Propaganda and denial about Gaza and Israel: beheading babies versus killing babies in more conventional ways
That’s a headline I never thought I’d be writing. But when the news that Hamas had beheaded Israeli babies first came out, many many people tried to claim it was untrue. Apparently it has now been verified by many reporters and photos have been released, although I imagine some will continue to deny it.
Much like Holocaust denial, this serves a need on the part of Palestinian apologists, of which there are many.
I remember reading long ago – I believe in a book by Primo Levi about his time in Auschwitz – that one of the ways in which concentration camp guards amused themselves with their Jewish victims was to tell them that in the unlikely event that they somehow survived, and tried to tell the world what had happened in the camps, the world would never believe them. This was an interesting form of psychological torment, and I have to say that the Nazis were not entirely wrong about that disbelief.
Eisenhower understood this. People’s minds reel at the idea of such vicious savagery. And so he ordered the following:
While Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had studied his World War II enemy, he was unprepared for the Nazi brutality he witnessed at Ohrdruf concentration camp in April 1945. Bodies were piled like wood and living skeletons struggled to survive. Even as the Allied Forces continued their fight, Eisenhower foresaw a day when the horrors of the Holocaust might be denied. He invited the media to document the scene. He compelled Germans living in the surrounding towns and any soldier not fighting at the front to witness the atrocities for themselves.
I’ve made the point, as have others, that one difference between WWII’s Nazi murderers and the present-day Hamas ones is that the Nazis assumed that the world would disapprove of their atrocities if people saw photos or movies of them or even heard some of the details. They correctly figured that many European countries wouldn’t mind getting rid of their Jews but might balk at the idea that most of those Jews (and others, although the main targets were the Jews) were to be summarily slaughtered, including babies, and that the ones allowed to live would be worked to death while simultaneously being starved to death while being mistreated in other myriad diabolical ways. In fact, the whole Nazi genocidal enterprise was diabolical, and so they kept it at least somewhat hidden. Earlier – before they had instituted the more efficient method of gas chambers on a large scale, they had encountered a manpower shortage in their Jew-killing efforts in Eastern Europe and had to enlist some of the natives to help with the Einsatzgruppen killings (focusing mostly on Jews but not limited to them), and they certainly did find many willing to cooperate in killing Jews. But still it wasn’t something the Nazis proudly broadcasted around the world, for what seems like obvious reasons.
Hamas does the opposite. Its killers video their diabolical atrocities and consider publicizing them to be good PR for the world’s Jew-haters, plus it’s a way to torture relatives of the victims. When I say “diabolical,” I mean “as in a horror movie such as Silence of the Lambs,” because it has been revealed that one of the things the Hamas terrorists did was to video the murders with victims’ cell phones and then post them to the victims’ Facebook pages or send them to the families so they could watch them in living color.
This is sadism of an extreme order, adapted to the modern internet social media age.
And yet we find people on Twitter (X) saying that Hamas didn’t actually behead all the babies they killed, as though that would be some sort of defense. Or that they killed babies but didn’t behead them. What’s going on with those deniers? Some are just psychopathic liars. But I think that most are just in desperation to preserve their belief system. So they must say – and believe – that the Israelis are lying about this, despite the documentation. They are also desperate to hide and/or deny the savagery of Hamas because one thing they know is that people generally love babies and want to protect them and are outraged when they are tortured and killed. That is why this act of barbarity seems to have shocked some people who had remained relatively unmoved by the rapes and the other killings, acts to which many people have somehow become desensitized (as long as they, their relatives, or their friends aren’t the victims). Baby killing is harder to ignore – and baby-beheading ups the horror ante even more.
A great many people fear that the Palestinians and the MSM will use the Israeli response as propaganda to drum up sympathy for, if not the devil, than the terrorists of Hamas and the people under their sway in Gaza. And they will certainly try, and the MSM will help them. But I don’t think it will gain them anyone who is not already firmly in the Hamas camp. I have spoken to and read the writing of several people for whom Saturday’s attack was a bridge too far; the atrocities Hamas committed are just too great and they understand that Israel must retaliate much more harshly than previously. But I have neither spoken to nor heard about anyone who had previously supported Israel who is now turning away from Israel because of the bombing of Gaza. Most sane people – and there still are a few – can see that an attack such as last Saturday’s makes it extremely clear that Israel can no longer tolerate Hamas in Gaza. The ones who cannot understand it were already lost.
