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Blood libel redux: the UN and Gaza death statistics — 40 Comments

1. The notion that an attack on a nation requires a reprisal that is proportionate, is only brought to the fore when Israel and ONLY Israel is involved.
   Of course , it’s total bullshit.
   What if the IDF, to be exactly proportionate in its response, raped and killed Gazan women, killed and beheaded their babies , and burned some of their victims alive, in exactly a one -to -one ratio as those suffered by Israel.
   Would that be considered by the joke that is the “international community” as OK?
   As proportionate ? As acceptable ?? I don’t think so.

   Recall the fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg , Tokyo and the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; these all were civilian targets, the purpose of which was to break the will of the enemy to continue.
   These strikes were most definitely not “proportionate,” nor were they supposed to be.
   By inflicting absolute terror upon the enemy – military and civilian – the hope is to end the conflict as soon as possible.

   Note that the fire bombing of Tokyo resulted in more deaths than either of the A-Bomb attacks, and the fire bombing of Hamburg resulted in as many deaths as those suffered in the A-bomb drop on Nagasaki.

   So why is Israel always singled out??
   The answer is obvious; many nations simply hate Jews (and Biden – as well as many Congressional demonkrats – are not too far off that mark as well).

   For some reason I think that the most anti-Semitic agency within the US govt is the State Dept. This is just a guess on my part but that’s what I think. Maybe someone can prove me wrong.

2. “For some reason I think that the most anti-Semitic agency within the US govt is the State Dept. This is just a guess on my part but that’s what I think. Maybe someone can prove me wrong.”

   John Tyler, I wish I could prove you wrong, but I can’t. I never saw any overt anti-Semitism (I prefer the more honest phrase Jew-hate) in my career at State, but anti-Israel and “anti-zionism” was prevalent, dominant, almost. Even among some of my Jewish colleagues. But people were reticent to show strong support for Israel out of a well-founded fear of hurting their career. We were told from day one of A-100 (diplomat orientation) that our corridor reputation would follow us throughout the halls of Foggy Bottom, and strong support of Israel was not a corridor rep conducive to promotions or good assignments.

   State is a cesspool of Democrat party machinations, even during a Republican administration … because no one takes seriously enough cleaning out this Augean stable. State, to its core, very accurately reflects the mindset of today’s Dem party – woke, anything for power, and anti-Semitic.

   And if you or anyone here should wonder why I stayed, it was because of the work we did. It was (and is) an incredible job, and an honor to serve the nation in this way. I’m not sure there is any other job that compares to what we get to do and see (both wonderful and repellently gruesome). I still miss the work and the life, but I don’t miss the mindset, the bureaucracy, or that many of my colleagues.

3. }}} even though Nazi Germany had not even attacked the U.S. when America declared war.

   Mrrr… Not to argue with the general thesis, but:

   America did not declare war on Germany. Germany declared war against the USA.

   This freed Roosevelt’s hands considerably, as there was substantial wavering in Congress over whether or not to declare war on Germany. It might well not have happened.

   An author I read routinely and recommend, Christopher Nuttall, ventured into alternate history with a book which presupposed that Germany did, in fact, declare war on Japan after Pearl, and thus America never got directly into the European half of WWII. Germany won out, taking over all of Europe (except Britain), the former USSR, and even parts of Africa and Arabia. Fast forward to 1985, where the meat of the story takes place. I suspect neither the Pact of Steel nor the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact occurred in “this” history, though no indication is made either way.

4. Don’t be surprised if the Left wins, but what cannot go on won’t go on. The only real question is how much damage will the Left do before it all falls in on them.

5. 9/11 might provide a more tangible comparison with 10/7.

   I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I remember the dead as percentage of population was glaring, something like 10/7 would translate to roughly 25,000 Americans raped, killed, and kidnapped over a span of hours in some southern communities by an over-the-border terrorist attack.

6. Yes, Germany declared war on us, but never attacked us. So what justified our demand of unconditional surrender? Because the nazis were monsters? They certainly were. And Hamas?

   Very wise words Sennacherib. I agree entirely.

