, but became Israeli citizens, where they have more freedom and prosperity to this day than their counterparts in the neighboring Arab states?
You're making characteristic modern liberal assumptions: that everyone wants to get along and prosper, and that if two groups are fighting, there must be a misunderstanding that can be cleared up by diplomacy, and if necessary, billions of dollars of aid. As a corollary, one group won't attack another without good reason, even if they may act excessively.
In many conflicts, none of these liberal assumptions apply. There are indeed some groups that simply want to eradicate the other, regardless of whether the other acts provocatively or not.
Read Hamas's charter if you don't believe (and of course you don't). They are committed to the eradication of Israel, to the killing of its inhabitants, and consider Jews around the world to be fair game. The UN apparatus in Gaza overlapped with Hamas, and the international media (which the wokists of the right think is controlled by Jews!) simply scribble down whatever Hamas tells them (if they don't, it would be unwise for them to come back to Gaza). So they are the ultimate in embedded media: they are united with Hamas because it is lethal to criticize; and they are united ideologically through the indoctrination they have received at college and through social media, which convinces them that Hamas are the underdogs and Israel the colonial oppressor, a situation that allows them to justify the most hellish of Hamas atrocities.
Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023, and has continued both to attack and to hold most of the hostages (or their corpses). As you wring your hands and equivocate, you tell Israel that it must allow its people to massacred in a series of October 7-type events, which Hamas has promised it will carry out if it has the chance. For Hamas, the international propaganda campaign is ultimately more important than their "military" campaign. To this end, they do their utmost to ensure that as many as possible of their civilians will die (civilians, by the way, many of whom were the rapists and murderers of October 7, but let that pass). At the same time, Israel does its utmost to minimize casualties, but the result is hardly going to look pretty if there is any chance of defeating Hamas. None of this interests you, since it provides no opportunity for virtue signalling. As I said in one of the other comments, this is just right-wing wokery (presumably you wouldn't be reading Eugyppius if you were a leftist, so I'm discounting that possibility).
I can imagine that much of the world (especially in the west) freshly emerging from WW2 would have been a bit busy with their own plight and the devastation of bombed cities all around them. Maybe they weren’t paying attention to Israel v Palestine.
You're making many assumptions. Those about the Middle East, I can hardly refute. I don't deny that Hamas are terrorists. I have little interest in reading their charter. Maybe I should, it won't be more of a waste of time than this exchange. I know that Israel has been fighting for its existence ever it existed. So has Palestine. You may argue that Palestine is an invention of the 20th century, but so is Israel. Maybe I'm a hopeless liberal, believing in peace and reconciliation. To be honest, I don't, really. Already before the current war, I've been thinking that the two state solution is doomed to fail. There is too much baggage, for both states not to remain enemies. I don't think there will be peace either way. Maybe the two state solution just perpetuated the conflict.
But what is the alternative? If Israel occupies all of Palestine, they risk losing their Jewish majority, and this is Israel's whole identity. Maybe the best would be going back to the original idea, give the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. But neither Jordan nor Egypt would want that. Egypt could open its borders to Palestinian refugees by the way, they also share some responsibility in the humanitarian crisis. But I understand that they don't want to import the problem. It's a tragedy, and I don't see any real solution. What is yours? I hope it's not hidden in your user name.
Am I virtue signalling? Maybe, depending on how broadly you define it. I mean, I do think that compassion is a virtue and by criticising your comment for its lack thereof, I may signal my superiority in some way. But everyone sharing their opinion is a virtue signaller in that sense. I don't think that either of us have any influence on the lives of Israelis or Gazans. I could call you a virtue signaller just as much for publicly siding with Israel. In the end, it's all pointless. I'd much rather be called a leftist than woke by the way, and I'm certainly not right-wing. I am not allergic to reading opinions that I disagree with. Although I would have never got to know Eugyppius blog if I didn't agree with his Covid commentary.
Saudis and Egypt said they’d take on rebuilding Gaza btw. For whatever that’s worth.
People playing fast and loose, lobbing adhominems at others whom they don’t know and have barely discussed anything with is a low characteristic and reflects more poorly upon the the attacker than the one being attacked. Usually it’s a sign of faltering ego. In a forum such as this, getting to the meat of the issue is more easily accomplished without the distraction of negative feelings or a need to suddenly defend oneself from an unexpected, nasty attacker.
> Both Gaza and the West Bank were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Objection to terminology. If it is "illegal" for Israel to occupy territory outside of the 1947 agreement, then it was "illegal" for forces from outside that territory to attack them in 1967.
Israel was attacked in 1967. They won. That's what happens when someone picks a war with you, and you win. You pick up territory.
I just about guarantee that *whatever* country you live in -- pretty much anywhere on the planet with *very* few exceptions -- has at one point or another, picked up territory via force of arms. Holding that territory is not "illegal". That's the *entire history of the human species*.
Calling the 1967 borders of Israel "illegal" makes as much sense as referring to the USA's "illegal occupation of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California". Like, it's certainly a sequence of words that a person could utter, but that's the entirety of the weight they carry, as well.
But it certainly does an excellent job of indicating your biases on the subject, so there's that, at least.
Yes. I do tend to use "reality" as my measuring stick... Seriously, it's not like Israel capturing territory like that in 1967 is even the most recent example! Lots of people like to talk as though the end of WWII was this massive turning of the leaf in the way the world works. And it has mostly been so in the fantasies of those people. And those fantasies seem to get more and more elaborate the further away from WWII we get. And a statistically significant portion of those people somehow only ever seem to apply that set of rules to Israel.
Can you image the backlash if Israel flattened Gaza outright? That would cause 100% of nations to publicly condemn Israel whether they actually still supported Israel or not. Maybe Bibi is smart enough to have figured that out. Maybe Blinken advised him to slow down.
One should keep in mind that the Middle East isn't really a geographic region. It's actually a vast blood sacrifice and purity cult superstore and there's always going to be a fight on Aisle Three.
Creepy. The term, “Palestinian Problem” harkens to another time when the term, “Jewish Problem” was used. This is starting to feel like we’re in an original “Twilight Zone” show from 50 years ago.
I don't care what you read into my comment. Seems like projection in any case. So, I'll ask again. How would you handle a neighbour whose raison d'être it is to whipe Israel from the map?
If their goal is to “wipe Israel” they’re not doing a good job. Mostly they do more pin prick attacks and capturing young women without plan. It’s more like random acts of terrorism. Big brother Iran would do a better job. So far they don’t seem very committed though.
The fact that they aren't doing a good job is *not* a refutation of the claim that it's their purpose.
Hamas has explicitly stated that its goal is to wipe Israel off the map -- "from the river to the sea" -- in a phrase you may have heard in the last several years. Someone's psychopathic neighbor may not actually have the *ability* to remove them -- as they say it, "from the garden to the street" -- but if he states very clearly that he'd *really like to*, keeps randomly shooting at their house, and rapes their dog to death, *they might decide to take him at his word anyway.*
That seems like a perfectly reasonable distinction, between "has the goal of" and "has the capability to", and why someone might still react to the former, even if the latter is lacking, but not for lack of trying.
Sometimes people on the right are stupid sheeple too. I know many. They think what their churches tell them to think but aren’t clear as to the “why.” Many of these same people vaccinated because they were told to by the government and felt patriotic, that their government must necessarily look out for them, right? Then they stayed away from church because their pastors closed things down for fear they’d lose their tax exempt status but called it, “following the law.”
People love to talk about Israel’s “genocidal mania” but no one ever has a realistic suggestion what it should do instead. By realistic, I mean Israel not just permanently living next to people who will use any second when the boot of the IDF is taken off their neck to start massacring their citizens, and absorbing massive, economy crippling costs (70% tax rates!) to keep the boot in place to prevent that outcome.
Israel removed its settlements from the strip, and Hamas took over. They had a fairly porous border until there were many terror attacks. Workers could still go into Israel to work through checkpoints, which was used by many to reconnoiter for the 10/7 attacks. Hamas’ excuse for the worst atrocities (which were celebrated anyway) was that that was just normal Gaza citizens tagging along (some of which may well be true).
