DEFEATING HAMAS IS NOT AN END, BUT A BEGINNING. HEALING THE PALESTINIAN MIND IS THE LONG-RANGE KEY TO PEACE. THIS WEEK’S PROTESTS ARE CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM.
There is this pernicious, annoying argument that the west is single-mindedly obsessing about Palestine because of its own "complicity" in it, which is a non-starter on multiple levels, but especially in the sense that on the contrary, foreign interference is the only thing that could possibly keep this conflict alive for as long as it has, and UNRWA's role here is beyond question. The anti-Israel crowd complains about complicity in terms of sending weapons and so on, but never about complicity in terms of funding the education system that created this society.
Then, this also ignores the west's role in, oh, India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, the current violence in DRC... or that human rights are not about who is guilty, but about humans... or that the "complicity" in Israel's existence and military power is complicity in a good thing, whereas when the dream comes true and Israel falls, I doubt that anyone will seek to do anything for the women and children of what would inevitably be yet another human-rights-deficient clepto-theocracy.
Only way these innocent Gazans are protesting is with the blessing and encouragement of Hamas otherwise they’d be dead. The spies that they executed today were just another layer of taqiyah.
Well said. The people pushing back on this, ignoring it, or rewriting it are perhaps more dangerous than Hamas. We have to amplify this movement and promote the internal Palestinian opposition to terror as much as possible.
There is no future for Gaza and Gazans, including no reconstruction of communities, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, without the complete elimination of Hamas and the various other political Islamist jihadist entities that threaten Israel.
This is the plain fact of what was achieved by the bestial attack of 7 October, 2023.
It may take another year, or two years or three for this plain fact to dawn on the people of Gaza, who massively and joyously celebrated the attack in the days afterwards.
The people of Gaza will have to conclude en masse that their short, medium and long-term interests no longer lie with the Islamist fantasy of eliminating the State of Israel and killing the Jews (both the majority of Israeli Jews who are indigenous to the region, or those who are immigrants from further afield) or driving them all away from Israel or into the sea.
In the meantime, the military and political figures of Hamas, PIJ and other terrorist organizations will continue to be eliminated, as they deserve.
Times of Israel podcast worth listening to from 17:15 onwards:
I agree with your comments on total reeducation being the critical element for change. I would add that they need to be removed from the Gaza Strip permanently. Ideally, the people should bring down Hamas from within, but if this is legit, why isn’t Hamas wiping out the « protesters? » The putrid Palestinian propaganda we’ve seen so far gives me pause in believing the rallies are genuine. Ideology and religion drives the population and Hamas and I do not think it will ever be eradicated, only managed very carefully with great watchfulness and strength. Can a leopard can his spots? But they can dye them to look different if required for survival.
Much to ponder. Can a leopard change its spots? No. But these are not spots ... they are incitement that have turned generations into jihadis. As I said, if Palestinians started teaching their kids to live in peace today, we might have peace in a generation or two. That's a longterm commitment. But there isn't really any other choice.
I have to admit, I’m with the conspiracy crowd who think that these protests are being staged by Hamas so as to fool westerners into thinking that there really is a groundswell of opposition to Hamas, which will result in said westerners pressuring Israel into stopping its latest offensive. My view is that if the protests were real, Hamas would be shooting the protesters.
As I said to Kafr Dhimi above: I can be naive at times and suspect the "conspiracy crowd" may be correct. I would not put anything past Hamas. If they were complicit, though, there is always the possibility of things taking on a life of their own. But anyways.
Another very good analysis. But I have something I want to add about what I see as another cause of the problematic mindset that leads to all the violence. This comes out of a conversation with a fellow sexual revolutionary about our lives in San Francisco in the 1970s and relates to your comment about the 76 virgins promise, but was also inspired by my reading about the almost unbelievable cruelty that Palestinians engaged in during the home invasions and gang rapes in Israel.
Why, I wondered, did they torture the families as they did, forcing the family members to watch as they killed them slowly one by one? And why did they sexually mutilate the bodies of their victims even after they were dead? I think it's because the way they live is horribly sexually frustrating.
I remember how, in the early 1980s ugly conservatives with dysfunctional marriages and families took great pleasure in the deaths of sexually free people at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. I saw more of this sort of jealous meanness when I went undercover in the Oregon Citizens alliance, a USA group that opposed Gay Marriage. What struck me most then was a letter in the voters' handbook that I later quoted in one of my own books (I was an academic researcher in Sexuality Studies.) The writer launched into a tirade about her view that all books that made girls think lesbianism was acceptable must be removed from schools and libraries because otherwise there would soon be no more human race. She went on and on about how repulsive men are and how they have nothing in common with women and ended by saying that if any woman had the option to marry a nice clean pretty woman who loved to sew and cook, she would never marry a "smelly, ugly" man who lived to watch sports on TV. You may laugh, but many women in the organization confided similar views to me.
