You all know Willis Eschenbach from his hundreds of excellent articles at WattsUpWithThat. There’s a catalogue up to 2021 at a link that begins with https:// and ends with wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/04/a-2021-index-to-williss-posts/
(I try too provide links, but WordPress just leaves empty spaces where I leave an URL. I have no idea how this article will appear. It’ll probably look like shit, but that’s WordPress for you.)
All his articles end with the warning:
“As is my custom, I politely ask that when you comment, you quote the exact words that you are referring to, so we can all be totally clear about both what and who you are discussing.”
I’ve always admired his articles, and enjoyed the glimpses they afford of their author, who seems to me to this British ex-prat to be the archetypal American – a fearless, footloose, high-IQ adventurer ready to question everything.
[It’s a sign of how low the USA has fallen that almost all of the Americans famous outside the United States nowadays are entertainers – millionaire narcissists who’ve never questioned anything other than their bank balance, or risked anything worse than falling audiences or record sales, or failing foreign contributions to their charity foundations.]
Three of the great works of American literature – Moby Dick, Walden, and Leaves of Grass – start off in exactly the same way: A part-time supply teacher, bored with routine, decides to up sticks and do something different. Willis is in that tradition. His articles are a breath of Whitmanesque fresh air for Climate Sceptics; a Cabin in the Woods to shelter from the madness of the science; a battle with the Great White Wally of Climate Doom.
I owe a debt to Willis. Eleven years ago, I wrote an article at WattsUpWithThat
demolishing a crazed loon called Rowland Emett Stephen Emmott who had won fame as a climate catastrophist on the basis of headlines reading: “Cambridge Professor says: ‘We’re F*cked.'”*
*[He wasn’t a Cambridge Professor, but a nerd working for IBM based in Cambridge, and a “visiting professor” – i.e. someone who was invited to give a talk – at the University of Oxford. He wrote a programme predicting the future of Life, the Universe and Everything, which repeatedly crashed, enabling Emmett to gain instant fame with his naughty catchphrase, thanks to fellow doomers in the press & at Penguin Books (science section) as well as at such prestigious organisations as the BBC, the Science Museum, and the Royal Court Theatre.]
My article, as usual, was heavy on spleen but short on references. Willis kindly supplied me with all the data it lacked in a follow-up article
– a heap of fascinating information on vertebrate species loss in the past 5 centuries from impeccable sources. Spot on and a welcome and unexpected gift.
I had no contact with Willis until last year, when I started leaving approving, and, I hope, entertaining comments at his Twitter posts. (Willis, like many well-known climate sceptics, gets surprisingly little traffic. Shame on you all.)
Then, on December 7th last year, I commented at a tweet of his on Israel, disagreeing strongly. This conversation has continued regularly ever since. If you’re interested, the first thread starts here
You don’t have to read it. To give you a flavour, the latest episode (8th January) runs like this:
Willis:
Letter to the editor in the LA Times:
“Every writer who bemoans the devastation in the Gaza Strip without acknowledging its cause is like a person complaining about how horribly they’ve been mauled by a bear without admitting that the bear had been sleeping when they poked it in the eye with a stick and slaughtered a few of its cubs.”
Me:
Israel is not the ancestral homeland of the vast majority of Israelis. It’s the ancestral homeland of Palestinians, who have every right to poke in the eye with a stick those who stole their land.
Willis:
Keep believing that, Geoff. Israel was there on that spot thousands of years before Palestinians were dreamed of. It’s literally the only country where archaeologists find ancient coins and texts speaking of the same country in the same language from thousands of years before the present.
But none of that matters. What matters is that Israel was LEGALLY given the land by a vote of the UN in 1948. And every time the Palestinians have been stupid enough to poke them in the eye, tens of thousands of Palestinians have died.
Having watched them poke Israel in the eye over and over for my entire life time, I have exactly zero compassion for them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Don’t come whining when your stupidity bites you in the fundamental orifice.
Me:
Do you really believe Londoners & New Yorkers have the right to turn Palestinians out of their homes because of something archaeologists found on ancient coins? It’s not possible. You’re Willis Eschenbach, a somewhat aggressive debater, but always on the side of reason, I thought.
It’s ongoing as I write. There is no possibility of either one of us convincing the other. I give credit to Willis for the fact that he has not blocked me, and I continue to give him Likes for all the sensible comments he makes on climate matters. We are civilised people.
That’s enough about Willis & me. This is an introductory chapter to something I intend to write about the massive change in the political landscape that started with climate hysteria and seems to be ending with the current war in the Middle East.
Briefly: The Left went mad when it caught climate hysteria, continued its descent into madness with its Trumpophobia and Covid Lockdown mania. The reasons for this are still obscure, but may be linked to a distortion of the idea of scientific socialism enunciated by Engels, a belief in the infallibility of officially designated experts, which caused immense damage in the Soviet Union. Whatever – the woke left finally awakened and came to reason when Elon Musk and others showed us what eight thousand dead babies look like, in the flesh, as it were.
The Left exists when it defends the oppressed against the oppressors; when the climate loonies & the rainbow-flag warriors forget their obsession with their personal neuroses and wave the Palestine flag. The Left claims to be the voice of Reason against the forces of Reaction, but it’s only effective when it acts under the influence of Emotion. Thanks to the bombing of Gaza, Politics has become normal again. The Left, from Roger Hallam to Jeremy Corbyn, is with Palestine. The Right, from Keir Starmer to the Nazis in power in Kiev (not that there’s much difference) is with Israel.
While the Left is reverting to type as the defender of the oppressed, the Right has revealed its true colours by defending the racist state of Israel, as they defended Apartheid in South Africa. Jordan Peterson has tweeted to Benjamin Netanyahu: “Give ’em hell.” Toby Young retweeted a tweet from the Museum of Communist Terror about how Lenin starved millions of peasants to death. As the Loony Left quietly commits suicide-by-spray-paint, the Loony Right reasserts itself as the Spokesthing for World Wars Three, Four, undsoweiter.
The Right, which was partly, and sometimes largely, right about climate, about Brexit, Trump, the fake 2020 US Presidential Election, and the sordid sex-and-race obsessed excesses of Wokeism, has had its own moment of Wokeness and realised that it’s fundamentally on the side of the winners (Israel) and against the losers (starving, powerless, bombed, murdered, tortured & mutilated Palestinians.)
In the Covid time I wrote an article predicting that the errors made then would tarnish the reputation of scientific expertise for ever. It didn’t happen, at least not then, not at once. Public opinion doesn’t work like that, not immediately, at least. The shift didn’t happen.
