The solution to what’s going on in Palestine, and everywhere else on this world, is God delivers a massive estrogen injection into humanity

 

     The other day, a fellow in my class at Crestline Elementary School, in the “poor” side of Mountain Book, aka The Tiny Kingdom, weighed in on the The war in Gaza drove a lot of people more loco than they already were post.

Peter Rodes Robinson

Have we met? Your name is vaguely familiar to my memory challenged 81-year-old brain. I have lived in Charlottesville and Birmingham.

I generally agree with Caitlin. I was shocked by what Hamas did, but Israel has killed 20 times as many and that's only if you don't count the 7000 decaying bodies under the rubble of Gaza.

Israel is clearly committing countless war crimes. The October 7th attack by Hamas is not clearly a war crime. Occupied peoples are recognized to have a right to resist.

Sloan Bashinsky

If you lived in Birmingham, you may have heard my family’s name, Bashinsky, and you and I might have met, as I am 81 also. I attended Cestitine Heights Elementary School, and then Ramsay High School, before going to school out of state. 

I know the casualty and prisoner statistics, more or less. Caitlin Johnstone, Chris Hedges, you, others, can call it what y'all want to call it, but we wouldn’t be having this discussion if Hamas had not made the Oct 7 raid, and it looks to me that the point of that raid was to get Israel to respond as it did, and here we are, and I’m never going to cut Hamas a millimeter of slack, nor do I cut Israel a millimeter of slack. Saying it another way, If I lived in Gaza, and was still breathing, I’d be furious with Hamas for the Oct 7 attack, and I’d be furious with Israel for its response, and I’d be furious with Hamas for not offering to return all of its Oct 7 hostages, if Israel would stop bombing Gaza and bring its army back to Israel.

Peter Rodes Robinson

I was at Crestline School from January 1950 to May 1955. We moved to Forest Park that summer. In 1957 I entered Indian Springs School. My brother Barry attended Ramsey, but he was four years younger.

Israel is holding some 2000 Palestinians WITHOUT CHARGE. Shouldn't Israel let them all go in return for the hundred or so Israeli hostages? That's the standard ratio, BTW. One Israeli is worth 20 Palestinians.

Sloan Bashinsky

I remember you, Peter. I think Israel and Hamas should exchange hostages and promise in writing to never bother each other again, and be struck by lightning and crispy-crittered by God and Allah, if they renege:-)

Peter Rodes Robinson

From your lips to god's ears!

But there is a problem. The leadership of Israel wants ALL OF THE LAND with zero Palestinian refugees.

Sloan Bashinsky

My dystopian solution for a while has been for Israel to detonate its nukes and make all of Palestine uninhabitable and there will be no more so-called holy land for Judaism, Christianity and Islam to fight over.

Peter Rodes Robinson

My father True was in the Air Force reserves and he used to bring home movies of thermonuclear bomb explosions. I loved these! These "hydrogen bomb" explosions were so much bigger and more spectacular than atom bomb blasts, pure fission bombs such as we used on Japan.

What if God is the same way? Loving the spectacle!

Sloan Bashinsky

My father was a navigator-bombardier on a B-29 stationed in Guam. They flew night missions to Japan, to drop conventional bombs. He kept getting his B-29 lost over the Pacific and they had to ditch their payload in the sea and return to Guam. His soul didn’t like killing people he did not see or know.

Meanwhile, I keep playing the broken record. Either Hamas is run by idiots, or the Oct 7 attack got the precise response from Israel it wanted, so that the entire world would turn against Israel, except for America it is turning out, because half or America wants Israel to defend the so-called holy land from Islam. It’s a religious war, and it’s been going on a long time, according to their scriptures.

Peter Rodes Robinson

"Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages. Once this is achieved Gaza can be demilitarized and deradicalized, thereby creating a possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike," Netanyahu continued on X.

So far Israel has freed one hostage by force and 110 through negotiation (and killed three with "friendly fire"). They have made no discernable impact on the ability of Hamas to function.

If you believe Netanyahu about his goals, then Israel's military operation in Gaza has been a total failure.

But what if the announced goals are merely a distraction, a cover for the true goal of making Gaza Uninhabitable. Then Israel seems to be performing quite well.

Sloan Bashinsky

The Oct 7 attack punched every last button in Israel’s leaders and military, they went insane, and that is what Hamas hoped would happen, and here we are. Giving Hamas a free pass, and laying all the fault on Israel and America is what Hamas hoped would happen. I see no way Israel could defeat Hamas in Gaza, and Israel learned that pretty quick after sending in the IDF. Caitlin Johnstone, Chris Hedges, etc. are doing Hamas’ public relations work for Hamas. The whole thing disgusts me, but giving Hamas a free pass is unconscionable. As is what Israel has done in Gaza. The Gaza civilians meant nothing to Hamas. Its objective was and is to defeat Israel on the world stage. How it all will end, or pause, is unknown. I hope Israel doesn’t become so deranged, or feel so threatened, that it uses its nukes against its enemies to the east. 

Peter Rodes Robinson

How does blaming or not blaming Hamas change anything?

I agree with you that Israel is reacting the way Hamas hoped.

Sloan Bashinsky

it is really important to humanity, and to the truth, that it be known that what happened in Gaza after Oct 7 was what Hamas hoped would happen; that Oct 7 was clever bait, which Israel swallowed hook, line and sinker. That has to be laid face up on the table top in any negotiations. Both Hamas and Israel need to be tarred and feathered on the world stage. And America should lead that charge, but I doubt it will. If I were president, I would be leading that charge, and I probably would be assassinated pronto, by Americans :-)

Peter Rodes Robinson

I think what you describe here is the truth. But what does it matter?

