Harry's Place

There should come a point when, no matter what benefit one may have brought to a particular city, that any properly formed moral creature should take a step back and say, hang on… should there not?

KL: Are you committed to the destruction of Israel?

KM: What is really happening is the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies our land and exiles us, kills us,
incarcerates us and persecutes our people. We are the victims, Israel is the oppressor, and not vice versa.

Yes!

We certainly did bring peace in Northern Ireland by agreeing to talk to IRA/Sinn Fein.

After the UK had infiltrated them completely at the very highest levels, and instituted a shoot to kill policy against their terrorists, and then waited until their leadership entered late middle age and wanted to retire on a state pension, that is.

Enjoyed the opening:

“Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, continues to extend illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and maintain a near-complete blockade of Gaza. Palestinians fire ineffectual rockets into Israel. Israel regularly attacks Palestinian territories with modern weapons.”

I suppose the rockets are fairly ‘ineffectual’ overall, apart from if you happen to be killed or maimed by one. And of course, there’s nothing ‘modern’ about weaponry such as rockets…

Like third question that never was; it’s worth repeating the Christopher Hitchens point, though, that ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is not a ‘forgery’, which implies a genuine model, but is in fact a complete fabrication concocted by racist Tsarist agents.

“KM: What is really happening is the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies our land and exiles us, kills us”

Similar to what Palestinian Christian and Muslim notables were saying of Jews’ migrating to Palestine in 1900. Which is presumably why the Palestinian national movement took the subsequent exclusivist, dispossessive then eliminationist road that ended in the Hamas covenant (or charter).

KM says that Israel was created by European Jews (fleeing The Holocaust) but fails to recognise that MORE Arab Jews (800,000) fled to Israel due to pogroms than due to The Holocaust.

Commenting on the interview is only a whole load of lie spotting.

The New Statesman is truly appalling, is it not?

The New Statesman has really sunk to a new low, hasn’t it?

Does anyone still buy this rubbish? Employing the “all non-muslims are sheep” guy (and the cringeworthy defence of him here by one of his naive “Christian” colleagues) was the last straw for me.

It’s not even fit for toilet paper. I don’t want to give money to a publication that employs the individual named earlier and now gives the spotlight to the leader of an Islamist terrorist organisation. Disgusting.

Great post, Lucy Lips – good links too.

These quotes, picked up by Daniel Goldhagen are a bit more revealing about the man than the OK! drivel our Ken managed.

“

“Hamas has a vision. Hamas has a plan. Hamas can manage the political battle, just like it managed the military battle, but in a different language, with different tools–and recognizing Israel is not one of them.”

Mashal said this just a week after the election victory, in a long, chilling address after the Friday sermon at a Damascus mosque. Delivered quite pointedly in a religious institution (and broadcast throughout the Islamic world on Al Jazeera), Mashal’s oration laid out Hamas’s political Islamic fanatical vision of conquering and slaying its enemies. After his audience was moved by his speech to interrupt him with the chant,

“Death to Israel. Death to Israel. Death to America”

Mashal lapsed into a blood-curdling reverie:

“Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day…. Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.”

”

And to think there are still people round here who wanted Livingstone as London Mayor…those people should hang their heads in shame.

“Death to Israel. Death to Israel. Death to America”

“Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day…. Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.”

Yes, but if don’t engage with people like that then there are no hopes for peace in the I/P conflict.

/sarc

Mershal for me is prime body-part fodder – for the pig farm!

In terms of power this is a bit like Cuba threatening the USA. He’s all up-front until Israel sends over a pea-shooter response and he spends two weeks hiding in a bunker under a hospital. When their impotence gets too much to bear then they take it out on Fatah by shooting them in hospital, in the back or throwing them from buildings.

And to think there are still people round here who wanted Livingstone as London Mayor…those people should hang their heads in shame.

No no no no no, Morgoth. As bad as he is, there is nothing worse than a Tory. See?

HAMAS is in breach of the UN Convention on Genocide, it is a proscribed terrorist organization in the EU, USA and Canada and has been shown to be involved in Crimes against Humanity.

Why do the left support it?

Well, there are a few so-called “anti-imperialists” who used to be on the Left and still support Hamas fascism. I’m grateful to HP for identifying them as lefties who have gone over to the fash, not for the first or the last time. The real left will stand up against them, regardless of Islamic trolls who try to identify all Muslims with Islamofascists…

“CookieCutter
In terms of power this is a bit like Cuba threatening the USA.”

Castro wanted to launch all the thermonuclear missiles based in Cuba at the East Coast of the USA. This was in the Soviet archives.

