 |
How Long Is Long Enough? Gaza under Israeli bombardment, July 2014. |
This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ruminations of an Old New Zealander
About Me
- Chris Trotter
- Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.
Bowalley Road Rules
The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.
So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.
These are based on two very simple principles:
Courtesy and Respect.
Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.
Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.
Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.
However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.
10 comments:
Thank you Chris. The continuation of that quote is: "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. "
What was he getting at?
Jordan Peterson:
"It's gazing into the abyss that makes you better; the thing is and this is maybe where Nietzsche's ideas are not as differentiated as it became. Sometimes your gaze can be forcefully directed towards the abyss and then you're traumatized if it's involuntary and accidental it can kill you. The more it's voluntary the more transformative it is and that's
part of that idea about facing death and Hell.
It's like; can you tolerate death and hell and the answer is, this terrible answer is, yes; to the degree that you're willing to do it voluntarily."
1m 28sec clip. https://youtu.be/T5aL-trOaQ0
The Jewish people developed a saying: "Never again" after they were herded up and shot, starved and gassed in their millions. Unarmed and powerless they were at the mercy of pure evil. "Never again" isn't a wish or a slogan. It's burned into their souls, it's a compelling collective idea: We must never again fail to defend our existence against those that would have us dead.
God bless them.
Is self determination the motivation for the Islamists?
Professor Gad Saad speaks from personal experience and observation:
“The mindset in the Middle East is very simple. It is based on the Qur’anic concept of dhimmi status for all religious minorities who are “people of the book.” Such people can at best be tolerated but they should NEVER be in a position in power whether within a country or within the Middle East. As such, Israel’s existence violates a definitional and fundamental tenet of the mindset in the region. It is that simple.
It has nothing to do with land; nothing to do with two states; nothing to do with other geopolitical realities. Islam is supreme. Islam can protect you as long as you know your place. Israel said NO! We have dignity; we have a right for self-autonomy. Ask yourself the following question: How are non-Muslim minorities faring throughout the Middle East? Yes, there are times when minorities are “tolerated” but the overlords reserve the right to exterminate you as they see fit. There is 1,400 years of that recorded history. Learn your history.”
I was born in 1951 and during my whole life thus far, have observed continual violence by both Israel and the so called Palestinians who are backed by other Muslim countries in the area. The problem is not new but from time to time there are different leaders and governing bodies from both sides that have either just carried on the violence or failed in their attempts to solve the issue.
'Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and assumed administrative control of Gaza Strip and West Bank. In 2007, Hamas led a military victory over Fatah, the secular Palestinian nationalist party, which had dominated the Palestinian National Authority'. I believe Hamas becoming a legitimate force in the area was a dark turning point that could only lead to more bloodshed.
With Hamas having at least the blessing of half the people in Gaza, they have gone about the business of preparing for where the situation is today. Whether the population in Gaza are as keen on their Hamas masters will be left for the future to sort out but Hamas have been prepared to sacrifice thousands for their cause. I say that because after the first few weeks of Israeli bombing, it was obvious that Hamas was never going to win the war in a practical way but they could try and win the emotional war and the media war, even if that meant sacrificing 30000 of their citizens so be it. All Hamas had to do to stop the violence was to give up the hostages that THEY took when they started this latest conflict. They chose not to. Israel on the other hand has an uncompromising ruthless right wing government who would be struggling to now have the blessing of a majority, but is taking the opportunity to inflict as much damage on Hamas as possible regardless of how many innocents are killed. The difference between the two sides being that The Israeli government would not survive if Jewish lives are lost in large numbers but Hamas may survive regardless of how many of it's citizens die. There is no doubt in my mind that the Israeli leadership have become monsters because like their Hamas counterparts, they have no humanity only ruthless objectives.
Humanity evaporates in any war where innocent people die for the so called greater good. We along with our allies are just as complicit. War makes monsters of us all.
Except, New View, Hamas are now admitting that their casualty figures have been wildly exaggerated; twenty two thousand dead not 33,000. Israel has claimed they have killed 13,000 Hamas terrorists. That is a remarkably low proportion of civilian casualties given that Hamas are fully imbedded among the population, hiding in and under hospitals, schools and residential areas.
Not what you would expect from people having "only ruthless objectives".