I fully agree that the Arabs in the territories belonging to Israel now or, I guess, soon were given a rough deal from at the latest the beginnings of Mandatory Palestine; but Jews didn’t decide to congregate and seek national independence in their ancient homeland because they had such a great time of it either. It really started out primarily as historical tragedy, not wilful mutual crimes (although those also happened all along the way, to be sure).
I don’t agree with many things Israel is doing or saying (first and foremost that they have probably – there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence – given medical support to ISIS fighters), and some politicians, worryingly including some in the governing parties, have indeed used quite genocidal language. The puzzlingly bad intelligence work before and the technical failures and delayed response after 10/7 also throw up horrible questions.
Israel is however fighting a popular (in the sense of “opposite of cabinet-”) war against a nation that started it in the first place and would do even worse to them, and whose only quality earning them international support is that they’re much less competent at it and everyone seems addicted to loving an underdog, even if it’s rabid. This is also an existential war for Israel, and yet they are fighting it much more carefully at least than any side in the second world war, including those for whom it was not remotely existential (i.e. anyone except the Reich and the USSR). Hamas has militarily already lost that war in the first few weeks despite using human shields and characteristically using pure terror tactics, and is simply nevertheless not surrendering, still keeping some hostages.
The goal of Israel is clearly not genocide, but ethnic cleansing (something that recently happened with the open support of a NATO member in Armenia, to deafening silence); the reason that this has not worked so far is that nobody among the Arabs countries is going to touch them with a ten foot pole since they have spelled disaster for anyone who did: Interminable civil war followed by horrible dysfunction and becoming subverted by Hezbollah in Lebanon; a coup attempt that cost the life of the previous king in Jordan, which is still suffering from a huge and unproductive Pali population; political subversion and a coup attempt in Egypt. The Arabs say that they won’t take the Palis because they will not allow Israel to conquer the Pali territories but they really won’t because the Palis have proven fatally deranged ingrates.
The likely outcome of all this is that the population will be ethnically cleansed to Europe, where they will almost certainly prove a source of further political derangement, terrorism, and vast amounts of corruption, welfare use, and everyday criminality, sexual and otherwise. It is not at all clear to me that that the safety of a people that has shown nothing but unremitting hostility to everyone they ever met, not least the wider west, should be worth that price to us.
Britain moved troops in and occupied land where they did not belong. Then they discharged the debt in trade to Rothschild for his own new state called Israel.
> Britain moved troops in and occupied land where they did not belong.
On land the Babylonians, then the Romans, and then the Arabs had done to previously, which was then being ruled by Turks until the Brits took over. And quite probably dozens if not hundreds of other folks squeezed in there as well. This is not a line of reasoning to be taken seriously.
Why is this "Don't pick wars you can't afford to lose" thing so *incredibly* hard for people to grasp?
Let's say that Russia absolutely collapses in their attack on Ukraine, and Ukraine manages to reassemble the Empire of the Kievan Rus. Like, back when Kiev was the capital and Moscow barely existed. Would that be "occupation of land where they did not belong"? Or would that just be "fuck around and find out, sucks to suck, Russia!"?
Nobody stuck a gun to the head of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and *made* him stick his dick into WWI. But he did, and it cost him his empire. For that matter, is the Russian aggression against Ukraine even unwarranted, given that Ukraine wasn't separated from Russia until after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire? Shouldn't that mean that the Russians have just as much of a claim on Ukraine as the former Ottomans have on their lost territories? Possibly more, since the loss occurred later for Russia?
Does basically *anyone* bemoan the land the *Germans* lost after WWI or WWII? There were ethnic Germans that were turfed out of places in Eastern Europe they'd been living for hundreds of years. But almost nobody ever mentions *that* except history professors. It still sucked for them. It *always* sucks when the local assholes in the castles decide to pick a fight with another set of assholes in castles, and the people in the middle get trampled on, particularly when the locals that picked the fight *lose* it. And then, most of the time, the people who are still breathing get the fuck over it and move on with their lives.
I live in a city -- Albuquerque -- which is surrounded on three sides by Indian Reservations. That was obviously taken through force of arms at some point, and the locals subjugated. Am *I* occupying land where I don't belong?
Where does the line get drawn? When does the line get drawn? Does Israel get to use the same definitions as everyone else? I haven't exactly heard a lot of lamentations regarding the demise of the Republic of Artsakh, for all that it happened a week before the Hamas attack on Israel. Would Armenia have the moral right to attack Azerbaijan? Some of the folks in Nagorno Karabakh had been there for some four thousand years, and Azerbijan expelled them less than two years ago. How far back should the clock be wound? Shall there be an international effort to Make Istanbul Constantinople Again? There's really no question *that* was taken by force. Are we kicking the Normans out of England? How about the Saxons, returning Albion to the Brythonic peoples?
Does "British troops moved in and occupied land where they did not belong" apply even to Britain itself, given the sequence of invasions there?
Put simpler and more direct: We should not make the problems of a nuisance population that is so incredibly good at bringing problems on themselves and everyone in their vicinity ours, no matter whatsoever what fate befalls them if we don’t.
I greatly resent the attempts some in Israel are making at offloading them on Europe, to be frank. It is somewhat understandable though, to be fair, since so many in Europe like to complain loudly about the treatment the poor dears receive at the hands of Israel.
The reflex of “if you like them so much…” is not too different from Eastern European countries supporting the westward move of various Gypsy peoples after being chastised for treating the lovelies ever so nastily. You’ll notice that that choir didn’t sing quite so loudly after the transplants started thieving in Paris and literally shitting up parks in London.
Europe should of course, (a) shut up and (b) not give in to any attempts made anyway. “We” should not need to have the consequences of “our” advocacy made manifest once again to think a bit ahead; I’m not very hopeful on either count.
Of course, like every people, the Palis have their smart fraction (e.g. the spectacularly successful president of El Salvador or the founder of the great web/AI coding system repl.it are ethnic Palestinians) but much like every other Arab with their stuff together they’ve gotten as far away from their compatriots as they possibly could, and while that set has residual ethnic sympathies that make them voice their concerns where they can (e.g. repl.it’s Masad in his Tucker Carlson interviews), I don’t see them support the struggle with skin in the game, and who can blame them.
What’s interesting is that a widespread and I am certain honestly believed talking point in Israel is that the Palestinians aren’t a nation at all but rather a random assortment of fellahin who just happened to live there as tenant farmers. I always tell Israeli friends: That might have been true at the end of the Ottoman empire, but you guys made them a nation, in the usual way – shared suffering and struggle. I’m not getting through on that one, at all.
As far as evangelical Christians in USA, many just play follow the leader. If they like their pastor they just go along with what he tells them. The pastor never talks about the Zionist history and the flock never ask. They simply assume they are taking the righteous position.
"The moderate, sensible, centrist solution – some kind of cooperation between the Union and the AfD to remove the left from power at the federal level – every day recedes further from view. "
Not so sure about this. The more intractable the SDP becomes, the likelier the possibility that a man (and a party) with no actual spine will finally invite the AfD into a coalition. Holy cow, I'd love to see the exploding left wing and mainstream craniums that would result from that. And this arrangement would likely last a decade or more.
Well. Can we say "thank God" that the Christian Social Union ain't in the least quaking before the specter of pro-Palestine lunatics running wild in the streets because of their objections and gave Merz a smart smack upside his head?
Considering the political haj currently being performed by Canada, France and Australia this is a mighty interesting counterpoint.
I am ashamed to be Australian at the moment. Our prime minister rents his spine out to what ever cause gets his short attention span and 90,000 terrorist supporter marching on the bridge in Sydney is the latest!
Really? A paid subscription grants immunity from legal action?
I have to say, despite my lack of interest in contemporary German politics, I find your writing compelling and entertaining. Maybe it’s because you have skin in the game and that is something I truly respect.
thank you mr. anthony. a paid subscription may not confer immunity, but at least it reduces vastly the number of people who can read what we write down here. which has its advantages and disadvantages.
