Hamas and Israel: So who do the far left support? By Greg Sheridan.
Hamas … murdered more than 700 Israelis, almost all of them civilians, and took more than 100 hostages. …
It’s worth remembering that under Australian law, both Hamas and Hezbollah are designated and proscribed terrorist groups, and it’s illegal for Australians to offer them any material support.
Hamas has always been indifferent to the suffering of its own civilians. When it first came to power, Hamas specialised in throwing Palestinians who politically disagreed with it off the top of buildings. It also used wide and severe punishments for Palestinians who were gay. …
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times has pointed out that Qatar has given Hamas more than $US1bn in aid in the past decade. Much other aid has been given as well. This money could have been used to build schools and hospitals and universities. In the absence of constant terror attacks, Israel would have had every incentive to facilitate economic development in Gaza.
Provoking a war:
But like all terrorists, Hamas doesn’t want anything to get better. It benefits from things getting worse. The presence of so many civilian Israeli hostages will make Israel’s operations in Gaza excruciating. But clearly Hamas wants Israel to undertake a major ground operation.
The question is: why? It may feel that it can inflict heavy losses on the Israel Defence Forces in the course of such operations. It may also calculate that if it absorbs tremendous Israeli military resources in the south, this will open up an opportunity for the even better equipped Hezbollah to attack Israel in the north.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, both Hamas and Hezbollah are not only supplied and funded by Iran but effectively co-ordinated, and to some extent directed, by Iran.
The Biden administration in the US has warned Hezbollah not to attack. But the Biden administration recently paid Iran $US6bn ($9.4bn) as part of its effort to woo Iran and to get US hostages released.
Biden’s policy towards Iran has been intensely counter-productive. US influence in the Middle East has declined. However, the US has been fast and clear that it will provide every support to Israel. This will be difficult, though, as it’s already at full stretch providing military resources to Ukraine.
What if war goes global?
Perhaps the gravest failure of the Biden administration, along with all other allied governments, including especially Australia, has been to fail to ramp up the industrial production of ammunition and weapons in the face of the Ukraine war. The Western arsenal has been gravely depleted, while China, Iran and North Korea have not fired a single munition.
The Australian Greens (by Alexi Demetriadi):
The NSW Greens posted on X on Monday afternoon proclaiming their support for the [Palestinian rally at he Sydney Opera House].
Also on Monday, Greens MP Jenny Leong, in a response to a post by federal Defence Minister Richard Marles calling the attacks “unprovoked”, criticised him, as well as a decision to light up the Opera House in the Israeli flag.
“Unprovoked?! This is a disgraceful statement from Defence Minister Richard Marles,” Ms Leong said. “It is also appalling that tonight the Opera House will be lit up in support of Israel — what about all of the Palestinian lives lost since occupation?”
Joining the long tradition of saying the victim provoked the war. Like Ukraine 2022, Poland 1939, and perhaps the upcoming Taiwan 2028.
(And Russia 1941? The exception that proves the rule, apparently. That war really was provoked by Russia. Russia was planning to invade and take over western Europe, and had been massing troops and equipment for months along the border with German Poland. The Germans found out and beat them to the punch by two weeks. This is heavily suppressed in the English speaking world, whose telling of history is dominated by left wing professors (who also say socialist Hitler was “right wing,” and don’t went to admit his role in saving western Europe from communist dictatorship). But it is relatively well known elsewhere. See here or here. Search on “Suvorov germany russia 1941”.)
Then there is the puzzling failure of Israeli intelligence to see it coming, leading to the thought that maybe they “let” it happen. Seems unlikely, given the scale of Israeli civilian casualties. From CDR Salamander:
It appears Israel has suffered 700 killed in the first attack, other reports state almost 100 are assumed kidnapped.
By geographic size, Israel is a little smaller than New Jersey, In population it has a population of 9.34 million souls – also close to New Jersey. …
To use round numbers, the USA has a population of 330 million.
On 911, the USA lost almost 3,000 souls.
The attack on Israel from Gaza this weekend, if scaled up by population, would be the same as if the USA had 24,669 people killed not by aircraft turned in to flying napalm, but by roving terrorist death squads, with an untold number of women and small children kidnapped and taken back across the border. 24,669.
Scaled up to USA proportions — that 100 kidnapped and taken back to Gaza to be subjected to horrors you really don’t want to hear the details of — about 3,500 kidnapped.
What would the USA do in such circumstances?
However, let’s see what comes to light and what happens in the next few months.
