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.
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Total nonsense.
It is reported that the ICC is considering war crimes charges against Netanyahu and others.
There is genocide intent.
“Israel is making a concerted effort to head off feared plans by the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials, an Israeli government source told The Times of Israel on Sunday.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-working-to-block-feared-icc-arrest-warrants-against-pm-others-over-gaza-war/
I find both the rush to rally to Israel’s cause by Toby and others on the ‘centre right’, as well, albeit to a greater extent, the rush to villify Israel by the usual suspects on the left as well as the ‘alt right’ (see unz dot com for a selection of vile anti-semitism), curious. Whatever the true situation is, this is a foreign matter that should be completely alien to the Western body politic. The pro-palestinians body are largely comprised of foreigners. The pro-Israel side is, shall we say, not entirely uninfluenced by jewish interests.
I understand Israel’s response. If something of comparable magnitude was done to the UK I’d like to think we’d be equally robust (we wouldn’t be of course). I also don’t relish the idea of young children being killed by Israeli bombs. Some might say that Hamas had the support of 90% of the population, and of course they’d have a point.
As for the article itself, I’m as wary of Israel propaganda as I am of Hamas’s. But one does wonder what Israel actually think it will achieve. Even if they kill every single one of the Hamas commanders new ones will arise in short order.
What would you have Israel do?
The geniuses want Israel to disappear – ‘from the river to the sea’, ‘remember Khaybar’. Even if the Muslim Jihad emanating out of Gaza killed every single Israeli these ‘moralists’ would blame the Jews and then add that some Jews still existed in New York, Paris, London etc and were fomenting war crimes against the non-existing ‘Palestinians’ ie Muslims who advocate Jihad. They too must be exterminated.
What can be done?
It’s too late to give back the property and land stolen even when as has been captured on film an Israeli says to the previous Palestinian owner, ‘if I hadn’t stole it someone else would have’.
The gall is almost beyond comprehension except that many of us have seen the same behaviour in the school playground when petty theft and bullying occurs, and suffered the same incomprehension.
Only now the stakes may well be catastrophically high.
Perhaps Israel would change tack and not try to drag it’s sponsors into a war, thereby taking us down with them.
A balanced position that is refreshing. There is room for criticism on both sides, like Neil Oliver should interview Douglas Murray instead of just George Galloway, and the DS should take more interest in the events that lead up to oct the 7th, like how Hamas had such an easy ride in one of the most defended places in the world. I find that suspicious.
Oliver has lost a lot of credibility with his love of the Muslim Jihad.
3 major Muslim wars against the Israeli state, endless Intifada and Jihad strikes, many, many thousands dead since 1947.
Galloway is a socialist- Muslim loving lunatic best left to talk to himself in a padded room.
I was amazed to see the following information which casts your description of events since 1947 in a distinctly different light. I find Zionists who criticise Israel particularly interesting.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, revered in his time in Israel was a scholar and a jewish Israeli zionist from Europe who described Israel’s conduct in the “occupied territories” as “Judeo-Nazi.”
I don’t think you can call Leibowitz a “Muslim loving lunatic” though his words may be difficult to digest.
“The pro-palestinians body are largely comprised of foreigners.”
What is meant by this. Foreigners in the sense of non Palestinians ?
All I see are communists. Communists everywhere! This has nothing to do with Palestine, by the way. I hope everyone is well aware of that by now. It’s like the mass psychosis we’d see within a cult. And the parents are paying 90,000 dollars per year for this.
”The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” James Lindsay
”Some of the signs say “pro-Palestine”, “ceasefire now” and “end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world’s leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America.
Many of the signs call for “revolution.” These are not directed against Israel, but rather against America, American Jews and all other Western democracies. The war in Gaza, started by Hamas on October 7, has provided the most recent excuse for anarchists, revolutionaries and America-haters to organize and recruit young people, many of whom have no idea what they are marching for or against. They know that many of their professors support the radical agenda.
For the most part, the groups protesting are comprised of four elements: the first consists of Arab and Muslim haters of Israel and Jews, who see this as an opportunity to call for the end of the nation-state of the Jewish people and the substitution of a Muslim caliphate or a radical Arab state; the second consists of old line radicals, anarchists, communists and America-haters who use any opportunity to seek to essentially overthrow Western democracies; the third are the organizers who stand ready to obtain funding and organizational logistics for well-planned systematic protests; and the fourth are the “useful idiots” who are recruited by the professors, the organizers and others.
Most of these young people have little or no knowledge of the substantive issues. They simply want to be part of current protest movements, which are popular on campuses and among many of their peers. It is this last group that is most troubling, because many of its members are good and decent people who are being led into dangerous territory by their elders. They are even more dangerous than the first three groups, because many of them come from influential backgrounds and may well become future leaders. The other groups tend to include mostly marginalized outsiders.”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20600/us-campuses-incubating-terrorism
“Most of these young people have little or no knowledge of the substantive issues”.
