Wes Streeting told Sky News: “One of the things the Home Secretary is looking at is, are we asking the police to focus on the right things?"
-Um yeah, would that be the same Home Secretary that actually asked the police to focus on arresting vicars, disabled people and octogenarians for holding up bits of cardboard? THAT Home Secretary? (and incidentally "Ed's" wife).
Seems obvious to me, as I sit here with my blood boiling over the fact that Beverly Hills idiot “educators “ have established a Jewish-American celebration/conflation month of some sort, schools obliged to fly the Israeli flag, which I assume awards accomplishments in ethnic cleansing or something similar. Why not just accuse Polanski and the Greens of failing to do likewise in the UK, an obvious route to anstisemitic hoopla, which could be seen as particularly embarrassing as an accusation of comparative incompetence re: the Trump administration in support of Israel.
Am I the only person in the U. S. who understands that there is a WIDE difference between the Jewish people (who are all over the world and many of whom are as appalled by Netanyahu & Co. as this WASP is) and Israelis who are citizens of the country Israel and some of whom seem suddenly very conflicted about how bad genocide is when their country is the one doing it, rather than the people to whom it is being done.
Hi Sooz Hall. re... "...and Israelis who are citizens of the country Israel and some of whom seem suddenly very conflicted about how bad genocide is when their country is the one doing it..."
.
"seem" is the operative term: I have observed, of late, a lot of my acquaintances making the same mistake: they observe hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets holding protests against Netanyahu and his government, demanding that they bring the Israeli soldiers out of Gaza and do a hostage swap, and they jump to the false conclusion that suddenly hundreds of thousands of Israelis are against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. NOPE. They're not.
.
I believe that I published an extensive note on this phenomenon recently. I will try to track it down and publish an elaborated form of it as an article shortly. The long and the short of this, however, is that the Israelis in the streets right now are overwhelmingly in favor of the genocide. They are simply opposed to the costs that the genocide is starting impose on the perpetrator. I.e. them. Such as the dead and maimed soldiers being sent home.
.
The fact is that the Israelis maintain a citizens' army. All of the citizens of Israel are obliged to spend time in their forces of occupation. So, their population is continuous with the army. All of them move back and forth, between the “civilian” population and the military population. (I know: some get exceptions, but not enough to interfere with the social consequences of this arrangement, which are manifold and impactful).
.
Basically, the Israeli population is indoctrinated from childhood within their school system, into militarism, fascism, apartheid, ethno-supremacism and hatred of every community around them – including the one they stole their land from: the Palestinians. Then, at young adulthood, they are conscripted into the army and indoctrinated further and deeply into these extremist homicidal views.
.
Then, these deeply indoctrinated young people, whose brains are still not fully formed (not until age 25, IIRC) are sent on military exercises into the occupied territories and given the opportunity to carry out a homicide or too (or many more, depending on their temperaments), some detention and torture of the occupied, and so on. That is, by and large, their military experience. Then they are sent back into the “civilian” population.
.
When Israeli citizens observe the evidence that their fellow occupation forces (the citizenry and the military are continuous, remember) post online the joys of their own atrocities on social media, the citizenry are delighted with these atrocities and they express their delight -- again, on social media.
.
Recently -- in June or July, IIRC, the Israeli citizens expressed their delight in genocide through a social sciences study that was reported in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, where something like 85% of the citizenry said they wholly supported the genocide (in fact, there are some reasons to conclude that is the conservative figure, and the percentage is much higher). That was a scientific study, with the usual social studies guiderails to assure accuracy, and it was reported in an Israeli newspaper of record.
.
So, public opinion in Israel did not widely reverse in the last 60 days. All the protests are expressing is that, although the Israeli citizens are delighted by the joys of genocide; they are not, however, delighted by the pains of genocide. They don't want to pay the costs that are being inflicted on their community (Israeli army <--> Israeli citizenry) by the forces of resistance behind the walls of Gaza.
.
I believe the number of Israeli reservists that have just been called up by the Netanyahu administration is on the order of 60,000, or thereabouts. That is the actual Israeli citizenry that are being called up. From among the 85% or more of the population who are gung-ho for genocide.
.
But now they are to lose their limbs and their lives to carry out that genocide? No thank you very much. They would much rather stay home. So, we are seeing hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets.
.
We observed the same phenomena, you may recall, when Israel launched its unprovoked war of aggression against Iran not so long ago. At first, the Israeli citizenry was ecstatic. As long as Iran was hammered by Israel, the Israeli citizenry was delighted, and said so. (By the way, the lead reporter at Haaretz, who was interviewed about this at the time, and is viewed as "liberal" by Israeli standards, also expressed great admiration and joy at Netanyahu's unprovoked attack on Iran when that war was launched by israel. Less so as the war progressed and the Israelis were hammered in their turn).
