As I write, students in universities across the U.S. are occupying their campuses in protest at what they consider to be Israel’s genocide against the Gazan people. Unlike the Met Police who freeze at the prospect of arresting pro-Palestine demonstrators guilty of breaching the peace, the American police have no such hang ups and are arresting protestors in large numbers for their illegal encampments. So far, around 120 students have been arrested at Columbia University alone.
What makes these illegal occupations particularly contemptible is the antisemitism of some of those taking part. Jewish students and university staff have been harassed with taunts of “Go back to Poland” and “October 7th is about to be every day for you”.
These barbs are not only revolting, they also display the monumental moral stupidity of those conducting this harassment. How can a person demonstrate against what they think is a genocide in Gaza whilst calling for the genocide of Jews? But what did we expect – irrationality is integral to extremism.
But there is also the empirical question of whether Israel’s actions in Gaza actually are a genocide. It is time to listen to an expert rather than students who mentally and emotionally are still in nappies. Enter John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point and a former infantry soldier of 25 years’ service.
In an article for Newsweek, Spencer, who studies and advises the American military on the kind of warfare in which Israel is currently engaged, namely urban warfare, argues that no other nation in history has shown as much concern to protect civilians as the Israeli Defence Force has done in Gaza. If the IDF were carrying out a genocide, civilians would be targeted too, but they are not. Yet still the international community does not acknowledge Israel’s concern for non-combatants and continues to scold it for failing to protect them. So exemplary has the IDF been in minimising civilian casualties, it is Spencer’s opinion that the U.S. ought to learn the IDF’s methods.
What is more remarkable according to Spencer is that Israel’s concern for Gazan civilians defies military orthodoxy regarding offensives. According to the theory and praxis of manoeuvre warfare, the attacker must smash an enemy morally and physically with surprise, overwhelming force and speed, and destroy political and military centres. Warning civilians to evacuate is forbidden as enemy forces would learn of the coming attack.
Yet this is what the IDF has done before almost every move it has made, thus ceding the advantage of surprise and allowing Hamas to relocate its ununiformed forces inside Gaza’s dense urban spaces where they can mingle with civilians and hide in their labyrinth of tunnels. Spencer confirms that Israel warned civilians in northern Gaza weeks in advance before launching its ground offensive. Israel also made over 70,000 phone calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left more than 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to warn civilians in that region to leave combat zones and to advise on where they should go and how to get there. Additionally, the IDF has used drones with speakers to exhort civilians to leave and has conducted frequent pauses of operations to allow any civilians who have not left battle zones to do so. These efforts resulted in an impressive evacuation of 85% of civilians in northern Gaza.
But we are not done yet. The IDF has given out its military maps to civilians so they can evacuate more safely. This is unprecedented in war. The IDF has used drone and satellite imagery to detect the presence of civilians who have not evacuated to avoid hitting them. Overseeing all these measures is the IDF civilian harm mitigation unit that is based close to the action in southern Israel. Even the ultra-liberal New York Times has reported in January that the rate of civilian casualties has steeply declined.
Spencer does not evaluate Israel’s motives for its unorthodox approach. These may be a combination of humanitarian concern, a determination to undercut Hamas’s anti-Israel propaganda, or an attempt at silencing Israel’s international critics, thereby preserving the recent rapprochement between Israel and leading Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia. Whatever the reasons, Israel’s concern for civilians is in marked contrast to Hamas’s gleeful massacre of civilians on October 7th.
It is not possible to know the true number of civilian deaths in Gaza. Spencer estimates from the sources he most trusts that 18,000 civilians have been killed. This is a tragedy, but when seen in the context of modern wars, is a remarkably low figure. The UN and the EU calculate that on average, 80-90% of deaths in modern war are those of civilians. As the IDF estimates that it has killed 13,000 Hamas terrorists, the percentage of all deaths in Gaza that are civilian is around 58%. That brings no comfort to the relatives of the dead, but it disproves the accusation of genocide made by Hamas’s useful idiots currently disrupting university life and threatening Jews.
First published on the New Conservative.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Why not posthumously honour Mengele whilst they are at it? The Royal Society has always been scientifically suspect having staunchly defended garbage like aether theory and being over run by the fixists pre ww2.
Ether exists. Space is full of particles. Einstein the Jewish wizard and fraud was completely wrong. So wrong he quietly inserted the ether back into the GTR in 1915 having taken it out to make his equations balance in the STR of 1905. Relativity is to put it nicely, utter bullshit.
Relativity is pretty well proven the atomic clock experiment as well as the gravitational shift to red of light are pretty robust. The quackery in physics came with the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which is palpable bs, IE the moon doesn’t exist till I look at it.
Agreed.
The big problem for the Copenhagen interpretation aside from the stupidity of observation determining probabilistically the state of a system is David Bohm’s deterministic version of QM.
And the problem is this – as a QM theory has been devised which is not probabilitistic but deterministic which works – which David Bohm’s does then that shows QM is really not about probabilities at all and trashes the Copehagen interpretation.
So Neils Bohr et al were really not as smart as they thought they were when they kept on trashing Einstein’s view that God does not play dice.
God might play dice but not with the laws of nature.
Bohmian Mechanics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Bohmian mechanics, which is also called the de Broglie-Bohm theory, the pilot-wave model, and the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, is a version of quantum theory discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927 and rediscovered by David Bohm in 1952.