People who cannot see the distinction between going into people’s homes and torturing and killing them and their babies, versus children killed as collateral damage by bombs directed at military or terrorist targets and with every effort to avoid killing civilians – sadly, such people are also lost. And yet there are many of them, and they believe that their stance is virtuous because it is against killing babies no matter why it occurs. Well, I’m against killing babies, too. But the terrible calculus of self-defense in war means that it will sometimes happen and that there is no way to avoid it, only minimize it if possible. In contrast, Hamas tries to maximize it, not only the killing of Israeli babies but also of its own children whom it purposely puts in harm’s way for propaganda purposes.
As this Hamas official says:
The interviewer interjected, “But all this was part of Hamas’s strategy in preparing for this attack.”
“Of course,” Baraka said, according to the translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a nonprofit press monitoring and analysis organization co-founded by a former Israeli military intelligence officer and an Israeli American political scientist. “We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza], and has abandoned the resistance altogether.”
“All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack,” Baraka continued. …
“The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs. The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be martyred for the sake of Allah, defending his land,” he continued. “We have been preparing for this for two years.
A lot more than two years.
ADDENDUM: On reflection, I realize that I haven’t sufficiently made a basic point that I want to convey. Just to clarify: whether the story that babies were beheaded turns out ultimately to have been true or false, a fact such as that matters but in the end doesn’t matter as much as it would seem. We already know full well that Islamic terrorists such as those in ISIS, and the killers of Daniel Pearl so long ago, have often used beheading as a way to treat captives, and they have proudly made videos to show it. We also know that last Saturday, many women and children and even babies were purposely murdered in cold blood, in very grisly and tortuous ways and also in “ordinary” ways such as shooting young people enjoying themselves at a concert. We know that some families found out about the fate of their loved ones by the terrorists posting photos and/or videos of the killings on Facebook.
In summary, we know that enormous numbers of atrocities of so many kinds were committed that they almost could serve as a guidebook to what is euphemistically called “man’s inhumanity to man.” But for a host of different reasons, people want the horror to not be true. So many are trying to fasten on some small part of it that might be an exaggeration. But true or false, that small part doesn’t change the big picture, which is that what happened in Israel on Saturday at the hands of Hamas was an abomination, and that those who perpetrated it need to be stopped.
Leave it to the Daily Mail to publish what sensational thing comes across the tramsom: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12623843/Israel-releases-images-babies-murdered-burned-Hamas-verified-photos-beheaded-terrorists-confirmed-local-media-IDF-drops-Gaza-leaflets-telling-citizens-flee.html
I think there is also a strange kind of double think going on. They will say “No one would behead babies.” and also say things like “By any means…” and “What do you think decolonization would look like?” It seems to me that most of the ones who are denying it or saying it is Israeli propaganda wouldn’t care even if they became convinced it was true. They are fully on the side of Hamas no matter what. Oddly many of these same people have lifestyles that would get them immediately killed by the people they support.
If you are a person who doesn’t think people would do this kind of thing you have not looked very hard at the history of people. We know how to hurt each other and we are quite good at it when endeavor to do so.
The Roman solution seems appropriate here. “They make a desert and call it peace.”
People who cannot see the distinction between going into people’s homes and torturing and killing them and their babies, versus children killed as collateral damage by bombs directed at military or terrorist targets and with every effort to avoid killing civilians – sadly, such people are also lost.
________
The “they kill children too” defense is an old one. The Germans used it in both wars, citing starvation by British blockade as justification for the U Boat war. (I’ve never seen them discuss how much food they allowed into Paris in 1870-1).
I have trouble getting my head around the idea that the killing is its own justification. I guess, to them, it is. But to my mind – leaving all morality aside – it seems that this will hurt their cause, and they should have some who know that. It will greatly lessen the effect of their defenders here. And turn many who are indifferent to the conflict against them. I’ve already seen that happen.
That’s as far as I can go; if I let loose, I’ll go overboard on the kind of vengeance I’d like to see.
Arc Light Gaza. Every square foot.
The Law of Land Warfare forbids setting up to fight from among civilians.
Should an enemy do that, the attacker must be very careful with area weapons and indirect fires.
In the second battle of Fallujah, we could have turned it into rubble and the only guys breaking a sweat would be the ones reloading the bombers. But that is forbidden, given the remaining civilian presence in the city. So we sent our Marines door to door like the Fuller Brush Man, and about two hundred were killed.
Fortunately for the left, there were some dead civilians. Can’t do without dead civilians.
Parenthetically, Time Magazine faked up the Haditha massacre which turned out never to have happened. The Marines, to their shame, treated the suspects horribly until it was irrefutable that the whole thing was a hoax.
