#27 – Once again, Id, diolch, thanks – your words?

Posted by: Geraint ap Iorwerth | Dec 8 2023 17:33 utc | 103

oracle | Dec 8 2023 17:28 utc | 100–
Thanks for your report. Agree 100% with your sentiments. There’s absolutely nothing Semitic about Zionism, which as is being proven is 100% Anti-Semitic.

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 8 2023 17:37 utc | 105

Whatever is being planned re Palestine, will I believe will be designed to fit into the larger war strategy and what Russia see in the future for Hybrid WWIII. Gaza just one battle in a far larger war.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Dec 8 2023 17:06 utc | 94
That was quite something watching Putin fly around west Asia. Yeah, I sense a disturbance in the force.

Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 8 2023 17:44 utc | 107

When the second Jewish Holocaust rolls around, as these things inevitably do, I will not shed a tear but take a sip from my wine glass and a puff from my cigar and continue reading the day’s news.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 8 2023 13:08 utc | 15
You mean like 1948? and 1956? 1967? 1973? 1976? 1978? 1982? 1987? 2000? 2005? 2006? 2008? 2012? 2014? 2021? 2023?
Imagine every waking day of your life, the State of Israel exists. Ponder that as you sip and puff. Kind of reminds me of Wyle E Coyote.
Beep Beep. Happy Hanukkah. The light shines brightly in gaza.

Posted by: HH | Dec 8 2023 18:00 utc | 109

God chosen animals…
Posted by: CK | Dec 8 2023 13:54 utc | 28
################
Whatever the terminology, it’s the same old thing. A Supremacist mentality.
Just like how America is the “greatest country” ever and the “leader of the free world” and filled with “exceptional” people.
Who needs a Supremacist mindset? The most insecure and unaccomplished people. It’s a veneer meant to obscure their lack of quality and character.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Dec 8 2023 18:06 utc | 111

Posted by: HH | Dec 8 2023 18:00 utc | 109
##################
Israel’s time is nigh. That IMO, is why they are all-in on genocide in broad daylight. People under control or winning don’t engage in that behavior.
Let’s not forget, that Hamas, a militia that trains and arms itself inside of an Israeli concentration camp managed to humiliate the government and continues to humiliate the IDF every day.
I suspect we won’t have to worry about Israel for too much longer.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Dec 8 2023 18:11 utc | 113

Hamas (and their MoA loveers) must be made to understand that they cannot win. Just like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had to be made to understand. So that is what is going to occur. After that, there will be peace.

Posted by: Realist | Dec 8 2023 18:26 utc | 115

Nobody cares what you think jew hater.
Posted by: Realist | Dec 8 2023 18:23 utc | 114
You apparently care enough to post that …

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 8 2023 18:29 utc | 117

After that, there will be peace.
Posted by: Realist | Dec 8 2023 18:26 utc | 115
Zionist Jews have no capacity for peace.
They’ve been booted out of every country they’ve infiltrated and are setting themselves up to be booted out again.
Even if they were the last on earth they would murder each other as the mark of Cain is upon them.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 8 2023 18:35 utc | 119

Many, many thanks for this posting, b. It is the most important one of this year, and if those giving out the prizes want to redeem themselves, the Nobel Peace Prize ought to go to this poet and his family, and all who suffer in Gaza. Thank you again; my heart grieves for them.
We should all be making kites to commemorate Gaza, so that next year’s skies will be full of them and not full of bombs. And we will tell our children, “This year, and these kites are for Gaza.” (We can use the poems to guide our kites in their flight)
Godspeed, Dr. Refaat Alareer; Godspeed

Posted by: juliania | Dec 8 2023 18:39 utc | 121

Israel-Palestine Weekly Update: may be useful to some: https://robcampbell.substack.com/p/israel-palestine-weekly-update-c74

Posted by: Robert Hamilton Camp | Dec 8 2023 18:54 utc | 123

Gaza just one battle in a far larger war.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Dec 8 2023 17:06 utc | 94
Peter, Gaza is the alpha and omega of our time. And I take this opportunity, although in sadness here, to say that for me Russia has already won, since you were the one to follow and open to us the most critical elements of that victory, in securing in Ukraine and holding the nuclear plants, even Chernobyl; but also in securing and obliterating the death labs there as an equally important priority.
Thank you for being our Paul Revere on that. We have yet to fully appreciate how crucial both those elements were, achieved at great sacrifice by noble troops. Thank you, Peter AU1, and thank you, Russia.
I say again, Gaza is the heart of it all.

