Thursday, January 25, 2024

Hey Chris Hedges and other Hamas apologists: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off

 

    Once upon a time, The Guardian newspaper, based in England, sent two of its U.S.-based journalists to Key West to interview me and other homeless people I knew and city officials about how the city treated its homeless people. The journalists told me that when they went to interview the people running the city’s homeless shelter, and told them that they already had interviewed me and a homeless woman friend of mine, the people running the shelter were freaked out and didn’t want to talk with the journalists. 

    After I moved back to Birmingham in 2019 and thanks to an inheritance no longer was homeless, I paid for my Key West homeless friend to take Greyhound through Birmingham, where we visited for a short while, and then Greyhound carried her to her mother’s city in Missouri, where my friend lived until she had a massive seizure and died. I then did a podcast about her, which got over 340,000 complete watches after it was launched on YouTube and then was seeded into the Torrent system.

Homeless outlaw cowgirl shaman with the blues saved Key West from Hurricane Irma obliteration 



    A very different kind of homeless report was in my email yesterday:
 
The Chris Hedges Report
CHRIS HEDGES
JAN 19

The cartoonist Joe Sacco invented nonfiction graphic journalism, marrying rigorous and detailed reporting with illustrations that leap off the page and give his stories a texture, depth and power that is hard for most writers to match. He pioneered this work with nine issues on the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation from 1993 to 1995. The nine comics, later published as the book
The Chris Hedges Report with cartoonist Joe Sacco about his iconic books Palestine and Footnotes 


Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Once upon a time, The Guardian newspaper, based in England, sent two of its U.S.-based journalists to Key West to interview me and other homeless people I knew and city officials about how the city treated its homeless people. The journalists told me that when they went to interview the people running the city’s homeless shelter, and told them that they already had interviewed me and a homeless woman friend of mine, the people running the shelter were freaked out and didn’t want to talk with the journalists.
 
The October 7 Guardian article below was in my Apple newsfeed yesterday morning. It helps explain why Israel’s leaders and military went insane after the October 7 attack. Unable to beat Israel militarily, Hamas hoped Israel would do precisely what it has done in Gaza, so that the entire world would turn against Israel. 

This former practicing attorney says Israel is guilty of massive war crimes in Gaza, and Hamas very much wanted those massive wars crimes to happen, and for people like Chris Hedges, who ought know better, to ignore what Hamas did, and lay 100 percent of the blame on Israel and America, which is guilty of aiding and abetting Israel’s massive war crimes in Gaza, is absurd.


Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attack, which was Hamas hope..

Guardian aware of sexual assaults for which multiple corroborating pieces of evidence exist