Maybe it takes images of thousands of dead kids to shift public opinion? It’s certain that the graphs & statistics of climate & vaccine sceptics didn’t do it, and won’t, ever.
It seems to be happening now. It will affect the coming Labour government profoundly. They will be hated from both sides. And that will have an effect on their attempts to impose their suicidal Net Zero climate policy.
Which is a subject on which we all – left & right – agree, n’est-ce pas?
Climate Scepticism 
Geoff, allow me to clarify my main points.
1) Both Palestine and Israel are states created by the UN out of the British Mandate territories, which was land that the Turkish Empire lost in WWI. Therefore, either both of them or neither of them have a “right to exist” as countries on that land. The Brits could have given it back to the Turks or to Egypt.
2) IF the Palestinians had been smart they would have taken the land and turned it into paradise. Instead, they joined 5 Muslim nations in attacking Israel in 1948 on the first day of its existence, trying to either kill or drive out every Jew in the Mideast. Surprisingly… they lost.
3) As happens when you lose a war (see e.g. the Turkish Empire, Mexico, Paraguay, or lots more), some of the stupid Palestinians lost land in the war. (The smart ones accepted Israel’s offer to become full citizens of Israel and are flourishing today. Israel is about 1/4 Arab, and they love the freedom of their country.) And at the same time, the Egyptians conquered the Gaza Strip.
4) Unlike Mexico and those other countries who accepted their postwar reality, the Palestinians have the deluded idea that they still deserve the land they lost. Sorry, wars don’t work like that. And worse, they’re willing to kill lots of innocent people to get it.
5) Israel won the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 war. The Gazans had never complained about being “occupied” by Egypt. Funny how that happens.
6) In 2006, in a deal advertised as “Land For Peace”, Israel flat-out gave Gaza to it’s bitter enemies, something almost unknown in history. Again, the Gazans could have made it paradise … instead, they immediately started attacking Israel.
7) In response, Israel put up a fence and started border inspections to keep the Gazans from getting weapons. The Gazans of course complained that it was an “open-air prison”. Nope. Just a prudent defense against insane endless aggression
8) Then, on 10/7, Hamas killed more Jews in one day than had happened since WWII. They murdered men, raped women, killed children, took infants and grandmothers hostage, and abducted girls to be kept as sex slaves forever to be raped at will … just as is authorized by the Koran. Seriously, the Koran says Muslim men can keep female prisoners of war as sex slaves, and it’s not some forgotten instruction. It’s happening all over today. That’s the reason Boko Haram kidnapped the schoolgirls. ISIS does it. And Hamas does it.
9) Only 13% of Gazans thought that the atrocities of 10/7 were wrong. About 1 in 10 thought rape, murder, torture, and kidnapping were wrong. Think about that before you start complaining about “innocent civilians”. I have great compassion for the kids and pets—they are the only innocents in Gaza.
10) Hamas then promised they would repeat 10/7 forever, raping and killing endlessly, until the Jews were dead or gone.
10) At that point, the Israelis had no choice—they have to eliminate Hamas entirely, no matter the cost to them or the Gazan citizens. Hamas declared a fight to the death. This is that fight. Not only that, but this is a nation whose daughters have been kidnapped and are being held in sexual slavery. Can you imagine the anguish of the parents, and what haunts their night terrors?
The Gazans are lucky that the Israelis and the IDF are far more ethical than I am. If that happened to my wife or daughter, I’d have turned the whole country into a slagheap.
11) Any ceasefire only helps Hamas. They will use it to rearm, resupply, recruit, and resume their hellish path to repeat 10/7 forever. Not only that, but they are routinely stealing every bit of aid they can that comes in during the humanitarian cessations of fighting, so ceasefires don’t help the civilians.
12) As a result, Israel cannot stop until Hamas is utterly destroyed. Hamas, on the other hand, could have recognized military reality and avoided every death by surrendering and releasing the hostages. However, they are billionaires living in palaces in Qatar, far from the fighting, and they care FAR less for Palestinian civilians than the Israelis do.
13) Supporters of Gazans in this war, you folks holding up signs, a reality check.
You’re supporting people who claim they have the RELIGIOUS RIGHT to keep female prisoners of war as sex slaves and rape them at will forever. And not only that, far too many Muslims around the world do that, and bestial Hamas savages are doing it to the female Israeli hostages as you read this.
Why? Because the evil Koran specifically authorizes Muslim men to do that:
Qur’an 33:50—”O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you [for sex] your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses [slaves] out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war …”
And disgustingly, in 2024 far too many orthodox Muslims still believe that and practice that.
OK, Geoff, I get that you support that … but tell me, how do you explain supporting the men endlessly raping helpless captive women to your mom, sister, or daughter?
And for the women supporting it … I have no words.
A final protip:
The fact that your great-grandfather lost his land in a senseless, useless war of aggression that he himself started …
… does not give you the right to attack, rape, and kidnap innocent girls dancing in a rave in the desert.
And sadly, that, Geoff, is the argument you are making.
My best to you, and thanks for the opportunity to clarify my position.
w.
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When I’ve lately written pieces on Gaza for Quadrant Online (Australia), instead of the usual 10-20 comments the comment thread blows out to 100+ and the editor sometimes (reluctantly) moves in with his chopper to terminate these endless unproductive and belligerent exchanges. I hope this doesn’t happen here…
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“However, they are billionaires living in palaces in Gaza, far from the fighting,”
Willis, I’m sure you mean Qatar?
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Thanks, Tony. I hope so as well. I’ve laid out my thoughts as clearly as I can. Not sure what I could add.
Best regards,
w.
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¡¡¡ Bravo Willis como Siempre !!!
[‘Bravo Willis as always’ expressed in Spanish]
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Willis I can only add one additional fact to your excellent summary, a fact that I learned during my one and only visit to Israel. My then wife and I were escorted around by two Israeli geologists. The extra information that we learnt (from the fear our friends had for our safety) was that it was a country under considerable stress, somewhere where people constantly go around in fear of being killed. I would not be able to live there and I have pity for all that do. I do not have the wisdom to offer any other comment, and do not plan to contribute further.
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Willis:
“ 1) Both Palestine and Israel are states created by the UN out of the British Mandate territories, which was land that the Turkish Empire lost in WWI. Therefore, either both of them or neither of them have a “right to exist” as countries on that land. The Brits could have given it back to the Turks or to Egypt.”