Now let's take a moment to think about what's been reported in Gaza for decades by all sorts of organizations concerned with sexual freedom. Women are often forced into arranged marriages, frequently as young teens and sometimes as children, families and communities push women to have as many children as possible, husbands decide if the wife can use birth control and if so what kind, abortion is allowed only to save the life of the mother, homosexuals are killed, as are "promiscuous" women. Aargh! It's worse than the 1950s. Anyone who grew up then, as I did, probably recalls how unhappy most marriages were and how much of the rage caused by sexual frustration was a part of everyday life. In Gaza a happy, sexually fulfilling marriage must be nearly impossible for any but men devoid of empathy, men who dehumanize their own partners and have never experienced anything except fearful submission from a woman. Yet people like this often secretly long for mutually pleasurable romantic sexual experiences and feel cheated that they have never had one. And even more cheated that they have the burden of providing for children who exist only because their parents were required by their belief system to produce them.
No wonder then that when they see Jewish families they want to grind us into the dust. We are people from a group historically famous for prioritizing sexual pleasure (even the Romans said this about us) and love. We typically love and indulge our children. We typically support sexual freedom and are disproportionately represented among those who see sex and love as the desirable antidote to all things deathly. (Even look at Freud on the battle between Eros and Thanatos -- such a Jewish vision.) When they came into homes where the children were loved and wanted not as future martyrs to a cause but for themselves, the living expressions of their parents' love and elders who cherished and tried to protect their children, they must have been driven crazy with envy.
In my view, the change in their mindset will have to be accompanied by a movement away from their sex negativity, hatred of women, and view of children as objects to be used to show their holy victimization, into the recognition that sexual freedom is a gift not a crime.
Wow. So much stuff here. Repression of sexuality almost always leads to dystopic human responses, individually and collectively, I think. The repression of more than half the population has other, different but equal or greater catastrophic power. I have dm'd you to discuss more ...
There is this pernicious, annoying argument that the west is single-mindedly obsessing about Palestine because of its own "complicity" in it, which is a non-starter on multiple levels, but especially in the sense that on the contrary, foreign interference is the only thing that could possibly keep this conflict alive for as long as it has, and UNRWA's role here is beyond question. The anti-Israel crowd complains about complicity in terms of sending weapons and so on, but never about complicity in terms of funding the education system that created this society.
Then, this also ignores the west's role in, oh, India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, the current violence in DRC... or that human rights are not about who is guilty, but about humans... or that the "complicity" in Israel's existence and military power is complicity in a good thing, whereas when the dream comes true and Israel falls, I doubt that anyone will seek to do anything for the women and children of what would inevitably be yet another human-rights-deficient clepto-theocracy.
I am sceptical and would not be surprised if this was initiated by Hamas to change the narrative about Gazan civilians. It fits their M.O perfectly.
Only way these innocent Gazans are protesting is with the blessing and encouragement of Hamas otherwise they’d be dead. The spies that they executed today were just another layer of taqiyah.
No disagreement from me
I can be very naive at times. Several people have made this case and it makes sense.
I wouldn't put anything past them. But I do see it as a ray of hope. Tiny, but a ray.
Hat doffed to your irrepressible optimism sir
Hahaha. It's rare. Usually I smell flowers and look for the coffin.
Brilliant phrase
I stole it from that old antisemite Mencken.
Nicely purloined
Someone shared an Instagram post about this very thing with me. Nothing happens in Gaza without the orchestration and control of Hamas.
Well said. The people pushing back on this, ignoring it, or rewriting it are perhaps more dangerous than Hamas. We have to amplify this movement and promote the internal Palestinian opposition to terror as much as possible.
💯
There is no future for Gaza and Gazans, including no reconstruction of communities, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, without the complete elimination of Hamas and the various other political Islamist jihadist entities that threaten Israel.
This is the plain fact of what was achieved by the bestial attack of 7 October, 2023.
It may take another year, or two years or three for this plain fact to dawn on the people of Gaza, who massively and joyously celebrated the attack in the days afterwards.
The people of Gaza will have to conclude en masse that their short, medium and long-term interests no longer lie with the Islamist fantasy of eliminating the State of Israel and killing the Jews (both the majority of Israeli Jews who are indigenous to the region, or those who are immigrants from further afield) or driving them all away from Israel or into the sea.
In the meantime, the military and political figures of Hamas, PIJ and other terrorist organizations will continue to be eliminated, as they deserve.
Times of Israel podcast worth listening to from 17:15 onwards:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/daily-briefing-mar-26-day-537-gazans-rise-up-against-hamas-the-end-of-the-beginning/
Exactly.