Apart from the style and the dash of your writing I commend your ever inventive neologisms - 'Merzian', 'Upscrewery' and the best 'Trainwreckclowncar'. More please.
The SPD used to be calmer, it's just taking a while to get used to their new rabid incarnation. Also, it simply seemed crazy to me that a failed Bundestag confirmation would occasion this much anger, just weeks of whining and crying. the Union made it clear the sticking point was abortion, just nominate somebody else who hasn't made such public statements about the issue.
He isn't even in contention for second worst, if we assign that based on damage done. However, for "most incompetent", unable to even explain let alone enforce his own agenda, I'd say he's in with a great shout for first place. With the exception of Starmer, few politicians have been so obviously unsuited to the role so quickly.
Truss, whose origins are in the Orange Book/actual properly liberal wing of the Lib Dems, was taken out because of "market-upsetting" remarks that would have been a nothingburger if expressed by the leader of a country that was either economically strong or already totally f'd. As the UK has been on the brink of financial collapse for some decades, saying so, and most especially saying something ought to be done about it, was unacceptable. She only lasted so long because the Queen died on her watch and it would have been unseemly to topple the PM before the funeral.
I looked it up, and my recollection was a bit off--it wasn't a quick collapse that Belgium was noted for, it was longest time without a governing coalition -- a total of 541 days!
Have you noticed how odd looking the current crop of politicians is worldwide? Perhaps we should vote for or against based on odder or more 'regular' looking people. I see this worldwide, America included.
In addition to demonizing fat, there is also massive and widespread intake of statins, thus denying the brain of needed cholesterol. No wonder so many can't think or reason.
I don't know which I look forward to more: E's clever updates or the hilariously brilliant comments of my fellow subscribers. The wit never, ever disappoints. I only wish E could write about my own state: California!
Ugh, Friedrich Metz. That face. Those eyes. How do such moronic people attain power? It seems that the higher your level of idiocy, stupidity and incompetence, the higher you rise in politics. And for strange reasons I can't explain, they all have a certain identifiable "look".
Psychopaths and sociopaths excel at rising to power because they are willing to do whatever it takes. And that is what you are seeing in the eyes of so many political leaders.
Merz always looks at the camera with a quizzical look, as though he’s wondering if what he just said was “ok.” Like a 6 year old glancing at mom during his kindergarten classroom end-of-year presentation.
Interesting. I did wonder why he'd done it - makes more sense now.
This political re-ordering seems to be happening in many West European countries of course as they all seem to have made a similar hash of running their countries for the last 20 years or so and are now reaping the whirlwind that follows.
comments closed to subscribers only because it's not possible to have a reasonable (or in Germany, legal) discussion section on the open internet when the word "Israel" is in the headline.
First, everybody lost their mind over Trump. Now it's Israel/Gaza. You can't have a reasonable discussion with anybody about it.
That's because everyone knows there can never be a solution.
The fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Arabs are the fastest-growing demographics. There aren't any secularists on the Arab side. Jewish and Israeli leftists are hopelessly naive morons and always have been.
No Arab country wants anything to do with its purportedly "Palestinian" brethren. Christian Zionists help fund the more extreme Israelis. Dual American/Israeli citizenship means the craziest settlers never have to pay for their crazy because when things get hot they can run back to Brooklyn etc. No Israeli government has the strength of will to ensure full Army service for the ultra-Orthodox so they get away with making everyone else defend their nonsense.
Diaspora non-observant Jews can't get their heads around the basic fact that Jews are an actual ethnicity and originated in the Middle East and have the same right to acknowledgement of an ethnic homeland as the Japanese and Slovaks do. You never hear them weeping about the ethnic cleansing that created Pakistan and India and Bangladesh.
And they don't have the wit to recognize that Arabs have been the world's pre-eminent settler-colonialists.
I could keep going but...
❤️ Bring it! 😂
My only stumble with what you described is that only 10% of Jews in Israel are truly “Orthodox.”
They couldn’t go to the market during Covid since this was the only group which followed the Law and wouldn’t jab. They are not warlike. They’re Torah nerds who spend their time studying. They are mostly geezers.
I suspect the group you are speaking of could be described as religious zealots or having been radicalized, following their own jihadi worldview.
Tell me I am wrong.
"Not warlike." Oh kid.
Someone is warlike but not the true “orthodox.” They are religious. Duty to the state and patriotism was not enough to compel them to jab. Friends and family had to bring them groceries. Is this really your group doing surgical strikes and blowing things up? 🤔
Perhaps you've misperceived my full original comment or you know nothing about the ultra-Orthodox in all their maleficent splendor.
Sure you can! Try me I’m game.
We need to all practice being reasonable and using our critical thinking skills!
It’s the new fashion that’s become a bad habit.
Such reminders of the times we're in continue to be horribly sobering.
Odd you should say that, they often cause *me* to cause me to drink heavily... ;)
They're especially sobering for those who've been driven to drink.
Dear eugyppius, thank you for the wise council. I hope Germany gets on with real economic matters which affect every single citizen. Political froth is no substitute for poverty.
Of course I wish the same for the rest of the EU27 and the UK, with many states affected by internal political instability. Mr Starmer is available for employment.
And Mr Albanese from Australia. He has a special line to Mahmoud Abbas to sell!
I understand Albo has a very special understanding of photovoltaic power generation without light (ie, at night). Oddly, China makes no such panels. Does Albo know something nobody else knows?
Yes. He did say that! He think he knows lots of secret stuff! Such a clever man!
I saw the event. If only he remembered the energy storage batteries - then his gaff could be diluted.
Poor man.
China is probably trying to find ways of making Albo's dream come true, so we can all buy even more solar panels.
Albo is clueless on everything. China calls him ‘a handsome boy’. Closeted with Xi who knows what he agreed to!
But would anyone give Starmer real employment? Could he do anything useful.
An interesting parlor game might be to prove who is more incompetent: Metz or Starmer.
Mertz appears to be swayed by Greens and Antifa, whereas Starmer is controlled by lovely young male escorts from Ukraine.
Chixbythesea has the best answer.
It's a big ask, but if young male company from Ukraine is not possible, the 'son of a tool' could use his body mass to keep papers from blowing away in gusty conditions.
As I say, it's a big ask. Can he attain this level of skill?
Pardon me, but I believe he is properly addressed as Sir Starmer. 😉
You are correct. However, this implies respect - as Jillian Stirling says, Mr Starmer KC, 'son of a tool', does not deserve this recognition.
Hopefully will not be our Prime Minister for much longer.
Nah! He doesn’t deserve it!
Believe me, it is not possible to have a reasonable discussion in America when the word "Israel" is in the headline, even on a Subscribers only Substack.
I don't understand parliamentary government very well, so I'll ask a "for dummies" question. How can the Chancellor announce a change in policy without consultation with the members. Our President does it as the leader of the party controlling the executive branch. He almost always consults with his own party; at a minimum he leaks before doing.
In this, it's not that different from the US system. This is Merz's government, so long as he's Chancellor, and this is a decision for the executive branch which Merz controls (with many constraints). So, while it's highly advisable to discuss these things internally and secure support, because all that's needed is a majority vote of the parliament to replace Chancellor Merz with somebody else, the decision is his.
Thanks for this explanation. I never equated President with Chancellor, because voters vote for parties complicated by coalitions.
Neurological damage is a known side effect of the tiny syringes. Neurologische Schäden sind eine bekannte Nebenwirkung der winzigen Spritzen. (Microsoft translation)
I guess I thought all the comments were only accessible to subscribers all the time! 😂😂😂
I feel like a Victorian reader of Dickens must have felt after coming to the end of the latest chapter of David Copperfield being serialised in a weekly magazine: Can't wait for next week's installment of 'The Fiasco at the Bundestag'!
Or a tale of two cities? Berlin and London. Or Berlin and Washington??