Except for the Sykes-Picot Agreement:
“The Sykes–Picot Agreement (/ˈsaɪks ˈpiːkoʊ, – pɪˈkoʊ, – piːˈkoʊ/[1]) was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement
“ The agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western and Arab relations. It reneged upon the UK’s promises to Arabs[9] regarding a national Arab homeland in the area of Greater Syria in exchange for supporting the British against the Ottoman Empire. The agreement, along with others, was made public by the Bolsheviks[10] in Moscow on 23 November 1917 and repeated in The Manchester Guardian on 26 November 1917, such that “the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted”.[11][12][13] The agreement’s legacy has led to much resentment in the region, among Arabs in particular but also among Kurds who were denied an independent state.[14][15][16][17]”
Lawrence (of Arabia) was persuading the Arabs to fight on ‘our’ side, which they did with great success 3 decades before the UN was even founded.
It’s little wonder Arabs are miffed.
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MODS: This comment was attempted to be posted via CliScep but WordPress seems to be up to its annoying tricks again. Hence what might be a duplication direct into WordPress. Feel free to delete a duplicate.
—————————-
Willis:
“ 1) Both Palestine and Israel are states created by the UN out of the British Mandate territories, which was land that the Turkish Empire lost in WWI. Therefore, either both of them or neither of them have a “right to exist” as countries on that land. The Brits could have given it back to the Turks or to Egypt.”
Except for the Sykes-Picot Agreement:
“The Sykes–Picot Agreement (/ˈsaɪks ˈpiːkoʊ, – pɪˈkoʊ, – piːˈkoʊ/[1]) was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement
“ The agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western and Arab relations. It reneged upon the UK’s promises to Arabs[9] regarding a national Arab homeland in the area of Greater Syria in exchange for supporting the British against the Ottoman Empire. The agreement, along with others, was made public by the Bolsheviks[10] in Moscow on 23 November 1917 and repeated in The Manchester Guardian on 26 November 1917, such that “the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted”.[11][12][13] The agreement’s legacy has led to much resentment in the region, among Arabs in particular but also among Kurds who were denied an independent state.[14][15][16][17]”
Lawrence (of Arabia) was persuading the Arabs to fight on ‘our’ side, which they did with great success 3 decades before the UN was even founded.
It’s little wonder Arabs are miffed.
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Mods here! First things first.
“Geoff, could you correct that brain freeze?”
I just replaced Gaza with Qatar and deleted Tony’s correction to that effect.
Thanks the both of you.
(It is sometimes controversial for mods to do direct editing of someone else’s comments.
But not, I decided, here today. It’s more important to maintain clarity.)
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The Arab-Israeli conflict is an onion – layer upon layer of moral issues. However you slice the onion, you’re always going to come up against these intractable moral issues and thus the conflict will never be resolved – at least not in a morally acceptable fashion. I think the Israeli government, for whatever reason, has decided that it is going to eliminate Gaza and its people, by war, famine and displacement. I too feel for the truly innocent – the children and the animals. The Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 provided the justification for doing so. I think it is almost certain also, that the Israeli intelligence services knew about and could have prevented the Oct 7 attack, but the border defence forces were stood down for two hours to enable the assault to take place. Therefore, in some sense, the Israeli government must take responsibility for the atrocities committed on that day and the subsequent atrocities (ongoing) committed against the hostages. Another moral dilemma onion skin layer. Let us also not forget that the Israeli government has displayed similar disregard for the health and safety of its own citizens during the Covid saga, when it signed a contract with Pfizer allowing that company to roll out a demonstrably unsafe and ineffective ‘vaccine’ which the government effectively mandated and then covered up the adverse effects.
There’s no overarching right or wrong here, only the onion of layered moral dilemmas. Anyone attempting to define the Gaza conflict in terms of an overarching right or wrong is going to come seriously unstuck.
I too have been to Israel once – Sharm-el-Sheikh. For some reason, the Israeli ‘intelligence’ services decided that we were a potential terrorist risk and we were both grilled separately for an hour before boarding the flight. Then, on the way home, similar happened and they confiscated a tin of food just in case it was a bomb or something. Rather spoilt the holiday. So the Israelis were definitely jumpy and nervous, even paranoid, back then, in the 90s.
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Joe Public:
“MODS: This comment was attempted to be posted via CliScep but WordPress seems to be up to its annoying tricks again. Hence what might be a duplication direct into WordPress. Feel free to delete a duplicate.”
It put your original comment into Spam. I’ve reversed that and removed the duplicate.
Sometimes I think understanding Sykes–Picot is a doddle compared to WordPress.
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Ok, supermod cape off, what about the substance here? I’m going with quick to listen, slow to speak on this one. You know, the favourite verse of those on social media, that makes it the heaven it is!
I would however like to express appreciation for Willis as he is on Twitter. For instance, he liked this yesterday, after I reposted it
I thought that was good UK humour, albeit in a (arguably) daunting context. Then there was
I hesitated before writing “blame the men who introduced them, by all means”.
Too much blaming going around already?
But I know what my farmer-uncle Dick in New Zealand thought about those who introduced the dreaded “nodding thistle”, as expressed in my direction in 1976. I replied that it was his ancestors, not mine, that were to blame.
Nicely relevant to both ‘climate justice’ and the same elusive result for Palestine?
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Concerning Gaza:
Amongst the antisemitic Left, it is a repressive concentration camp under the iron boot of the Israeli oppressors, without water, food, medical services and all other civilised amenities..
In reality:
It has five star hotels,
THE 10 BEST Hotels in Gaza City 2023 (from £64) – TripadvisorView deals from £64 per night, see photos and read reviews for the best Gaza City hotels from travellers like you – then compare today’s prices from up to 200 sites on Tripadvisor.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotels-g663088-Gaza_City_Gaza-Hotels.html
Gaza Strip Malls – The best and most famous shopping malls in the Gaza Strip Capital Mall, Hyper Mall ..
Life on the beaches of Tel Aviv and Gaza City – in picturesThe beaches in Tel Aviv and Gaza City, just 70km (40 miles) apart, are different worlds on opposite sides of a century-old conflict, but on long summer days Israelis and Palestinians enjoy some of the same delights.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/03/life-on-the-beaches-of-tel-aviv-and-gaza-city-in-pictures
Not bad facilities for a place that the antisemites tell us is the World’s largest concentration camp.
If the Gazans had seized the opportunity in 2005 when Israel ethnically cleansed the place of 13,000 of her own citizens – the families of some had been there for many generations, Gaza could by now be the Monaco of the Eastern Mediterranean.