More and more I ignore what is being said, and just look at what is being done. Israel is committing daily war crimes. Do they get a pass because Hamas baited them?

Sloan Bashinsky

Hell no, Israel doesn’t get a pass! Before God, Israel is already judged. So is Hamas. But who judges and punishes them on this world? The UN has no power to do anything. So all that’s left is the court of public opinion. Caitlin and Chris Hedges, and 99.99 percent of their readers condemn Israel and give Hamas a pass. That’s nuts.

Peter Rodes Robinson

I call Gaza a "concentration camp." What do you think?

Sloan Bashinsky

It became one after the Oct 7 attack, and it became a Dresden, because the people had no place to go after Egypt turned them down. Hamas knew what it would be like in Gaza, if Israel took the bait. So, Hamas was the architect of Gaza becoming a concentration camp. 

Peter Rodes Robinson

Ah! We disagree. I say Gaza has always been a concentration camp.

>a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The term is most strongly associated with the several hundred camps established by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe in 1933–45, among the most infamous being Dachau, Belsen, and Auschwitz.

Sloan Bashinsky

You didn’t watch “Schindler's List”? That was about a concentration camp. The Jews in the camp, who were not able to help Germany’s war effort were burned alive in ovens. The survivors were fed very short rations. They had body lice. If they tried to escape, they were killed. If they pissed off a German officer, they were killed. That’s how it was in all of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. Jews all over Western Europe were rounded up and sent to those camps. The Jews in my father’s ancestral bloodline, who had not come to America, all were put in those camps and died there. I can’t believe you and I had the same history teachers at Crestline, and you say Gaza was a concentration camp before Oct 7. 

Peter Rodes Robinson

I gave you the definition. In what way does Gaza not match the definition?

Jews are not the sole possessors of the term "concentration camp".

And I say what is happening in Gaza is a "holocaust".

destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.

"a nuclear holocaust"

  

Peter Rodes Robinson

Hamas is more popular than the PLA among rank and file Palestinians, because Hamas fights the occupiers while the PLA collaborates. 

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514

Sloan Bashinsky

Look at how being in bed with Hamas turned out for the people of Gaza. Be careful who you sleep with? You might end up dead.

Peter Rodes Robinson

And yet they prefer Hamas to the PA. One might think they agree with New Hampshire:

LIVE FREE OR DIE

Sloan Bashinsky

Perhaps, then, they should be allowed to experience that on their own terms and it be respected by the likes of Caitlin, Chris Hedges, you and me and the UN?

Peter Rodes Robinson

I don't understand.

Sloan Bashinsky

Live free, or die. If that was their choice, if the people of Gaza understood the risk of aligning with Hamas, then who is anyone to argue with or second guess them? Now, Hamas, I think it and its leaders are gonna be really surprised when their rolls are called up yonder, as will Israel’s leaders and the IDF, as will a lot of people.

Peter Rodes Robinson

It seems that you are the one second-guessing the Gazans. Seems like you are saying, "You people are making a big mistake, if you support Hamas."

I'm saying:

"I completely understand your frustration and your determination to be free, even if the cost is very high."

Sloan Bashinsky

I said nothing of the kind. Read again what I wrote. How it turned out for the people of Gaza was determined by Hamas and Israel. 

Peter Rodes Robinson

And, ironically, the Gazans seem to approve of how it has turned out, since approval of Hamas has risen.

Do you agree?

Sloan Bashinsky

Well, if the Gazans approval of Hamas has risen, why is anyone upset with Israel doing Hamas’ bidding in Gaza?

Peter Rodes Robinson

Because Israel has created the situation where the only conceivable path to freedom requires that tens of thousands of Palestinians die.

I personally believe this is the only path to freedom. That judgment of reality does not require that I approve of daily war crimes.

The world must stop approving of Israel and condemning the Palestinians. What we are seeing now is a step along that path.

Sloan Bashinsky

The world needs to stop approving of Israel and Hamas, and maybe the people of Gaza will benefit from that, and maybe not. Palestine is much larger than Gaza, and there are other radical Islamic factions vying for big dog there. Mixing that up with a solution for Gaza, won’t help produce a solution in Gaza.

Peter Rodes Robinson

Please give concrete examples.

Sloan Bashinsky

I just did give you concrete examples. Gaza is not Palestine. it is a small part of Palestine. Hamas is in Gaza. Deal with that. Forget the rest. Maybe that will lead to a cease fire in Gaza.

Peter Rodes Robinson

2,375,259 Palestinians in Gaza

2,747,943 Palestinians in West Bank

https://youtu.be/Ru49O7oSBIk?si=V4AvdQNH3QuxX5od

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-says-no-such-thing-palestinian-people-2023-03-20/

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/palestinians-dont-exist-smotrich-only-repeats-zionists-always-said

Sloan Bashinsky

Peter, the mistake of creating the nation called Israel will haunt humanity for a very long time. Regardless of what is reported, or not reported, said, or not said, the cause of what’s going on in the Middle East is the scriptures of the three Abrahamic religions. Good luck fixing that :-). This morning, after a dream about what I took to be the feminine essence, or, the Holy Spirit, which Christendom does not recognize as the feminine side of God, I posted. this comment under Caitlin and Chris Hedges’s newest reports.

"Three nights before 9/11, a familiar voice asked me in my sleep, “Will you. make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity?” I woke up, wondering what that was about, and made the prayer. On 9/11, I understood what it was about. My lady friend at the time and I hoped America would not get into another foreign war it could not win. A few days later, as I walked out of a US Post Office, the familiar voice said “America needs to get out of the Middle East altogether and let Islam and Israel work it out, or fight it out, and in that way learn which, if either, is God’s chosen people. I then watched America get into two foreign wars it could not win. And nearly into several more. And now another looms. It looks to me that the only cure is America, and the world, receive huge injections of estrogen, psychologically and spiritually. Without that , nothing will change in America, the Middle East, the world - humanity."