I agree with your comments on total reeducation being the critical element for change. I would add that they need to be removed from the Gaza Strip permanently. Ideally, the people should bring down Hamas from within, but if this is legit, why isn’t Hamas wiping out the « protesters? » The putrid Palestinian propaganda we’ve seen so far gives me pause in believing the rallies are genuine. Ideology and religion drives the population and Hamas and I do not think it will ever be eradicated, only managed very carefully with great watchfulness and strength. Can a leopard can his spots? But they can dye them to look different if required for survival.
Much to ponder. Can a leopard change its spots? No. But these are not spots ... they are incitement that have turned generations into jihadis. As I said, if Palestinians started teaching their kids to live in peace today, we might have peace in a generation or two. That's a longterm commitment. But there isn't really any other choice.
I have to admit, I’m with the conspiracy crowd who think that these protests are being staged by Hamas so as to fool westerners into thinking that there really is a groundswell of opposition to Hamas, which will result in said westerners pressuring Israel into stopping its latest offensive. My view is that if the protests were real, Hamas would be shooting the protesters.
As I said to Kafr Dhimi above: I can be naive at times and suspect the "conspiracy crowd" may be correct. I would not put anything past Hamas. If they were complicit, though, there is always the possibility of things taking on a life of their own. But anyways.
Another very good analysis. But I have something I want to add about what I see as another cause of the problematic mindset that leads to all the violence. This comes out of a conversation with a fellow sexual revolutionary about our lives in San Francisco in the 1970s and relates to your comment about the 76 virgins promise, but was also inspired by my reading about the almost unbelievable cruelty that Palestinians engaged in during the home invasions and gang rapes in Israel.
Why, I wondered, did they torture the families as they did, forcing the family members to watch as they killed them slowly one by one? And why did they sexually mutilate the bodies of their victims even after they were dead? I think it's because the way they live is horribly sexually frustrating.
I remember how, in the early 1980s ugly conservatives with dysfunctional marriages and families took great pleasure in the deaths of sexually free people at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. I saw more of this sort of jealous meanness when I went undercover in the Oregon Citizens alliance, a USA group that opposed Gay Marriage. What struck me most then was a letter in the voters' handbook that I later quoted in one of my own books (I was an academic researcher in Sexuality Studies.) The writer launched into a tirade about her view that all books that made girls think lesbianism was acceptable must be removed from schools and libraries because otherwise there would soon be no more human race. She went on and on about how repulsive men are and how they have nothing in common with women and ended by saying that if any woman had the option to marry a nice clean pretty woman who loved to sew and cook, she would never marry a "smelly, ugly" man who lived to watch sports on TV. You may laugh, but many women in the organization confided similar views to me.
Now let's take a moment to think about what's been reported in Gaza for decades by all sorts of organizations concerned with sexual freedom. Women are often forced into arranged marriages, frequently as young teens and sometimes as children, families and communities push women to have as many children as possible, husbands decide if the wife can use birth control and if so what kind, abortion is allowed only to save the life of the mother, homosexuals are killed, as are "promiscuous" women. Aargh! It's worse than the 1950s. Anyone who grew up then, as I did, probably recalls how unhappy most marriages were and how much of the rage caused by sexual frustration was a part of everyday life. In Gaza a happy, sexually fulfilling marriage must be nearly impossible for any but men devoid of empathy, men who dehumanize their own partners and have never experienced anything except fearful submission from a woman. Yet people like this often secretly long for mutually pleasurable romantic sexual experiences and feel cheated that they have never had one. And even more cheated that they have the burden of providing for children who exist only because their parents were required by their belief system to produce them.
No wonder then that when they see Jewish families they want to grind us into the dust. We are people from a group historically famous for prioritizing sexual pleasure (even the Romans said this about us) and love. We typically love and indulge our children. We typically support sexual freedom and are disproportionately represented among those who see sex and love as the desirable antidote to all things deathly. (Even look at Freud on the battle between Eros and Thanatos -- such a Jewish vision.) When they came into homes where the children were loved and wanted not as future martyrs to a cause but for themselves, the living expressions of their parents' love and elders who cherished and tried to protect their children, they must have been driven crazy with envy.
In my view, the change in their mindset will have to be accompanied by a movement away from their sex negativity, hatred of women, and view of children as objects to be used to show their holy victimization, into the recognition that sexual freedom is a gift not a crime.
Wow. So much stuff here. Repression of sexuality almost always leads to dystopic human responses, individually and collectively, I think. The repression of more than half the population has other, different but equal or greater catastrophic power. I have dm'd you to discuss more ...
Fascinating and unexpected discussion. Thank you both.
If you want to see more significant anti Hamas activities from Palestinians, keep blocking the humanitarian aid.
Change*