Warning: contains graphic descriptions

10:00 EST Thursday, 18 January 2024

In videos from 7 October, the body of a young woman is lying face down in the back of a pickup truck, stripped to her underwear, one leg bent at an unnatural angle. One of the men sitting next to her pulls her long hair as armed men around him shout praises to God. 
Footage of the lifeless corpse of Shani Louk, a 22-year-old Israeli-German national, paraded around the streets of Gaza was some of the first to surface on 7 October, as the scale of the horror visited on sleeping families in kibbutzim neighbouring the strip and people partying at a nearby rave started to become clear.
In the more than three months since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, the atrocities the militants committed have been well documented. Israel is still grappling with the trauma: entire families burned alive, torture and mutilation, children and elderly people ripped from the arms of their loved ones, seized as hostages.
Emergency responders risked their lives in the fighting on 7 October and several days afterwards to rescue the wounded and retrieve the dead. The chaos meant there were significant failings in preserving evidence of gender-based violence and what is coming to be seen as the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war by Hamas.
Israel’s top police investigations unit, Lahav 433, is still poring over 50,000 pieces of visual evidence and 1,500 witness testimonies, and says it is unable to put a number on how many women and girls suffered gender-based violence.
By cross-referencing testimonies given to police, published interviews with witnesses, and photo and video footage taken by survivors and first responders, the Guardian is aware of at least six sexual assaults for which multiple corroborating pieces of evidence exist. Two of those victims, who were murdered, were aged under 18.
At least seven women who were killed were also raped in the attack, according to Prof Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a legal scholar and international women’s rights advocate, from her examination of evidence so far. The New York Times and NBC have both identified more than 30 killed women and girls whose bodies bear signs of abuse, such as bloodied genitals and missing clothes, and according to the Israeli welfare ministry, five women and one man have come forward seeking help for sexual abuse over the past few months.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims, and the burned or disfigured state of some of the bodies, morgues were preoccupied with identification and did not have the time or capacity to test for sexual assault using rape kits, said the police spokesperson Mirit Ben Mayor. Lack of trained personnel was also a problem: according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, there are only seven forensic pathologists in the entire country.
Zaka, Israel’s emergency response organisation, usually works in cooperation with police at the scenes of terrorist attacks so the authorities can gather evidence before Zaka removes the bodies. Many have said since the attack that they wished they had realised at the time that, although they were trying to treat the dead with respect, they were also contaminating crime scenes. Most Zaka workers are conservative ultra-Orthodox men: several have said that they “didn’t think of rape at all”.
The victims’ bodies were also released as quickly as possible from morgues to their families for the swift burial required by Jewish tradition, and crucial evidence buried with them.
Some posthumous forensic examination is still possible, but it is unlikely that the full extent of the gender-based violence committed on 7 October will ever be known. 
The Guardian spoke to a Zaka volunteer, Simcha Greeneman, who said in one kibbutz he had come across a woman who was naked from the waist down, bent over a bed and shot in the back of the head. In another house, he discovered a dead woman with sharp objects in her vagina, including nails.
At the Shura military base in central Israel, where most of the dead were taken, the reservist Shari Mendes, who was tasked with washing the female bodies and preparing them for burial, told reporters: “We have seen women who have been raped, from the age of children through to the elderly.
“We were in such a state of shock … Many young women arrived in bloody shrouded rags with just their underwear, and the underwear was often very bloody. Our team commander saw several soldiers who were shot on the crotch, intimate parts, vagina or shot in the breasts,” she added.
The most detailed witness account of rape is from a young woman who attended the Supernova music festival, where more than 350 young people were killed. The witness, who was shot in the back, said she was hiding in vegetation just off route 232 when a large group of Hamas gunmen arrived, who between them raped and killed at least five women.
“They laid a woman down and I understood that he is raping her … They passed her on to another person,” she told police in a video reviewed by the Guardian. “And he cuts her breast, he throws it on the road and they are playing with it.”
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One raped woman was “shredded to pieces” and another “stabbed repeatedly in the back while she was being raped”, the same witness said in an interview with the New York Times. The witness has provided police with photographs of her hiding place, and another survivor hiding in the same spot has testified that he saw at least one woman being raped.
One of the festival’s organisers, Rami Shmuel, who returned to the scene the day after the attack, has described finding the bodies of three young women “naked from the waist down, legs spread”.
“One had the face burnt,” he said. Another was “shot in the face” while the last had been “shot all over the lower part of her body”.
One woman who survived gang rape at the rave was being treated for severe mental and physical trauma, police said, and was in no condition to speak to investigators.
In addition to the gender-based violence committed on 7 October, there are worries for the safety of the women still in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
Renana Eitan, the head of psychiatry at the Ichilov Tel Aviv medical centre, previously told the Guardian that of the 14 freed hostages still under her care – including children – several had been subjected to or witnessed sexual abuse. The US state department has said that the week-long truce between Israel and Hamas in November broke down because the militants refused to release the remaining women in its custody, over fears they would speak publicly about sexual violence.
Orit Sulitzeanu, the director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, said: “Everyone is looking for that golden piece of evidence, a woman survivor who testifies publicly about what happened to her. But think about it: someone suffering with that kind of trauma, why would they put themselves through that? Sexual violence is underreported everywhere. This is no different.
“I don’t think it is currently in the survivors’ best interests to go to the police, and I think the investigations into all the atrocities are going to take a very long time.”
Rape and sexual assault are considered war crimes and a breach of international humanitarian law. Hamas has denied the accusations of sexual violence.
On Monday, UN-appointed independent experts said that “given the number of victims and the extensive premeditation and planning of the attacks”, mounting evidence of rapes and genital mutilation pointed to possible crimes against humanity.
Israeli intelligence officials, experts and sources with direct knowledge of interrogation reports of captured Hamas fighters believe units that attacked were beforehand given a text that drew on a controversial and contested interpretation of traditional Islamic military jurisprudence, claiming that captives were “the spoils of war”. This potentially legitimised the abduction of civilians and other abuses, without being an explicit instruction to do so.
In at least two unsourced videos of interrogations of alleged Hamas members, which Israeli officials say they did not authorise for release, the men are heard talking about instructions given to rape women.
Linking suspects in custody to specific crimes was likely to be very difficult, Halperin-Kaddari said, although Israel intends to open criminal proceedings as soon as possible. 
Individual victims will be able to file complaints amounting to crimes against humanity charges against Hamas at the international criminal court in The Hague, and the court is also expected to open a specific investigation into sexual violence on 7 October.
Halperin-Kaddari said: “An international investigation has more potential because the level of evidence is not as high as that in criminal proceedings, where you have to have a specific individual and specific victim and prove what happened beyond all reasonable doubt.
“To prosecute the overall scope of the atrocities and the degree of cruelty … We have enough for that already.”