Posted by: juliania | Dec 8 2023 19:02 utc | 125

Realist: you are on the wrong side this time -you would have been last time too, I expect. No regime which treats people like this can possibly endure. It defies all nature. Treatment such as that documented below screams out to heaven for revenge.
“Here, just yesterday and auto-translated from Arabic, is Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
“The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented the arrest by the Israeli army of dozens of Palestinian civilians after severely abusing them and stripping them completely naked after they were besieged a few days ago inside two shelters in the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
“The Euro-Med Monitor received reports that Israeli forces launched random and arbitrary arrest campaigns against displaced people, including doctors, academics, journalists and the elderly, from inside the schools of Khalifa bin Zayed and New Aleppo, both of which are affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
“The sister of journalist Diaa al-Kahlout told Euro-Med Monitor that Israeli forces forced him to leave his disabled child, Nada, 7, and then arrest him at gunpoint, stripping him naked like all detainees and beating them severely.
“Mohammed al-Kahlout said that Israeli forces burned several houses in the Mashrou’ Beit Lahiya area and launched random arrest campaigns against the remaining residents after beating them after besieging them inside shelters and a number of houses.
“The arrests took place after a brutal raid on residential homes and the removal of everyone under arms, including the elderly, as Euro-Med Monitor documented the arrest of Khalil Hashem Al-Kahlout (65 years old), Rafiq Ahmed Al-Kahlout (60 years old) and Mohammed Ismail Al-Kahlout (57 years old)….”
https://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2023/12/08/more-naked-truth-from-gaza/

Posted by: bevin | Dec 8 2023 19:06 utc | 127

Posted by: malenkov | Dec 8 2023 15:27 utc | 57
No. Not that. You that need to recall the context in which psalm 137 was written. The Israelites were captives in Babylon and lamenting their captivity and the threatened destruction of their holy city, and plotting revenge. Or so the story goes. Anyway, several somebodies in the zionist entity need to understand that context, because that is precisely what they are have done and are now doing to the Palestinians, and what the inevitable outcome will be.

Posted by: pasha | Dec 8 2023 19:14 utc | 129

I am watching the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres read the riot act to Israel and the US. He is explaining the atrocities commented by Israel in detail. It is hard to believe that even Genocide Joe would veto this call from for a permanent cease fire after this drubbing by Guterres, but one should underestimate how low Genocide Joe can go.
The important thing is that this will be viewed by people all around world: The anti-Zionist point of view will be hard to defend.

Posted by: Ed | Dec 8 2023 19:31 utc | 131

Posted by: Ed | Dec 8 2023 19:31 utc | 13
Is Guterres a lapdog of the US and Israel or something more? I’m encouraged by his words, at any rate.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Dec 8 2023 19:40 utc | 133

Posted by: Tedder | Dec 8 2023 15:14 utc | 48
Yes that was a dumb comment from oldfart. He was surely referring to the Nazi injunction in 1939 to annihilate Polish intelligentsia and the Commissar Order attached to Barbarossa. So, oldfart blames the victims. What an ignorant old fart.

Posted by: Patroklos | Dec 8 2023 19:42 utc | 135

Augustus Pi
And the child relatives of the poet who died also – they are acceptable collateral damage? Acceptable collective punishment?
We in the west are creeping towards – sorry – have slid over the cliff into – acceptance of collective punishment of civilians.
I might have missed it but – when did the EU, U.K. and USA vote capital punishment back in?
Last time I checked, even if someone voiced support for murder, that did not justify extrajudicial killing of them. Prison maybe but not summary death with child relatives thrown in.
O yes, I forgot. War is hell. After the first bullet, anything goes – especially the killing of the races and religions that we hate. Ain’t that so, Pi?
Without anyone noticing, western civilisation disappeared. This happened years ago – we’re only just noticing. We and the rest of the world (remember them? Horrid brown things?) They now see the west for what it is – nothing but a lynch mob of 800 million people.