Peter Rodes Robinson

The problem is 5 million stateless Palestinians. I will post my solution later.

You might want to think about what is your solution.

Sloan Bashinsky

I have thought for a very long time what is the solution, and in the human realm, it is America gets out of the Middl East altogether, and deals with the many problems within its own borders, the beams in its own eyes, which is what Jesus in the Gospels recommended. As for fixing what’s going on in Palestine, I hope you have a viable solution, because I do not, other than a massive estrogen injection by God. 

Peter Rodes Robinson

I'll give you a hint: my solution does not employ violence.

Sloan Bashinsky

Neither does a massive estrogen injection. So, Peter, what is your solution?

Peter Rodes Robinson

I see one possible solution: the world should buy a country for the Palestinians.

It would not be cheap. Rebuilding Gaza after Israel destroys it will also not be cheap, but the world will pay for it. Here is my proposal.

Buy a poorly developed part of Sudan bordering Egypt with a size roughly equivalent to Israel. Include an outlet to the Red Sea. 

Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world with a GDP of approximately $34 billion. It is located in the same general part of the world as Gaza but far enough away from Israel. The no-longer-stateless Palestinians would not try to launch rockets across Egypt.

Price? Offer to permanently redirect the aid that the US gives Israel (approximately $4 billion per year) and give it to Sudan instead.

Enlist a coalition of nations to build a new Palestine in the area that was part of Sudan. The US can contribute the money it would otherwise spend rebuilding all the buildings and infrastructure in Gaza that Israel has turned into rubble. Israel can rebuild Gaza.

Sloan Bashinsky

Thank you. 

Do you think the Palestinians and Hamas and Hezbollah, ISIS, PLA, Iran. etc.might say, buy that land for Israel and we will stay in Palestine? Do you think Islam will ever agree to the State of Israel being in Palestine? Do you think the Palestinians or Israel will agree to leave their ancestral holy land? I doubt it, but if they did, either the Palestinians or Israel moving to Sudan could the solution, for a while. I hope you will post your solution into Caitlin’s and Chris Hedges’s forums. 

The solution I proposed several times is, America offers all Israelis sanctuary in America, to repent for not doing that after WWII, and to resolve the problem of Israel being in the heart of islam. I doubt America would go for it, though, and I doubt Israel would go for it, either. The American right want Israel where it is, defending Christendom’s holy land from Islam. Donald Trump told Israel he is their best friend, hoping to the vote of every Jew and conservative Christian in America.

Peter Rodes Robinson
One of the reasons for the October 7th attack was that the Arab world was getting much too cozy with Israel to suit Hamas. The Arab world would not be the sticking point.
Would the Palestinians go for it? The alternative is death by famine and disease in Gaza or settler gunfire in the West Bank.

Sloan Bashinsky
Like I said, I hope you post your solution into the Caitlin and Hedges forums. Perhaps, Hedges, at least, being a retired respected war correspondent, who put his life on the line many times in war zones, who was a close friend of Hama’s founder, Ahmed Yassin, has enough clout to get the people in Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, the White House, etc. high places' attention?

Peter Rodes Robinson

One of the reasons for the October 7th attack was that the Arab world was getting much too cozy with Israel to suit Hamas. The Arab world would not be the sticking point.
Would the Palestinians go for it? The alternative is death by famine and disease in Gaza or settler gunfire in the West Bank. 

Sloan Bashinsky
I dunno. Maybe if you open the door to various points of debate, that’s a death knell. Maybe you just present it as you presented it to me and see what comes back, and retire and think about how to respond, or simply point them back to your solution. You see very well how easy it is for people to wander away from the main point. 

 

Peter Rodes Robinson
How about a very short intro?
One must wonder how many decades people will cling to the vision of a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians while the facts on the ground move continually in the other direction. Nor is a one-state solution any more possible. Time for a new idea.

Sloan Bashinsky
Agreed. I think any responses to your proposal will reveal what many I have discussed this with at the Hedges and Caitlin forums have denied, which is this a religious war, and its not going to go away, so why not try something pragmatic to try to do an end run around it. 

 

Peter Rodes Robinson
I'll post a slightly revised version here later today.

Sloan Bashinsky
Post it at the top of Caitlin’s newest Gaza war report, so it will be at the top and have more chance to be read. Send it to me and I will repost it at the top of Hedges’s next report. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

    

Armchair war profits capitalist correspondent Chris Hedges needs to head to Gaza and interview people there and find out what they think about Israel and Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar

  

    Retired International war correspondent Chris Hedges, who many times put his own life on the line in war zones, needs to stop hedging his bets, by continuing to give Hamas a free pass, and to help him do that, Chris needs to leave his Princeton armchair and head to Gaza and talk with people there and hear what they think about Israel and Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, and report that.

The Chris Hedges Report 

The Case for Genocide
The International Court of Justice may be all that stands between the Palestinians in Gaza and genocide. 
CHRIS HEDGES
JAN 12, 2023

The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 Palestinians, makes a strong case for genocide. 

Israel’s smearing of South Africa as “the legal arm” of Hamas exemplifies the bankruptcy of its defense, a smear replicated by those who claim that demonstrations held to call for a ceasefire and protect Palestinian human rights are “anti-Semitic.” Israel, its genocide live streamed to the world, has no substantial counter argument.

But that does not mean the judges on the court will rule in Israel’s favor. The pressure the U.S. will bring – Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the South African charges “meritless” - on the judges, drawn from the member states of the U.N., will be intense. 