Years ago, writing about Central America, Sarah Miles lamented that Low Intensity Conflict was working. Unfortunately, it did not kill enough innocents to raise the consciousness of the American people so other techniques must be found. When they tell you who they are….
I do not care what happens to the Palestinians. I have been a staunch Israel supporter since I saw ‘Cast a Giant Shadow’ as a kid and complete disinterest in the fate of their enemies since 72 and more so if that was possible after watching them on 9-11. Israel is too small a nation to be expected to absorb huge losses in street fighting.
Anyone who excuses the wanton slaughter of innocent babies is a monster. They’ve demonstrated that the world would be a better place without them. They should be shunned.
Re: Sara Miles
Richard Aubrey:
Not sure of your point, but I suspect your Sarah Miles is this Sara Miles who became a priest at my Episcopalian church.
Not long after her installation, she slapped my wrist for something, we had a conversation I found uninspiring, and I let her know that in the future I would not be seeking her counsel as a priest.
It was an early hint that I was not fitting in at my church.
__________________________________________
God probably had a few good giggles over Sara Miles’ conversion. The San Francisco writer and former restaurant cook was a happy atheist, a probing journalist who covered wars and revolutions in Central America — and a woman married to another woman. She certainly didn’t intend to become a Christian or — as she describes it — “a religious nut.” But early one morning she ambled into St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church on Potrero Hill, took Communion and her life changed. That day Miles found both God and her life’s mission: feeding the hungry.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/FINDING-MY-RELIGION-How-San-Francisco-writer-2646175.php
“The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be martyred for the sake of Allah…”
Seems to be describing an attitude endemic to Islam and not just Palestinians. And when your enemy is, in your eyes, of a lesser species… well… barbarity is what you do to eliminate them. Again not unique to Palestinians but certainly a feature of their “faith.”
To be sure the expected propaganda has been spun up, but ….
Am I the only person who notices that the Usual Suspects find it a heavier lift than usual?
I think quite a lot of Americans understand this is a genuine horror. Even the Biden administration realizes that the moral equivalence two-step is not going to work this time.
The Hamas guy describing their inverted pyramid of values –living in order to die as “martyrs,” happy to throw their own flesh and blood onto the pyre– is both incomprehensibly sick and completely logical. Just take all the things that you live for, all the work you’ve done and hope to do, all the love you’ve been lucky enough to give and get –take all that and reverse the sign. Burn down everything that God ever intended for our sad and suffering species.
Burn it all down. Yeah: these people came from Hell, and need to be sent back there.
huxley
The background sounds similar. I believe the article I read was by “Sally” who later turned out to be Sarah.
The point is that the left wants and needs dead innocents. And if they don’t get enough…something else must be arranged.
Low Intensity Conflict is a real thing which, in the Central American context, worked but without the rewards the left is used to having for its propaganda.
I don’t believe the Latin Catholics have female priests, but I also don’t think she’d have “wandered” into one of those places. Horrors!
Again, not certain it’s the same person.
One of the stories that I heard about the Nazi death camps (from a licensed guide) was that the development of the ‘Final Solution’, that is, the use of Zyklon gas, was only partly implemented to increase the efficiency of the process. In early days, soldiers tasked with murdering prisoners were given a daily quota of 1,000. And as time went on, the psychological toll began to manifest itself with suicides, nervous breakdowns, and refusals to follow orders. This led to the investigation of other methodologies – trying to mitigate the problem they had with the soldier’s mental health.
Gaza residents are in a tight spot. They’ve agreed to live under Hamas and implicitly, agreed to be sacrificial shields should the need arise. Israel will do the right thing and offer safe passage. How many will accept it?
As WWII demonstrated, and as subsequent unresolved conflicts have reinforced in the converse, an enemy must be annihilated, its leadership brought to justice and executed. There is no other path to resolving the conflict. Anything less invites a renewal of the hostilities and aggression. Only the certainty of ignominious death will deter.
This is Israel’s war. They were attacked without warning, and it was intentionally directed at non-combatants. I believe there are quite a few rules of warfare that apply to such an event, none of them providing any excuse. Anything Israel chooses to do in response is entirely the responsibility of the duly elected Israeli government. I trust their discretion. However, I will not criticize them for anything that happens. Sew the wind; reap the whirlwind.
This looks real:
_______________________________
The Biden administration is preventing Iran from accessing the $6 billion the U.S. recently transferred after Hamas, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, launched a brutal attack against Israel, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo confirmed to House Democrats that Iran will not be allowed to access the $6 billion, noting that the money “isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” according to Democratic aides who spoke to the Post.