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Dec 8 2023 19:45 utc | 137

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Dec 8 2023 19:45 utc | 138
yeah, i look at what people do, more than what they say. I’m not sure how much real power Guterres would have to accomplish anything, but there have been oceans of words uttered in the UN about Israel’s occupation, and here we are. The UN is crippled by the way it was originally set up (that was the point I expect), with the US having a veto over pretty much everything.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Dec 8 2023 19:52 utc | 139

When we in the collective waste hear terms like “abolish the state of Israel” or “from the river to the sea”, we become incensed and react as if it is genocide that is being called for. When it is not.
That is because we wasterners “judge others by ourselves”. We are masters of genocide – it is in our DNA. We can’t to see a Russian, Palestinian, Chinese etc. without experiencing an involuntary gas chamber fantasy. So we imagine others must think like ourselves.
But the odd fact is that there do exist peoples in the world who – when confronted with a political problem or conflict, do not reflexively think of genocide.
But the state of Israel can be abolished, from the river to the sea, without a single person dying or even having any rights, religious or otherwise, taken away from him/her. That’s bewildering and disappointing I know. But the solution for Israel is not a two but a one state solution. A state with all religions (and those with none) given equal rights in every way. With for example a rotating presidency between a member of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities – the latter thrown in as a kind of control rod.
But a peaceful Palestine and Middle East would be no fun at all, would it?

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Dec 8 2023 20:10 utc | 141

The Palestine Chronicle
@PalestineChron
An elderly Palestinian woman, who had gone viral for saying that she was “older than Israel” in a video circulating online, was killed by an Israeli sniper.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/older-than-israel-elderly-palestinian-woman-in-viral-video-killed-in-gaza/

Posted by: Menz | Dec 8 2023 20:23 utc | 143

Canuck @ 60
re Indians and slaves,
In Trail of Tears: The Rise and fall of the Cherokee Nation, John Ehle describes how much delight the Indians, especially the women, took in the excruciating tortures meted out to captives.
I think Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, also mentions this.
This isn’t meant to imply that Europeans had any right to steal Natives’ lands.
But one does sometimes get sick of the unrelenting idealization of Native Americans and their social norms.
I thought the Ehle book was excellent. In particular because it details the tensions that arose within Indian societies after prolonged contact between those who welcomed and those who totally rejected the European way of life and the technical advantages it offered. Ehle’s book is a work of history, quite heavily documented, yet very readable.
He also describes which individuals adopted the slave=holding and farming practices of whites and which one chose to remain “braves.” This led to violent divisions within and between tribal groups and of course clashes and pitched battles with whites.
Many of the former (those who wanted to adopt European life styles) were pleased to be removed to Arkansas, as the land there was very fertile.
The bottom line was that although some individual natives prospered, as a group they of course got totally screwed by the Yankees.
Unfortunately the Native Americans who were removed to the West also got entangled in the Civil War in the West.
Altogether a most thought-provoking read.

Posted by: Jane | Dec 8 2023 20:33 utc | 145

So the UN does not support humanitarian laws anymore? Openly?
Posted by: Minaa | Dec 8 2023 17:18 utc | 95
Below I have linked a video in which Mouin Rabbini interviews Ardi Imseis who has worked extensively in Gaza for the UN and since converted his doctoral thesis in law to a book on the UN and Palestine.
The UN has since inception purposely placed Global South countries (aka 3rd world back in the day) in a legal subaltern position. Rule of law has been replaced by RULE BY LAW for the imperial and settler colonial powers. Apart from lack of enforcement, the unfairness inherent in the structure is by design.
For the specific case of Palestine, the unjust 1947 resolution set a paradigm based on an unfair partition rather, than e.g. sharing.
Also, regarding the killing of Refaat, I read that his friends said he got a call from Israel at the school he was sheltering at. So he left the school but went to his sister’s house where he was killed along with her and her four kids.
Not sure why he would go to his sister’s place, other than that he probably felt a need to see her. I suppose he did not expect they were tracking him that closely.
While the ICJ ruled in 2004 that Israel cannot claim self defense in Gaza as it is an occupying power, the ICJ never ruled on the legality of the 56 year occupation. On Dec 30, 2022, UNGA finally sent a resolution to the ICJ. THey will rule in 2024.
If they follow the rule of law, it will finally get rid of the farce that was Oslo.
https://youtu.be/7p7XnS-FXlI

Posted by: pq | Dec 8 2023 20:37 utc | 147

” some Jews and their families did not let their relatives’ children get out of NAZI Germany. Children should have the right to choose about their future, once they grow up: let the children grow up, keep them out of your politics.”
Boy, this writer thinks you just snapped your fingers and you and/or your children could leave Germany. He/she sure has a lot to learn.
Not to mention, ever heard of the Kindertransport?
Go and educate yourself.