A ruling of genocide is a stain that Israel - which weaponizes the Holocaust to justify its brutalization of the Palestinians - would find hard to remove. It would undercut Israel’s insistence that Jews are eternal victims. It would shatter the justification for Israel’s indiscriminate killing of unarmed Palestinians and construction of the world’s largest open air prison in Gaza, along with the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It would sweep away the immunity to criticism enjoyed by the Israel lobby and its Zionist supporters in the U.S., who have successfully equated criticisms of the “Jewish State” and support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.  

Over 23,700 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other resistance fighters breached the security barriers around Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed – there is strong evidence that some of the victims were killed by Israeli tank crews and helicopter pilots that intentionally targeted the some 200 hostages along with their captors. Thousands more Palestinians are missing, presumed buried under the rubble. Israeli attacks have left over 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. Thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children, have been arrested, blindfolded, numbered, beaten, forced to strip to their underwear, loaded onto trucks and transported to unknown locations. 

A ruling by the court could be years away. But South Africa is asking for provisional measures that would demand Israel cease its military assault – in essence a permanent ceasefire. This decision could come within two or three weeks. It is a decision that is not based on the final ruling by the court, but on the merits of the case brought by South Africa. The court would not, by demanding Israel end its hostilities in Gaza, define the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocide. It would confirm that there is the possibility of genocide, what the South African lawyers call acts that are “genocidal in character.”  

The case will not be determined by the documentation of specific crimes, even those defined as war crimes. It will be determined by genocidal intent - the intent to eradicate in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group – as defined in the Genocide Convention.

These acts collectively include the targeting of refugee camps and other densely packed civilian areas with 2,000-pound bombs, the blocking of humanitarian aid, the destruction of the health care system and its effects on children and pregnant women - the U.N. estimates there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and that more than 160 babies are delivered every day - as well as repeated genocidal statements by leading Israeli politicians and generals. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu equated Gaza with Amalek, a nation hostile to the Israelites in the Bible, and cited the Biblical injunction to kill every Amalek man, woman, child or animal. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Palestinians “human animals.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated, as the South African lawyers told the court, that everybody in Gaza is responsible for what happened on Oct. 7 because they voted for Hamas, although half the population in Gaza are children who are too young to vote. But even if the entire population of Gaza did vote for Hamas this does not make them a legitimate military target. They are still, under the rules of war, civilians, and entitled to protection. They are also entitled under international law to resist their occupation via armed struggle.  

The South African lawyers, who compared Israel’s crimes with those carried out by the apartheid regime in South Africa, showed the court a video of Israeli soldiers celebrating and calling for the death of Palestinians – they sing as they danced “There are no uninvolved civilians” - as evidence that genocidal intent descends from the top to the bottom of the Israeli war machine and political system. They provided the court with photos of mass graves where bodies were buried “often unidentified.” No one – including newborns – was spared, the South African lawyer Adila Hassim, Senior Counsel, explained to the court.

The South African lawyers told the court the “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.” The second genocidal act, they stated, is the serious bodily or mental harm inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2B of the Genocide Convention. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another lawyer and legal scholar representing South Africa, argued that “Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”

Lior Haiat, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, calledThursday’s three hour hearing one of the “greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims.” He accused South Africa of seeking to allow Hamas to return to Israel to “commit war crimes.” 

Israeli jurists, in their response on Friday, called the South African charges “unfounded, “absurd” and amounting to “libel.” Israel’s legal team said it had – despite U.N. reports of widespread starvation and infectious diseases from a breakdown in sanitation and shortage of clean water – not impeded humanitarian assistance. Israel defended attacks on hospitals, calling them “Hamas command centers.” It told the court it was acting in self-defense. “The inevitable fatalities and human suffering of any conflict is not of itself a pattern of conduct that plausibly shows genocidal intent,” said Christopher Staker, a barrister for Israel.

Israeli leaders accuse Hamas with carrying out genocide, although legally if you are the victims of genocide you are not permitted to commit genocide. Hamas is also not a state. It is not, therefore, a party to the Genocide Convention. The Hague, for this reason, has no jurisdiction over the organization. Israel also claims the Palestinians are warned to evacuate areas that will come under attack and provided with “safe areas,” although as the South African lawyers documented, “safe areas” are routinely bombed by Israel with numerous civilian casualties.

Israel and the Biden administration intend to prevent any temporary injunction by the court, not because the court can force Israel to halt its military assaults, but because of the optics, which are already disastrous. The ICJ’s ruling depends on the Security Council for enforcement – which given the veto power by the U.S., renders any ruling against Israel moot. The second objective of the Biden administration is to make sure Israel is not found guilty of committing genocide. They will be unrelenting in this campaign, heavily pressuring the governments that have jurists on the court not to find Israel guilty. Russia and China, who have jurists in The Hague, are battling their own charges of genocide and may decide it is not in their interests to find Israel guilty.

The Biden administration is playing a very cynical game. It insists it is trying to halt what, by its own admission, is Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians, while bypassing Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including “dumb” bombs. It insists it wants the fighting in Gaza to end while it vetoes ceasefire resolutions at the U.N. It insists it upholds the rule of law while it subverts the legal mechanism that can halt the genocide.  

Cynicism pervades every word Biden and Blinken utter. This cynicism extends to us. Our revulsion for Donald Trump, the Biden White House believes, will impel us to keep Biden in office. On any other issue this might be the case. But it cannot be the case with genocide.

Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot, no matter what the cost, support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It is the purest expression of evil. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.