.
When, however, the Israeli citizens found that Iran could bite back, they became unhappy. And said so. Vociferously. This is a pattern. Not a change. Same then. Same now.
Certainly you’re not alone in this understanding, but there are far too many who, like the Beverly Hills crowd, can’t resist conflating Judaism and Israel (zionism), thereby, as Lynne points out, setting up the convenient “antizionism is antisemitism” trope, an equivalency, which true scholars of the Jewish religion reject as ludicrous. But that is a convenient point of victimhood for Israel and its supporters/defenders.
Most israelis are NOT Semites...they are european...they are also the most anti-semitic peoples on the planet...currently engaged in a genocide of Semites...
George Bernard Shaw once wrote that, after all the countries Britain colonized have been decolonized, Britain itself will need its own decolonization. I wonder if the foreshadowing of that process is not already underway ... a painful process to experience no doubt... but how else will the people of Britain come out from under the yoke of their own internal imperial colonial chains?
Hey RN have you been using this in debates about 'woke culture'?
"The joke’s enduring relevance is reflected in its application beyond religious satire—frequently referenced in debates about “woke culture,” political tribalism, and mass movements, where declarations of individuality often mask underlying group-think."
“The last thing we need is politicians who do the right thing “. Boom 💥💥💥Another brilliant demolition of alleged “democracy”. So much of your genius could be applied to the Australian government and Opposition , re both domestic and foreign policies . Thank you Laura 👍🏻
OK so perhaps Zack should have done something relatable to Ed BALLS, perhaps hypnotherapy to convince good old Ed his BALLS were large..er 😉 Or perhaps Starmer should stop being traumatized by his closet, or something along those lines. From across the pond, I wish we had a Zack Polansky instead of our current conservative and liberal clowns. 🇨🇦
It was that comment from Starmer that was the last straw for me. As a former human rights lawyer, he, more than anyone, should have known that using starvation as a weapon of war is both a war crime AND a crime against humanity. Of course he knew, making that one of the most reprehensible and disingenuous comments I've heard from ANY politician in recent years. I'm no lawyer but even I suspected as much and it didn't take much searching to discover that that was indeed the case. I had my doubts about Starmer from the start of his leadership but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, he's done nothing to assail my suspicions. Quite the opposite. I really don't understand what he hopes to achieve with his relentless pursuit of Reform voters, turning the Labour Party into Tory-lite. He will never convince Reform voters and in the meantime he's haemorrhaging Labour sympathisers. Labour have done one or two decent things but the bad things are overshadowing them to such an extent that they'll be completely forgotten. He's basing all his hopes on growth, but refuses to entertain even a customs union with the EU when rejoining would be the simplest, easiest way of achieving at least some of that. And there's his refusal to contemplate electoral reform. Maybe that's not such a big surprise considering he got less of the electorate's votes than Corbyn did in 2019, but it'll bite him come the next election. It's unlikely that any miraculous growth will happen in the next four years, especially not with that demented arse in the White House, intent on wrecking the world economy, so I don't see his popularity increasing. FPTP is the least democratic electoral system possible, it's high time we got rid of it.
Zack is exactly the type of new working class politician we need. And the old argument of "can't vote for them, they've no experience of running a government" falls completely flat after 25 years of the experts FUCKING IT ALL UP!! How about give peace and common sense a chance.
Polanski is an exciting contra- current to the disturbing drift to far right rhetoric of today’s politics . He seems personable, fearless and very articulate. I wonder though, how long it will take for the media to vilify him as not having an English enough sounding surname …
And in related news:
Wes Streeting told Sky News: “One of the things the Home Secretary is looking at is, are we asking the police to focus on the right things?"
-Um yeah, would that be the same Home Secretary that actually asked the police to focus on arresting vicars, disabled people and octogenarians for holding up bits of cardboard? THAT Home Secretary? (and incidentally "Ed's" wife).
Twisted, weird weird politicians eh.
Seems obvious to me, as I sit here with my blood boiling over the fact that Beverly Hills idiot “educators “ have established a Jewish-American celebration/conflation month of some sort, schools obliged to fly the Israeli flag, which I assume awards accomplishments in ethnic cleansing or something similar. Why not just accuse Polanski and the Greens of failing to do likewise in the UK, an obvious route to anstisemitic hoopla, which could be seen as particularly embarrassing as an accusation of comparative incompetence re: the Trump administration in support of Israel.