“Today TikTok is the big driver of the truth about the genocide of Gaza, and that’s why the majority of 18 to 24 year old Americans support the Palestinian resistance, which is a shocking amazing and wonderful statistic. And that’s being driven primarily by TikTok which does not impose Zionist censorship and shadow banning and algorithm tweaking. All the other American sites do. They can’t keep a complete lid on truthful information about Gaza but they can spin the whole conversation in such a way that it covers up the depth of (Zionist) depravity.
The hasbara trolls don’t rule TikTok and the reason for that is that they’re only so prominent on these other platforms because the owners of the platforms make sure that they are. If you have a platform that doesn’t give the hasbara trolls special privileges, then they shrink down to the actual percentage of real human beings that support that line, which is very, very small.”
https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/p/jfk-911-the-media-gaza-unitarianism?publication_id=314817&post_id=143049183&isFreemail=true&r=1ninci&triedRedirect=true
There are now literally thousands of online postings from Israeli soldiers – on Tiktok, some also on YT and especially Telegram – that show the destruction and desecration of Gazan & West Bank homes and infrastructure, spraying sewage over streets, blowing up and setting fire to food trucks, the t
heftacquisition of mementos, the rounding up of manyciviliansHamas terrorists – young, old, male, female – and in some cases theirmurder, accidental deaths, amongst many otheratrocitiesmilitary wins. They are as freely available as those from the ‘other side’ so if their cause is the more legal, just and righteous, why aren’t these clips encouraging ever more support and encouragement, not less and less? Really makes you wonder, doesn’t it.It may indeed be the case that things have moved on a bit since Bertrand Russell urged the powers that be, in his last public statement before dying, to recognise Israel’s strategy of committing atrocities on the Palestinians until such point as its sponsors and the world media could stomach no more and the US ordered it to stop; and then after a ‘decent’ interval starting to commit atrocities again.
Ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
But I think you pack in rather too many premises.
Moshe Dayan, an Israeli war hero of yesteryear knew why they are demonstrating.
“What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.”
“Most of these young people have little or no knowledge of the substantive issues. They simply want to be part of current protest movements, which are popular on campuses and among many of their peers. It is this last group that is most troubling, because many of its members are good and decent people who are being led into dangerous territory by their elders.”
You appear to feel betrayed by people of your own culture who exercise their ability to think and implicitly acknowledge that the danger is that they are intelligent.
An extraordinary number of these people are actually Jews. This you must find literally mind boggling.
Israel is fighting an existential war.
Let Hamas survive, which is committed to her destruction and death of every Jew, and the whole cycle repeats.
The IDF has the power, the Israeli people have the will and they really don’t give two hoots for what the haters in these comments, university campuses, or globalist technocrats think.
Israel has a 3500 year old title deed to the Land. Watch them enforce it.
I would be interested to know where you acquired the right to speak on behalf of the entire population of Israel.
It’s clear from numerous Israeli sources that there is not a unified opinion or unanimous support for their government.
Nowhere have Hamas stated a commitment to the’death of every jew’.
Bertrand Russell observed a repetitious cycle but it was and is that of Israel’s committing of atrocities until its sponsors and the world press can stomach no more. Then the US tells it to stop. After a while, during which no time is lost in intimidation of Palestinians further ensuring a desire for freedom to be expressed violently, Israel again begins its atrocities until its sponsors can no longer stomach the….
It must be dispiriting for you to read an Israeli warrior say the following:
Ami Ayalon, ex Shin Bet chief and an Admiral in the Israeli navy when asked some days ago what he would do if he were Palestinian replied he would fight for his freedom.
When asked how dirty he would fight he raised an eyebrow, grimaced slightly, looked hard at the camera and said he would do whatever he thought necessary for his freedom.
Never let a crisis go to waste. In the West Bank:
“Israel has seized the opportunity to intensify the occupation, with mass arrests of Palestinians, hundreds killed, a host of new illegal settler outposts and roads. Shepherds expelled from their homes, violent settlers rampaging in uniform. All under the aegis of the war”
“What’s the direct connection between harvesting olives in the West Bank and the war in Gaza? There is none, but the war has apparently presented a great opportunity for the settlers and their collaborators in the government. An opportunity West Bank settlers were just waiting for: to abuse the Palestinians with impunity, to make their lives intolerable, to dispossess and humiliate them until they flee or are driven out. Maybe that’s why the settlers appeared to be particularly joyful this week during the Purim festival?”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/twilight-zone/2024-03-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/while-war-rages-in-gaza-the-west-bank-has-undergone-a-metamorphosis/0000018e-8d23-d9a4-a7bf-cd7b2c270000
“must smash an enemy morally and physically”…..How must one do that!