But instead, Gazans elected a government – Hamas – that destroyed all the utilities such as the desalination plant, the greenhouses and hydroponics plants and electrical generation facilities and used it as a bridgehead to launch terror attacks into Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
Built literally hundreds of miles of attack tunnels:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels
Oh, and by the way Jaime, Sharm-el-Sheikh is in Egypt!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharm_El_Sheikh
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Willis,
Glad to find that this posting with its curiously dissembling title is just another example of “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”.
Philip
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“Sometimes I think understanding Sykes–Picot is a doddle compared to WordPress.”
Absolutely. Hence the precaution of copying intended posts to the clipboard before hitting ‘send’ 😉
What I can’t understand why, if WordPress dumps my posts via your webpage into Spam, it doesn’t do likewise via WP.
Incidentally, I’m WP prevents me from liking (some) comments on your webpage, but never via WP.
For info & NOT a reflection on CliScep, but I have far more WP issues on CliScep than any other WP site I use regularly. e.g. NaLoPKT.
Thanks again for rescuing my original! 👍
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Joe:
Pleasure. An additional reason it was is that you were writing somewhat in support of Geoff. Part of my “quick to listen, slow to speak” stance mentioned earlier is that Geoff, as he himself pointed out on Cliscep over a month ago, is in a sizeable minority of climate sceptics in his views on the Israel conflict. (If sizeable minority is a thing. He also mentioned Ben Pile as maybe being in the same camp.).
Geoff knows from Twitter that I see the situation differently than he does. I wanted to read his post carefully, as well as Willis’s response, before saying anything substantive myself. If I ever do.
Philip Mulholland:
“Curiously dissembling title” is too snarky for me. Geoff’s appreciation of Willis over many years is I’m sure genuine. But he deeply disagrees with the guy on this one issue. No problem.
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Like Richard, I have been in no hurry to comment, because I was anxious first to clarify my own thoughts, and to endeavour to ensure that anything I say should not be capable of misinterpretation.
I cleave slightly more to the Geoff line, but only slightly, because more than that, I am very much in Jaime’s camp of recognising the complexity of the situation and the difficulty of making clear moral judgements. Whilst recognising the sincerity of the views expressed by Geoff and Willis, and also crediting the thought that has gone in to arriving at their positions, I would put them into a different category from the many on both left and right who seem to have “decided” where the rights and wrongs of this complex issue lie, based on little more than which “tribe” (right or left) they belong to.
Isn’t it odd that many on the right are now the defenders of the state of Israel and opponents of anti-Semitism, whereas in the past some of the vilest anti-Semitism came from the right? And isn’t it odd that many on the left now offer knee-jerk support to Palestinians and opposition to Israel, to the extent that many of them sound like (and possibly are) anti-Semites; and also that feminists and supporters of gay and trans rights go out of their way to offer exculpatory comments for an organisation that is profoundly misogynist and homophobic?
The history of this region is dreadfully complex, and has been problematic for more than a century. Many mistakes have been made along the way by the UK, the UN, the US, Israel, and sundry Arab states, and by the Palestinians themselves. So while my sympathies are mainly for those who find themselves stateless, I can also sympathise with Israelis who live in constant fear. It goes without saying that the events of 7th October were beyond any normal moral compass, and must be condemned unreservedly. Equally, however, the actions of the IDF since then, while arguably avoiding the sheer barbarity and disgustingly provocative vileness of Hamas’ actions, nevertheless must be condemned too – I cannot sit back and not condemn the deaths of more than 20,000 people (and as Jaime points out, no doubt many animals too), many of whom are completely innocent of any offence.
Yes, many Gazans voted for Hamas, but many Israelis voted (sometimes more than once) for Netanyahu. And the actions of the settlers on the West Bank strike me as appalling too. Fortunately, as well as many bad actors, there are decent people of goodwill on both sides, and I hope that ultimately they will prevail. Sadly, I fear they won’t.
About the only positives I take from this are, firstly that people here, often with profoundly different views, can express their differences politely, without causing offence, and without falling out over those differences. Secondly, this demonstrates wonderfully that we sceptics are not monolithic, that we come from left, right and centre, and we do not represent, as many alarmists would like to believe, some sort of “far right” band of nutters. Whatever they might try to persuade themselves, nothing could be further from the truth.
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Mark,
Ditto.
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I haven’t read the two main protagonists carefully enough but I’d like to quote from Geoff’s original and make some brief points.
Partly brilliant IMO. Now in a few pieces:
Agree about the first two. Covid Lockdown remains for me more complex and wasn’t just down to the madness of the Left. It was out of the fear of many. But climate hysteria came first and that is really significant.
Interesting. I don’t know enough to disagree 😉
No, the woke didn’t come to reason. Elon Musk has though been immensely significant as owner of X. I agree with that.
The best bit of the whole post.
I don’t see that as consistent with what came before. Because genocidal antisemitism.
Anyway, I wanted to quote you, once you’d cut loose from Willis, so to speak.
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Like the Israel-Palestine conflict, a many-layered onion h/t Jaime,
so too we sceptics at Cliscep, h/t Mark.
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@Richard Drake
“Curiously dissembling title” is too snarky for me. Geoff’s appreciation of Willis over many years is I’m sure genuine.
Not snarky, I genuinely had to check if Willis is still with us.
I have no idea who Geoff is nor quite frankly do I care.
The good thing however is that I have now found Willis on X – Twitter.
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We have our own form of ethnic cleansing in the Highland Clearances after the Jacobite rebellion and the battle of Culloden 1746. The Duke of Cumberland is believed to have ordered the eradication of the hated Highlander who they believed to be a foreigner to Britain.
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So the word I think you were looking for was not ‘dissembling’ but ‘temporarily misleading’.
An apology for using dissembling, meaning intentionally misleading, I take as read.
Thanks.
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“something I intend to write about the massive change in the political landscape that started with climate hysteria and seems to be ending with the current war in the Middle East”
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.
The left seem to be lost, looking for something to believe in.
?
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Great post, thank you
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WordPress is preventing me from Liking again. Thanks to Joe Public for the detail on Sykes-Picot, to Niall for the very apposite GK Chesterton quote, and thanks to Willis & everyone for the civil debate. (Willis does claim I need psychiatric help, but who am I to disagree? Apologies to Willis there, since I haven’t quoted his exact words.)
In several tweets I pointed Willis to the articles by Max Blumenthal pointing out that the evidence for atrocities is extremely dubious, at best. I recommend anyone who believes the rape/atrocity stories to read them.
Based on evidence from Israeli sources (there are no others) it is certain that no babies were beheaded, hung on a line, or put in the oven, and it is highly unlikely that any rapes occurred, since no reliable witnesses have come forward & (according to the NYT) none of the anonymous survivors of rape have sought professional (presumably medical & psychological) help.