Am I the only person in the U. S. who understands that there is a WIDE difference between the Jewish people (who are all over the world and many of whom are as appalled by Netanyahu & Co. as this WASP is) and Israelis who are citizens of the country Israel and some of whom seem suddenly very conflicted about how bad genocide is when their country is the one doing it, rather than the people to whom it is being done.
.
Hi Sooz Hall. re... "...and Israelis who are citizens of the country Israel and some of whom seem suddenly very conflicted about how bad genocide is when their country is the one doing it..."
.
"seem" is the operative term: I have observed, of late, a lot of my acquaintances making the same mistake: they observe hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets holding protests against Netanyahu and his government, demanding that they bring the Israeli soldiers out of Gaza and do a hostage swap, and they jump to the false conclusion that suddenly hundreds of thousands of Israelis are against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. NOPE. They're not.
.
I believe that I published an extensive note on this phenomenon recently. I will try to track it down and publish an elaborated form of it as an article shortly. The long and the short of this, however, is that the Israelis in the streets right now are overwhelmingly in favor of the genocide. They are simply opposed to the costs that the genocide is starting impose on the perpetrator. I.e. them. Such as the dead and maimed soldiers being sent home.
.
The fact is that the Israelis maintain a citizens' army. All of the citizens of Israel are obliged to spend time in their forces of occupation. So, their population is continuous with the army. All of them move back and forth, between the “civilian” population and the military population. (I know: some get exceptions, but not enough to interfere with the social consequences of this arrangement, which are manifold and impactful).
.
Basically, the Israeli population is indoctrinated from childhood within their school system, into militarism, fascism, apartheid, ethno-supremacism and hatred of every community around them – including the one they stole their land from: the Palestinians. Then, at young adulthood, they are conscripted into the army and indoctrinated further and deeply into these extremist homicidal views.
.
Then, these deeply indoctrinated young people, whose brains are still not fully formed (not until age 25, IIRC) are sent on military exercises into the occupied territories and given the opportunity to carry out a homicide or too (or many more, depending on their temperaments), some detention and torture of the occupied, and so on. That is, by and large, their military experience. Then they are sent back into the “civilian” population.
.
When Israeli citizens observe the evidence that their fellow occupation forces (the citizenry and the military are continuous, remember) post online the joys of their own atrocities on social media, the citizenry are delighted with these atrocities and they express their delight -- again, on social media.
.
Recently -- in June or July, IIRC, the Israeli citizens expressed their delight in genocide through a social sciences study that was reported in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, where something like 85% of the citizenry said they wholly supported the genocide (in fact, there are some reasons to conclude that is the conservative figure, and the percentage is much higher). That was a scientific study, with the usual social studies guiderails to assure accuracy, and it was reported in an Israeli newspaper of record.
.
So, public opinion in Israel did not widely reverse in the last 60 days. All the protests are expressing is that, although the Israeli citizens are delighted by the joys of genocide; they are not, however, delighted by the pains of genocide. They don't want to pay the costs that are being inflicted on their community (Israeli army <--> Israeli citizenry) by the forces of resistance behind the walls of Gaza.
.
I believe the number of Israeli reservists that have just been called up by the Netanyahu administration is on the order of 60,000, or thereabouts. That is the actual Israeli citizenry that are being called up. From among the 85% or more of the population who are gung-ho for genocide.
.
But now they are to lose their limbs and their lives to carry out that genocide? No thank you very much. They would much rather stay home. So, we are seeing hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets.
.
We observed the same phenomena, you may recall, when Israel launched its unprovoked war of aggression against Iran not so long ago. At first, the Israeli citizenry was ecstatic. As long as Iran was hammered by Israel, the Israeli citizenry was delighted, and said so. (By the way, the lead reporter at Haaretz, who was interviewed about this at the time, and is viewed as "liberal" by Israeli standards, also expressed great admiration and joy at Netanyahu's unprovoked attack on Iran when that war was launched by israel. Less so as the war progressed and the Israelis were hammered in their turn).
.
When, however, the Israeli citizens found that Iran could bite back, they became unhappy. And said so. Vociferously. This is a pattern. Not a change. Same then. Same now.
.
Once again, the almost-entirely-all Israelis making the actual humans who haven't yet emigrated look bad.
Certainly you’re not alone in this understanding, but there are far too many who, like the Beverly Hills crowd, can’t resist conflating Judaism and Israel (zionism), thereby, as Lynne points out, setting up the convenient “antizionism is antisemitism” trope, an equivalency, which true scholars of the Jewish religion reject as ludicrous. But that is a convenient point of victimhood for Israel and its supporters/defenders.