October 30, 1962

Dear Comrade Fidel Castro:

…………………..
“In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to launch a nuclear strike against the territory of the enemy. You, of course, realize where that would have led. Rather than a simple strike, it would have been the start of a thermonuclear world war”

N. Khrushchev

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/Crisis/Cltr-3.htm

Israel will kill Mashal. Don’t worry.
The guy who planned the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires is dead. And it wasn’t Argentina’s courtroom bureocracy that killed him.

One by one, the murderers will dissapear.

Next weeks world exclusive:

Adolf Ahmadinejad on the 12th Imams ‘immanent’ arrival and what that means for peace in the middle east (a Jew free middle east).

Week after next world exclusive”

Benito Chavez on the coming ‘permanent’ suspension of Democracy and how to pass it off as a necessary emergency measure to protect His “Democracy” from the evil neo-con zionist conspiracy.

Week after next, next weeks world exclusive:

Ill Kim Franco on how to keep the idiot Western imbecile governments giving psychotic dictatorships protection money and making them look like 10 year children. (this exclusive being translated into Farsi, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese.)

Week Four world exclusive:

A Live interview with Comrade Lenin (who isn’t really dead, he and Karl Marx and Elvis and the 12th Imam are in orbit around pluto and after the technological advances in communication in the last few years it is now possible to interview them, Live, audio only sadly, but who knows maybe in a few years we might have video also)

Red is a good colour choice for the Far Left, Blood is Red, is it not.

Green, another good colour choice for Islamists.

Hezbollah chose yellow, I think, excellent choice.

“Red Ken” is that like “Mad Mel”? Are these nicknames meant as an insult or are they a way to belittle the speaker, deflect from what is being said or are they accurate descriptions.

Ken is very Left wing so “Red Ken” would seem to be an accurate term or am I being communistophobic, is calling Melanie Phillips “Mad” Phillipsophobic?

Is Saying Hamas are a Islamofacist, Genocidal, Nazi like gang of religious Lunatics, Hamasophobic?

Indeed is saying the Far Left are disgusting anti-semitic Fascists “Leftophobic”?

I personally can’t stand people such as ken Livingstone, does that make me “Ideologueophobic” ?

I can’t stand the New Statesman, I must surely be then, a Newstatesmanophbic.

I can’t stand the religion called Islam, so I must be Islamophobic, OK, fine I am Islamophobic, I cannot stand the religion called “”"Islam”"”

Hmmm,

In fact, I cannot stand any Religion, actually, so a more accurate term to use would be “Religiophobic” , I am not Muslimophobic, I have no animosity toward people who refer to themselves as Muslims, I am not Christiansopbic, I have no animosity towards people who refer to themselves as Christians, I am Not Buddistsophobic or Hindusophobic, am I not Arabophobic, Chineseophobic or anyone elseophobic.

So lets cut the shit, The Far Left have become appeasers of and apologists for, blatantly genocidal maniacs, Ken Livingstone and a few other Far Left Politicians are aiding, what in my view, are religious fascists.

“I” believe that is what Ken and the other Far Left Fools are doing, they obviously don’t think that there is anything wrong in what they are doing because I find it inconceivable that they don’t know what these people are.

I find it to fantastic a possibility that they simply haven’t read documents such as the Hamas Charter, as far as I am concerned it is impossible that they didn’t notice the thousands of rockets launched by Hamas, at the civilian population of Israel.

All the suicide bombers sent by Hamas that targeted the civilian population of Israel was not a ‘zionist’ propaganda trick, it happened, Meshal is Hamas, the Far Left know this, don’t they.

I Am forced to accept the reality that seeing as the Far Left know who and what the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah are, and yet they still appease and apologize for them, then they must agree with them, they must agree with their agenda.

All this really is becoming dangerously Absurd.

After all, I have only one thing to ask, “What about peace for peace’s sake.” It is time to evolve and move in the direction of oneness. We are aloud to be different, think different, and live different and still there should be oneness.

The Protocols is a hoax not a forgery.

Call me dangerously naive if you will, but Ken is surely right here – you don’t get peace by each side throwing rockets at the other. At some point there have to be negotiations, and peace talks are not often conducted between amiable groups of mutual friends. They’re usually between two groups of people who fundamentally hate each others’ guts and would crawl over barbed wire to throttle each other.

Playing “No platform for Hamas” looks very sound if you think that the I/P conflict is a bit like an election in Bradford, but in reality it’s exactly the same as endorsing the status quo of regular bloodshed. Hamas are evil bastards, but they’re the only evil bastards in town who can negotiate even the slightest reduction in hostilities. Arguing that the Israeli government shouldn’t speak to them because they are bastards and, by extension, the NS shouldn’t publish their opinions because they are bastards, is the same as saying Let’s continue to choke the Palestinians economically and trade munitions for the indefinite future. That’s surely not a desirable outcome.