7. state stood in the vanguard of the opposition to israeli independence, marshall lovett et al, of course fmr navy secretary and first defense secretary forrestal, had deep ties to oil companies and german enterprises, this was something drew pearson revealed in the prelude to his internment in walter reed was it,

   since then, it has largely tilted arabist, under older brother dulles, rusk, kissinger might have been an exception, but he was captivated by the peace process marage, as was schultz and co, langley had few fans of israel except possibly angleton, (the story recounted in latham’s roman a clef, flowers for mother)

   the full arabist tilt was noted by stephen emerson, in American House of Saud, and Robert Kaplan in the Arabists, he noted the hall of shame with Eagleton, Walker Freeman,and co, as apologists and a rare exception with the late Hume Horan, and Alberto Fernandez, former of FBIS

   it would have been unlikely if nazi germany had warred on imperial japan, maybe if they had gotten as far as india, like the Turtledove tale with Ghandi and Model
   they would pretend to regard them as honorary aryans, until them

8. Speaking of Germany,

   https://m.jpost.com/international/article-802275

   For the love of God, what is the world coming to?

9. well thats a very old story, do you want to go back to the 1936 intifada, funded by Fritz Grobba or Munich, which happened with at best German security looking the other way,

   the AFD by the way is the most pro Israel party and they are trying to ban them,

10. Germany has a special interest in demonizing Netanyahu and Israel. They probably feel it gets them off the hook for their own history of genocide against Jews.

11. “The UN knows that Hamas is completely unreliable. But they want to discredit Israel,”

    Some in the UN want to discredit Israel in hopes that it will satiate the crocodile’s appetite before the ‘crocodile’ gets to them. They are the ones whose moral cowardice quails in the face of evil.

    Some in the UN, want to discredit Israel because Israel is arguably, the foremost example of nationalism. That is George Soros’ ideological rationale.

12. take those four countries that now ‘recognized’ palestine, some made up place like fredonia, they have large immigrant populations from the middle east and north africa, ireland trying fervently to replace their population,

    the wakeup call that should have happened with the hamburg cell, well it’s a snooze,

13. Thanks Mike!

14. none dare call it treason, if treason doth prosper’

    https://twitter.com/GLNoronha/status/1793396057486856395

    like the coyote, thats kerry’s shtick through five decades,

15. miguel cervantes noted:

    take those four countries that now ‘recognized’ palestine, some made up place like fredonia

    Now just one minute there, Fredonia is real. I stopped there briefly on a long drive back east once. Didn’t see much there, I admit: it was after midnight, pretty dark out, and I was only there for the gas station, anyway. Maybe if western NY secedes from the rest, Fredonia could become the capital of that region.

16. Fire bombing Japan was not terror bombing. Japanese industry was highly diffuse. Small workshops all over the place making parts and sub assemblies. These intermixed with houses all flammable as hell.

17. it was to break the Japanese people’s will as it was Germany, and if you go by the Strategic Bombing Survey, whose members included McNamara Nitze and Galbraith it didn’t work, a lesson we seem to forgotten 20 years later,

18. Fredonia is real.

    Philip Sells:

    Yes, but … Hail Freedonia!
    _____________________________

    The country’s taxes must be fixed,
    And I know what to do with it,
    If you think you’re paying too much now,
    Just wait ’till I get through with it.

    –Groucho Marx, “Hail, hail Freedonia!” “Duck Soup” (1933)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4OJGdtRx10
    _____________________________

    I never understood how anyone could make a serious musical after the “Duck Soup” demolition.

19. Speaking of Freedonia, Rufus T Firefly has been AWOL for a while. Hope all is well with him and his family.

20. Perspective:
    The truce-breaking October 7, 2023 jihad carnage inflicted by Hamas on predominantly (i.e., over 70%) non-combatant southern Israeli women, children, men, and the elderly, was the largest single day mass terror casualty event per capita in over 50-years, by 2.6-fold.

21. Chases Eagles and Miguel,
    concerning the view that bombing campaigns harden rather than reduce the population’s war time morale, was there any post war historical evidence that the bombing did have a meaningful military benefit for the Allies vis a vis decreasing the diffuse small workshop industry in Japan, and perhaps in Germany?

22. Was thinking the same om. He is certainly missed.

23. My understanding is that there is a substantial theoretical belief, at the State Department and among the ‘diplomatic community’ associated with it, that the reason the Middle East is in a constant broil is precisely the existence of Israel as a regional irritant. These people believe, to oversimplify it, that if we ‘let them have Israel’, the Middle East will then calm down.

    Which is blathering nonsense, of course. But I do think quite a few of the American diplomatic community believe something along those lines.

    Back in the days of Bush the Younger, at one point a proposed ‘solution’ to the situation was the output of the so-called ‘Iraq Study Group’, i.e. the ‘Baker Hamilton Commission’. The press pushed their ‘report’ desperately, as did the Democrats, trying to present it as the only alternative to the _status quo_. It really was just a series of idealized statements of what ‘ought’ to happen. But buried in it was a key item: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the ‘occupied territories’, back to the old, and this is key, indefensible, borders.