I thought the US views anti Zionism & anti Semitism as interchangeable in legal terms ?
They do, so does israel...
The Nation State law was designed to reinforce that
That doesn't mean it's correct. 'Semites' don't have to be Jewish. But that "minor" detail is always glossed over, can't think why 🙄
Most israelis are NOT Semites...they are european...they are also the most anti-semitic peoples on the planet...currently engaged in a genocide of Semites...
You're absolutely right. Lawyers have the same problem as Jews: it's just the nearly all of them that make the rest look bad.
Laughing from La Paz in Bolivia! Thanks, gracias, always need your humour and satire to bring some form of laughter in this sh!tty world!
.
George Bernard Shaw once wrote that, after all the countries Britain colonized have been decolonized, Britain itself will need its own decolonization. I wonder if the foreshadowing of that process is not already underway ... a painful process to experience no doubt... but how else will the people of Britain come out from under the yoke of their own internal imperial colonial chains?
.
How about, “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy”
“You’re all individuals!”
“Yes, we’re all individuals!”
“I’m not.”
Hey RN have you been using this in debates about 'woke culture'?
"The joke’s enduring relevance is reflected in its application beyond religious satire—frequently referenced in debates about “woke culture,” political tribalism, and mass movements, where declarations of individuality often mask underlying group-think."
Wow! There’s a Pythonian intellectual about! Who said that? They’re doing something useful with stuff I mostly just laugh at. 🙃
Must I reveal my sources? Ah ok then, it was a Perplexity search to find out more about Monty Python quotes.
“The last thing we need is politicians who do the right thing “. Boom 💥💥💥Another brilliant demolition of alleged “democracy”. So much of your genius could be applied to the Australian government and Opposition , re both domestic and foreign policies . Thank you Laura 👍🏻
“Entryism”! Good one! I’ll have to suggest that to the anti-Mamdani forces in New York!
Great article again, Laura!
OK so perhaps Zack should have done something relatable to Ed BALLS, perhaps hypnotherapy to convince good old Ed his BALLS were large..er 😉 Or perhaps Starmer should stop being traumatized by his closet, or something along those lines. From across the pond, I wish we had a Zack Polansky instead of our current conservative and liberal clowns. 🇨🇦
It is hard to discern how rotten each fish is by the time you hit the bottom of the barrel.
It was that comment from Starmer that was the last straw for me. As a former human rights lawyer, he, more than anyone, should have known that using starvation as a weapon of war is both a war crime AND a crime against humanity. Of course he knew, making that one of the most reprehensible and disingenuous comments I've heard from ANY politician in recent years. I'm no lawyer but even I suspected as much and it didn't take much searching to discover that that was indeed the case. I had my doubts about Starmer from the start of his leadership but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, he's done nothing to assail my suspicions. Quite the opposite. I really don't understand what he hopes to achieve with his relentless pursuit of Reform voters, turning the Labour Party into Tory-lite. He will never convince Reform voters and in the meantime he's haemorrhaging Labour sympathisers. Labour have done one or two decent things but the bad things are overshadowing them to such an extent that they'll be completely forgotten. He's basing all his hopes on growth, but refuses to entertain even a customs union with the EU when rejoining would be the simplest, easiest way of achieving at least some of that. And there's his refusal to contemplate electoral reform. Maybe that's not such a big surprise considering he got less of the electorate's votes than Corbyn did in 2019, but it'll bite him come the next election. It's unlikely that any miraculous growth will happen in the next four years, especially not with that demented arse in the White House, intent on wrecking the world economy, so I don't see his popularity increasing. FPTP is the least democratic electoral system possible, it's high time we got rid of it.
🤔
He leads the green party.
Green is associated with Islam/muslims and irish types.
I think there’s enough to work with there.
Where do i send my invoice? 🧾
You've heard of reds under the bed - Greens is way worse!
Oh Laura, I did not need that image of K.Starmer and the Union Jack planted in my brain!!
How do you smear a smear?
Perhaps Zack is related to Roman Polanski still wanted in the USA I believe, however implausibly, for paedophilia. The Sharon Tate murders? Anyone?
You’re sounding Kafkaesque…
Zack is exactly the type of new working class politician we need. And the old argument of "can't vote for them, they've no experience of running a government" falls completely flat after 25 years of the experts FUCKING IT ALL UP!! How about give peace and common sense a chance.
Spot on, as always!
Polanski is an exciting contra- current to the disturbing drift to far right rhetoric of today’s politics . He seems personable, fearless and very articulate. I wonder though, how long it will take for the media to vilify him as not having an English enough sounding surname …