Posted by: Jane | Dec 8 2023 20:51 utc | 149

Posted by: Newbie | Dec 8 2023 11:33 utc | 4, quoting Prof. Refaat al-Areer:
“What should we do… drown? Commit mass suicide? Is this what Israel wants? And we’re not going to do that..”
Apparently, Israelis are drowning Hamas, and American Thinker revels in it.
The use of the name, American, conveys shame to us all.
I am thinking of my childhood catechism, about “indelible signs”, permanent marks of a character.

Posted by: ChasMark | Dec 8 2023 21:05 utc | 151

@pq | Dec 8 2023 19:58 utc | 140

Indigenous enslavement was significantly different than the practice and institution of enslavement as carried out by Europeans. European enslavement was more than a denial of freedom, it was a racist practice that involved enslaving those deemed “inferior.” Europeans used the labour of slaves to fund the growth of their colonies. The enslavement of Indigenous peoples by Europeans must be understood within the context of doctrines of discovery, which were used to justify imperialization and the colonization of Indigenous lands and peoples.

1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation:

The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation was the largest escape of a group of slaves to occur in the Cherokee Nation, in what was then Indian Territory. The slave revolt started on November 15, 1842, when a group of 20 African-Americans enslaved by the Cherokee escaped and tried to reach Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829. Along their way south, they were joined by 15 slaves escaping from the Creek Nation in Indian Territory.
[…]
In the late 18th century, some Cherokee set up European-American style plantations on their Cherokee Nation land, which occupied territory near parts of Georgia and Tennessee. They purchased African-American slaves to work this land.

Wow! Such difference! So diverse! Much freedom!

Posted by: SG | Dec 8 2023 21:17 utc | 153

Looks like my comments are disappearing.

Posted by: Moonie | Dec 8 2023 21:27 utc | 155

U.S. vetoes UNSC proposal for ceasefire in Gaza.
U.S. objections phrased as endorsement of Isreal’s war aims:
“(ceasefire) would only plant the seeds for the next war – because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace…” The ceasfire proposal was “divorced from reality” and “would have not moved the needle forward on the ground.”
Israel has apparently been told (although this is publicly denied) that they have until the end of the month to push “the needle forward” – but this may set-up either a complete collapse of all forms of aid and comfort in Gaza, with attendant massive death and suffering, or encourage Israel to rampage with massive ordinances in a bid to destroy everything, also with massive casualties. It is certainly in the U.S. best interest to avoid either of those scenarios, but they are stuck with their own political realities (i.e. power of Israel’s lobby) and so something unbelievably catastrophic may yet occur.
The UNSC is probably best to go to the General Assembly now, particularly after the UN’s head man denounced the situation so emphatically.

Posted by: jayc | Dec 8 2023 21:30 utc | 157

pq | Dec 8 2023 19:58 utc | 140
‘ Thanks for correcting ‘canuck’. He should know better.
Jane@145 read Bruce Trigger’s The Children of Aataentsic it is a fascinating account of the Wendat or Huron confederacy that was smashed by the combined effects of Catholic missions, the Haudenashaunee and epidemics introduced from Europe.
A brief treatment can be found in The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber Wengrow. The chapter Wicked Liberty will explain why there is such respect for the traditional mores and governance of what are called in Canada The First Nations. It can be argued that the values of the Enlightenment oswe a great deal to the accounts of Wendat society in Baron Lahontan’s accounts. Even the Jesuit Relations, biassed as they are, contain much information that was filtered into European intellectual circles in the C18th.
pq@147
To return to the subject under discussion: the US representative at the UNSC in wielding his veto provided a full and detailed vindication of Al Qaeda’s bombing of the World Trade Center, which was far closer to being a military target than anything Israel has bombed in Gaza.
I presume that the US will now close up Guantanamo and compensate all who have suffered there (and survived) now that they concede the right of Self Defence to the victims of Imperialism.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 8 2023 21:41 utc | 159