Quite obviously, Khaled Mashal is telling lies – he’s not only a politician, but a Hamas terrorist politician to boot, and if NS readers don’t keep that in mind when reading him then they’re idiots, pure and simple. That’s their problem.

The point is that this kind of Fuck the Palestinian Liars attitude is exactly how the Israelis wound up facing fundamentalist Islamists in the first place. Arafat’s crowd weren’t that much more appealing, but at least they were more interested in politics than religion, and it’s not as if fucking Fatah off led to a wonderful, happy outcome.

If you want any kind of peace – or even a drawdown in military conflict, which I would argue is a Good Thing that should be desired by everyone – you have to go to the table and argue with people who would cheerfully bite your throats out given the chance. That’s how this kind of thing works, and even Churchill saw that despite being regarded as the ultimate in rah-rah, gung-ho warmongering by his peers.

In summary, Ken is correct and you are wrong.

The soaring assbat swoops in.

and is a ‘world-exclusive’ only in the sense that no other mainstream publication in the world would print such crap.

Excuse me, did I hear you say “mainstream”? Not the poor old Staggers, surely? Once upon a time it was mainstream, but that was in the dim and distant past.

Shanah tovah!

>> Call me dangerously naive if you will

No, I will call you a sociopath and a totalitarian creep.

I especially was impressed by the soaring assbat’s mention of Churchill’s supposed recognition that it was better not to fight Hitler and the Nazis, but instead chat with them.

In summary, assbat, Livingstone and Meshal should get together more often for peace and for the humiliation, degradation, cutting out of eyeballs and killing of Israeli Jews.

Flying Rodent; have you ever heard of “Magda” Goebbels and her children;
Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Hedwig, Holdine and Heidrun ?

As usual, there is a kernel of truth in the midst of Flying Rodent’s wrongheadedness. Neither party is capable of machine-gunning the other into submission and the respective leaders of Israel and Hamas in the next decades are unlikely to suddenly discover they are in fact in love and fall into a deep embrace. The undeniable truth is that any lasting peace will come only after dialogue and a political settlement. History teaches us that this is invariably the only formula that works, but it also teaches us that such negotiations do not begin whilst one or more party clings to hopes of outright victory. As in Northern Ireland, once the realisation finally dawns that the best you’re going to achieve is a score-draw, a genuine peace process can commence and momentum builds inexorably.

If Hamas repudiates its charter and recognises Israel’s right to exist, I’ll be at the head of the queue of those demanding the start of bilateral talks. As it is, Israel has no moral obligation to sit across the table from those who openly call for her destruction. Genocidal policies should not be rewarded with talks.

That said, I don’t subscribe to the notion that Hamas operates as a single entity in all respects. I don’t need convincing that there are less extreme elements within their ranks, politcal animals, who do not delude themselves with fantasies about driving the Jew out of the holy lands and who would welcome a settlement with Israel. I would hope that Israel is reaching out, covertly, to such actors and would be surprised were this not happening.

Alec and Lbnaz,

I agree with you guys far more often than I do with FlyingRodent, so why am I looking at your response to FR and thinking that’s it’s you two who look like the assbats? I mean FFS, Lbnaz, you don’t really believe that FT hates Jews, so why are you pretending you do?

I don’t agree with the thrust of FR’s comment here, but it was a reasoned position and entirely inoffensive in content. I appreciate there is history in all this, but your replies are needlessly abusive and do absolutely squat to further this discussion. So what’s the point?

FlyingRodent: “Playing ‘No platform for Hamas’ looks very sound if you think that the I/P conflict is a bit like an election in Bradford …”

But, FR, isn’t that just what you advocate?: “… Hamas are evil bastards, but they’re the only evil bastards in town …”

“Let’s continue to choke the Palestinians economically and trade munitions for the indefinite future. That’s surely not a desirable outcome.”

There are two very good reasons to “choke” the Palestinians in Gaza: (1) full economic interaction with Israel is severely hampered because Israel fears suicide bombers; (2) some materials (like concrete and pipe) present a real risk to Israel.

FlyingRodent, the reality as understood by those whose interests and lives are most imperiled by that organization, is that Hamas is a fascist, murderous, and lunatic movement. To propose that by virtue of their being the only game in town (and how did they get that way?) Israel must deal with them, is to ignore what they are, what they say, and what they do.

Isn’t it at least theoretically possible that an organization or movement may be, in its intentions and actions, so essentially vile that treating with them as though they were some sort of conventional political movement is lunatic?