    The whole thing was, IMHO, an effort by James Baker to change U.S. policy into a full effort to force Israel into an indefensible position. I think Baker probably shares the ‘let them have Israel in exchange for peace and stability’ viewpoint.

    To his credit, Bush refused to go along with it. To his discredit, his refusal to call out the lies and nonsense the Democrats and the press and the establishment GOP (but I repeat myself) were spewing enabled them to cloud the issue to the point where nothing useful could be said or achieved.

    If Bush had called out this nonsense at its start, in 2003, the whole subsequent history of the last 20 years might well have been very different.

24. “Some in the UN, want to discredit Israel because Israel is arguably, the foremost example of nationalism. That is George Soros’ ideological rationale.” — Geoffrey Britain

    This^^.

    Personnel is policy. Most of the UNO organizations, and a lot of their associated organizations, (like the ICC), pressure groups, and hangers on (such as Davos Man) are part of, or closely affiliated with, what is sometimes called the ‘NGO class’. They are the purest of the Western Globalists, so purely ideologically globalist that their own parochial Western roots are hidden even to themselves.

    (China, Russia, India, they aren’t really globalist. They’ll sometimes talk the talk and ride the train, when it’s useful, but the real dedicated globalists are almost entirely over-educated upper class Westerners.)

    The NGO class hates capitalism, Christianity, nationalism, Judaism, Israel, etc., not necessarily in that order. As the most powerful sovereign nation-state, the USA is at the top of their hate list, the more so because so many of them are American and detest their fellow Americans for blocking their ideas so reliably. They almost instinctively side with whoever is against America right now.

    The same is true of Israel, to a lesser degree. As Netanyahu correctly pointed out, the world doesn’t hate American because we support Israel, it’s more the other way around, at least among the Western NGO crowd. Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., they of course have their own reasons for hating both America and Israel, and it’s a toss-up who they hate worse.

    Want to see the UN, the ICC, the World Court, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, et al. change their behavior? The only way to do it is the replace the personnel at those organizations with people who are not part of the NGO class, or else marginalize them. (The latter sounds like the easier approach.)

25. “The UN knows that Hamas is completely unreliable. But they want to discredit Israel…”

    Not exactly.
    The UN has for over 50 years been blatantly anti-Israel, passing the highest number of anti-Israel resolutions in its history, such as it is (compare the number of anti-Israel resolutions to the countries with the next highest numbers).

    Following the October 7 attack and ensuing slaughter, it was revealed (to anyone that cared, or didn’t already know, or didn’t already suspect; though I would assume that even those who “knew” or “suspected were NOT aware of the huge scope of UNRWA’s (i.e., the UN’s support); were NOT aware that UNRWA was supporting Hamas not only morally and materially, but logistically, militarily, strategically—EVEN TO THE POINT of contributing fighters to the terrorist group…with apparently no problem at all, unless UNRWA was caught at it…from time to time.

    Such that the UN is not only “completely unreliable”, as one may wish to believe but is an actual ARM of Hamas…and of the Palestinians as a whole…with their uber-alles righteous Human Rights demands of “Palestine from the river to the sea….”
    (As is “Biden”—Israel’s “greatest supporter”—in spite of “his” honeyed words and certain actions that would appear to demonstrate that “he” has Israel’s interests at heart…but SHHHH! Don’t tell any liberals. Actually, you CAN tell them, since they won’t know what yer talkin’ about, anyways…)

    Which leads to the questions:
    How many—huge(?) numbers of—Israelis will have to die because of this global perversity?
    And how many Palestinians?

    Now one MAY wish to believe that the increased—the huge—number of Palestinians, and Lebanese and other Arabs and or Iranians(?), perhaps—that will be killed if a war for Israel’s existence erupts MIGHT make some of the “righteous” think twice in their earnest, cutting-edge-moral efforts to erase the Zionist Entity from the map.
    But one would be wrong…since such logic is the logic of “humanism”, at least to a degree.
    What we have been witnessing since October 7 (and even before, actually; but push has come to shove) is that Hamas and its UN, and global, supporters are absolutely fine with a huge death toll amongst the Palestinians, and other Arabs, AS LONG AS IT RESULTS IN THE ERADICATION OF THE ZIONIST ENTITY.
    N.B. It’s even MORE important than the creation of a Palestinian State.