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Cult Busters: Israel, Hamas, America, and social media

 

    The Some proposed solutions to the war in Palestine, which surely would please Melchizedek and Father Abraham  post introduced a fellow from my class at Crestline Elementary School in the “poor side” of Mountain Brook, aka The Tiny Kingdom. I had not seen or heard from him since then. 

    Here is our private message conversation after I published his proposal for ending the war in Palestine.

Peter
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 plausible. Time for a new idea. The fundamental problem for Israel and the Palestinians is that there are 5 million stateless Palestinians and Israel will never accept them as citizens because they are not Jewish. Historically no Arab country has welcomed them either. 

In the past month, both Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly declared that their borders would not be opened to receive even one Palestinian—not as a way to deny humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under attack but rather as a countermove to deny Israel the opportunity to empty the West Bank and Gaza of as many Palestinians as possible. Jordan’s fears are not unfounded, and its redline of refusing to admit Palestinians remains unlikely to change for several reasons.

https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/21/jordan-s-redline-on-admitting-palestinians-is-unlikely-to-change-pub-91077 

Without a country, the Palestinians will never be free. 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. The idea when first proposed was to buy a less-developed part of Sudan bordering Egypt with a size close to that of Israel. A refinement is to negotiate a deal with the micronation self-proclaimed as the "Islamic Republic of Hala’ib Triangle". This entity covers 7,950 square miles (20,580 sq km), comparable to the size of Israel (8,630 sq mi). 

https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Hala%27ib_Triangle 

Set aside the claims of Sudan and Egypt for this area, and focus on justice for the current inhabitants which number about 1500. I'm proposing a payment of $1 million US per resident, infants included. The nominal cost would be $1.5 billion, about the cost of 2 to 3 weeks of bombs to be dropped on the Gazans. Also a grant of ten acres of their choosing per resident. Hala'ib lies between Sudan and Egypt and borders the Red Sea to the east. I believe the best approach is that the current residents, mostly Bedouins, would have citizenship in the new country along with the Palestinians. They would be suddenly rich, of course, which would not be a new phenomenom for Bedouins. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1982/01/31/saudi-arabiafrom-bedouins-to-oil-barons/bef09597-7dd2-481c-9a85-1041320e0a63/ 

The 1500 rich Bedouins and the five million not-rich Palestinians would be the citizens of the new country which might be called the Hala'ib-Palestine Alliance. Hala'ib-Palestine would be far enough away from Israel that continued hostilities would be unlikely in addition to being pointless. Many persons claim that the Palestinians would never accept the idea of moving away from the birthplace of Islam. Not living in the birthplace of Islam does not seem to be a problem for the rest of the nearly 2 billion Muslims. A quick poll of the Palestinans in between bombardments and sniper attacks could resolve that question. There would need to be a threshold for final approval on both the Hala'ib and the Palestinian sides.

Of course a proposal which looks very good to those directly involved will probably be repugnant to Sudan and Egypt, so those countries must be dealt with. One possibility: offer to redirect the aid that the US gives Israel (approximately $4 billion per year) for ten years: $2 billion per year to Sudan, and the same for Egypt. Set a one-year deadline for agreement: if either country does not agree, all of the money goes to the other country. Regardless, the establishment of the new country would proceed under UN and US protection.The new country should include a nature preserve for the Nubian wild ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_wild_ass 

t should also include a large interior area which is reserved for nomadic occupation only. In addition a strip of land one mile thick along the Red Sea plus land for an airport and various parcels for government installations should be under permanent government control. The oceanfront area could be leased for resort development. The land remaining after the grants to the original Hala'ib residents would be divied up among the Palestinians. Enlist a coalition of nations to build a new Palestine in the new country. The US can contribute the money it would otherwise spend replacing the buildings and infrastructure in Gaza that Israel has turned into rubble. Israel can rebuild what it has destroyed in Gaza.

SB
I will say this one more time. What is going on in Palestine is a religious war, and religious fanatics are driving it, and have driven it for a very long time. I tell you this again, because I have dealt with religious fanatics for a very long time, and they are deranged and cannot be reasoned with. You see how nuts some people I engage at Chris Hedges and Caitlin Johnstone’s substacks are. They are fanatics. Certain they are right. No chance of thinking they are wrong. That said, I encourage you to present your proposal into both of those forums, yourself, and into any other forums in which you participate, and get it to President Biden, if you can, and to the the top dogs in the US Senate and House of Representatives, if you can, and to Al Jazeera, maybe they will publish it, which would be terrific. And to NPR All Things Considered, and to Fareed Zakaria at CNN, and Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett at CNN.