Who is the Artful Dodger character?
Seems it would be Nancy Faeser.
I don't think she's likely to artfully dodge anything...
A shifty pickpocket.
As per a famous advert for chocolate: "Chancellor Merz, you spoil us!"
Support for Israel's genocidal mania is "high" in centre-right parties in Germany? Have you got polling on that because I am going to say I doubt it. Support for Israel's conduct is "high" nowhere at this point but in Israel and among the more deranged of dispensationalist evangelical Christians.
well, I'm talking specifically about party members and the politicians. as for voters, the polling data is surprisingly bad. CDU/CSU voters skew more than German average for the Israeli side, with about 20-30% rejecting the idea of pressuring Israel or favouring greater Palestinian concessions (these are the way the questions were posed in the most relevant polls).
"Support for Israel's genocidal mania" etc. etc.
This is the flimsiest wokery. You drink down the same swill from the media, the NGOs and the UN that you would (presumably) reject on any other issue.
The only starving people in Gaza are Israeli hostages. Look at the pictures of plump terrorist humiliating their emaciated hostages on the few occasions when they've deigned to return a few. Oh but what about the starving children? Again, look at the photos. Starving children have starving mothers, not well-fed mothers. In any part of the world, there are children to be found with wasting diseases. Outside of war, Israel received such children into its hospitals.
Gaza during the whole of this conflict, has been provided with more food than it can actually eat. The current upside-down world propaganda that you so credulously accept is precisely because over 90% of the aid was stolen by Hamas, which then sold it on to its citizens at high prices, in order to fund Hamas's continued terrorism. The US and Israel finally organized a way of distributing aid without it falling into Hamas's hands first. This meant that Hamas had a funding crisis, hence the current pretense that Gazans are starving. The mainstream media that you wouldn't normally trust readily complies with this propaganda campaign and you believe it - because Israel.
Can you name another conflict where one side provided electricity, and allowed for its enemy to remain well fed and supplied with medication? There are indeed people in Gaza who don't receive adequate food and medication, and those are the hostages that Hamas took on October 7, 2023.
It is one of the defining characteristics of wokery to allow yourself to be pumped up with emotion to accept a politically useful narrative, until you are primed to think that anyone who talks about evidence and statistics undermining the narrative must be evil. Ask yourself: what did you think of people who behaved this way in 2020 over masks and 2021 over the "vaccines"? Why are you behaving the same way a few years later?
I accept that you wrote this in good faith, and I am honestly curious as to your sources of information. Really very very genuinely, what are you reading that has lead you to the series of assertions you make here? I’m not asking to have a fight or be dismissive, I am quite sincerely interested in your news diet if you don’t find that an impertinent question.
You make it clear that your only interest in what I have written here is to pathologize it. It is kind of you to attribute to me "good faith" rather than malice, but you are hoping I will offer a source that you can dismiss as "Zionist propaganda".
I read widely, and change my reading often. When I find a source is lying, I ditch it. When I find a source changes its opions substantially or even contradicts what it said previously without any explanation, I ditch it. I do not hold an opinion because I think it will look good to someone else. If I have some evidence for an opinion, but not enough, I hold it tentatively, and keep an eye out for counter-evidence.
If I find someone disagrees with me, there are two common possibilites: they know something I don't know; or I know something they don't know. It can easily be put to the test (one can ask questions of the other). I find, on the subject of Gaza, for example, that those who disagree are unaware of basic recent history of the territory. On any political issue, those lacking knowledge of the relevant basic history are leaving themselves open to manipulation - even to the stage when they believe in a complete inversion of the reality, and close themselves off to anyone offering counterevidence or counterarguments.
I will put a few such questions to you. Do you know what authority was in charge of Gaza between Israel's independence and 1967? Can you explain why there was not a word about Palestinians suffering the occupation of a foreign power during those two decades. Similarly, what entity occupied the "West Bank" during the same period? And again, why was there not a word about Palestinian land begin occupied?
On a related issue, can you find any sentence mentioning a Palestinian nation in UN documents prior to 1969? Even a hint? The UN, after all, has been more industrious in issuing condemnations of Israel than any other country. If you can't answer these, then you have indeed left yourself open to manipulation
Lastly, can you give me a reasoned refutation of a single point I have made in my several comments here. If you have no idea (before consulting the internet) how to answer the questions above, it is unlikely that you will make much headway here.
I asked you a very straightforward and polite question. Why are you dodging it?
I didn't dodge it. Everything I have written this evening is off the top of my head because I've been immersed in the subject for years, and have professional historical knowledge of the Soviet Union, which has great relevance to the subject. This is not an assemblage of Wiki-facts picked up in the last five minutes. So I have thousands of sources, which I'm not going to try to list here.
I'm not sure that you even know what it would mean to be immersed for years in anything. Is there any field you know well? If your knowledge of Israel and Middle East conflict comes from doing the rounds of a few favored substacks or YouTube channels, then you probably imagine that I can simply list half a dozen such sources, from which you can pick one or two that "only a Zionist shill would read". I'm not Jewish, and I've never even been to Israel. I'm Catholic, and have no partisan or pecuniary reason for writing. It just saddens me to see the bold 2020-21 skeptics of Eugyppius's readership turn into keffiyeh-wearing NPCs (or if not keffiyah wearing, then at least the equivocating hand-wringers of the globalist institutions).
I've challenged you to give a reasoned refutation of any single point I've made in this evening's comments. There's nothing to stop you from giving that a go.
No one (or at least you) heard about dissatisfaction with foreign occupation of the West Bank and Gaza prior to 67 because despite riots and demonstrations it was ignored because it was an *Arab thing.* When Israel took over, all of a sudden for some reason people from all over the world became concerned with much indignation and self righteousness on both sides.
You only have to look at entire districts in Gaza with every building destroyed by bunker busting bombs to get at tunnels underneath to see for yourself that there is no running water for sanitation and consumption. No one is walking around well fed with nutritious food in Gaza because the physical conditions of living in rubble make food preparation and health care impossible. Whatever electricity is offered to Gaza, it can't possibly reach the residents in the shattered remains of buildings that constitute entire neighborhoods.
There are no electricians available because they are all Hamas and Israel is claiming great success in killing Hamas. There are no carpenters, no building contractors, no plumbers, no medical people, no sewage workers, no organization of any kind. That is because they are all part of or get paid indirectly by Hamas. Hamas controls everything. That is how it works in a war time setting.
Even if a technician is willing to risk his life looking or acting for all the world like he is a Hamas agent furthering Hamas objectives by getting things running again, he can't get the tools or materials to do his job.
You just have to look at things in the background of every visual thing that comes out of Gaza to know that things are not as you describe them. The morality of what is happening there is a separate issue.
Man. Both this and the previous comment were brilliant (both in the English and American sense). Thanks.
You're welcome. I'd have been happy discussing the situation in Germany today if the keffiyah-wearing NPCs hadn't parascended over the wall. This is Eugyppius's site - people don't come here unless they were among the skeptics of 2020-21. What is it about this one issue that brings them into line with all the most powerful and shameless liars?
I likewise would like your source material if you really hope to enlighten minds.
I didn’t, “believe the science” and I don’t simply accept words simply because they are pretty, emotional, or forceful.
I was not the subject of your last batch of ire but I found it “dismissive” of you to preemptively assume that a person you do not personally know, K Lowrey, would herself be automatically “dismissive” of your supposed Zionist sources.
Your offhanded, accusatory attitude resembles the times I was inanely boxed in as being a “science denier” or “killing grandma” (or some such nonsense) out of hand by the 2021 zealots of scientism.
You are acting the part 💯 of what Eugyppius was warning about. As you are a part of this community, I suggest you try to think more empirically and contain your irrational emotion. IMO you owe KL an apology.
Normally I would not recommend normie MSM Piers Morgan but this interview is really important for understand some of the Israeli mindset of expansionism.