“The IDF has used drone and satellite imagery to detect the presence of civilians who have not evacuated to avoid hitting them”……Not all were avoided. I have seen footage as I’m sure many have of people being targeted by Drones. There is also helmet cam footage of unarmed citizens getting shot in house raids. I am not excusing Hamas by pointing this out.
Excellent discussion and explanation from Michael Hudson of Israel’s methodic process of genocide here: https://michael-hudson.com/2024/04/gaza-the-strategic-imperative/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.
First of all, you isolate the Palestinians and strategic hamlets. That’s what Gaza had already been turned into for the last 15 years. It’s been carved up into districts requiring electronic passes from one sector to another to go into Israel, to go to Jerusalem, or to go to Israel for jobs to work.
The aim all along has been to kill them. Or first of all, to make life so unpleasant for them that they’ll emigrate. That’s the easy way. Why would anyone want to stay in Gaza when what’s happening to them is what’s happening today? You’re going to leave. But if they don’t leave, you’re going to have to kill them, ideally by bombing because that minimizes the domestic casualties …
So, the genocide that you’re seeing today is an explicit policy, and that was a policy of the forefathers, the founders of Israel. The idea of a land without people was a land without Arabs in it, the land without non-Jewish people …
For the United States, what they wanted was the oil reserves in the Middle East … But they realized that for Israel to get by with the money that it needed for its balance of payments, it had to be in a partnership with the United States.
So, what you’re seeing today isn’t simply the work of one man, of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s the work of the team that President Biden has put together. It’s the team of Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor Blinken, and the whole deep state, the whole neocon group behind them, Victoria Nuland, and everyone …
But as the United States learned in the Vietnam War, populations protest, and the U.S. population protested against the Vietnam War. What the Biden administration wants to avoid is the situation that President Johnson had in 1968. Any hotel, any building that he went to, to give a speech for his re-election campaign, there were crowds shouting, LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? …
Well, to prevent this kind of embarrassment … the first people you have to kill are the journalists. If you’re going to permit genocide, you have to realize that you don’t want the domestic U.S. population or the rest of the world to oppose the U.S. and Israel. You kill the journalists. And for the last, ever since the October 2nd Al-Aqsa event, you’ve had one journalist per week killed in Israel. That’s part of it.
… So you minimize the visible bombing. Well, the line of least resistance is to starve them. And that’s been the Jewish, the Israeli policy since 2008 …
And so Israel has been especially focusing after the journalists, after the hospitals, you bomb the greenhouses, you bomb the trees, you sink the fishing boats that have supplied food to the population. And then you aim at fighting the United Nations relief people … If you can make a very conspicuous bombing of aid people, then you will have other aid suppliers afraid to go …
Well, the United States is fully behind this. And to help starve the Gazan people, Biden immediately, right after the ICJ finding of plausible genocide, withdrew all funding from the United Nations relief agencies. The idea, again, the hope was to prevent the United Nations from having the money to supply food.
So when the United States is now trying to blame one person, and Biden goes on a television recorded call with Netanyahu saying, please be humane when you’re dropping your bombs, do it in a humane way. That’s purely for domestic consumption. It’s amazing how nakedly hypocritical all this.
So I think I want to make it clear that this is not simply an Israeli war against Hamas. It’s an American-backed Israeli war. Each of them have their own objectives. Israel’s objective is to have a land without non-Jewish population.
https://off-guardian.org/2024/03/21/gaza-the-end-of-the-jewish-joy-ride/
There really is no Genocide.
Lol.
He is right, it is not genocide, it is just a plain old massacre. So that is alright then.
“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”.
This is mendacious rubbish re the legality of the demonstrations and if the quotes are verifiable the tenor of the first will be extremely rare.
Columbia University staff have come out in support of the students right to demonstrate because they are legally entitled to do so.
A Jewish Prof there has made it quite clear that she supports the students right to protest and also feels no sense of intimidation because eif being Jewish.
At another university, name in fog, the Police have stated there was no danger to property and people were well behaved. Hence the university governors were wasting police time and resources.
The author is contemptible. Students have a legal right to demonstrate in the US.
Finally re Oct 7th I submit what Ami Ayalon, a man of war, had to say in a recent interview.
Ami Ayalon, ex Shin Bet chief and an Admiral in the Israeli navy when asked some days ago what he would do if he were Palestinian replied he would fight for his freedom.
When asked how dirty he would fight he raised an eyebrow, grimaced slightly, looked hard at the camera and said he would do whatever he thought necessary for his freedom.