Peter
Wow! Well, I updated Caitlin. Paso a paso.

SB
This is your project, and it’s a good project, and I think you need to present it everywhere you can, after you see how Caitlin’s place responds to it, which might help you tone it up again.

Peter
I'll certainly try to keep on improving, and looking for new places to post it.
Pretty crazy folks over at Caitlin's blog. They think the Israelis are going to move somewhere else.

SB
Here’s my take on them, which is not meant to diminish what Israel is doing, which is terrible. Caitlin and most of her followers were terribly abused in childhood. They identify with the people of Gaza, and with the Palestines generally, as if they are the people of Gaza, and the Palestinians. Hamas are the protective the good parents they never had growing up. Thus, it is not possible for them to entertain even a sliver of thought that Hamas has done this to them to gain favor in the world and for Israel to lose favor.

Peter
Certainly possible. It's more in the psychological realm than I normally go. I see a lynch mob. Lynch mobs are seldom angry about nothing. The focus of their anger has transgressed in someway, and for sure Israel has transgressed. Mobs are not interested in moderation. They have one goal in mind and that is to exact justice as they see it as quickly as possible. Calm voices and seeing both sides are not appreciated.
Mobs make all of the members feel powerful. Almost all humans enjoy feeling powerful.

SB
Lynch mob is a good assessment, but in this case, the people leading Israel and IDF need to be lynched. So I give Caitlin and her followers attaboys for that. But why can’t they see the whole picture? That brings in their psychology. That’s the last thing they want to hear or deal with, and if I drop that on them, I would not be surprised if they try to lynch me.

Peter
I understand these motivations, they don't bother me particularly. What dismays me about Caitlin's group so many like it is the attachment to unreality. They don't like my proposal because the Palestinians have to move. They want the Israelis to move. Well a case could be made that that would be more just, but it's a complete fantasy. They imagine some combination of forces will impel this to happen. I ED what if Israel says that have any NATO country attacks them they will respond with nuclear missiles. The answer was "return fire". So they would torch the world and the Palestinians from their mob mentality.
Some of them immediately turned on you and me as well. I'm not slow to block the worst cases.

SB
Israel definitely will use it nukes, if it feels sufficiently threatened, and I have made that comment several times in Hedges and Caitlin's forums, and it doesn’t faze them. Here’s the deal, though, When I see someone obsessing over something going on a long way from where they are, as if their very lives are at risk, too, then that’s the tip-off that they identify with the victims, whose plight punches every one of their internal wounded buttons, and they respond accordingly.

Peter
Thumbs up

SB
This is what Hamas did to Israel on Oct 7. Israel went insane. Here we are, and Hamas is pleased, it got what it wanted to get.

Peter
Thumbs up

Peter
Some day the historians will see Oct 7 as a brilliant stroke. I think we are going to see some real change now, which has not happened in 75 years.

SB
Psychiatry and Psychology call what the remote obsessors are doing, projection. I don’t yet see how real change is possible. Hamas gambled the entire farm that Israel’s reaction would turn the entire world against it, but Hamas did not factor in America, and especially, the American right, but even Joe Biden is furious with Hamas, but he does not really know why. Israel is sitting on huge stockpiles of American weapons and munitions, put there by America for its own military, but Israel controls the warehouses and is drawing down the inventory to pursue this war. Biden was worried the war In Gaza would expand, and it is doing that. Biden beefed up the US Naval presence there, and now look what’s going on in the Red Sea. And at the Lebanon border. We soon could be in WW III. Thank you, Hamas, a brilliant strategy. Thank you, Israel. Thank you, President Biden, Donald Trump, the American Christians and Jews for Israel. Well, that would be serous change. 

Peter
You blame both sides and I don't blame either side! I'm probably angrier with Israel, but that is emotion, not rationality. All this leaves you and I in a place where we can communicate.
America and Israel are becoming isolated. I don't think there is any other country in the world where the general public supports the US and Israel.

SB
I blame both sides, because both sides contributed to where we are now. I blame America, because it should have kept its nose out of Palestine and the Middle East altogether. I have been around the Globe twice, and have traveled in Europe and the Caribbean, and Americans, in the main, don’t know, and don’t care, how the rest of the world views America. America really needs to turn inward and look at itself in the mirror for a good while. But projection and finger pointing are so much more comfortable and fun and exciting. Joe Biden sucks. His son sucks. The Democrats remind me of the mythical Fulakwi tribe, forever getting lost and gathering in a circle and sitting down and holding hands and closing their eyes and chanting, “Where the fuck are we? Where the fuck are we?" Donald Trump and the MAGAs and the Republican Party and the Christian right Supreme Court Justices are something else entirely. They are America’s blossoming version of The Third Reich.