Daniella Weiss
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwuyoiVNAQ
Stop with the hyperbole. There is no genocide happening. If Israel wanted to exterminate the Palestinians, they could have floored the whole place already. So why didn't they, because they will be accused of genocide either way?
Agreed. I thought I'd try to answer your parting question:
"So why didn't they, because they will be accused of genocide either way?"
It's in the nature of acting morally that the person (or group) will act this way whatever others say. Certainly, it's a good byproduct if people think better of you that you've done the right thing. But even if they pretend you're doing the opposite, and dishonestly denounce you for this (falsehood), you continue doing the right thing.
The Geneva Convention documents permit siege warfare - there isn't a separate paragraph on the topic, but it is mentioned twice, with guidance on how it should be conducted (i.e. the purpose is not to condemn it categorically). So here, Israel is actually going far beyond what is required for the just conduct of war.
Just War theory (as formulated in the Geneva Convention) also requires that a combatant party should not only never target non-combatants, but should also attempt to mimize the death of non-combatants. In the current conflict, the IDF has sent out millions of SMS messages to Gazans, telling them that a certain building or block will be attacked, and also telling them which nearby area will be safest for them. Additionally, it has been standard practice for the Israeli airforce to drop a warning on the roof of such a building (a non-explosive device that creates a loud noise), so that any remaining non-combatants still have time to clear the building. This, of course, means that Hamas missile crews also have time to descend to safety into their tunnel complex. Again, this is far beyond any measures required by the Geneva Conventions.
Correct. But Israel only has a choice of "bad" in terms of ending the Gaza conflict. Which is the least bad option?
Hey folks….
Please watch this interview of a former mayor of Israel, Daniella Weiss. Time will tell if this plan comes to fruition. Expansion of Israel far to the east.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwuyoiVNAQ
Does it matter if it happens slow or fast? Israel knows the world is watching. Faster movements create more of a stir. More fodder for the press.
Well, you know, people rather sensibly get less of a chill up the spine from a kosher butcher rather than a halal one moving into the neighborhood.
Even the AFD supports the embargo.
there are also divisions within AfD, but as you move away from the Union in either direction (left or right) you will find more Israel-critical voices.
Support for Israel's war against Gaza is certainly high in centre-right mainstream publications including among user comments. Of course, these are by no means representative but they reveal that there is indeed a large number of people especially on the right (and to a lesser degree on the Left) for whom Israel can't fight brutally enough. My impression is that most of them are full of hatred against Muslims because they essentially treat them all as one. Hamas, Palestinian civilians, psychotic knife attackers in Germany, fundamentalists who fight for a global caliphate, the annoying Arab youths in their neighborhood who commit seven deadly sins before breakfast? All the same to them. And it's certainly true that the lines between Hamas and civilians is blurry but that doesn't justify a complete neglect of the latter. And given the way Israel has been conducting itself for decades and especially in the past two years, it's really not surprising that many Palestinians wished it wouldn't exist.
"And given the way Israel has been conducting itself for decades and especially in the past two years..."
How has Israel been conducting itself for decades? In the 90s, by making foolish "peace" agreements that merely facilitated Palestinian terrorist attacks. In the early 2000s by forcibly removing all Israeli citizens from the Gaza strip, and handing over the whole territory, with its infrastructure and industries intact so that they could enjoy prosperity.
So did the "Palestinians" want prosperity? No, of course not. There was no such nation before the mid 1960s, and their national identity is nothing except the eradication of Israel. After being gifted the Gaza strip, they staged a civil war which Hamas won (killing off their PLO opponents). They destroyed the industries, and lived off a global welfare scheme. The Hamas leaders took billions of $ for themselves, and instead of building up industry and tourism, they bought missiles and dug tunnels equivalent to the metro system of a major developed city, but for the purpose of terrorism only (which are indispensible to the war they are waging now, such as hiding Israeli hostages, or appearing out of nowhere to shoot Israeli soldiers).
Since you have such a dark and warped view of Israel, you will be aware that they could have turned the Gaza strip to glass in a day. Why, instead, do they provide electricity, allow in food aid and medicines. Are you even aware that Hamas takes over 90% of the aid, shooting its own people if they try to get it first. They then sell on the aid at whatever price they choose, in order to fund their continued terrorism.
Are you even aware that there was no conflict before Hamas and "Palestinian civilians" went on a rampage of gang rape, torture, burnings, beheadings and shooting. Are you even aware that Hamas has continued attacking every day since October 2023? If your country was under constant attack from an enemy sworn to your destruction, would you find yourself saying at some point "Enough is enough. This looks bad in the international media and the UN. We must surrender now, and let them massacre us."
One thing I find very curious about the "poor Palestinians" is why are no Arab countries willing to take in Palestinian refugees? If their fellow Muslims are in such dire straits, why don't Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc offer them asylum? Everyone blames Israel, but no Islamic country is willing to offer help to these supposedly starving war-torn people. A clear lack of sympathy for their Muslim brothers and sisters. Curious.
Curious indeed that our hordes of wokists (left and right varieties) conveniently overlook this.
Jordan was nearly taken over by the PLO at the beginning of the 70s, and the Jordanian monarchy's successful attempt to crush the revolt was exactly the kind of merciless massacre that Israel is always accused of carrying out (but never does).
The PLO then moved on to Lebanon, and did indeed succeed in destroying that country. Reagan foolishly allowed the PLO leadership to move into exile, and Hizballah took over the fight. Try to find old photos of Beirut - it was a truly elegant capital city once.
The wokists also failed to note Egypt's closure of the border with Gaza at the Rafah crossing (the only crossing to Egypt) at the same time that Israel closed its crossings when they realized that they had handed over control of the strip only to have Hamas take it over as a pad for launching rockets at cities and towns in Israel.
Again, they failed to note Egypt's treatment of the tunnels near its border: Egypt flooded them with sewage, doubtless drowning many Hamas terrorists in the process. Israel, of course, has never done any such thing.
Almost as if the wokists didn't actually care a jot for the "Palestinians" but only for the destruction of Israel - on the left because it is a civilized country that is presented as "colonialist" and locked unwilling in combat with the leftist's beloved Islam; and on the right because of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or some such rubbish under a politer name.
Well put. Wasn't it known as Black September, when Jordan crushed the PLO? It does help to know some history.
It amazes me how nobody on any side seems to notice the way Egypt keeps seriously blockading any Palestinians who try to flee in that direction. It's the classic Elephant In The Living Room -- Islamic countries do not want the Palestinians! We need to pay attention to that.
Yes, and as a result, Arafat's Fatah organization, the leading faction of the PLO, organized a new front organization, called Black September. They assassinated the Jordanian prime minister, failed to assassinate the King, but their best known terrorist action was the torture and murder of the Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics of 1972. Fatah used these "more extreme" organizations partly to cultivate plausible deniability, but also to stop the PLO from splitting, or from overthrowing Fatah leadership. The hottest of the hotheads could be transferred over to the latest front organization, which in this instance was Black September.
Fatah closed Black September down the following year, which is an interesting example of the dynamics of Palestinian terrorism. The Soviet Union agreed to mentor, train and arm the PLO (and later offshoots) because 1967 had proven that several Arab countries under Soviet sponsorship were unable to defeat Israel militarily, even when their attacks were simultaneous and co-ordinated.
As a result, the KGB, with Andropov in charge, formulated a program of terrorism combined with propaganda. The first end other countries' co-operation with Israel. The second was to be attuned to the weaknesses of the Western liberal elites, so that they would gradually see their capitulations to terrorism as a highly moral act.
After Munich in 1972, the terror campaign abroad was proving counter-productive to "Palestinian" and Soviet interests, so Black September in particular was closed down, and terrorist activities were confined to Middle Eastern theatres - chiefly the "West Bank" and Lebanon.
Iran kicked out Afghanis last week but the largest number of Jews outside of Israel reside in Iran. 🤔
Hmmmm……
As Ben Shapiro likes to say, “Two things can be true at once.”
The Zionist State of Israel could have been started because of British occupation and subsequent colonization. AND Hamas and Hezbollah can be terrorist organizations.