Based on testimony of Israeli survivors and military personnel, it seems likely that many, possibly most, of the civilian deaths were due to Israeli military action. Again, see articles by Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté & others for the details.
Richard is quite correct that my division of attitudes of Left and Right to Covid, Brexit & Trump was simplistic and therefore often wrong. The point I was trying to make was that, for a decade of so, Left & Right seemed to have changed places. On Covid, the left by and large supported authoritarian measures of lockdown & compulsory vaccination, while the Right challenged authority; on Trump & Brexit, the left dropped all semblance of sympathy for the losers (or “deplorables”) in our increasingly inegalitarian society, & the Right took up their cause.
After October 7th the two poles seem to have reverted to type. The Right here in France (extra or moderate) is behind Israel, the Left is for Palestine. At the one demonstration I attended, the banners were all of the far left and Communist and Anarchist trade unions, though a lot of people were marching under no banner.
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Geoff, you wrote, “Briefly: The Left went mad when it caught climate hysteria, continued its descent into madness with its Trumpophobia and Covid Lockdown mania. The reasons for this are still obscure, but may be linked to a distortion of the idea of scientific socialism enunciated by Engels, a belief in the infallibility of officially designated experts …”
I would like to pick up on this idea of the infallibilty of official experts, especially as represented by the academy and its graduate output …
If I understand correctly Matthew Goodwin’s 2023 book ‘Values, Voice and Virtue – the new British politics’ then he argues that the current Labour Party has become essentially a political alliance of two groups: one group is the original or historical core of the Labour party, namely ordinary men and women. The second (and currently dominant) group is the epistocrats and university graduates comprising the new elite with their luxury beliefs. The graduate class are these days also dominant in journalism [page 120 et seq.] and even amongst Labour MPs. For example, at page 100, Goodwin writes, “Over the last two decades, Labour, like other left-wing parties, has morphed into a political home for what French economist Thomas Piketty has called ‘the brahmins’ – a highly educated caste of politicians and voters who have little interest in reforming the economy and the wider system to help the left behind … a new generation of Labour politicians has pushed aside the very group their party was once founded to represent.”
And at page 183 Goodwin writes, “In the universities, scholars demand the return of ‘epistocracy’, an elitist conception of democracy in which the votes of people who are more knowlegeable count for more than the votes of those who know less.”
It is for reasons such as those above that, elsewhere at Cliscep, I have characterised the Left as having been “flipped” into ‘blight-wing’ politics, a brand of politics that will cost ordinary people hugely while enriching the already (extremely) wealthy. No wonder there is a lot of apathy towards our current major parties (and perhaps towards politics in general).
Regards, John.
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Geoff,
I just tried to comment but it seems to have vanished into thin air – the first time that has happened to me for several months.
Anyway, what I was posting (based on Goodwin’s book “Values, …” (2023) was essentially to say what you have just written, namely that, “The point I was trying to make was that, for a decade of so, Left & Right seemed to have changed places.” However, I am not yet convinced that they have reverted to type.
Regards, John.
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John C,
Sorry about WordPress. I have just found your comment in spam and released it.
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Mark, thank you! Regards, John.
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John Cullen
Thanks for the interesting comment. You’re right, I expressed myself badly when I said that, in demonstrating in favour of Palestinians, the Left was reverting to type. It would be truer to say that the emotions raised by events in Gaza have shattered the glass bubble in which the Left has imprisoned itself, ,at least temporarily.
I haven’t read Goodwin’s book, but the morphing of the Labour Party, and of the democratic left in general (or “liberalism” in American terms) is a favourite subject of mine in trying to explain the rise of climate hysteria. The takeover of the left by the university educated class has led to the Left adopting every neoconservative dogma, and becoming the conscious of capitalism, rather than its opponent. When the university educated ceased to be merely a specialised élite minority of doctors, teachers lawyers etc., and came to dominate the communication professions (journalism, media, advertising etc.) they took over leftwing parties and naturally bent their politics to suit their own interests: environmentalism, sexual liberation etc. Socialism was redesigned as a kind global home improvement scheme.
I hope to come back to this subject sometime soon.
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I’ve lost patience with Willis.
This is a serious learning moment for me.
For nearly 20 years my posting on climate issues, at the Guardian, at numerous sceptical blogs, on my own blog, & here, has been based on serious scepticism about the trustworthiness of experts. The alternative is trust in people who demonstrate that they are worthy of trust by their honesty, intelligence, and willingness to debate. Willis was one of them.
I disagree on fundamental political questions with a large number of people, probably the majority of climate sceptics, with whom I’ve had amicable relations, including Willis, despite the fact that since the beginning of this correspondence he has suggested I need psychological help.
I suggest that Willis (& anyone else interested) consult the evidence presented by Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté, the Israeli journal Ha’aretz & others. He won’t. He prefers to quote the Qu’ran (Koran.)
I won’t be posting anything more on this subject.
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Geoff, there is a big heap of evidence of rape by Hamas terrorists, both at the site of the massacre and in captivity.
Any decent human being, when a woman reports being raped or seeing someone being raped, will respond with some version of “Oh, that’s terrible!”. And we have dozens of exactly those reports from the massacre.
However, not you. Instead, you say something like “Photos and video, or it didn’t happen!!” … I suspect, however, you want photos solely so you can wank off to them. Here’s testimony from a survivor.
===
“One of the people that hide with me see a terrorist, and they told everyone to run away. And that’s what we did. The terrorists shoot on us. And I saw a lot of people died in my eyes, I — murdered in my eyes. People get shot in the head, in the shoulder. A lot of dead bodies.
We go to hide in a bush, a big bush in the creek. And we was in the bush something like six or seven hours. A lot of terrorists go around us and search for people to kill. The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that.
They laughed. They always laughed. It’s — I can’t forget how they laughed on the — in this situation.”
===
And you refuse to believe that Muslims practice sex slavery, despite reports of it from around the planet. Here’s testimony from a released hostage:
===
“Released hostage Aviva Siegel and her daughter Shir say that both women and men are being raped in Hamas captivity.
Speaking to Israeli lawmakers in the Knesset, Aviva said that inside the tunnels in Gaza: “The terrorists bring inappropriate clothes for the girls, the clothes of dolls. They turned the girls into their dolls, that they can do whatever they want with. And it’s unbelievable that they’re still there”.
Aviva said: “I want to tell you that the boys go through these things too. They can’t get pregnant, but they also go through it. And something must change now”.