Sloan Bashinsky 

Chris, I appreciate your dogged, thankless effort to shine bright sunshine on the Gaza horror show. Here’s a link to a recent report in Middle East Monitor,  

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240111-hamas-sinwar-sends-important-letter-to-movement-members/

in which Yahya Sinwar tells a very different story about how the war in Gaza is going for Israel’s military, and how proud Sinwar is of the Gaza people, whom he encourages to hang tight and have faith and keep supporting Hamas. 

I agree with just about everything you write about Israel, and having practiced law in Alabama, and having had a law school professor, Clinton McGhee, a University of Alabama Law School graduate, who went into the U.S. Army during World War II and prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg, I appreciate your reporting of the genocide complaint filed by South Africa against Israel before the United Nations.

As you pointed out, getting to a final judgment against Israel will take a while, and might never come about, because of U.S. resistance. But even if there is a final judgment against Israel, I don’t see any way the U.N. can enforce it against Israel. Nor do I see how the World Court can enforce a judgment against Israel. But then, that’s blanced by, as you also pointed out, the UN has no jurisdiction over Hamas, which is an Islam outfit that claims to answer only to Allah.

Where I have steadily differed with you is you continue to ignore the huge elephant in the Gaza living room, Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar, who was in an Israel prison for a long time, where he learned and carefully studied Israelis and Israel, and analyzed Israel the way a very good psychiatrist would analyze you or me. Seeing no way to destroy Israel, as called for in Hamas’s charter, Sinwar concluded only way to defeat Israel was in the court of public opinion.

Sinwar was released in a hostage exchange, and he implemented what he calculated would punch every last button in the higher regions of the Israel government and its military, which was the October 7 attack, which happened to me my 81st birthday, which in my line of work was not a coincidence. 

The October 7 attack was clever bait, which Sinwar hoped Israel would swallow hook, line and sinker, and do the very things in Gaza about which you and others have written so much. It was a brilliant strategy to let Israel, and people like yourself, who have large audiences, and the news media and the social media, destroy Israel in the court of public opinion. For free, not one red cent did Sinwar or Hamas pay for all that tree publicity. 

While Sinwar tells the people of Gaza he and Hamas are with them, he and Hamas use them as Israel cannon fodder martyrs, who go straight to Paradise when they are killed by IDF. That’s fundamental to radical Islam’s belief system. 

So, Chris, keep pounding Israel, and President Biden and the U.S. Congress for sticking with Israel, and in that way be Sinwar’s free press secretary. He loves you for doing that, and for leaving his sorry ass alone. 

PITA Contrarian

Hedges is a turncoat ...

He has actually taken sides with the globalists on the issues of climate change and vax-related bodily autonomy ... and he's betting the ranch that you won't notice.

Sloan Bashinsky

I’m not familiar with that, but I keep wondering if Hedges’s paid subscriptions increased after the Oct 7 attack, which gave him a whole lot of fresh stuff to write about, and if his paid subscriptions did increase, did he donate his “war profits” to the beleaguered people of Gaza?  

 

PITA Contrarian
I've followed Hedges as closely as anybody this past decade ...
He used to be my hero ... and I'm willing to bet that he pockets every last cent of income generated by his Substack writings ... he has 60k subscribers here ... In a 2021 interview with Jimmy Dore, Hedges actually volunteered to him that he resides in Princeton, NJ ... so I did my research and discovered that the average price of a house in that city is between $700k-$800k! ... and when his otherwise excellent show ON CONTACT on RTV was cancelled, he brazenly said "I cannot continue without YOUR support"! ... 
No Chris, you do not need our support:

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/395489/princeton-nj/

Sloan Bashinsky

Perhaps former international war correspondent Chris, who many times put his own life on the line in war zones, needs to stop hedging his bets, by continuing to give Hamas a free pass, and to help him do that, perhaps Chris needs to leave his Princeton armchair and head to Gaza and talk with the people of Gaza and hear what they have to say about what they think about Israel and Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar:-), and then he pulls out his notepad and finds an internet connection and tells us all about that :-) 

PITA Contrarian

Yes, once a true activist, Hedges has morphed into an armchair QB ...

Your suggestion that he do some real "boots-on-the-ground" reporting is excellent ... 

He has now been writing almost exclusively about Gaza for the past 3 months, while things are going to hell here in the U.S. ... there are people out there like Hedges' friend Naomi Wolf and former Phizer exec Karen Kingston literally risking their lives to expose the truth ... but Hedges now hides risk-free behind the heinous crimes of Gaza ... 

Sloan Bashinsky

Amen.
I wonder if Hedges gives any thought to what it will be like in the so-called holy land, if Donald Trump gets back in the White House, after telling Israel he is their best friend, hoping to get the vote of every Jew and conservative Christian in America? :-) 

 

Wikipedia

Yahya Sinwar (Arabic: يحيى السنوار, romanized: Yaḥyá al-Sanwār, born 1962), also spelled Yehya Sinwar,[3] is a Palestinian politician who has been leader of Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political and military organization that rules the Gaza Strip, since 2017.[4][5]

Born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egyptian-ruled Gaza in 1962, his family was expelled or fled from Al-Majdal Asqalan (Ashkelon) during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He finished his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza where he received a bachelor's degree in Arabic Studies.

For orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered to be collaborators in 1989, he was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel, of which he served 22 years until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.[4] Sinwar was one of the co-founders of the security apparatus of Hamas.[6][7][8][9] In 2017, he was elected as Hamas' leader, and claimed to pursue "peaceful, popular resistance" the following year, a position which was later abandoned.[10] He was re-elected as Hamas leader in 2021, and was subject to an assassination attempt by Israel that year.