AND, USA funds all 3. So BS was wrong. 3 things can be true at once. It’s not an either/or situation.
AIPAC still oversees and contributes to almost every single American lawmaker, media group, and University.
What does it all mean??😳
I guess now heads will break.
I believe they are sometimes of different sects. The same reason why Iran and Saudis had a problem with each other. FYI: Iran just kicked out a large group of Afghanis. It’s a cultural mismatch.
Also, they don’t want to inadvertently bring terrorists and dependent, poverty stricken populations into their midst which they then have to sort out.
There are so many factions among the Muslims, just as with every other human group, I guess. Shitte, Sunni, who knows what all. I keep hearing that Syria and Iran have now been killing groups of people within their countries that they don't like -- Muslims of different political or religious factions, Christians, Druze...taking advantage of the recent upheavals to do some slaughtering. So it goes...
It’s ramping up that Israel will take one part of Syria and Turkey the other. There goes the remnant of one of the very oldest civilizations going back to the time of Assad and Hammurabi.
I'm not saying Israel is the only bad actor here and I'm certainly not condoning Hamas terrorism. But your comment does not address anything that happened before the Oslo agreement and paints a very one-sided picture of what happened after. The territory that increasingly many states recognise as Palestine is only a small part of what the original UN partition plan of 1947 assigned to the Arabs. Both Gaza and the West Bank were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967. That Israel returned it (under limited sovereignty) in the 90s may deserve some praise, but ultimately it would be as if Trump and Putin signed a peace deal and Russia returns some of the occupied land, while still controlling the borders and protecting Russian settlers. Just look at how Israel has grown since 1948.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Israel is committing genocide. Maybe what they are doing qualifies as such, but I'm not convinced. Given the power imbalance, they could easily flatten all of Gaza but they don't. Yet, they have restricted food aid again and again, and there are many quotes of Israeli politicians that do sound like they have zero empathy for Palestinan civilians and would be willing to starve them to death. I'm sure Hamas is partly responsible for the famine in Gaza, but Israel also bears responsibility, certainly morally, but even legally as an occupying force. There would be no hunger if they dropped the same amount of food as they dropped bombs.
I've addressed earlier decades in some other comments here. You can look around for them ... or not, as you please. There is one comment that asks about the occupations of Gaza prior to 1967, and why there was not the slightest hint of protest at foreign occupation for two decades? How could it be that the ancient and brave Palestinian nation that you believe in was so little worried by foreign occupation, so long as the foreigners weren't Jews? You can also do a little homework on what happened in 1948. Who accepted the partition, and who rejected it? Which countries launched an attack, and which country had to defend itself? Who was told to flee because the other armies would soon defeat the Jews? Why should they be allowed back? How do you account for the many Arab communities who didn't flee, and who not only weren't massacred, but became Israeli citizens, where they have more freedom and prosperity to this day than their counterparts in the neighboring Arab states?
You're making characteristic modern liberal assumptions: that everyone wants to get along and prosper, and that if two groups are fighting, there must be a misunderstanding that can be cleared up by diplomacy, and if necessary, billions of dollars of aid. As a corollary, one group won't attack another without good reason, even if they may act excessively.
In many conflicts, none of these liberal assumptions apply. There are indeed some groups that simply want to eradicate the other, regardless of whether the other acts provocatively or not.
Read Hamas's charter if you don't believe (and of course you don't). They are committed to the eradication of Israel, to the killing of its inhabitants, and consider Jews around the world to be fair game. The UN apparatus in Gaza overlapped with Hamas, and the international media (which the wokists of the right think is controlled by Jews!) simply scribble down whatever Hamas tells them (if they don't, it would be unwise for them to come back to Gaza). So they are the ultimate in embedded media: they are united with Hamas because it is lethal to criticize; and they are united ideologically through the indoctrination they have received at college and through social media, which convinces them that Hamas are the underdogs and Israel the colonial oppressor, a situation that allows them to justify the most hellish of Hamas atrocities.
Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023, and has continued both to attack and to hold most of the hostages (or their corpses). As you wring your hands and equivocate, you tell Israel that it must allow its people to massacred in a series of October 7-type events, which Hamas has promised it will carry out if it has the chance. For Hamas, the international propaganda campaign is ultimately more important than their "military" campaign. To this end, they do their utmost to ensure that as many as possible of their civilians will die (civilians, by the way, many of whom were the rapists and murderers of October 7, but let that pass). At the same time, Israel does its utmost to minimize casualties, but the result is hardly going to look pretty if there is any chance of defeating Hamas. None of this interests you, since it provides no opportunity for virtue signalling. As I said in one of the other comments, this is just right-wing wokery (presumably you wouldn't be reading Eugyppius if you were a leftist, so I'm discounting that possibility).
I can imagine that much of the world (especially in the west) freshly emerging from WW2 would have been a bit busy with their own plight and the devastation of bombed cities all around them. Maybe they weren’t paying attention to Israel v Palestine.
You're making many assumptions. Those about the Middle East, I can hardly refute. I don't deny that Hamas are terrorists. I have little interest in reading their charter. Maybe I should, it won't be more of a waste of time than this exchange. I know that Israel has been fighting for its existence ever it existed. So has Palestine. You may argue that Palestine is an invention of the 20th century, but so is Israel. Maybe I'm a hopeless liberal, believing in peace and reconciliation. To be honest, I don't, really. Already before the current war, I've been thinking that the two state solution is doomed to fail. There is too much baggage, for both states not to remain enemies. I don't think there will be peace either way. Maybe the two state solution just perpetuated the conflict.
But what is the alternative? If Israel occupies all of Palestine, they risk losing their Jewish majority, and this is Israel's whole identity. Maybe the best would be going back to the original idea, give the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. But neither Jordan nor Egypt would want that. Egypt could open its borders to Palestinian refugees by the way, they also share some responsibility in the humanitarian crisis. But I understand that they don't want to import the problem. It's a tragedy, and I don't see any real solution. What is yours? I hope it's not hidden in your user name.
Am I virtue signalling? Maybe, depending on how broadly you define it. I mean, I do think that compassion is a virtue and by criticising your comment for its lack thereof, I may signal my superiority in some way. But everyone sharing their opinion is a virtue signaller in that sense. I don't think that either of us have any influence on the lives of Israelis or Gazans. I could call you a virtue signaller just as much for publicly siding with Israel. In the end, it's all pointless. I'd much rather be called a leftist than woke by the way, and I'm certainly not right-wing. I am not allergic to reading opinions that I disagree with. Although I would have never got to know Eugyppius blog if I didn't agree with his Covid commentary.
Saudis and Egypt said they’d take on rebuilding Gaza btw. For whatever that’s worth.
People playing fast and loose, lobbing adhominems at others whom they don’t know and have barely discussed anything with is a low characteristic and reflects more poorly upon the the attacker than the one being attacked. Usually it’s a sign of faltering ego. In a forum such as this, getting to the meat of the issue is more easily accomplished without the distraction of negative feelings or a need to suddenly defend oneself from an unexpected, nasty attacker.
> Both Gaza and the West Bank were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Objection to terminology. If it is "illegal" for Israel to occupy territory outside of the 1947 agreement, then it was "illegal" for forces from outside that territory to attack them in 1967.
Israel was attacked in 1967. They won. That's what happens when someone picks a war with you, and you win. You pick up territory.
I just about guarantee that *whatever* country you live in -- pretty much anywhere on the planet with *very* few exceptions -- has at one point or another, picked up territory via force of arms. Holding that territory is not "illegal". That's the *entire history of the human species*.
Calling the 1967 borders of Israel "illegal" makes as much sense as referring to the USA's "illegal occupation of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California". Like, it's certainly a sequence of words that a person could utter, but that's the entirety of the weight they carry, as well.
But it certainly does an excellent job of indicating your biases on the subject, so there's that, at least.
I suspect she meant illegal in the UN way of thinking which the world supposedly now aspires to. You are speaking of human history and real politic.