    (And, to be sure, “humanism” has been redefined to mean Israel’s destruction, as noted immediately above.)

    And so, “completely unreliable”?
    NO.
    “COMPLETELY RELIABLE”…unfortunately….

    A third question:
    Will “Biden” (or others) again send a carrier group to the Eastern Mediterranean…to protect the “innocent” from the rabid ZIOs?
    (Hmmm. Maybe one should ask Samantha Power?)

26. From Wikipedia
    “The ability of the Allies to attack unhindered from the air meant by the last year of the war, Germany was finished.
    ….
    Under state control, despite the attacks on them, the German people were resilient to the bombing campaign and that “power of a police state over its people cannot be underestimated.”

    Their morale didn’t matter one whit.

    Same with Japan. Their ability to resist was melting away.

27. “…honeyed words…” (continued)….

    “White House: We oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state
    National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says Biden supports a two-state solution, but believes it should be brought about through direct negotiations.”—
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/390407

    IOW, Biden declares: “I AM TOTALLY INSANE! HEE, HEE, HEE, HEE, HEE, HEE…”

28. Not sure I’d agree with Wikipedia on this claim.

    In fact,
    Example: Battle of Britain.
    Example: Look at how long it took Germany to surrender (and why they actually did).
    Example: Ditto Japan. Even AFTER Nagasaki, there were those who REFUSED to surrender….

    Why did airpower succeed? Not because they destroyed much and wore down the population. The first it accomplished, but NOT ENOUGH. WRT the second, the morale of the enemy citizenry remained, for whatever reason—counter-intuitively or maybe perfectly intuitive—HIGH. (Let’s factor in such parameters as the Unity of the nation and/or the general characteristics—strong or weak, committed or fearful—of the populations… And of course there’s the propaganda issue…)

    True, airpower succeeded in obliterating the enemy with promises of more to come but it was NOT enough.
    Most importantly, the Allied ARMIES were converging on Germany from East and West, especially the Russkies, killing and raping, destroying, commandeering and burning along the way; which is why—no matter HOW MUCH it grates on Americans, Brits and the allies generally; and it DOES—the Russians have a point (from their POV) when they make the all-things-being-equal, absurdly ahistorical claim that THEY won WWII.

    Of course it was a team effort.
    Of course, the Allies, mostly the US, sent the Russians all kinds of materiel and other assistance via the Arctic Ocean and Iran, which in effect, helped save Russia.
    Of course, Stalin initially signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Hitler.

    But—and this is the crux—the Russians got to Berlin first (helped out by Hitler’s go-for-broke decision to delay the Western forces at the Bulge).

    The Russians “persuaded” Hitler to kill himself and flattened, to a significant degree, Berlin.
    And so, according to Russian logic….

    Absurd, yes.
    But it’s not the only absurd aspect of Soviet claims then…and Russian claims, today.

29. ‘ “…honeyed words…” (continued)’…. (continued)….

    “Of Course: Biden Was Plotting With Iran Against Israel”—
    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/05/22/of-course-biden-was-plotting-with-iran-against-israel-n3788845
    H/T Instapundit.

30. And an important, hopeful, article that doesn’t flinch from describing the difficult situation, but stresses the positive, tells the truth…and articulates what’s necessary to know, to believe—and to act on.
    Richard Hanania:
    “Israel Doesn’t Need Better ‘Hasbara’;
    “It needs better friends”—
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/better-ally-israel-richard-hanania

31. They are more diligent liars than the truth tellers to a remarkable degree

    There was a novelist charlie newton who tried to spin the hebron massacre in 29 against the jews in his tale about oil intrigue in the middle east

32. Barry Meislin:

    And of course you fight the war you are in with the tools you have and are making, to take the war to the enemy. Germany and later Japan could be bombed before boots could get up close and personal.

    The Germans and Japanese could not bomb American or Soviet factories or factory workers (and civilians). The Germans tried to bomb the British but were not successful (relative to the scale they were later bombed).

    And of course the Allies shut down the U Boats by late 1943 and eliminated Japanese shipping by 1944 (subs and mines). So having factories and populations safe and largely immune from enemy attack by Germany and Japan was a hudge advantage. Geography matters.

    Bombing helped the boots immensely (IMO).

33. WWII is worth reviewing in detail when trying to evaluate today’s wars, because we’ve built a mythology about it being a very moral war. In reality, many of the things done in the course of winning WWII would shock our conscience today, not because they were necessarily wrong to have done them then, but because we in the West have not faced such a dire threat in that time and simply have not faced such hard choices as were on offer then.