In September 2015, Sinwar was designated a terrorist by the United States government,[6] and Hamas and the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades have also been designated terrorist organisations by the United States, the European Union and other countries.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com 

The war in Gaza drove a lot of people more loco than they already were

 

    After a brief interlude of personal reflection in Grandfossil’s tales to his grandchildren, a different sort of last will and testament at this what I suppose some people might view as a nut house, I made yet another visit to a nuthouse owned and operated by a lady in Australia. 

Westerners Have An Absolutely Psychotic View Of Airstrikes

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

JAN 8, 2024

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/westerners-have-an-absolutely-psychotic 

 

Excerpts:

Canadian online outlet The Breach has published a letter by CBC’s senior manager of journalistic standards Nancy Waugh which highlights perfectly the bizarre psychological relationship that westerners have with bombs and airstrikes in foreign countries.

In response to multiple complaints from a retired Humber College professor about the wildly biased language that Canada’s state broadcaster has been using to describe Israel’s war on Gaza, Waugh acknowledged that the CBC routinely uses words like “murderous,” “vicious,” “brutal,” “massacre,” and “slaughter” to refer to the October 7 Hamas attack while using far less emotionally charged words like “intensive,” “unrelenting,” and “punishing” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last three months. 

Waugh defended this extreme discrepancy by saying that Israel’s attacks in Gaza differ from the Hamas attack on Israelis in that Israel’s killings are done “remotely”.

“Different words are used because although both result in death and injury, the events they describe are very different,” Waugh wrote. “The raid saw Hamas gunmen stream through the border fence and attack Israelis directly with firearms, knives and explosives. Gunmen chased down festival goers, assaulted kibbutzniks then shot them, fought hand to hand, and threw grenades. The attack was brutal, often vicious, and certainly murderous.”

“Bombs dropped from thousands of feet and artillery shells lofted into Gaza from kilometers away result in death and destruction on a massive scale, but it is carried out remotely,” Waugh continued. “The deadly results are unseen by those who caused them and the source unseen by those [who] suffer and die.”

I’ve written a number of essays trying to point at the baseless and irrational way westerners view military explosives as a far more civilized and humane way of killing human beings than bullets or blades, but I’ve never written anything that sums it up as clearly as this frank admission by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s senior manager of journalistic standards.

Military explosives rip human bodies apart. They burn people alive. They trap them under rubble where they die excruciatingly slowly in one of the most horrifying ways imaginable. They leave people without limbs. They dismember and disfigure children for life. Many of the most agonizing deaths in human history have been caused by bombs.

There are thousands of Gazans who have yet to be counted among the dead because their bodies are still buried under the rubble of fallen buildings. Many of them would not have died instantly. Some are still alive, waiting for days in a state terror and searing pain for a rescue that will never come. 

Sloan Bashinsky

Writes Sloan’s Newsletter

Hamas and Israel are equally brutal and vicious, the difference between them is, Israel has bigger and better weapons. Maybe Hamas will think twice before doing another Oct 7? As for impersonal warfare, you keep beating up on the Ukraine president, whose country’s cities are being blasted by Russian rockets. Why aren’t you beating up on Vladimir Putin? It looks to me, Caitlin, that Israel's counterattack, which Hamas hoped would happen, to get the very result you abhor, has driven you loco; and it looks to me, the more you beat up on Israel and minimize Hamas’s role in this, the more loco you get. 

Arseniy Shchukin

Sounds like you swallow propaganda pretty nicely . Big Bad Putin destroying Ukraine. Not Big Bad USA pushing NATO on Russia doorstep, when they promised they wouldn’t , provoking the conflict . Let’s not even talk about the negotiations in April , when Boris Johnson and our administration got shook at the prospect of peace, and told Zelenskyy to watch out 😅 like ur beloved Biden would say. Common man 

Sloan Bashinsky

Whatever the history, Ukraine and Russia, Irael and Hamas, I’m looking at the slaughter, and if you are defending Putin for blasting Ukraine cities with rockets, many made in Iran, then I think you are as loco as I think Caitlin is. 

Arseniy Shchukin

🤣 whatever bro , suit yourself if you wanna close your eyes. Maybe helps you sleep better at night . I for 1, am sick of swallowing mainstream propaganda based on feeling rather than objective observation. If your blaming Putin for war crimes and defending USA and Israel for defending freedom, I think you need a good look In the mirror , and a good re-learning of the truth. If that’s what you really are searching for . Good luck Sloan. Btw I used to be Pro Israeli a long time ago when I was blind, deaf, and dumb . And of course pro “ freedom “. Thank to independent media for finally waking my ass up .

Sloan Bashinsky

I’m not defending any of them: Israeli, Hamas, Biden, U.S. Congress, Putin. If they are slaughtering civilians, they should be lined up and shot. If you defend them with mumbo jumbo, then that makes you loco in my lingo, or, if you prefer, it makes you Evil.

Dennis Merwood

The truth about Putin is not welcome my man.

PUTIN= BAD

GENOCIDE JOE = GOOD

Sloan Bashinsky

Read my lips. Biden should be lined up and shot for helping Israel do what it’s doing in Gaza. Hamas’s leader and his soldiers should be lined up and shot. Israel’s leaders and IDF should be lined up and shot. Putin should be lined up and shot. I sure hope none of his rockets hit a Soviet Union nuclear reactor in Ukraine. 

DomeLord

Sick of killing but yet you demand more killing? Who shall kill the killers of killers? How are we to rise above this barbarian culture where killing is the answer to life's problems? Is the last one standing the best killer of all?

Sloan Bashinsky

The leaders of the killers should be allowed to remain alive, so they can keep killing? 