Cutting through the explanations and excuses over the conflict of Palestine.
https://remix.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/timeline_main.html
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
Happy to see anyone's solution to this crisis. I'm quite sure Israel would be grateful as well.
If it was your loved one still in captivity being subjected to what has been described as intolerable treatment would you be comforatble with your country walking away? What of the children now being carried by these repeatedly raped and returned hostages. What fate awaits those still in captivity?
All very well to be moralistic here but all hammas has to do is return the hostages that they have not yet murdered, yet they refuse.
War is monstrous. And it is zero sum " game".
There is little point in nominating the biggest" monster".
The Gaza territory establishes a fundamentally unsound though historically significant killing ground where both protagonists compete to outdo the other in the ferocity and terrors of their monstrous!responses.
If ever a case could be made for an armed coalition of peacemakers then this is it. No place here for taking sides but the use of UN force to preserve agreed boundaries is a way less "monstrous" option ... than are the current battle lines.
I don't know what sort of entity should administer Gaza once things settle down, Larry. UNRWA have been outed as facilitators of, and actual participants in, Hamas terrorism. They funded Jew hate propaganda in the schools and happily turned a blind eye to Hamas rocket launching sites, munitions stores and the 500 KM of terrorist tunnels. Having them oversee the peace when they actually helped enable the invasion? Perhaps not.
The neighbouring countries (Egypt and Jordan particularly) look to be a better bet. They are well aware of the threat to themselves from the Islamists and understand the terrorists and their hate filled delusions better than anyone. They helped shoot down the missiles and suicide drones fired at Israel from Iran.
The brutal, repressive Iranian Islamist regime is the real problem; the end of them would be good. Fortunately most Iranians hate them and it's way past time they were more widely recognised for what they are; the major promoter, funder and facilitator for violence in the entire region.
David I agree that any death figures require confirmation. Even the Israeli figures. I am assuming the 13000 Hamas deaths you quoted doesn’t include civilians? I call Israel leaders ruthless because they have made the impossible task of rooting Hamas from Gaza possible by levelling large areas of it and large numbers of civilians have been killed as collateral damage. We can debate the rights and wrongs but will Hamas ever be completely expelled from Gaza. I don’t think so, in which case it might be that the total destruction of Gaza was fruitless. Apart from the revenge factor and setting back Hamas growth in the area a decade or so. While Israel where’s it heart on it’s sleeve Iran is pulling strings in the shadows now having the excuse it wants to escalate war in the region. Israel is just a pawn in the big game.
Some very bad news if you thought Jew Hatred was buried with the Nazis. Jmes Lindsay:
"At the moment, we are losing liberalism to Critical Social Justice, which isn’t just inimical to liberal beliefs but also believes they must be torn out by the roots—which, if Weiss is right, will include Hebrew roots. This simple truth, hard-learned so many times before about shallow social theory, is a danger to us all. It poses a particular, though not wholly unique, danger to Jews.
For the present, there is still some daylight between Woke anti-Semitism and older, more recognizable forms of Jew-hatred, but there’s no guarantee that will stay the case. Indeed, the edifice already seems to be crumbling. It’s worth stating, then, that the only difference between historical applications of ideologically driven anti-Semitism and Woke anti-Semitism, then, is that the current approach comes at the issue in an apparently novel way by shoehorning Jew-hatred into a drastically oversimplified framework of American racial history—one with a great deal of current cultural cache—which is to say that the differences are mostly a matter of window dressing and time. That is to except one other difference: those have no positive branding and no Jewish support, whereas Woke anti-Semitism currently enjoys a reasonable degree of both.
Critical Social Justice is, in its vulgar simplicity and pretentious racism, neither sophisticated nor liberal enough to handle the straightforward facts of Jewish life and history, which make an inconvenient misfit to its profoundly inadequate notions of social power and conflict. It must therefore be said that this paucity of sophistication and liberalism within Theory render the contradictions at hand both unavoidable and irreconcilable for Theory. This, in turn, defines a fundamental and intolerable Jewish problem in Critical Social Justice that, if history writes any guide, will find its “resolution” in the decrees of the Theorists, if they become sufficiently empowered. We must not allow this to happen."
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/10/critical-race-theorys-jewish-problem/
Post a Comment