    This post’s Israel article is a good example of how to use WWII for perspective. An article that could have used a fair comparison with WWII is this Federalist article Zelensky’s Prolonged Presidency Proves Americans Were Sold A Lie On Ukraine.

    I am not a fan of what the US is trying to do with Ukraine, but the examples given there of antidemocratic actions by Zelensky are not anything that Winston Churchill didn’t do:

    General elections for Parliament were suspended from 1940 – 1945. Press and speech restrictions were in place. People who had done absolutely nothing wrong were imprisoned just in case. Churchill assumed the power to requisition anyone or anything. And I’m afraid there was corruption and people profiting handsomely from wartime spending. But the UK did not cease to be a free country. When the crisis was over the elections resumed and those interned were released, and corruption gradually dropped back to peacetime levels. Not only that, Churchill was decisively repudiated in that first resumed election, and he went home to write his books.

    You can disagree with the US approach to Ukraine without having to create a narrative to make Ukraine look worse than it is, or than the Western countries have been when faced with a serious a threat as Ukraine is.

34. here is the thing, the most public partisans of the ukrainian cause are also the ones most focused on deplatforming, spreading dezinforma, et al, because insurrectionist, eleventy, like miss disinfo, who sees 1984 as a how to manual, they are more often than not, the same people who wanted forever lockdowns
    despite their ineffectiveness, and their damage of the social fabric, wanted unvaccinated to be banned from public life, often were the strongest promulgators of the Russian hoax, no matter how much contrary evidence was available,

35. @miguel:the most public partisans of the ukrainian cause are also the ones…

    You and I are usually on the same page, but not here. You’re doing the “my side / their side” logic and it’s bogus.

    The rightness or wrongness of what the US is doing with Ukraine is based on the appropriateness of the goal to be achieved, the effectiveness and ethics of the means used to achieve the goal, the likelihood of success, the costs in lives and money, and the risks being run. It has nothing whatever to do with who’s in favor of it.

    Plenty of good people on the Right are in favor of it. I think those people are either mistaken or emphasize different values from mine, but that doesn’t put them on the Bad Team. And if the Bad Team says the sun rises in the east, that doesn’t mean it’s smart to bank on the sun really rising in the west.

36. I was very particular with the choice of language, the same people who presided over the Kabul capitulation, which turn out to more sordid every day, without a moments rest, are at the forefront of this effort, in and out of government, in academia, in private contractors,
    now i’m on record, this expedition was ill considered ill timed and most of the proponents on the Russian side, deserve a short balcony drop,

    but our desire to mirror our expectations and
    desires to the adversary seems equally flawed, when Reagan put in missiles in West Germany, that was considered provocative, opening up a front in the bloodlands of the Steppes, well that seems insane,

    the happy talk we were told the last two years, contrasts with the actual record, we see with the national guardsmen leak, they are rather silent on this score all of a sudden,

37. I have often surmised that the single stupidest thing Hitler did was to declare war on America. Imagine Roosevelt trying to wage war on Germany if they had remained neutral, much less implement a “Europe first” strategy, while battling Japan?!

    Could Roosevelt have persuaded America to declare war on Germany in the abscence of a German declaration?!

    U.S. participation in every convoy to England or Russia could only be begrudged as reducing the effort against the true enemy, Japan. Might Hitler have forced England and Russia to the negotiating table without the U.S. participation in Europe?

38. thank heaven for Stupid and evil dictators, yes he seemed to ignore that the US had basically helped bring the last war to a close, same with the Prologue of the Corsican corporal,

39. Interesting to think about; what if Germany had never declared war on the USA and Japan had never attacked the USA??
    Then what?
    How would WWII have unfolded?

    Who knows, but it is interesting to speculate.

40. @ray van dune:Could Roosevelt have persuaded America to declare war on Germany in the abscence of a German declaration?!

    Probably, because the US had already exceeded in belligerence what is permitted for for a nation to be considered neutral, and the only reason Germany hadn’t declared war in response is because their hands were full. In other words, the US before Pearl Harbor was fighting a limited and undeclared war against Germany and Germany was pretending not to notice.

    American violations of neutrality before Pearl Harbor include:

    Declaration of a “Pan-American Security Zone” in international waters
    Invading and occupying Iceland
    Lend-Lease
    US Navy escorts for Allied shipping
    Roosevelt’s order of September 11, 1940 to attack any U-boats on sight

    I’m not saying it was morally wrong to do these things, just noting that they happened.

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