She went on, “I would like to go back to captivity to protect the girls there like I did when I was there. I felt like they were my daughters.”
“My heart is there and it’s exploding. I can’t understand how the world is silent.””
===
And still you don’t believe, and want to blacken my name? You are one sick puppy.
In any case, you want evidence? Here you go. Grab your favorite sock, you can start wanking now.
w.
https://www.newsweek.com/i-saw-children-hamas-beheaded-my-own-eyes-shame-queen-rania-opinion-1855472
https://news.yahoo.com/hamas-used-horrific-sexual-violence-131412847.html
https://news.yahoo.com/saw-raw-footage-hamas-horrors-101327304.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/12/08/hamas-rape-weapon-israel-progressive-women-silent/71823415007/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/06/middleeast/rape-sexual-violence-hamas-israel-what-we-know-intl/index.html
https://news.yahoo.com/screams-without-words-hamas-weaponized-191206172.html
https://news.yahoo.com/why-full-extent-hamas-terrorists-170000858.html
https://www.timesofisrael.com/right-now-someone-is-being-raped-in-a-tunnel-knesset-hears-of-hamas-sex-crimes/
https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/women-and-men-are-being-raped-by-hamas-says-released-hostage-ws3exnuq
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctor-who-treated-freed-hamas-hostages-describes-physical-sexual-and-psychological-abuse/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hamas-israel-witnesses-evidence-show-sexual-violence-oct-7-terror-attack/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/former-hostage-tells-lawmakers-fellow-captive-was-sexually-abused-by-guard/
https://www.nysun.com/article/new-testimony-from-hostages-suggests-sexual-abuse-by-hamas-continues-against-israelis-still-captive-at-gaza
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/freed-israeli-hostage-says-three-women-told-her-they-were-sexually-abused
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/islamic-state-systematically-turns-girls-sex-slaves
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/nadia-murad-isis-sex-slave-nobel-peace-prize
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-02-09/ty-article-magazine/inside-the-fight-to-save-2-000-women-and-girls-held-as-sex-slaves-by-isis/0000017f-e6ef-df2c-a1ff-feff650e0000
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Willis: “you refuse to believe that Muslims practice sex slavery..”
No, I don’t. Your references to ISIS, the Qu’ran etc. are irrelevant. You don’t use straw man arguments like that at WUWT, so why here?
I’m not going to redo the work of Blumenthal, Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz, etc. which I repeatedly recommend & that you repeatedly ignore.
Taking as an example your first reference, to the Newsweek article: “I saw Children Hamas Beheaded with my Own Eyes..”:
The Israeli government has since admitted that no children were beheaded. The rest of the article details accounts of rape taken from one person who quotes one expert she interviewed on New York, and describes body parts she saw at the Israeli govt forensic science centre. The centrepiece is the description of a horrific gang rape seen by an anonymous witness who was hiding in a large bush for 7 hours while Hamas patrolled around looking for people to kill.
This is thirdhand evidence from anonymous witnesses relayed by Israeli government or IDF sources. Some of it is known to be false. Given the Israeli government’s record of making up horror stories, the rest is worthless.
The line of argument is always the same: “The details I’m about to give you are so horrific that only a despicable person would refuse to believe them.”
It’s in writing the above that I’ve suddenly realised that it’s very similar to the argument put forward by some climate activists.
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Thanks for the reply, Geoff.
I said “you refuse to believe in sex slavery”, to which you reply “No, I don’t. Your references to ISIS, the Qu’ran etc. are irrelevant.”
That’s unclear. Do you or don’t you believe that Muslims practice sex slavery? And why would it be “irrelevant” to the fact that Hamas is doing the exact same thing, raping female prisoners of war just as the Koran?
Were people beheaded during the 10/7 massacre? Absolutely.
===
“A terrorist from the Gaza Strip decapitated an IDF soldier killed in fighting on October 7 and later tried to sell his head for $10,000, the soldier’s bereaved father revealed, adding that “by a miracle” it was eventually found by the army and returned to Israel for burial.”
===
Here’s testimony from a man who saw the horrific videos taken by both Hamas terrorists and survivors of the attack.
===
“Two beheadings shown in full – one done with a garden hoe, the other with a crude knife. The terrorists were ecstatic while committing these barbaric acts.”
===
Next, without a scrap of evidence that she is lying, you dismiss the testimony of a woman like you wanted to see what happened with her own eyes … but unlike you, she went to Israel and viewed the bodies herself.
===
“I inspected bodies that had been repeatedly stabbed, shot, and crushed. I examined mutilated bodies, restrained with cables, electrical cords, and zipties, still in place post-mortem, and those that had been decapitated and incinerated at temperatures approaching 3,000 degrees Celsius.”
===
But nooo … according to you, she’s lying about what she went all the way to Israel to actually find out the truth about …
Now, there were indeed unconfirmed claims that forty babies had been beheaded, claims later shown to be false. But enough people have described seeing a beheaded baby to make the claims of a few beheaded babies very credible.
Regarding the Israeli Government, here’s a spokesman for the PM:
===
“Babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza in southern Israel after Hamas’ attacks in the kibbutz over the weekend, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister says.”
===
And it’s on CNN here:
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-10-11-23/h_a63b0fd57f2df717147ea8e26a2f758c?utm_term=video&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2023-10-11T15%3A45%3A05&utm_source=twCNN
Here’s more:
===
“Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said in an Oct. 11 broadcast on X that, based on reports, he could say “with relative confidence” that babies were beheaded in Kibbutz Be’eri, about 10 miles southwest of Kfar Aza. He said these reports came from eyewitnesses and an Oct. 11 CBS News interview with Yossi Landau, the southern region’s head of operations for Zaka, Israel’s civilian emergency response organization.
Landau’s accounts to news outlets about the attack’s aftermath have varied, and it’s unclear from these interviews where Landau saw mutilated bodies. In an Oct. 17 interview with CNN, Landau said he saw a teenager who had been beheaded. To India’s Republic World on Oct. 13, he described Hamas “chopping off the heads” of children. To Fox News on Oct. 17, he described extreme violence, some of which involved children, without specifically mentioning beheadings. In a Hebrew-language interview with Now 14 Israel, Landau said he picked up bodies of children and babies without heads.”
===
And you, without any evidence, declare them all liars? I’m the one with evidence here, personal testimony, and you’ve given us nothing.