Okay, just a quick reply to @60, 140, 153… which were sort of indirectly in response to my @ 30.
First Nations people also danced, prolifically, enthusiastically, on the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. Appearances being most important, all that matters when it comes down to it, yeah?
I do know specific First Nations with a history of enslaving others (not the ones referenced above). And this continent has known war, plenty of it. I’ll let an actual First Nations historian or diplomat provide any further detail on that. (Haudenosaunee Confederacy has those, by the way. Someone brought them up, up thread, iirc.)

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Dec 8 2023 21:46 utc | 161

Greeks, indigenous Americans, and various desert fathers practiced some form of slavery, true. There really is something exceptional about USA, though, and that is the invention of chattel slavery on our hallowed soil. Frederick Douglas, in his three memoirs, did a pretty good job explaining the difference, for anyone interested.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Dec 8 2023 21:55 utc | 163

Posted by: bevin | Dec 8 2023 21:41 utc | 159 rpq@147
To return to the subject under discussion: the US representative at the UNSC in wielding his veto provided a full and detailed vindication of Al Qaeda’s bombing of the World Trade Center, which was far closer to being a military target than anything Israel has bombed in Gaza.
I presume that the US will now close up Guantanamo and compensate all who have suffered there (and survived) now that they concede the right of Self Defense to the victims of Imperialism.
————————————————————
Good on Bevin, it would have never occurred to me, but it does make a lot of since.

Posted by: Ed | Dec 8 2023 22:02 utc | 165

The whole world evidences native forms of slavery at some degree or another. However Chattel Slavery was a horrific development of the rise of industrial-revolution-like demands for processing sugar. It was a function of market demands being hotter than containable and colonies away from prying eyes of imperial heartlands about the greater weight of its horrors. Basically the rise of merchant companies parallels the rise of chattel slavery.
Now this is seeming off-topic, but if we view Israel as a Colonial Project, and Oil Businesses as the new Chartered Merchant Companies (along with Hedge Funds and other private finance interests), you could argue this is a contiguous thread of outsourced exploitation. This “Gaza Has Our Oil Under Our Overdue Conquest of That Land” is a vestige of Colonialism dying in Palestine, while at the same time showing how the Colonialist private equity morphed behind the guise of Post-Colonialism methodologies. It is an instrumental Masks Off moment on how corporatism (capitalism) abuses national legal frameworks and civic naivete to create monstrosities.
The monster creates new villains for humanity to fight as it keeps looting. Yesterday it was chattel slavery, today it was/is supremicism & apartheid, tomorrow will be another cause celeb. But it is the continuation of looting without moral brakes that keeps the death train’s momentum. Fight the root source, fight the international companies, fight the structure of finance captured into a small cabal of private hands.

Posted by: titmouse | Dec 8 2023 22:28 utc | 167

@ karlof1 | Dec 8 2023 21:55 utc | 162
A quick Thanks. I still have a print of the original screen shot, the attribution ‘Not Our Tribe’ still holds on current incarnation.
Have progressing case of macular degeneration (drfy form) and reading has been affected where following commentariat is difficult and time consuming. Still get in some of b’s offerings.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Dec 8 2023 22:43 utc | 169

he ended his piece with “Free Palestine”, by which he meant “exterminate Israel”

My God, their is no victimhood you will not claim, no atrocity you will not countenance, no thing too low for you to stoop to. You are without reservation a psychopath.
The name Israel will be a curse for generations. Look at you as you excuse your chosen side of their hideous crimes, absolve yourself of the death of babies and mothers. You are the very worst kind of coward, and since you appear to be religious, doubt it not that a perpetual lake of boiling excrement awaits you and the rest of your ilk.
Now if you would like to get back to honoring yourself and the rest of your Israeli bedfellows for slaughtering civilians, who am I to interrupt such a solemn affair.