Yes. I do tend to use "reality" as my measuring stick... Seriously, it's not like Israel capturing territory like that in 1967 is even the most recent example! Lots of people like to talk as though the end of WWII was this massive turning of the leaf in the way the world works. And it has mostly been so in the fantasies of those people. And those fantasies seem to get more and more elaborate the further away from WWII we get. And a statistically significant portion of those people somehow only ever seem to apply that set of rules to Israel.
It's... very frustrating.
Can you image the backlash if Israel flattened Gaza outright? That would cause 100% of nations to publicly condemn Israel whether they actually still supported Israel or not. Maybe Bibi is smart enough to have figured that out. Maybe Blinken advised him to slow down.
Slightly off topic.
Just in case it’s useful info…. Palestinians as you said are considered Arabs, in case anyone was wondering, Iranians are not.
Spot on!
One should keep in mind that the Middle East isn't really a geographic region. It's actually a vast blood sacrifice and purity cult superstore and there's always going to be a fight on Aisle Three.
😂
Another armchair critic who can't say how he would address the Palestinian problem.
Creepy. The term, “Palestinian Problem” harkens to another time when the term, “Jewish Problem” was used. This is starting to feel like we’re in an original “Twilight Zone” show from 50 years ago.
I don't care what you read into my comment. Seems like projection in any case. So, I'll ask again. How would you handle a neighbour whose raison d'être it is to whipe Israel from the map?
If their goal is to “wipe Israel” they’re not doing a good job. Mostly they do more pin prick attacks and capturing young women without plan. It’s more like random acts of terrorism. Big brother Iran would do a better job. So far they don’t seem very committed though.
The fact that they aren't doing a good job is *not* a refutation of the claim that it's their purpose.
Hamas has explicitly stated that its goal is to wipe Israel off the map -- "from the river to the sea" -- in a phrase you may have heard in the last several years. Someone's psychopathic neighbor may not actually have the *ability* to remove them -- as they say it, "from the garden to the street" -- but if he states very clearly that he'd *really like to*, keeps randomly shooting at their house, and rapes their dog to death, *they might decide to take him at his word anyway.*
That seems like a perfectly reasonable distinction, between "has the goal of" and "has the capability to", and why someone might still react to the former, even if the latter is lacking, but not for lack of trying.
Sometimes people on the right are stupid sheeple too. I know many. They think what their churches tell them to think but aren’t clear as to the “why.” Many of these same people vaccinated because they were told to by the government and felt patriotic, that their government must necessarily look out for them, right? Then they stayed away from church because their pastors closed things down for fear they’d lose their tax exempt status but called it, “following the law.”
People love to talk about Israel’s “genocidal mania” but no one ever has a realistic suggestion what it should do instead. By realistic, I mean Israel not just permanently living next to people who will use any second when the boot of the IDF is taken off their neck to start massacring their citizens, and absorbing massive, economy crippling costs (70% tax rates!) to keep the boot in place to prevent that outcome.
Israel removed its settlements from the strip, and Hamas took over. They had a fairly porous border until there were many terror attacks. Workers could still go into Israel to work through checkpoints, which was used by many to reconnoiter for the 10/7 attacks. Hamas’ excuse for the worst atrocities (which were celebrated anyway) was that that was just normal Gaza citizens tagging along (some of which may well be true).
I fully agree that the Arabs in the territories belonging to Israel now or, I guess, soon were given a rough deal from at the latest the beginnings of Mandatory Palestine; but Jews didn’t decide to congregate and seek national independence in their ancient homeland because they had such a great time of it either. It really started out primarily as historical tragedy, not wilful mutual crimes (although those also happened all along the way, to be sure).
I don’t agree with many things Israel is doing or saying (first and foremost that they have probably – there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence – given medical support to ISIS fighters), and some politicians, worryingly including some in the governing parties, have indeed used quite genocidal language. The puzzlingly bad intelligence work before and the technical failures and delayed response after 10/7 also throw up horrible questions.
Israel is however fighting a popular (in the sense of “opposite of cabinet-”) war against a nation that started it in the first place and would do even worse to them, and whose only quality earning them international support is that they’re much less competent at it and everyone seems addicted to loving an underdog, even if it’s rabid. This is also an existential war for Israel, and yet they are fighting it much more carefully at least than any side in the second world war, including those for whom it was not remotely existential (i.e. anyone except the Reich and the USSR). Hamas has militarily already lost that war in the first few weeks despite using human shields and characteristically using pure terror tactics, and is simply nevertheless not surrendering, still keeping some hostages.
The goal of Israel is clearly not genocide, but ethnic cleansing (something that recently happened with the open support of a NATO member in Armenia, to deafening silence); the reason that this has not worked so far is that nobody among the Arabs countries is going to touch them with a ten foot pole since they have spelled disaster for anyone who did: Interminable civil war followed by horrible dysfunction and becoming subverted by Hezbollah in Lebanon; a coup attempt that cost the life of the previous king in Jordan, which is still suffering from a huge and unproductive Pali population; political subversion and a coup attempt in Egypt. The Arabs say that they won’t take the Palis because they will not allow Israel to conquer the Pali territories but they really won’t because the Palis have proven fatally deranged ingrates.
The likely outcome of all this is that the population will be ethnically cleansed to Europe, where they will almost certainly prove a source of further political derangement, terrorism, and vast amounts of corruption, welfare use, and everyday criminality, sexual and otherwise. It is not at all clear to me that that the safety of a people that has shown nothing but unremitting hostility to everyone they ever met, not least the wider west, should be worth that price to us.
“Sins of the father, something something… ”
Britain moved troops in and occupied land where they did not belong. Then they discharged the debt in trade to Rothschild for his own new state called Israel.
> Britain moved troops in and occupied land where they did not belong.
On land the Babylonians, then the Romans, and then the Arabs had done to previously, which was then being ruled by Turks until the Brits took over. And quite probably dozens if not hundreds of other folks squeezed in there as well. This is not a line of reasoning to be taken seriously.
Why is this "Don't pick wars you can't afford to lose" thing so *incredibly* hard for people to grasp?
Let's say that Russia absolutely collapses in their attack on Ukraine, and Ukraine manages to reassemble the Empire of the Kievan Rus. Like, back when Kiev was the capital and Moscow barely existed. Would that be "occupation of land where they did not belong"? Or would that just be "fuck around and find out, sucks to suck, Russia!"?
Nobody stuck a gun to the head of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and *made* him stick his dick into WWI. But he did, and it cost him his empire. For that matter, is the Russian aggression against Ukraine even unwarranted, given that Ukraine wasn't separated from Russia until after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire? Shouldn't that mean that the Russians have just as much of a claim on Ukraine as the former Ottomans have on their lost territories? Possibly more, since the loss occurred later for Russia?
Does basically *anyone* bemoan the land the *Germans* lost after WWI or WWII? There were ethnic Germans that were turfed out of places in Eastern Europe they'd been living for hundreds of years. But almost nobody ever mentions *that* except history professors. It still sucked for them. It *always* sucks when the local assholes in the castles decide to pick a fight with another set of assholes in castles, and the people in the middle get trampled on, particularly when the locals that picked the fight *lose* it. And then, most of the time, the people who are still breathing get the fuck over it and move on with their lives.
I live in a city -- Albuquerque -- which is surrounded on three sides by Indian Reservations. That was obviously taken through force of arms at some point, and the locals subjugated. Am *I* occupying land where I don't belong?
Where does the line get drawn? When does the line get drawn? Does Israel get to use the same definitions as everyone else? I haven't exactly heard a lot of lamentations regarding the demise of the Republic of Artsakh, for all that it happened a week before the Hamas attack on Israel. Would Armenia have the moral right to attack Azerbaijan? Some of the folks in Nagorno Karabakh had been there for some four thousand years, and Azerbijan expelled them less than two years ago. How far back should the clock be wound? Shall there be an international effort to Make Istanbul Constantinople Again? There's really no question *that* was taken by force. Are we kicking the Normans out of England? How about the Saxons, returning Albion to the Brythonic peoples?