Peter
Thumbs up

SB
Be thankful you are able to live in the Dominican Republic. My younger friend, who does the tech work for my books and our podcast told me last night that he thinks he will be happier, and safer, living somewhere else, but other countries, including Mexico, don’t want any more American ex pats.

Peter
Most people are friendly to me here.

SB
I’m talking about the governments of other countries, they don’t want more American ex pats. I spent a lot time on Tortola and Dominica in the Caribbean, in he latter 1990s. Loved it. I no longer have a passport, and am not well enough to leave America anyway. I’m gonna go down with the ship. I worry for my children and their families.

Peter
Yes

Peter
My health is remarkably good. I haven't been to a doctor in at least 5 years probably longer..

SB
I’m jealous of your good health, and also happy for you.
Part of our last podcast is about Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. My tech friend  gathered enough evidence to persuade the Feds to prosecute Meadows for faking where he lived so he could run for Congress there. Some Rumble clients learned of the podcast and cut out clips of it they especially didn’t like and posted the clips at Rumble and Rumble took the clips down. Rumble is very right wing. You Tube never gave us a link for that podcast. Lots of people who piss off Trump start receiving death threats, is what I’m getting at. So it won’t surprise me if I am made extinct. That’s why viewers of he podcast can see only me, and why Bob is not Bob’s real name.

Peter
My memory is terrible, but it doesn't seem to be getting a lot worse. I'm actually learning tricks such as when I lay something down I try to visualize it in my praying for about 10 seconds after I let go of it. If I do that I can pretty much remember where I put it.
In my brain
I hope the best for you. Of course both of us have already beaten the averages.

SB
Lucky you, when I had vertigo about a year ago, and an ER did an MRI to see if I had a stroke (no), they called the government, because they had never seen anything like my brain. I snuck out of there and changed back into my usual shape and drove home.

Peter
Lol

SB
https://tinykingdomblacksheep.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-more-books-he-writes-ant-longer-he.html

"Grandfossil’s tales to his grandchildren, a different sort of last will and testament"

Peter
Thumbs up
I received no useful feedback at Caitlin's substack. Sad.

SB
Cults, or if you wish, religions, are not open to change, or to anything that challenges their views.

Peter
Thumbs up

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Some proposed solutions to the war in Palestine, which surely would please Melchizedek and Father Abraham

                                    

Melchizedek star

    Melchizedek is introduced in the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible, which was derived from the Jewish Scriptures. Genesis describes a supernatural being, Melchizedek, who took human form as the King of Salem (Peace). Abraham had dealings with Melchizedek. Abraham’s wife Sarah bore Isaac, whose bloodline became the Israelites, whose blood brought forth Jesus and Christianity. Sarah's slave Hagar received Abraham’s seed, with Sarah’s permission, and Hagar bore Ishmael, whose bloodline produced Mohammed and Islam. The Star David actually is the universal symbol for Melchizedek.

    I was waiting for a good moment to drop someone else's suggested solution for the Palestine war into retired war correspondent turned armchair commentator Chris Hedges’ Newsletter, to which I am a paid subscriber. That moment came the day before yesterday, when this arrived in my email account.

I will speak at The Islamic Society of Central Jersey on Jan. 18 at 6:00 pm on "The Death of Israel: How a Settler Colonial State Destroyed Itself"

CHRIS HEDGES
JAN 15

Reserve a spot at this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chris-hedges-at-iscj-tickets-793596667997 Event held at The Islamic Society of Central Jersey, located at 4145 Route 1 South and Promenade Blvd. Monmouth Junction, NJ 08852-0628 The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



     Here is what I dropped, followed by other people’s responses and my responses to them.

Sloan Bashinsky

Chris, I would like to hear your and your readers' views of this below, written by someone I attended grammar school with and had not seen or heard from until he subscribed to my substack the other day.

***********************

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 plausible. Time for a new idea. 

The fundamental problem for Israel and the Palestinians is that there are 5 million stateless Palestinians and Israel will never accept them as citizens because they are not Jewish. Without a country, the Palestinians will never be free. 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 located in the same general part of the world as Gaza but far enough away from Israel to make continued hostilities unlikely. The no-longer-stateless Palestinians would not try to launch rockets across Egypt. 

