Netanyahu tells Israel ‘We are at war’ after Hamas launches an unprecedented attack, killing at leas

He should have known better. His words aren't that much different than those from the campus lefties who have defended Hamas.

 

I can assure you none of the three have taken their ideas from or would have much to say to campus lefties. Pappe and Khalidi are lifelong published scholars and historians on the issue. Pappe’s book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” is 17 years old, so I don’t think he was inspired by campus lefties. Khalidi is perhaps the world’s foremost scholar on Palestinian identity. Beinart doesn’t have the scholarly pedigree, but has been commenting and working with like minded Palestinian thinkers for years.

Look them up.

One can question about using a term that they have used for decades and can support with extensive scholarship in this moment, and that is a fair criticism, one of which I might support if I didn’t read what they say with the background of having read their books/essays/substack for years. But they have a solid factual background for their conclusions. Pappe especially has been attacked and later vindicated, but he has spent years in archives.

Most of the world is coming into this area in any depth the last two weeks. But the scholarship and debate have long predated the horrible events of 10/7, and the issues will remain after.

 

They are the same words. It is an awful tragedy that more than 5000 Palestinian civilians are dead (according to Hamas). Considering the damage in Gaza, it is evident that Israel has tried to limit casualties. They warn people to leave buildings they target. That is tacticly bad- it alerts that who are targeted too. They told people to leave northern Gaza and got criticized for that too. Well, should they have not said anything since they are bombing there? But they are accused of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment. All the buzzwords from this who think it is inconvenient that Jews don’t March off to the gas chambers

 

About those meanie Israelites in the West Bank. They are fanning the war flames.

 

At this point the settlers on the West Bank are irrelevant although I wouldn't be surprised that when the failure of Israel to provide sufficient security for Israeli residents living near the border with Gaza are investigated it will turn out that Netanyahu was more concerned with protecting the settlers than with the Gaza border.

 

That they have been spreading a blood libel for 17 years just makes them bigots. No matter how much they disguise their bigotry as academia. Lots of bigotry is disguised as as academic thought. It’s really simple: if Israel was ethnically cleansing Arabs, how do you account for the Millions of Arabs there? Or the refusal of the Arabs to accept the borders in 1948? Or to make peace in 1967 by accepting the land back in exchange for peace? Ot the repudiation of the agreement in 1999 they negotiated with Clinton or Batak? If your want to know what ethnic cleansing is, read what happened to the Jews of Poland. Use to be 3 million living there. Don’t look at Jews. Look at Armenians.

 

Absolutely correct about Jews in Poland and all over Europe and elsewhere. And Armenians. And Native Americans. Plenty others also.

History is never clean and pure; it’s not even narrative, though our minds perceive it as such.

And that’s really my larger point. It’s never clean and clear or one sided. It’s almost always the stronger party that asserts its will unjustly, and the weaker party likely would if they could, pace Orwell and many others.

I’m mainly against pure narratives and lack of mitigation or concern for progress or longer timelines. Nothing is simple. But hopefully we keep making progress, and maturely accept truths with discernment.

 

F15/16s conduct strike in Syria....

 

Let's think of it this way. And for everything I'm about to very broadly summarize at a very high level, I am largely relying on Peter Cozzens "The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West." I've read some other books too, including Megan Kate Nelson's the Three Cornered War and others.

But in terms of Native Americans, many are still with us, largely on reservations. So I'm going to summarize, but most of them simply surrendered rather than being killed or forcibly displaced. They did so because their lifestyle was destroyed, sometimes systematically with purpose and sometimes just because they confronted a more powerful force that had completely different conceptions of ownership of land and economic organization. They were largely hunter-gatherers that relied on the buffalo, and Americans, occasionally well-meaning, wanted to civilize them into learning agriculture and also systematically killed off the buffalo. But they were told in no uncertain terms that the railroad was coming and the white man was coming and they were not free to roam, and that they could not necessarily keep the land they did claim.

They would repeatedly enter into treaties or understandings, formal and informal, which rarely held up. Sometimes they broke them. Sometimes rogue bands would commit atrocities against settlers. Sometimes those that had entered into agreements would interpret actions the Americans did as violations and attack as a result, deeming the treaty and the peace was no longer valid. More often, Americans deliberately and obviously broke the treaties or understandings, and war would result with some battles won by Native Americans but always eventually the US Army would prevail

Certain American governments, especially under Ulysses S. Grant, tried to dictate that Native Americans would be treated for humanely and treaties would be respected. But there was constant internal pressure to obtain resources on lands where Native Americans occupied. Grant was under economic pressure and made some concessions, invariably resulting in conflict, initiated by one side of the other, and then the military would come in and do what militaries often do. Grant would feel frustrated and feel his orders were not followed but also felt that events were often outside his control.

Native Americans would end up surrendering on the brink of starvation based upon promises that they would be supported and given sustenance. They would voluntarily enter reservations but most of the time the promises of sustenance were not honored. Americans thought they were lazy for not learning agriculture and becoming self-supporting. Many would starve or break down in mental illness at a lost lifestyle and the inability to cope to an agrarian lifestyle. Again, this is all at a high level of generality.

Many Americans wanted just to kill them, deeming them subhuman and not worthy of rights that white people deserved, or felt that they forfeited whatever rights they originally had by their conduct. Many Americans settled in non-authorized settlements on land given to the Native Americans in formal or informal agreements, and would start fights that the military would again have to come in to protect them. Atrocities were committed by Americans, which were often publicized back East in horrific headlines. Westerners felt the Eastern Americans were naive and didn't understand the savage conditions they lived in and endured.

But there was also a very deliberate philosophy of Manifest Destiny that the United States should control the land from sea to shining sea. This despite the fact that Native Americans were recognized in the Constitution under Congress's numerated powers, giving Congress the right to enter into trade agreements and treaties with them.

Did the United States commit ethnic cleansing? Many Native Americans are still here. Many of them surrendered and went on to reservations willingly. Many attacked in what they usually considered self-defense, although atrocities were committed and the young warriors were not always controllable.

Again, is ethnic cleansing a libelous term in describing American treatment of natives?

 

DOD background briefing to the Pentagon press corps likely coming up in the next 10 minutes according to Fox News.

Not a ton of detail yet on what specifically we did beyond “precision strikes on two bases in Syria used by the IRGC and proxy militias” in retaliation for recent drone and rocket attacks on U.S. bases.

 

US strikes back at Iran

 

Strikes carried out by two F-16s on weapons and ammunition dumps in Eastern Syria. Pentagon background briefing made clear that, if Tehran does not get the message and Iranian proxies continue attacking US troops, additional strikes will follow.

 

It’s not in the Persian Gulf yet. Reporting from the past couple of days is that it’s in the Eastern Atlantic and is going to transit the Mediterranean and Suez Canal.

 

Is not surprising. For whatever reason, all the warning signs were ignored

 

Always easy to say after the fact.

 

FYI. Not really surprising.
Israel: Hamas terror group's main operations base is under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City - The Times of Israel