…
Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers demanded the Biden administration refreeze the $6 billion transfer after the attacks began on Saturday. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas announced legislation to refreeze the transfer less than 24 hours before the Biden administration made the decision to do so.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/10/12/us-blocks-iran-accessing-6-billion-fund-hamas-attack/
_______________________________
If so, Things Are Different This Time.
It’s bullshit. Not real. Fake as fake can be.
https://x.com/billboardchris/status/1712338129632580052?s=46
These animals are evil.
(Nothing graphic at the link, but proof that these terrorists don’t even care about their own kids.)
I just thought of something: Netanyahu saying “Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas” doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it?
A couple days ago, I was hesitant to just listen to the stories of the most brutal atrocities (slaughtering families, beheading babies, raping women next to corpses) and run with them until they were confirmed. It’s too easy these days for one person to misunderstand something or make something up and post it somewhere and for the rumor to catch on. I figured the worst stories could be true – you name it, people have done it – but I was afraid that if they were later shown to be exaggerations, it would just be used to make the Israelis/Israel’s supporters look bad.
To be fair, I think the last few years have shown us that when the world’s attention is turned on one topic, we need to always be on high alert to make sure we’re not falling for propaganda.
Ceterum censeo Hamas esse delendum
Many apologists for Hamas have no problem with dismembering babies in the womb, or partially delivering them and puncturing their skulls, since it’s “a woman’s right to choose.”
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Steve suggests this is Israels war.
Perhaps the Israelis ought to widen the conflict.
“The World doesn’t care what happens to us Jews. WE don’t care what happens to the rest of the world. Give US peace or the entire world will know war.”
Shadow: that was my response, too. There was never any question that the Hamas attacks involved the massacre of civilians, but a certain reservation of judgment is in order about stories of atrocities that don’t seem to have any definite source. For a couple of days some of the references I saw were just a sort of circle of unsourced reports without anything specific, all linking to each other.
But it seems that the stories are true. I am a very mild-mannered sort of person but I think I could kill on the spot with a completely untroubled conscience anyone committing those atrocities
You’ve all seen the ‘this is what decolonization looks like’ meme.
Gaza in rubble is what ‘NEVER AGAIN’ looks like.
huxley on October 12, 2023 at 6:45 pm said:
Am I the only person who notices that the Usual Suspects find it a heavier lift than usual?
No you are not.
…the moral equivalence two-step is not going to work this time….
Two? It’s easy to find someone dancing so hard that their taps are worn off. Their use of ‘equivalence’ is truly stomach turning.
For all alleged journalists with the inability to actually “have a conversation” rather than expecting people to bow to their superior status and parrot their narrative:
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/10/shame-on-journalists.php
I listen to very few of the videos in the news, but this one is particularly illustrative of the media’s bias, although I expected better from Sky.
The commenters at Powerline had thoughts:
*The talking-head was actually, at that point, trying to get Bennett to admit guilt for the dangerous situation in hospitals due to Israel cutting off Gaza’s electricity, and Bennett pointed out that anyone who wants to is welcome to provide electricity to Gaza.
He also noted (although not in so many words) that Israelis have no moral or legal obligation to provide utility services to people who are trying to kill them.
Neo: IMO your discussion of the controversy over the allegations and repudiations of the story of the beheaded babies (“That’s a headline I never thought I’d be writing.” Indeed.) is the best I have seen on the internet. Most of the conservative pundits kinda-sorta address the question of its veracity and relevance, but you presented the essential answers.
That we have to witness such a discussion at all is a condemnation of Hamas and all its supporters, and the witless Western wokesters’ ignorance of the history of Israel & Gaza is no excuse for their moral depravity.
So Mac if it turned out Hamas didn’t behead babies but did everything else how outraged would you have been about that versus the actual atrocities?
Personally I did not doubt that Hamas was capable of such atrocities, but the story seemed eerily similar to the “babies thrown out of incubators” narrative that helped us into the first Iraq war. It is important to verify the facts of all war stories, in my opinion, because not doing so provides the opportunity to argue that the Israelis’ justified response is based on lies. The context of constant government lies over the past few years regarding Covid, Russiagate, and the Ukraine war tends to make a person more skeptical.
Hamas’ barbarities in Israel will give rise to another generation of Israelis with a burning hatred of the Palestinian terrorists. Now Hamas is sheltering amongst the Palestinian civilians of Gaza knowing full well that the Israeli military operation against them will result in many civilian casualties which will will give rise to another generation of Palestinians with a burning hatred of Israelis. Thus the mutual hatred and warfare between Israel and Palestine will be fueled for another generation or two with Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations winning big.