An offer sufficiently attractive to Sudan to conclude such a deal would need to be explored. 

One possibility: Offer to permanently redirect the aid that the US gives Israel (approximately $4 billion per year) and give it to Sudan instead. Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world with a GDP of approximately $34 billion. Permanent aid of $4 billion per year would make a huge difference.

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

You could do that but since Israelis are the colonialists I suggest they go to the Sudan and leave Palestinians alone. You sound as eager as the Israelis to dispossess the Palestinians of their homeland. WTF? The Israelis need to go.

OR the Israelis could go to Georgia, THEIR ancestral homeland. 
 
Phil Kind Man 
 
Good idea with one modification, the Jewish settlers should be sent to Sudan, not the Palestinians, who are the modern original residents of Palestine! It makes more sense to establish a new Israel in Sudan, than it is to establish a new Palestine in Sudan! 
 
Sloan Bashinsky
My sentiments also. Then, Islam would control Palestine, the so-called holy land, and hopefully they welcome Christian visitors and their money. I imagine they would. As things now stand, the tourism industry there is dead, and that’s a big hit for that area. 
 
Julio Santos 
 
My suggestion is "enlist a coalition of nations" which will demand the granting of the Palestinian statehood and the end of the occupation and blockade of their land. This will be less expensive for the whole world than the continuous support that USA gives to Israel and would be fair to both Israel and Palestine as well as for their diasporas. And let the war criminals to be judged and sentenced. 

Sloan Bashinsky

Demand? Israel will just roll over? I doubt it. 

Landru 
 
Solutions. Many have including myself. It's an easy problem to solve. Give the Palestinians right of return. One person, one vote and equal rights for all. That isn't hard to understand or implement. People living in peace wow, what a hard concept to understand.

Sloan Bashinsky 
 
I agree, but how to bring that off? 
 
Landru
Without U.S. aid israel falls as a functioning gov. See how quickly human rights are restored. Not special rights, equal rights for all. The world is ending israel slowly now not wanting to support Genocide. We could do nothing and nothing changes OR we can do the simple things that change everything.

Sloan Bashinsky 

I agree, but since I live in a part of America controlled by the Christian and conservative right, Alabama, I know they will not stand for a president or Congress that abandons Israel to Islam. So, elsewhere in this thread, including my initial comment, are other suggested solutions, which I imagine would meet Father Abraham and Melchizedek’s approval. In Genesis, Abraham had dealings with a supernatural being that had taken human form, Melchizedek, aka the King of Salem (Peace). Few today know that the “Star of David” actually is the universal symbol of Melchizedek, an angelic order. 
 
Jon Carver 
 
Here comes Sloan the bigot with his relocation Progrom for the Jew God after Jews in Israel have stolen their homes and families. Sloan is a great example of Jewish bigotry. He doesn't even see what a shit head he is. Sloan is a kind of Nazi, actually, and not a deep thinker. Like relocation isn't always a part of genocide, you fucked up, bigoted Jewish moron supremacist. Fuck Judaic bigots! 
 
Marcia Z Bookstein 
 
Your comment sounds so utterly anti-Semitic, Jon, that it's no wonder Jews are afraid for their lives. Yes, anti-Semitic. Would there even have been an Israel if people hadn't felt guilt about not allowing Jewish refugees from Europe into their countries? They were turned away from the US, and everywhere north and south of this country. They returned by ship to be butchered by Nazis. Where are we guaranteed to be safe? Nowhere except Israel. Murder and death taught us that. It sounds to me like you would like all of us to die. That would solve everything, wouldn't it? You believe that we are all that awful? If there were no Jews, would the Muslims then go after the Christians? Your speech does nothing to help.  
 
Jon Carver 
 
Hey Marcia, please don't put words in my mouth. And not calling for anyone's death. Anti-semiticism is what Jews today in Israel are doing to their semitic cousins in Gaza, today and for the past 50 plus years in their genocide for the Covenant with Abraham, no? My issue is with why Jews like Tony Blinken want more dead kids. I believe, since he identifies as Jewish that he believes in the Covenant of Abraham. Then when I study the Torah I find that it's incredibly xenophobic, Jewish Supremacist and celebrates multiple acts of genocidal ethnic cleansings as "Holocausts for Yaweh" the only spiritual entity Jews are allowed to acknowledge. Anyway, Jews are just people like everyone else. I despise the Abrahamic Ideology as it's so clearly Supremacism, the same way I despise the Supremacism of Nazis and the Proud Boys. I don't discriminate between bigots doing bigotry as Jewish people are today in Gaza and the West Bank. Why can't y'all share, I'm supportive of a Jewish homeland in Israel, but definitely not by slaughtering and mutilating children to get there.  
 
