Thank God, the last 20 living hostages have now been released and returned to Israel, 737 days after they were taken hostage. Remember the hostages who did not survive, who did not come home. Remember the hostages who came home, only to learn that the rest of their family were murdered. Remember the people who were murdered and raped on October 7th.
Remember the people who justified, applauded and supported these acts of terror and barbarism.
Trump made this happen. For this, I thank him.
If only October 7th never happened. If only the hostages were never taken. If only the hostages were released swiftly. If only all the hostages were returned alive. If only Hamas hadn’t started a war that ended with so many deaths and so much pain and destruction. But it did happen and it took 737 days for the last of the living hostages to be released. Am Yisroel chai.
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Thank you.
I celebrate their return.
But, being the pessimist that I am, I wonder how long it will be before there are more clashes between Israel and Hamas.
Golda Meir.
“We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children.”
If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.
― Benjamin Netanyahu
Scott Greenfeld: I have followed your column for many years. While at times I took issue with some of your views , on the whole I have felt you have remained loyal to the genuine liberalism of the 60s, a liberalism that sought to extend the neutral principles of Justice and fairness to all people whether you agreed with their political positions or not. During the years extending until today when progressives on the left and conservatives on the right bend the principles of Justice if it serves to advance their causes, you have stood firm in resisting this tide. I mention all this because this genuine 60s liberalism was combined with unwavering support for the safety and well being of the State of Israel, which of corse did not preclude criticizing particular policies of particular Israeli governments. I am a religious Jew and you are a secular one. But your powerful and eloquent column today shows me that you have kept and continue to keep the faith. Thank you and am Yisrael hai.
“The people of Israel live.”
[Ed. Note: Just a reminder, this is what I have to deal with.]
“If only October 7th never happened.”
SHG your post and the comments on it that I have seen so far have made me furious hence the tone for which, I do not apologize. However I do hope you read even if you then trash it.
You are not looking at everything that has happened between Zionist Jews and Palestinians between the last decade of the nineteenth century and today.
“If only the Nakba had never happened.”
If only the Zionists in 1948 had not rid Palestine of 765,000 Palestinians by killing 15,000 and expelling 750,000 then stealing their land and their movable property. In 1948 the term genocide had recently entered the lexicon courtesy of Raphael Lemkin who was not thinking of contemporaneous Nazi actions but those of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians between 1914 and 1918. The term “ethnic cleansing” was unknown until the break up of Yugoslavia in the nineties so the actions of the proto Israelis were not recognized as the crime that they were.
I would respect Zionists if in 1948 they had rounded up and executed every one of the approximately one million Palestinians in mandate Palestine. In my view the 15,000 dead were the lucky ones, they were out of their misery but what happened to the 750,000 who were expelled and their descendants? They were confined in squalid refugee camps in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and The West Bank having no citizenship rights and no rights to education and to work at decent jobs in the host countries, and then in 1967 Israel followed them into Gaza and The West Bank and in the eighties into Lebanon.
There are worse things than a complete, quick and relatively merciful genocide and one of them is the failure to complete a genocide when it becomes inevitable leaving a marginalized underclass of despised paupers whose conditions of life are far below those of legitimate citizens.
My nation Australia is like Israel a colonial settler state and Australian bleeding hearts are wringing their hands about The Gap between the life conditions of the remaining indigenous descendants and the Australian majority, we try this and we try that and nothing works.
Nothing works for three reasons:-
1/ We hate them and want them gone, their existence makes us uncomfortable about being aware of things that our predecessors and ancestors did to their ancestors;
2/ Most of them form an underclass and their behaviors and conditions of life are normal for members of an underclass and we despise them not just for being of an inferior race but because they are an underclass;
3/ They are bad people and Christian (or any other) morality makes it impossible to do anything to remedy their underclass status as it would involve spending resources on them in way that would benefit them while spending much more on law, prisons and police is very moral.