Posted by: Doctor Eleven | Dec 8 2023 23:01 utc | 171

Formerly T-Bear | Dec 8 2023 22:43 utc | 169–
Thanks for your reply! I tried to download that photo but yes informed it “wasn’t a properly secure site.” Grrr! But I tipped my hat to you and provided a link to it instead as it was a better image to use in my republishing Finnian Cunningham’s SCF essay “Jesus Buried Under Rubble in Bethlehem”. Saddened about your vision. Fortunately, the ability of computer software to read aloud has advanced quite a lot. My Best to you for Solstice and New Year!!

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 8 2023 23:20 utc | 173

Elmagnostic | Dec 8 2023 18:08 utc | 112
*** Whatever it’s called, burying your money in the back yard now has a respectable ring to it.***
Till the all-surveilling who rule (regardless of what the public want) do away with anything except “digital” money which they can selectively cancel anytime.

Posted by: Cynic | Dec 8 2023 23:23 utc | 175

fyi
Guernica remembers!
https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1733174524282019907
NEW:
🇪🇦 The Spanish city of Gernika sounds the sirens against the Israeli’s bombings and genocide of the Palestinians.

Posted by: michaelj72 | Dec 8 2023 23:31 utc | 177

How would the Western ruling establishment and its media mouthpieces react if muslim states of the Middle East decided enough is enough and launched a full scale war against Israel using the same rules of engagement Israel is using in Gaza? If Israeli hospitals and schools were deliberately targeted and its cities were relentlessly targeted with no consideration at all for the civilian population then the response from the West would no doubt be that the Arab’s have the right to defend themselves wouldn’t it? And if Russia supplied an endless flow of weapons to be used against Israel l can’t see any Western governments having a problem with that!
And how’s this for a clown world if true. I heard it mentioned on a podcast but l don’t know if it has actually happened. Apparently Khan from the ICC has been in Israel to gather evidence of Hamas war crimes to be used to build a case for future prosecutions in The Hague of Hamas leaders!

Posted by: JohnG | Dec 8 2023 23:40 utc | 179

Another Biblical prophecy writ large – the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.
Posted by: abierno | Dec 8 2023 23:21 utc | 174
In particular this is because the children refuse to stop committing the sins of the father or profiting from it’s proceeds.
Redemption is possible but we choose the inheritance of evil.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 8 2023 23:47 utc | 181

danf 166
On 7th October Hamas attacked across the border from Gaza.
What did they attack?
Israeli civilians? Nope.
No amount of hasbara lies can obscure that basic fact.
What they DID attack was the Zionist kiddie killers in their lairs.
Army bases and police stations, which they overran and occupied.
One of these bases had 20 tanks in it.
The Zionist kiddie killers had their asses handed to them.
320 Zionist kiddie killer troops and 59 Zionist kiddie killer police killed.
Scores more captured. Hundreds more wounded.
Hamas lost about 200 killed, who lying hasbara shills like yourself tried to pass off as “murdered Israeli civilians.”
The real “murdered Israeli civilians” were killed by the gutless kiddie killers, who slaughtered hundreds of their own people in a blind panic with tank, artillery and helicopter gunship fire.
It is quite likely that the number killed by Hamas was very small.
But now we are getting the old, old story from the Zio Regime.
If only we can get rid of Hamas, everything will be just peachy.
Just like in the past,
If only we can get rid of Nasser…….. If only we can get rid of Arafat……..
if only we can get rid of the PLO…….. if only we can get rid of Assad……
if only we can get rid of Hezbollah…….. if only we can get rid of Iran …..
Strange how if only……. never quite seems to work out for our bloodthirsty Zionist buddies and their Amen Corner in Washington.

Posted by: anon | Dec 9 2023 0:03 utc | 183

Anyway beautiful lighting of the menorah in central gaza tonight
Posted by: HH | Dec 9 2023 0:07 utc | 184
Pity so many of the IDF goon squad won’t be there to celebrate.
Hope the menorah and a good bunch of Ashkenazi hoodlums get blown to Sheol during the lighting.
No better time.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 9 2023 0:13 utc | 185

Otterboy | Dec 8 2023 22:46 utc | 170
*** Every Palestinian that’s killed is a double tragedy because they could also be a drone launcher of the future
Save themselves, get to safety. Then make millions of drones and destroy those bastards once and for all. ***
Drones and missiles cost money. So does merely living. As soon as the Palestinians leave Palestine, the Israelis will grab the oil and gas in Palestine for themselves and their US-corporate partners.
The departed will have no money with which to acquire the weapons you cite.
While smarms of fatcat lawyers claim the forced-out Palestinians no longer own anything.