Here’s more on the horrors of that day, since you don’t like anonymous witnesses …
===
“Sergeant Major Natah Katz from the IDF Rabbinical Unit at the Shura base near Ramle described to me cadavers he received with breasts and genitals hacked off, one with a knife impaled directly into the vagina. The mutilation of sexual organs and breasts, “seemed to be an obsession,” he recalled. Dr. Chen Kugel, head of Israel’s National Forensic Center has confirmed to me the same.”
===
And more testimony from a named individual who recovered bodies from the scene:
===
“Simchat Greyman had to pause several times when describing the evidence of sexual violence he saw when recovering bodies of victims of the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.
One body was so severely brutalized that he and his colleagues from ZAKA, the ultra-orthodox Jewish human remains recovery organization, couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.
Greyman described finding a woman who was shot in the back of her head, lying on her bed, naked from her waist down. A live grenade was planted in her hand.
And then there was the body with the nails.
“I was called into a house, I was told there are few bodies over there. I saw in front of my eyes a woman, laying (down). She was naked and she had nails …,” Greyman managed to say before pausing for a long time, struggling to get the words out.
“She had nails and different objects in her female organs. Her body was brutalized in a way that we could not identify her,” he added, the trauma clearly visible on his face.”
===
As to the Koran-authorized rape of female prisoners of war, we have testimony after testimony.
===
“Former hostage tells lawmakers fellow captive was sexually abused by guard
Aviva Siegel also recounts seeing a woman tortured in Gaza, days after freed teen Agam Goldstein-Almog tells of encounter with girls who had been sexually assaulted”
===
And here’s testimony to the Knesset:
===
“Israeli women held hostage in the Gaza Strip are being subjected to regular sexual abuse, with their guards treating them like “dolls,” survivors of October 7 testified in the Knesset on Tuesday, adding to a growing body of evidence that Hamas weaponized sexual assault and is likely still violating victims in captivity.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” said former hostage Aviva Siegel, who was abducted from Kibbutrz Kfar Aza with her husband Keith on October 7 and released during a ceasefire in late November.
“I felt as if the girls in captivity were my daughters. The terrorists bring inappropriate clothes, clothes for dolls and turn the girls into their dolls. Dolls on a string with which you can do whatever you want, whenever you want,” she told a meeting of the newly established Knesset caucus on victims of sexual and gender violence in the war against Hamas.”
===
Here’s testimony from a doctor who treated the released hostages:
===
“Yes, we did see signs of branding,” Pessach said. “We definitely saw signs of being handcuffed. We did hear and see evidence of sexual abuse in a significant part of the people we have treated. We also heard evidence – and that was one of the hardest parts – of abuse against those that [are still there], both physical and sexual.”
===
But no, their testimony means nothing to you. You won’t believe endless personal testimony of things done in the darkness of the tunnels—photos of girls being raped in the tunnels, or preferably videos, or it didn’t happen …
Really?
This is likely the best-documented massacre in history. We have:
• Videos made by the attackers
• Videos made by the victims
• Recordings of the attackers
• Testimony of the survivors
• Testimony of the captured attackers
• Reports of the first responders
• Reports of the IDF who fought the attackers
• Testimony of the released hostages
• Heartbreaking autopsy reports
But that’s not enough for you? You want to claim that it didn’t happen, that I’m making it up?
Sadly, my friend, tragically, I’m not making any of it up … I’m basing my take on the situation on the overwhelming mass of evidence showing the most horrendous things were done to men, women and children.
So I truly don’t understand what your point is here. You claim I’m believing without evidence, but as I said, there is overwhelming evidence—this is the best-documented massacre in history. So just what are you trying to prove?
In your head post, you rail against me saying that the following:
===
“Unlike him, the rest of us don’t approve of executions, torture, beheadings, desecration of corpses, rape, necrophilia, incinerating people alive, dismemberment, and hostage-taking.”
===
Your claim was that I was believing those happened without evidence. But I’ve given you testimonial after testimonial that all those and worse happened … evidence which you airily dismiss with the wave of your hand. So I ask again.
What. Is. Your. Point?
My best to you, in hopes that the scales fall from your eyes and you see Hamas for what it is,
w.
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Willis, please agree to one change – the last part of your last sentence might be better (factually) recast as “…and you see some in Hamas for what they are”.
Not everyone in Hamas committed atrocities, nor was everyone involved in the October attack a member of Hamas, individuals from other groups took part.
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The same people (or similar, who share the same violent ideological fanatical tendencies) who committed the heartbreakingly horrifying atrocities documented on October 7th, who were facilitated in crossing the border by the stand down of Israeli border controls, are no doubt at this moment making their way across the US southern border, facilitated by the Biden regime, which supports the Israeli government on the geopolitical stage. We should chew on those facts, because they are not easy to digest.
Texas AG to feds: “As I said before, this office will continue to defend Texas’s efforts to protect its southern border against every effort by the Biden administration to undermine the State’s constitutional right of self-defense.”
Of course they will. This is now an issue of self-preservation and it looks like civil war is the only way it’s going to be resolved.
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Willis:
The subject of my article was motivated reasoning. We all do it, no doubt. I quoted you because your writings at WUWT, whatever else they are, are particularly rigorous & you seemed to me the last person in the world who would fall prey to it. My sub-text was: “If it can happen to Willis, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
You say:
“.. their testimony means nothing to you.. You want to claim that it didn’t happen, that I’m making it up?”
You continue to distort my position, accusing me of being an atrocity denier, when I’m simply sceptical about claims by people who are proven liars, like CNN & IDF spokesmen.
A few points on the evidence you quote:
1) According to the Ha’aretz list of victims, there was just one baby among the dead, who was shot, not burned or beheaded.
2) You quote twice members of “ZAKA, the ultra-orthodox Jewish human remains recovery organization.” According to Blumenthal, they are a weirdo group of “first responders” whose leader Epsteined himself in prison while awaiting trial on counts of multiple rape & paedophilia. Describing atrocities is their job.
3) Aviva Siegel’s description of bodies she saw at the forensic lab makes it clear they’d been carefully examined for signs of torture etc., but the NYT article says that in the rush to give them a decent burial, no tests for rape were made. That doesn’t make sense. The article also claims that the 4 or 5 (I can’t remember) living victims of rape had not requested official aid (presumably medical or psychological.) This is frankly unbelievable.
4) She claims she saw bodies “incinerated at temperatures approaching 3,000 degrees Celsius.” No-one has explained how guerillas armed with rifles & hand grenades could burn bodies at high temperatures. IDF tank crew & helicopter pilots have described how they bombed & shelled cars & houses. Burned bodies were almost certainly the result of “friendly fire.”