Within the limits of what Israel thinks is plausibly safe, it attempts to ameliorate the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza. But it is quite sanely unwilling to carelessly facilitate Hamas’ avowed intent to destroy Israel, or, failing that, to kill Israelis.

Do Hamas have to acquire and use better rockets before you consider them anathema, or will that sorry occasion prove to you merely a more compelling reason for Israel to “negotiate”?

When does this bloody-mindedness stop?

“As usual, there is a kernel of truth in the midst of Flying Rodent’s wrongheadedness. ”

As Usual the Left see only Grasshoppers and never Locusts.

As Usual the Left think that when the tanks roll up to their house it will only be to ask for directions to the ‘right wingers’ house.

As Usual the Left think that Islamism can be sated by a cup of tea and a scone and a talk.

As Usual the Left are wrong.

“If Hamas repudiates its charter and recognises Israel’s right to exist”

or

‘IF’ Hitler had not been an anti-semitic psychopath

or

‘IF’ Stalin had really understood communism

or

‘IF’ Mao had really given a shit about the people

or

‘IF’ Pol Pot had been a choir boy

or

‘IF’ the crusades wouldn’t have happened

or

“IF” FATHER FUCKING CHRISTMAS WAS REAL

or

“If Hamas repudiates its charter and recognises Israel’s right to exist”

Then everything would be just fine and dandy, wouldn’t it.

Here’s one for you

“IF” HAMAS DON”T REPUDIATE THEIR CHARTER AND RECOGNIZE ISREAL BUT INSTEAD THEY CONTINUE TO ATTACK THE CIVILIANS OF ISRAEL, WHAT THEN?

Oh and here is another

“IF” Iran build a nuclear bomb and attacks Israel, using said bomb, what then, more talks?

‘IF’ the Islamic world attacks Israel, as they have on more than one occasion before, what? more talks?

“IF” Iran uses its proxy Hezbollah to attack Israel, more talks?

After the record of Leftist support for despotic regimes and leaders in the past, I for one will take any advice on conflict resolution they offer with a pinch of salt.

“I’ll be at the head of the queue of those demanding the start of bilateral talks. As it is, Israel has no moral obligation to sit across the table from those who openly call for her destruction. Genocidal policies should not be rewarded with talks.”

Now I agree with that, 100%

Pity the Left don’t.

“Neither party is capable of machine-gunning the other into submission” (Brownie)

Wrong.

Pay attention Brownie.

Israel can do it, but we won’t, because it would bring too much suffering to the Arabs.
Hamas can’t do it, but if it had the means it, would.

This is the nut of the question. We are good, Hamas (supported by a large proportion of the Palestinians) is evil.

We recognize this, because we are sane and close to the source of evil.
You don’t recognize this because it is easy to shut your ears when you are far from the source of evil.

There is really not much to argue.

Israel is waiting for the complete failure of Hamas. It might need another war, maybe two more. Maybe none. But a democracy has nothing to discuss with fundamentalist terrorists. They belong to the dark past of humankind. They will be destroyed.

One often hears the ‘Hamas are nasty but you need to talk to them’ arguments of course. In fact this argument seems to be gathering more and more momentum as time goes on, partly I suspect, because yet again the people pushing this argument are both ignoring the lessons of recent history and searching for a quick fix rather than looking at the bigger picture.

One of many faults with the Oslo agreements, which at the time I too supported, was that their net effect was to take a group of people who were self-proclaimed terrorists, with no experience whatsoever of processes of democratic leadership and who had in fact never lived in a normal democratic country with normal functioning systems of rule and to crown them king.
Their obvious lack of leadership credentials were all the more apparant when they were parachuted in and put in charge of a population which, although one could say were under ‘occupation’, had for over two decades been living as part of a democratic country and through contact with the Israeli authorities and people, through working in Israel and through being exposed to Israeli media and society in general, already had come a long way towards understanding and appreciating democracy.

These new leaders knew only the language of the gun, and the results were that to this day no mature, democratic, responsible leadership has been able to germinate and grow within Palestinian society, which is one of the reasons we are in such a mess today.

If our ultimate aim is for a Palestinian state which is a normal, functioning country which takes care of its citizens and lives in peace with its neighbours to be established, then it would be totally irresponsible to repeat the mistakes of Oslo. The Palestinian people have suffered enough: they do not deserve to be harnessed yet again to the yoke of tyrranical leadership by Western king-makers looking for a quick fix.

The main argument, therefore, as far as I am concerned for not dealing with a thuggish, theocratical, despotic regime which conducts both foreign and domestic policy through the barrel of a gun and employs fear as its method of engagement both externally and internally, is that the Palestinian people deserve a lot better than that.