Sloan Bashinsky

If you read my comment, Jon, you know I asked for feedback about what someone else had written, which I included in my comment. 
I told the fellow who made the proposal that I felt Israel should move to The Sudan, but if that happened, who would rebuild Gaza? You. Caitlin Johnstone? Chris Hedges? The UN? Hamas? Hezbollah? ISIS? Iran? Certainly not America or Israel.
To date, I have yet to see Caitlin, or any of her followers, or Chris Hedges, or any of his followers, offer a solution to the Israel-Palestine horror show, other than Israel ceases to exist, which is the stated goal of Hamas’s charter.

I think the odds of getting Israel to agree to cease to exist are below zero. So, Jon, perhaps you will suggest a solution that has at least a zero chance of Israel and its Palestine adversaries accepting?
I have proposed here, and at Caitlin’s place, that America offer all Israelis sanctuary in America, to atone for not doing that after WWII, and I got no amens. I doubt the Israelis would go for it, and I doubt America would go for it, either.

I keep wondering if you, Jon, and many others who lay all the blame on Israel and America, were so abused when they were children, that they are unable to consider that what’s going on in Gaza punches every last one of their wounded and abused little child buttons, so that they simply cannot see Hamas tricked Israel into doing the very thing Hamas wants Israel to do in Gaza, and in that way, Hamas put every person in Gaza at mortal risk.

If I were America's President, I would do what in some circles is called a culture jam, and in other circles is called a systems jump. I would declassify all U.S. Government’s UFO files, hoping that would so fuck up every stupid war and disagreement going on everywhere, that maybe humanity would come to its senses, or at least stop fucking over other humans beings, and they start trying to save humans from themselves and what they perceive to be the, yes, the sum of all their fears, over which they have zero control, which might be worse fear for them than having zero control over God by whatever name they tried many times to remake in their own image and boss around. 
 
Jon Carver 
 
Hi Sloan, not sure if your characterization of Caitlin or Chris is accurate, but that aside, you and your "friend" who floated ideas of relocating Palestinians are doing bigotry. Have you heard of the Trail of Tears. Relocation is a prime element of genocide. It's called forced removal. Personally, I believe in a Jewish right of return to Israel after 2000 or so years of Diaspora following the sacking of the Second Temple of Solomon by Titus. I also believe that Palestinians have a right to live, as they have for generations, in their homeland in Israel. The problem that I see is that Jewish Supremacy which is systemic to Judaic cultural settings and Judaic thinkers means Daddy Jew knows what's best for the Palestinians you all have killed regularly and systematically for years . Some of the worst examples of bigoted speech I've ever heard came from the mouths of Jewish Liberals slurring Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael, and your cousins. The problem as I see it is Jewish Bigotry coming from the celebration of the Holocausts that xenophobic Jews bring upon the Canaanites in the Torah. Jews need to recognize the immense cultural Supremacism of saying there is only on God and he's Jewish. As a Goy ( fucking pig supremacist slur Jew word that all Jews use, basically) I have to say fuck Jewish Supremacist Bigots and their genocidal shit thinking. Please tell that to your genocidal Jewish "friend" that came up with that shitty, bigoted, Palestinian Relocation Progrom. Tell him that's what the Goy said. Please let him know that is what I think of his bigoted Jewish thinking. Thanks. Fuck the Jew God! 
 
Marcia Z Bookstein 
 
The descendents of Ishmael are our half brothers and sisters. Not our cousins. Same father, different mother. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky 
 
Correct. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky 
 
He is not my friend, Jon, I haven’t seen or spoken with him him since grammar school. He is not Jewish. He is does not care for my view of Hamas. He understands Israel will never leave Palestine voluntarily. That said, I pretty much agree with your assessments and beliefs stated in your comment, and I wish you would propose a solution, but your don’t, and perhaps that’s because Palestine is way beyond FUBAR and there is no solution. Unless, God, or something, steps in and does something truly biblical that maybe nobody in Palestine likes? So that every one there, and at Chris Hedgs’s and Caitlin Johnstone’s places, all want to tell God to fuck himself? Or herself? Or itself? 

Jon Carver

The solution is that Jews in Israel learn to share, make reparations for 50 plus years of ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and hang their heads in shame for their and their religious system's systemic lack of humanity. LEARN TO SHARE ISRAEL WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISHMAEL. I'd also like to encourage you to simply stop being Jewish and to reject Judaic theology and become a person instead of associating yourself with the Ethnic Supremacists, the Proud Boys of Judah.  
 