A commenter at a thread of yours, in a reply to my comment, posted a long series of videos of atrocities from https://www.thisishamas.com
The most horrific, of a foetus being torn from a woman’s body, looked impossible to fake. I looked at a few seconds & don’t have the courage to continue, I’m afraid. Someone should examine it carefully, but it won’t be me. There’s also an image of the bodies of two babies so badly burnt as to be unrecognisable as human beings.
Other scenes are problematic. In a scene of the bloody bodies of a massacred family, the arm (or leg, I can’t remember) of one of the bodies clearly moves. This is a propaganda video, & under each image is the slogan “Hamas = ISIS” which is just stupid.
Some scenes actually seem to confirm a theme of pro-Hamas propaganda: that any atrocities were committed not by Hamas, but by members of a civilian rabble which followed Hamas fighters. For example, the man trying to hack the head off a corpse with a hoe, and the people trampling on dead bodies, are clearly not fighters. We see only the top half of the guy with a hoe, & he’s wearing just glasses & a t-shirt.
On the other hand, the guys in three other shots are clearly fighters. In one, a young female hostage is being bundled into a jeep, & being treated no more roughly than many demonstrators arrested by Western police forces.
In another, two elderly hostages are sitting in the back of a car, and are bizarrely smiling, presumably to give themselves courage. A third shows a truck surrounded by a crowd. In the back is a Hamas fighter sprawled over the body of a young woman. At first it seems as if she’s naked, but she’s wearing just underpants, & the way the guy has laid his legs across her body suggests that he’s protecting her body from the view of the crowd, or stopping it from falling off the back of the truck, rather than anything else.
My point is not to minimise the horrible suffering of the victims, or justify atrocities. But if these represent the main evidence that Hamas is an organisation dedicated to carrying out atrocities, they fail.
Hamas carried out a successful military operation, overrunning military bases, & an unsuccessful & illegal hostage taking, and some Palestinians committed atrocities, but nothing like as many as has been reported in the press.
This video is presumably part of the film that the Israeli government showed to selected journalists, and refuses to release to independent researchers. An independent inquiry by medical & technical experts would answer a huge number of questions about what happened on October 7th. Who is demanding such an inquiry? Why not?
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Here’s some different commentary on what happened on 7th October in Israel, the first from the climate sceptical couple who have been doing so much to publicise what’s been happening in ‘Mann v Steyn’ in the Washington DC courtroom. Just the first six minutes here
And here’s historian Niall Ferguson on the historical precedent for leading universities to advocate and lay the intellectual foundations for the genocide of all Jews. German academics loved the Nazis far more than ordinary working people, he says, as the membership stats from the 1920s then the 1930s show.
Those genocide-loving universities are now throughout the ‘West’. And it’s a shock to find who are fellow-travellers in this disgusting excrescence of our self-congratulatory 2020s culture.
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Here you go, Geoff. A video of a guy being beheaded, and lots more.
Happy now?
w.
https://www.thisishamas.com/
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I suppose this information is “good for me” but usually I avoid it like the plague. I suppose someone has to deal with/argue about it but not me.
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Alan: I never look at the videos. I do read descriptions of the atrocities, as more details come out, and of the ongoing suffering of victims and their familes. Then I try to find words of prayer and compassion but that is hardly easy. This is to a Jewish lady who lives in London I’ve got to know quite well.
None of us come to this kind of horror without some context. For example I read Holocaust Inversion and contemporary antisemitism within a year of it coming out in Winter 2014. Blaming Israel for a genocide in Gaza as bad as the Holocaust is all over Twitter by now. Zionists are the new Nazis. So utterly wrong. But it’s all there in Lesley Klaff’s piece.
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Richard,
You are quite right to say that we all come to debates such as these with a context informed by what we have previously read – no matter how little that may be. In my case, I have to declare that there are two books in particular that have been influential: ‘Empire of Fear’, by Andrew Hosken, and ‘Taliban’, by Ahmed Rashid. I don’t think one can read such books without gaining an awareness of how organisations such as ISIS and the Taliban succeed by using degraded brutality as a means of subjugation. Whether or not the individuals concerned are sadistic is hardly relevant since their acts form part of a practical and effective strategy. The more depraved the acts, the more terror is sown, which from the organisation’s perspective is all well and good.
So does this make the accusations of atrocity on October 7th more plausible for me? Absolutely! And does it mean I should believe everything that has been said about them by the Israeli government? Absolutely not!
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I know little about what happened on October 7th, and am grateful for it. My information comes primarily from TV news (Good ol’ BBC) and some minor reading about it in the Guardian. Yes what I have absorbed from these sources might well be highly biased but what the hell, what does it matter if I have been misled? I’m not going to try to influence anyone else about my possible prejudices upon this subject, so they stay with me. In the past I might have thought differently, but now? I’m in my early eighties, am still crippled from interacting with my youngest scottie (who has moved on from football to energetic frisbee chasing) so don’t get much chance to influence anyone upon any subject. She who must be listened to has her own opinions.
I feel much sympathy for those affected by any atrocities and attempt to understand why the perpetrators did what they did. But not very hard. That’s as far as I wish to travel. I try to understand why some might be interested in sickening details but I am not. Period.
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Willis is being inaccurate again. The video he mentions doesn’t show a beheading by Hamas. It shows a man in a t-shirt & glasses hacking ineffectually at the neck of a corpse with a hoe. Vile. You can call him an animal, if you think that helps. Willis & others deduce from this that Palestinians deserve no compassion, no mercy. Willis expressed this view before seeing the video. Jordan Peterson was delivering a personal message to Netanyahu along those lines on Twitter before he’d seen any evidence at all.
My point, for the nth time, is that a shocking event has led people who have a reputation for their insistence on rational, evidence-based debate to renounce their principles overnight. It may be eccentric, but I think the positions taken by people like Willis & Jordan Peterson are far more significant than the statements of a thousand Western politicians & pundits.
Meanwhile, in an ideal world, where facts matter, this article
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/
reports that the rape which provides the centrepiece of the NYT’s long article on Hamas atrocities didn’t happen.
Why believe an article at Mondoweiss rather than NYT? Because it’s based on the testimony of the family of the victim, who was shot by Hamas, according to a phone call from her husband, who was himself murdered soon after.
Imagine the state of mind of a family that sees worldwide reports that their murdered daughter was raped. They have no conclusive proof that it’s not true, but, in the middle of a war, to the embarrassment of their own government & the most respected media organisations in the western world, they insist that there’s no proof that she was. They want the truth, even from a government at war, even from the New York Times.
Which is where we climate sceptics came in.
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