“don’t need convincing that there are less extreme elements within their ranks, politcal animals, who do not delude themselves with fantasies about driving the Jew out of the holy lands and who would welcome a settlement with Israel”
- problem is Brownie, they’re called Fatah

“Neither party is capable of machine-gunning the other into submission” (Brownie)

We recognize this, because we are sane and close to the source of evil.
You don’t recognize this because it is easy to shut your ears when you are far from the source of evil.

Right on Fabian!

I wanted to write the same. The bleating Palestinians milking their own self-infliction in Gaza, for example, ONLY records 1,500 deaths from 1.5m when they also bleat about it being the most densely populated garbage tip in the World.

If Israel had simply responded proportionally with a ‘blind’ missile into Gaza for every rocket/missile fired by Hamas then the deal toll would be mabe ten thousand (ie 6,000 missiles).

Israel response, as you rightly say, are powder puff compared with what they do. Aren’t they sometimes called the Best or 2nd Best (after USA) air-force in the World? Aren’t they the sixth biggest army – or somethin?

If Israel really went for it then there would be no Palestinians in two days. (That comment is about how Israel holds back – not a desire)

Also, I note that Israel has dropped assasinations. Maybe they shouldn’t.

I just had an epiphany over this crap about Israel being on ‘Palestinian Land’ or that West Bank settlements are “illegal”.

We get stuck in a mythical trance and forget the facts and logic. West Bank was part of The Mandate For Palestine which stated that both Jews and Arabs could live there (as well as all that was called Palestine.

Arabs attack Jews in 1948 and Jordan illegally annexes Jerusalem and West Bank. Illegal because the Mandate states that no foreign country shall invade/annexe Palestine.

1967 and Arabs attack. Jordan loses and is expelled from West Bank and Jerusalem. Since no title as to who West Bank is stated by The UN then it must revert back to the last official status is had. That being the Mandate and the Mandate allowing both Jews and Arabs to live in West Bank.

Then you have a peace deal to CREATE a Palestinian state. Until then there can be no concept of exclusive “Palestinian Land”. It doesn’t exist. It WON’T exist until the peace process officially creates it and recognises it.

IF it were “Palestinian Land” by recognition of the UN then the UN wouldn’t broker a peace process, they would simply declare West Bank as “Palestinain Land” and tell Israel to leave – or else.

Hence, it CANNOT be Palestinian Land its disputed land.

I mean FFS, Lbnaz, you don’t really believe that FT hates Jews, so why are you pretending you do?

FFS Brownie, my comment ridiculed FR’s mention of Churchill as allegedly someone who recognized it was better not to fight Hitler and the Nazi fascists and then I referred to Khaled Meshal’s quote as cited by Tevya @ 9:04 pm, you know, the Hamas honcho who resides in Syria and who FR believes Israel should chat with and whose directives to mortar, rocket, human bomb and kidnap Israelis, the Israeli government should never defend itself from with force.

Nowhere did I state, suggest or “pretend” as you put it, that FR (whom I assume you mean when you typed FT) hates Jews, qua Jews. And while I think Livingstone is a tosser and unreconstructed ignoramus about the ME who never questions the antizionist talking points he takes at face value, I wouldn’t suggest that he hates Jews qua Jews either.

What I did suggest following FR’s comment is that FR and Ken Livingstone should get together -and in Livingstone’s case, more often- with Meshal to chat.

Now, if you were to ask me whether Meshal hates Jews qua Jews, given his statements, I’d say, damn straight he hates Jews. And if you were to ask me whether FR, or as Mesquito coined him: ‘the swooping assbat’ is too enamoured with seeing his anti-imperialism of idiocy and anti-”decent left” verbal diarrhea which he regularly churns out published in comment boxes, I’d reply in the affirmative.

Reading through the interview I just cannot understand how Hamas bullies pushed Fatah members off 6 story buildings.

It must have been Zionist propaganda.

Brownie, even when I disagree with you, it’s ‘cos I’ve listened to your comments and found that they are wanting.

Flying Rodent never, ever agrees with anything HP says, and will disagree with it just to get people’s backs up. If he said the sea’s blue only through reflections from the sky, I would call him a tosser.

You attack Benn, but he asked the key question.

Benn: Mr President, may I ask you some questions. The first is, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction?

Saddam: We have no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever.

Straight question, truthful answer.

Does anybody have a copy of Ken’s offshore bank statements we can all peruse?

Well, Benn ‘lists five questions we should ask any powerful person: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”‘

How many of those did he ask Saddam Hussein? And how many answers did he press him on?