Arseniy Shchukin

Putin's rockets won’t hit any nuclear reactors, if any do it’ll be from Ukraines side fully backed by loco, Mumbo jumbo USA support. Any unbiased real following of the events would teach you that . Let’s not mention the similarities of Donetsk and Gaza for the past 8 years and how they have been shelled indiscriminately, solely based on hate and racial discrimination, AKA genocide. Seems like u have part of the truth, basically an inverted RFK, as he will defend Putin but never condemn Israel , but you are the opposite, even though u know claim, out of nowhere, to condemn Israel and Biden . Just like RFK, switching sides rapidly when convenient. Either that or you are just confused. No mumbo jumbo here, unless you gotta clean the wools from your eyes. 

Sloan Bashinsky

Putin’s rockets are blasting Ukraine cities, but that's ok by you, apparently, but it ain’t okay for Israel’s bombs to be blasting Gaza cities. Loco.

Starry Gordon

They think they have to do it. But I don't think it's correct to say that "Westerners" are unconscious of the horrific results of the bombings. On the contrary, I don't know anyone who is indifferent to what's going on. We just haven't figured out a way to stop it. Meanwhile, people like Putin (or any other of the bigdeals) are playing the game of Realpolitik as it is played.

hierochloe

"Maybe Hamas will think twice before doing another Oct 7?" this stinks of apologia

Starry Gordon

Well, it's stupid, because it's a proven fact that violence begets violence. Yes, Hamas will think twice -- about improving their performance next time around.

·

Sloan Bashinsky

Hamas got the exact result they wanted, Oct 7 was bait, Hamas would have been really disappointed if Israel had used restraint, because Hamas could not beat Israel militarily, so it provoked Israel to behave kinda like Putin, Iran, Hitler, Putin.

hierochloe

"Hamas got the exact result they wanted" that wasn't the answer implied behind your question, but ok. You're still doing the 'but do you condemn hamas' bit, which is becoming a meme tbh (check out Dershowitz's weird-ass deflection over Epstein stuff). Keep in mind there's no Hamas in the West Bank, just dead Palestinians.

Sloan Bashinsky

What Hamas wanted is what Israel did in Gaza, and that’s so drop dead obvious that nobody here today, or any day prior, can see it. Or, they don’t want to see it. Or, they see it, but they won’t admit they see it, because then they have to see what the guy running Hamas,  Yahya Sinwar, really is up to, which should be no surprise, since Hamas's initial charter called for the destruction of Israel, and Hamas’s amended charter, using different words, called for the same result. Unable to beat Israel militarily, Sinwar set out to defeat Israel in the court of public opinion, and it was a truly brilliant strategy, which Caitlin and her many admires prove every time she posts something new bashing Israel and giving Hamas a free pass.

Fran

I certainly don't approve of what Hamas did, but spare me by trying to equate what Hamas did and a genocide which Israel is implementing with thousands and thousands and thousands now dead, and it goes on and on and on, and maybe until they are all dead. Remember Israel even needed to lie about the total number of fatalities, lie about the babies killed, lie about the woman raped and had to up the number that Hamas killed. 

Sloan Bashinsky

If you grow out of diapers, you might see Hamas meant to provoke Israel to do the very thing it did in Gaza, to turn the entire world against Israel, except for about half of America, which hopes Israel kills every Muslim in the Middle East. 

Fran

Tit for tat, look you old fart you're probably in diapers, yes blame Hamas for making Israel implement a genocide, but don't forget they were Netanyahu's favorites and he empowered them with lots of money through the years. Look it up. You are an Israeli apologist and that is all you are. No the whole world is not against Israel just think how America is pouring weapons into her genocidal killing spree, but should the world turn against her, I can understand. You act like Israel had no other choice, but she did. However, she used what Hamas did to do what she always wanted to do. After all didn't Gallant say they were just animals? Didn't Israel have them in an outdoor concentration camp. Does that mentality sound familiar? 

hierochloe

"used what Hamas did to do what she always wanted to do" that should be bold underlined

Sloan Bashinsky

All true, and Hamas grew up. If you take either side, you go blind, 

Fran

I am going to take a side, and I am not going to support a genocide. Lets not forget that Israel was forewarned of an impending attack by Hamas. A year or more before the assault Israel had the detailed plans of the attack, but dismissed them, and claimed they were too complex for Hamas to carry out. They were warned by those who monitored Gaza's borders that  suspicious behavior was going on. Ignored. Egypt warned them on an impending attack, 3 days before, but it was also ignored. The fence they claimed would protect the people from such an assault was flimsy, not strong like they said it was. I don't even think the monitoring system was working at the time. Hamas hit 20 towns before any response. Everyone complained that the response time for those who could protect them was very slow, so maybe it was Netanyahu and his right wing party that wanted all this to happen so they could implement a genocide. The final solution. Who knows. Only 10 years before they were building, and building Jewish settlements all over the West Bank which continues to this day, but more aggressively, and they continue to steal Palestinian land, and I hear they are killing people there, and they are hungry. Oh, perhaps you should go back and read about the NAKBA, or perhaps you would like to view it on Youtube. It will allow you to see how willing they were to kill and displace so many. I have 20/20 vision. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7FML0wzJ6A

Sloan Bashinsky

You need better vision than that to see that the guy running Hamas has Israel, Caitlin and you doing his bidding.

Fran

You're the one who wears glasses, not me. I can see. 

Sloan Bashinsky

I once had a wife, who was a licensed clinical social worker, who told new acquaintances that I was the mail man, I delivered the message; she didn’t know how I did it, but I could see around corners and through buildings. I told the new acquaintances that I took no credit for it, one day, like a light switch was thrown, I saw everything differently. What had been hidden in plain view, was no longer hidden. It came to pass that she didn’t care for some things I saw that were important in her life, and that was the end of our relationship. 