Does "British troops moved in and occupied land where they did not belong" apply even to Britain itself, given the sequence of invasions there?
Thank you!
A real pleasure reading you.
Your final sentence could be read more than one way
Put simpler and more direct: We should not make the problems of a nuisance population that is so incredibly good at bringing problems on themselves and everyone in their vicinity ours, no matter whatsoever what fate befalls them if we don’t.
I greatly resent the attempts some in Israel are making at offloading them on Europe, to be frank. It is somewhat understandable though, to be fair, since so many in Europe like to complain loudly about the treatment the poor dears receive at the hands of Israel.
The reflex of “if you like them so much…” is not too different from Eastern European countries supporting the westward move of various Gypsy peoples after being chastised for treating the lovelies ever so nastily. You’ll notice that that choir didn’t sing quite so loudly after the transplants started thieving in Paris and literally shitting up parks in London.
Europe should of course, (a) shut up and (b) not give in to any attempts made anyway. “We” should not need to have the consequences of “our” advocacy made manifest once again to think a bit ahead; I’m not very hopeful on either count.
Of course, like every people, the Palis have their smart fraction (e.g. the spectacularly successful president of El Salvador or the founder of the great web/AI coding system repl.it are ethnic Palestinians) but much like every other Arab with their stuff together they’ve gotten as far away from their compatriots as they possibly could, and while that set has residual ethnic sympathies that make them voice their concerns where they can (e.g. repl.it’s Masad in his Tucker Carlson interviews), I don’t see them support the struggle with skin in the game, and who can blame them.
What’s interesting is that a widespread and I am certain honestly believed talking point in Israel is that the Palestinians aren’t a nation at all but rather a random assortment of fellahin who just happened to live there as tenant farmers. I always tell Israeli friends: That might have been true at the end of the Ottoman empire, but you guys made them a nation, in the usual way – shared suffering and struggle. I’m not getting through on that one, at all.
Your first sentence could be read more than one way.
Choose your adventure!
Which final sentence?
As far as evangelical Christians in USA, many just play follow the leader. If they like their pastor they just go along with what he tells them. The pastor never talks about the Zionist history and the flock never ask. They simply assume they are taking the righteous position.
"The moderate, sensible, centrist solution – some kind of cooperation between the Union and the AfD to remove the left from power at the federal level – every day recedes further from view. "
Not so sure about this. The more intractable the SDP becomes, the likelier the possibility that a man (and a party) with no actual spine will finally invite the AfD into a coalition. Holy cow, I'd love to see the exploding left wing and mainstream craniums that would result from that. And this arrangement would likely last a decade or more.
Well. Can we say "thank God" that the Christian Social Union ain't in the least quaking before the specter of pro-Palestine lunatics running wild in the streets because of their objections and gave Merz a smart smack upside his head?
Considering the political haj currently being performed by Canada, France and Australia this is a mighty interesting counterpoint.
I am ashamed to be Australian at the moment. Our prime minister rents his spine out to what ever cause gets his short attention span and 90,000 terrorist supporter marching on the bridge in Sydney is the latest!
Really? A paid subscription grants immunity from legal action?
I have to say, despite my lack of interest in contemporary German politics, I find your writing compelling and entertaining. Maybe it’s because you have skin in the game and that is something I truly respect.
thank you mr. anthony. a paid subscription may not confer immunity, but at least it reduces vastly the number of people who can read what we write down here. which has its advantages and disadvantages.
As long as none of us shares his copy with some yutz from BILD.
But do keep in mind that "they" own the servers. (cf. Edward Snowden.)
Apart from the style and the dash of your writing I commend your ever inventive neologisms - 'Merzian', 'Upscrewery' and the best 'Trainwreckclowncar'. More please.
> Trainwreckclowncar
Isn't that just an ordinary German compound noun, translated literally into English?
;-)
The long form of the word also references a dumpster.
Beg pardon, Eugy, But could you explain this phrase?
"...with the left in an unusual, unbalanced rage..."
At least here in America, unbalanced rage seems to be the usual condition of the left. But maybe your progressives are calmer than ours?
The SPD used to be calmer, it's just taking a while to get used to their new rabid incarnation. Also, it simply seemed crazy to me that a failed Bundestag confirmation would occasion this much anger, just weeks of whining and crying. the Union made it clear the sticking point was abortion, just nominate somebody else who hasn't made such public statements about the issue.
"I explained why Freidrich Merz is the most incompetent Chancellor the Federal Republic has ever seen."
Fortunately for him, as the meme has it, the bar for "worst German chancellor ever" is very high.
Fortunately for the rest of us, the field for "most incompetent" is still wide open.
"He is stranded in a political no-man’s land and taking fire from all sides."
As the adage reminds us, if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.
He isn't even in contention for second worst, if we assign that based on damage done. However, for "most incompetent", unable to even explain let alone enforce his own agenda, I'd say he's in with a great shout for first place. With the exception of Starmer, few politicians have been so obviously unsuited to the role so quickly.
Wasn't one of Starmer's predecessors prime minister for just a few weeks?
Truss, whose origins are in the Orange Book/actual properly liberal wing of the Lib Dems, was taken out because of "market-upsetting" remarks that would have been a nothingburger if expressed by the leader of a country that was either economically strong or already totally f'd. As the UK has been on the brink of financial collapse for some decades, saying so, and most especially saying something ought to be done about it, was unacceptable. She only lasted so long because the Queen died on her watch and it would have been unseemly to topple the PM before the funeral.
Ah yes, Liz Truss--50 days in office, the shortest-lived PM in British history.
What's the record for quickest collapse of a governing coalition?
I looked it up, and my recollection was a bit off--it wasn't a quick collapse that Belgium was noted for, it was longest time without a governing coalition -- a total of 541 days!
If you mean worldwide, I think Belgium currently holds the trophy.
Have you noticed how odd looking the current crop of politicians is worldwide? Perhaps we should vote for or against based on odder or more 'regular' looking people. I see this worldwide, America included.
It turns out that limiting animal fat and salt in one's diet doesn't promote the gestation of attractive and intelligent children.
In addition to demonizing fat, there is also massive and widespread intake of statins, thus denying the brain of needed cholesterol. No wonder so many can't think or reason.
And the possible effects of multiple Covid boosters.
Two words: legal pot.
...solely as an explanation for why the left (both the electorate and the elected) can no longer think straight,
Certainly the Democrats in the U.S. are a distinctly weird looking (and acting) bunch. Mutants of some sort?
Think “Invasion of the Body Snatchers. “
I don't know which I look forward to more: E's clever updates or the hilariously brilliant comments of my fellow subscribers. The wit never, ever disappoints. I only wish E could write about my own state: California!
Cheers to all.🥂
The most intelligent and informed and most well-considered reader commentary of any forum on the Internet is found here at Eugyppius.
I continue to be amazed ar the ineptitude of the leadership of the West.
Ugh, Friedrich Metz. That face. Those eyes. How do such moronic people attain power? It seems that the higher your level of idiocy, stupidity and incompetence, the higher you rise in politics. And for strange reasons I can't explain, they all have a certain identifiable "look".
Does Merz have good jeans? (:)) I'll get me coat.
Psychopaths and sociopaths excel at rising to power because they are willing to do whatever it takes. And that is what you are seeing in the eyes of so many political leaders.
It's those people who are placed in positions as puppets by their masters. The puppets can't follow their own convictions, should they ever have any.
Merz always looks at the camera with a quizzical look, as though he’s wondering if what he just said was “ok.” Like a 6 year old glancing at mom during his kindergarten classroom end-of-year presentation.
Interesting. I did wonder why he'd done it - makes more sense now.
This political re-ordering seems to be happening in many West European countries of course as they all seem to have made a similar hash of running their countries for the last 20 years or so and are now reaping the whirlwind that follows.
Reading from the UK, this is gripping dram and a welcome respite from our own national self-immolation under our own Starmer.