Sloan Bashinsky 
 
I’m not Jewish, Jon. I used to be a Christian. I think the creation of the state of Israel was a colossal blunder. I wish President Biden had abandoned Israel after he saw what IDF was doing in Gaza. Where you and I never agreed is I put half of It on Hamas, starting with October 7. Because Hamas got Israel to do precisely what Hamas wanted Israel to do. You may care about the Gaza people, but Hamas does not. All Hamas cares about is trying to destroy Israel. That’s why Hamas was created. Its charter said so. Its “revised” charter says so in different language, all glory to Allah, Islam is a peaceful religion. Read it for yourself. Hell, Islam doesn’t even get along with itself. 
 
Jon Carver 
 
All the Abrahamists kill for God, that's a huge part of the problem. That's why I'm opposed to Abrahamism and Abrahamic systems of hierarchical bigotry and castes. Hamas is desperate. They made a desperate move to provoke Israel and their sycophants in the US government. How do you oppose the genocidal actions of Judaism in Israel since the 1920s or so? Hamas did what it had to do and seems to be winning world opinion wars, along with the Houthis in the Red Sea, the only folks actively trying to intervene by destroying property and disrupting Capitalist trade without, yet, harming a person. What would you have done on October 7th if you were in Hamas' position in the Concentration Camp of Gaza? 
 
Sloan Bashinsky 
 
If I were Hamas, would have cared too much for human life, especially in Gaza, to try to provoke Israel on October 7 to level Gaza and kill a lot of unarmed civilians, in pursuit of trying to kill me.  
 
Jon Carver 
 
"Our Religions must become subject to an overwhelming loyalty to humankind as a whole." MLKJ. Jews, Christians and Capitalists are the only faith based religious groups I know that so clearly lack the loyalty to humankind that King spoke so eloquently about. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky 
 
Dr. King was spot on. Interesting, you classify capitalism as a religion, which it is :) 
 
Jon Carver 
 
It's the 4th (blind) faith based Abrahamic religion. Calvinist Capitalist Wealth Accumulators. Their concepts come through Protestantism directly from Calvinist readings of the Torah, which says God rewards the wealthy with riches because of their superior virtues ( snort)😂 
 
Sloan Bashinsky 
 
That’s actually hilarious genealogy, the way you present it. 
 
Marcia Z Bookstein

First, I'm in awe of your response to Jon. I'm grateful for your example of grace and patience.

And I agree that there is no solution. I have my own idea, though: as a student of comedy improv, I think the Israeli side and the Palesitian side should get together. I like the idea of the King David Hotel. (That's where my uncle was born!) There you would have mediators, negotiators, psychologists, comedians (both Jewish and Palestinian--they have truly honed their craft!) and comedy improv teachers. Each Israeli would play the part of a Palestinian, and vice versa. This is how you truly understand someone. I've done it and it's remarkable. (I played a right-winger in the International Space Station.) Laughter is healing, and, yes, a good comedian can make anything funny. It's a great way to connect. Also, have the best Halal food, which is more Kosher than Kosher, and no wine. (Yeah, wine makes people weird. Just use laughter to break the ice. It's also against Islamic rules I believe.) And then just talk. And talk and talk. Maybe a few hundred years or so. I want to be there! At least, while people are talking, they aren't killing each other. There. Solved. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky

From God’s mouth to your ear. Thank you. 

While I think Chris Hedges has not understood Hamas’s strategy for October 7, I also think Chris is more than well enough known and respected as a war correspondent, who put his own life on the line many times in red hot war zones, and he was friends of Hamas’s founder, and he knows that region and its peoples, and I think he is the ideal person to go there, representing himself and concern for all people, and he tries to sit down with both sides, and speak them as a man who has been through the flames of hell, and nudge and cajole them to give serious thought to setting side their religious and other differences, and embracing they are all children of Father Abraham, and its time to turn their swords into plowshares, because anything else simply is intolerable for all the people in that region.

Palestine is the epicenter of three huge religions. Let them turn it into a peaceful, beautiful holy shrine for all three religions. Let the members those religions come there from all over the world, with their money, to celebrate their religions' history and to worship and to get to know their brothers and sisters descended from Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. That would surely please God. I can imagine Chris Hedges being Allah's emissary and mediator for that unfolding. But he has to go in neutral. He has to be ready and willing to be the adult in the room, because both sides have contributed to this horrible mess, and only they can fix it. 

You go with Chris, as the court jester, the comedian, the sage fool who knows tears and love like perhaps no other. You and Christ, er, Chris, tag team them, help them shriek, writhe, cry and laugh. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

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