The guy running Hamas spent a long time in an Israel prison. He learned Hebrew. He studied Israel and came to know it better than it knew itself. He figured out the best way to beat Israel, and the bait was the Oct. 7 attack, which punched every last button in Israel’s president and high government and the IDF, provoking them to do what they have done in Gaza. The guy leading Hamas could care less about all the Gazans IDF killed. He views them all as martyrs, for his cause, and they went straight to paradise. That’s how that segment of Islam thinks. They are as convinced of it as the American religious right as sure it is the only representative of God and Jesus in America.

If you think I am defending Israel, you are blind, deaf and dumb. Israel’s leaders and IDF are working for the Devil, literally. As are the guy running Hamas and his military. As are Joe Biden and the American Congress and the American people, who support what Israel did in Gaza. 

Whether or not you, Caitlin, Chris Hedges, or Mickey Mouse, can take that in is irrelevant. What’s going on between Israel and Hamas and other Islamic factions is a religious war, which has been going on for a very long time, and it is rooted in their scriptures, dating back to Abraham. That war will not end for so long as the state of Israel exists in Palestine. What’s going on now is just another phase of that very old war.  

 

Fran

I've been keeping up with what has been going on in Gaza and the West Bank and this article in excellent in providing the reason for Oct 7. It provides a perspective which is just about no where.  

 

Spark That Lit the Fire: Untold Story of Oct 7 Attacks

Israel is reeling under collective shock because of its tendency to pay close attention to analyses of Israel an'

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/01/09/spark-that-lit-the-fire-untold-story-of-oct-7-attacks/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=74ec95aa-3c4e-4582-890a-6e1c2f011956

Sloan Bashinsky

After reading that article, I still say the Oct 7 raid was hoped by Sinwar to provoke what it provoked for the purpose or hope of the entire world turning against Israel. I hope Sinwar is pleased with the result. If not, he is an idiot? He thought Israel would simply play tit for tat, after his jihadists killed unarmed men, women and children, and raped women, and defiled the raped women’s bodies, and took men, women and children hostages, even foreign hostages, including Americans, back to Gaza? Just to get Israel to release its Palestinian prisoners, whose numbers were drawfed by the number of Gazans IDF already has killed, and destroyed their homes and cities and infrastructure and economy, and turned the Gaza people into nomads. That some really lousy arithmetic. If I lived in Gaza, I would be really pissed off at Sinwar, who I doubt gives a shit what the people of Gaza think of him, now that the world, except for about half of America, has turned against Israel. Yet, facing those facts, Caitlin and many people I have engaged at this forum, give Sinwar and Hamas a pass, or even admire him. Looks plain loco to me.

Fran

Well, not turning against Israel for no reason, but to make the world aware of their plight and the horrors imposed on them by Israel, like stealing their land, killing them, brutalizing them, providing them with no sense of a future, not to mention the poverty, and unemployment, and the outdoor concentration camp Palestinians were forced to reside in knowing they lived under the threat that Israel wanted them gone. Oh, and the West bank,  and stealing their land, using it for Israeli settlements. By the way there is no proof women were raped and babies killed. Kind of like America, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and Gaddafi is carrying on a genocide in Lybia, etc, etc The death rate came down by hundreds when they got things straight. So in your  response no balancing act, no mention of 23 thousand dead Palestinains, and the destruction of Gaza, or the hospitals blown up. What about that little 9 year old whose whole family was killed in this genocide. She had her leg blown off. Still she had hope, wanted to be a doctor, take care of people, that is until Israel dropped a bomb on the hospital that was caring for her, and blew her head off. Yep, you mention all you claim Hamas did, but no mention what Israel continues to do,  and how many they have killed in their response to the Hamas attack, well that's what Sinwar was pissed off at.

Sloan Bashinsky

You keep dodging the obvious, which is your privilege, or you simply are unable to see it. Sinwar got the precise response from Israel he hoped to get. it was a brilliant strategy that Caitlin, Chris Hedges, and nobody who keeps bashing Israel can see. I’m not defending Israel. I’m simply explaining what the Oct 7 attack was really about. 

 

Jim Jackson

Your attempt to excuse Israeli terrorism by pointing at Russia is Zionist propaganda. Some facts: 3,000 ethnic Russian civilians were killed in 2014-15 by Ukrainian artillery shelling of the Donbas. 9,500 Ukrainians and ethnic Russians were killed in 2022-23 by Russian artillery and missiles. In only three months, Israel has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians. Israeli savagery is clearly the greater. Russia is reclaiming ethnic Russian territories. Israel is annexing Palestinian land that it did not manage to seize during the Zionist colonization of 1948,

Sloan Bashinsky

Caitlin keeps beating up on Ukraine’s leader, so she is who uses Zionist propaganda? Russia is destroying Ukraine cities and infrastructure that are no where close to the Russian border. The entire area around Israel is Palestine, and Hamas is burrowed into the Gaza part. I think Israel should cease to exist, and Islam should control Palestine, if it allows people of other beliefs to live there peacefully, which I have read is how it was before Israel was created. Israel and America will never agree to that, so here we are, in yet another phase of a very old religious war between descendants of Abraham.  

Mike Fish

All who kill civilians are not the same.

A drunk, or dumbass, distracted, cell phone, driver kill civilians.

While certainly worthy of scorn, they’re certainly not in the same league as 

Nazi Israel.

Intent has a roll in assessing criminal responsibility.

And, Israel has articulated its intent quite clearly.

But, the invention of Israel was a crime in the first place.

Sloan Bashinsky

And the intention of Hamas on Oct 7 was not a crime? Are you 100 percent loco? 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com