Unfortunately the latter method does not work, heaping more misery on the already miserable does not change behavior. Of course respectable people reason that punishment would prompt us to change so it should work on them but it does not, some just become victims of learned helplessness others see punishment as reward because it indicates that they have pis*ed off the respectable and that is something they very much like and for them is worth jail time (maybe a lot of it) as their lives in freedom are of little value to them.
A cost benefit analysis on attempting to rehabilitate an underclass as against inflicting righteous punishment must not use raw dollars, it must use morally adjusted values involving a fudge factor. Let us consider a fudge factor of 10 then each dollar spent on doing good to them must be counted as $10.00 and each dollar spent making them miserable should be counted as $0.10. Rehabilitation is a BIG NO NO!!
One thing is that we Australians perceive the indigenous as inferior and our perceptions are correct. Most of them are manifestly inferior, their culture is underclass culture, their behavior is underclass behavior they are ill educated, incompetent and many are so brain damaged that they are incapable of obeying the law or being other than wastes of space and oxygen many because of FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder). But why do they have FASD? Answer because their mothers drink while pregnant. But why do their mothers drink? They do not drink because it make them feel good but because it stops them being aware of their miserable lives and is an easier barrier to climb over than suicide. The more sensible either suicide or use less harmful drugs, marijuana, opiates or illegally obtained prescription drugs.
How did they become such a pathetic hopeless collection of dregs of society? Were their ancestors this hopeless during the 40,000 or 50,000 or 65,000 years that they occupied the hostile Australian continent? No! This happened post the British colonization on 26 January 1788 and it did not happen immediately. Colonial and Australian hostility increased over time. From 1788 to the eighteen eighties the indigenous in the Sydney area had social relations with the colonists, but then an Aborigines Protection Act was passed and they were rounded up and confined to a concentration camp near Botany Bay. In the rest of the continent conflict over land and quickly reduced them to marginalized slave laborers and when it became necessary to pay them wages they were sacked and the jobs reserved for White Men.
One thing that is a credit to the Zionists is that they have not yet reduced the remnant Palestinians to the level of abject misery of indigenous native of Australia or The Western Hemisphere.
For the Palestinians October 7 was a very little bit of overdue pay back for 1948, 1967 and everything after that. They see Jews as Jews see Amalek. If I were a Palestinian I would not want to behead Jewish babies because that would not be cruel enough. I would not want to rape Jewish women because that would not do enough damage to their genitals. I would use a conical steel instrument with spines that would make subsequent procreation impossible. The allegations of oven baked and beheaded babies and raped women were atrocity propaganda normal in any war.
October 7 was a guerilla raid and guerillas do not have time to dawdle while oven baking or beheading infants and raping women. That not one of them did so surprises me.
Benjamin Netanyahu justified restarting the war in March as to force Hamas to release the hostages. Since March how many Palestinians have died to force the release of the 20? Yes we should welcome their release and the pause in killing but should be extremely angry about the dead Palestinians Netanyahu believes were justified to achieve this.
Certainly something changed that got this surprising result but what? Mossad still has the Epstein client list so what has loosened Netanyahu’s control of Trump?
I am not optimistic that this represents real change. Israel is still Israel, Neanyahu is still Netanyahu and he still needs Ben Gvir and Smotrich and Israel still wants all the land from the Nile to The Euphrates as promised to it by God Almighty and the political elites in the Western Euro American Empire are still deluded into thinking that they control Israel rather than the other way around.
This calls for a special donation to the cause. Nobody should have to deal with insanity like this.
Carlyle Moulton.
“Benjamin Netanyahu justified restarting the war in March as to force Hamas to release the hostages. Since March how many Palestinians have died to force the release of the 20? Yes we should welcome their release and the pause in killing but should be extremely angry about the dead Palestinians Netanyahu believes were justified to achieve this.”
Robert Heinlein.
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.”
Should Israel have just forgotten about the 20 remaining *living* hostages that Hamas refused to release? There are only so many tools in the bag.
And I’m not all the keen on negotiating with terrorists in the first place. If you negotiate with people who kidnap hostages to use as bargaining chips, the only lesson is to kidnap more people to get more bargaining chips.
TL;DR
Do you think length was his big problem?
Emphasis added or emphasis retained?