Posted by: Cynic | Dec 9 2023 0:14 utc | 187

A tribute to a great poet upon his (timely) death, by yet another great poet
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
W. H. Auden (1907 – 1973)
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Posted by: RJPJR | Dec 9 2023 0:35 utc | 189

Laura K at substack reports:
“The BBC has taken great care to dehumanise a Palestinian writer who was murdered by Israel by calling him “controversial”. The BBC takes its obligation to report in a neutral manner (that doesn’t upset the Israeli government or its supporters in the British government) very seriously.
“If they ever failed to do this, the licence fee would be scrapped quicker than you can say ceasefire. This is why the BBC spent half the article attacking the character of Refaat Alareer, rather than the people who murdered him. In fact, they didn’t even say who murdered Refaat, which is rather lazy journalism when you think about it, so let me set the record straight…”
JohnG | Dec 8 2023 23:40 utc | 179
I believe that that is true Mr Khan is truly without shame. I believe it’s a family failing.
“Renowned poet, Refaat Alareer, who was known as “the voice of Gaza” and was beloved by his students, was killed by Israel in a surgical airstrike that targeted the apartment where he was staying. The airstrike killed Refaat, his brother, his sister and four of her children, but left the apartment building intact. Israel says this proves it always minimises civilian casualties, apart from all the times it doesn’t bother to.
“In the spirit of minimising civilians, Israel destroyed the university at which Refaat taught, claiming it was the Hamas command centre that was also under Al-Shifa hospital. They destroyed every other university in Gaza just to be safe and explained they consider these actions “proportionate”. However, others have suggested that killing four children to get revenge on their uncle for getting likes on Twitter might be a war crime. Perhaps we need a Question Time debate to figure this one out.
“BBC guidelines currently state that wanting children to stay alive is needlessly divisive, hence, the emphasis of their article. An Israeli spokesman explained it was wrong that a man who had only known brutal occupation for 44 years of his life might side with his people in this conflict. Others have an alternative view, but we’re going to ignore them.
“Refaat was controversial because he said insensitive things like “Please don’t kill us” and there is concern at the BBC that this was racist. Refaat was even guilty of suggesting Palestinians are human beings who deserve to be free of an illegal blockade so they can live prosperous and fulfilling lives on their native soil without the constant worry of being killed. An investigation is underway to ascertain how such a man was ever allowed to appear on the BBC.
“One of Refaat’s biggest crimes was responding to a propaganda story about an Israeli baby being cooked alive in an oven. Rather than pretend the fake story was real, Refaat showed it the contempt it deserved and this was unforgivable.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 9 2023 0:45 utc | 191

Re Arch Bungle 181 response to the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children –
Israel has one of the highest rates of spousal and child abuse in the world. It is also well known that children and adolescents who are abused will themselves inevitably (without lengthy and intensive therapy) become abusers themselves. This is how the sadistic aggressive behavior leaches into the family and the community, mentally poisoning the trust and emotions of those in those systems. And continues through generations…

Posted by: abierno | Dec 9 2023 0:52 utc | 193

Even under Israel’s savage and relentless bombardment, Refaat never stopped nurturing and mentoring his students and former students, whether it was to write poetry, or reportage for The Electronic Intifada.
Although he was not fearless, Refaat was brave. He continued to speak out even knowing that Israel was systematically targeting journalists, doctors and other intellectuals for extermination.
Dr. Refaat Alareer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732891174464041278

Posted by: ld | Dec 9 2023 1:13 utc | 195

“Anyway beautiful lighting of the menorah in central gaza tonight.”
a byword and an astonishment among the nations — never been truer.

Posted by: anonymous | Dec 9 2023 1:22 utc | 197

@ pasha | Dec 8 2023 19:14 utc | 129
Context? There is no possible context in which the ending of Ps 137 is not depraved and reprehensible. Heck, I’ve heard no shortage of Bible “apologists” — what they really are, are excuse-makers — try to justify the verse as only a metaphor. But that’s a sorry attempt at excuse-making; even as a metaphor it is depraved and reprehensible.

Posted by: malenkov | Dec 9 2023 2:07 utc | 199