…..
Bell did not establish the impossibility of a deterministic reformulation of quantum theory, nor did he ever claim to have done so. On the contrary, until his untimely death in 1990, Bell was the prime proponent, and for much of this period almost the sole proponent, of the very theory, Bohmian mechanics, that he supposedly demolished.
Bohmian mechanics is of course as much a counterexample to the Kochen-Specker argument for the impossibility of hidden variables as it is to the one of von Neumann. It is obviously a counterexample to any such argument. However reasonable the assumptions of such an argument may be, some of them must fail for Bohmian mechanics.
Why is the idea that at the instant of human observation that crystallises one state of a probability of any number of states stupid?
It is because every part of the universe is constantly interacting with every other part – all parts of the universe are constantly ‘observing‘ all other parts.
It is a modern scientific equivalent of the remarkable self-taught scientist and philosopher Margaret Lucas Cavendish’s inanimate awareness of matter [1623-1673] – Margaret Lucas Cavendish – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
So it therefore follows that there cannot be any number of probable states of any particular aspect of the universe. It is a self-watching self-aware system in an inanimate sense.
Well and bravely said! I’ve hardly ever heard anyone bold enough to tell the truth about Einstein the Plagiarist Fraud.
FerdIII it is instructive that ‘science’ abandons theories prematurely.
The Michelson-Morley experiment was not conclusive, showing approximately 25% of the expected 30m/s speed of an “aether wind” from Earth orbiting the Sun.
This anomaly went ignored for a century and more.
As you say, the aether was abandoned it is said because of Special Relativity.
Einstein accepted a new version to explain parts of General Relativity.
Nobel prize winner the late Professor Maurice Allais and the late Dr Robert Latham [latterly of the Blackett Laboratories, Imperial College, London] collaborated on investigating the anomalies with much unpublished research held by The Allais Foundation in Paris.
Latham was ridiculed by his Imperial College colleagues as “still believing in the aether” whereas in fact he was one of the most talented constructors of sensitive measuring apparatus in the world and that was part of his contributions to Professor Allais’ work. In addition, he was doing what a scientist should – checking and investigating anomalies.
He has sadly passed without his contributions to scientific inquiry being recognised – whilst as we see from DS the truly dreadful Anthony Fauci is honoured by what seem IMHO to be the now highly political supporters of globalist policies at the Royal Society.
Can these fraudsters really expect to get donations from Dr Gates et al if they don’t honour Fauci and Mann.
They honoured that idiot quack Saint Edward Jenner of the Stabbinations. He murdered thousands with his smallpox quackcine poison. 3 days before he died he admitted in a letter that people were injured and dying and he was ‘beset with difficulties’. He always talked about ‘needing money’. £3 million transferred by HMG to Jennings and friends. Thus began criminal pharma.
So why not a criminal like Fauci. AIDS – Rona and much else. He just bought a $18 million estate on the Potomac – a payment as the world’s greatest drug salesmen. NIAID was out of business until Fauci and Gallo concocted the AIDS scam (which used the PCR test scam).
Royal Society – has not much to do with real science. Another useless self congratulating entity of preening empty headed peacocks and criminals.
Apologies for being Off Topic (although Fauci is partly and mainly responsible for pushing vaccines so maybe not).
This is very relevant to the “Obesity Epidemic” topic a few days ago but until now I couldn’t find the link :-
https://vinuarumugham.substack.com/p/obesity-and-diabetes-are-vaccine
As far as Fauci’s Honour goes, look no further than the likes of Sir Tony Blair and our expert epidemiologist Sir John Edmunds.
No comment really needed as to why the establishment do this.
Fwiw though I think they do it just to take the piss (out of us, not them).
It’s to reinforce the establishment.
Don’t call it an Obesity epidemic for God’s sake, next we will have the WHO telling us its a pandemic and we must all stop eating anything except Billy boys bugs and lab produced gloop that they call fake meat.
“We, the true Royal Apostles and Prophets of Science™ discern the anointing of power on these worthy brethren, Anthony Fauci and Michael Mann, and by the laying on of our hands we decree and declare that they too are Apostles of Science whose authority is to be accepted by all the people, or be under the curse. Lo, we have spoken.”
To remind us all of who’s in charge. A simple psychological game of confusion and demoralisation.
Morning fellow sufferers , your succinct comments so far have this back slapping debacle covered
, can I just add the vision of “AIDS inducing Fauci” when he appeared wearing 3 different patterned face masks ! He was definitely mocking us !!
And Tedros was given a honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow…
I’ve posted this link before but in my humble opinion this is a useful perspective on Fauci and I’m sure the good people at the Royal Society have considered such evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KziNZARsv1s&t=13s
Fauci & The Communists
Why?
Because they’re all part of the Globalist Clerisy.
The Royal Society has been taken over by the politically-correct, just like every other institution.
Drumpf MAGA worshippers will be glad their hero’s “Warp Speed” vaccination tsar has been duly honoured.
It’s all a political pose, as you suggest. Anything with the word ‘Royal’ in its title needs to be regarded with the utmost suspicion, anyway
Let’s hope they’ll be able to visit Fauci in prison
Visit? They should be in the next cell over.
RIP Royal Society