Carilee
WRT the incubators. I believe it turned out to be true, at least later on when Iraq looted every kind of appliance from washing machines and generators.
As far as I know, the Nazis didn’t behead babies. Hamas is worse than the Nazis. And many Dems and American students support Hamas.
Just when you didn’t think American society could sink any lower….
What is all this intellectual verbiage??? Muslims are Muslims !! Peach trees don’t give pears
Ahh, Bucky helps us with the usual “circle of violence” line. Next, I assume he’ll bring up the current antisemitic, socialist talking point of “colonialism” that is making the far left hatred rounds.
FOAF: you argue like a progressive.
Bucky @ 7:12: I fear you are correct. Hamas threw a match* onto the ever-present tinder. Now everyone is trapped in the conflagration and desperately trying to quench it with rivers of 100 octane.
*Not trying to belittle the scope and scale of its evil acts; trying to view them as first stages in a geopolitical firestorm.
Carilee:
Yep it’s propaganda the Vlad invaded Ukraine. I heard it on Tucker that it is all lies and that Russians soldiers are liberators protecting Russian citizens from Nazi monsters. (sarc)
Om, no, I am not denying that Russia invaded Ukraine, and that they have caused massive death and destruction there. But there has been a lot of questionable “news” out of Ukraine, like the Nordstream 2 story. First, Russia did it, then oops, Ukraine did it, but OF COURSE, the US had no knowledge of it. In researching that case I discovered the interesting fact that a former Navy seal with BUDS training had been killed in Ukraine. Was that person involved with destroying Nordstream? I have no idea, but it was not publicized anywhere that I have seen, I kind of just stumbled across it. Also, the Elon Musk/Starlink story, which was twisted to make it sound like Musk cut off Starlink when the service had never previously existed in that particular area. The “Ghost of Kiev” and “Snake Island” narratives were apparently fabricated or exaggerated, and there are in fact Nazi battalions in the Ukraine military. In consideration of these, and the other govt lies I previously mentioned, I have learned to be more skeptical about any stories that seem too perfectly tailored to support a particular viewpoint.
Islam is an ideology, like Nazism. It is not a religion, but is deemed so by the Council on Arab-Israeli Relations (CAIR) and our governing fools in DC accept that. From the Quran: “Kill the Christian, kill the Jew”.
Stop giving these vermin a free platform.
Islam is evil.
Biden and the so-called Democrats are a major problem here. Biden has necessitated petroleum imports from Iran and Venezuela (Its government owns Cities Service, so never, ever buy gas there.
And Hezbollah has ten thousand rockets (!) stockpiled in Lebanon.
Remember the good old days, now so long ago, when Beirut was considered a Free City?
The University of Virginia has a chapter of “Students for Justice in Palestine” which had a recent group chat on events in Gaza which had 57 participants. The chapter is pro-Hamas. The chapter chairman is someone named Josh Rosenberg. Tell his mother and father ‘heckuva job’.
Carilee:
You do realize that Ukraine is about the size of Texas?Kind of big, and that one former Seal was killed there you say. You do realize that the Baltic Sea is not the Black Sea? So it is interesting how connections are made between the Nordstream Pipeline and a Seal (RIP). Propaganda indeed. Now I’ve posted links to investigations made by Danish journalists that showed links to Russian operated intelligence ships operating in the Nordstream Pipeline region at the time of the sabotage. But you can cite a German investigation and the mystery yaht. Which is correct or closer to being correct?
Propaganda indeed.
And who blew up the gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland this week? It wasn’t the deceased American former Seal.
Fog of war. Conflating Ukraine and Israel is weak.
Media in general.
To harp the chord I have already played, once again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DzHcPHidJQ
ABC News, [US] from 3 days ago but typical. [G’Damn near hyperventilating Brit narrator too]
” … one of the most densely populated places on the planet …” @1:05
[Having over the last decade or so gained through media more familiarity with British mainstream media culture, prevailing social attitudes and voices than I ever would have expected or desired, I now have a viceral understanding of why my ancestors climbed the sides of King’s Mountain, and, upon gaining the summit, showed as little pity as they did.]
Now, a clip from the NY Post. Gaza residents begin moving south.
Go to 35 seconds. Densely populated? Sure. Endless canyons of sun baked tenements? No.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5a9LAVXZxM
it is the land of the phillistines, they have the sling shots now,
tropes are a dime a dozen,
om, I don’t know the “truth” about any of this and I have no argument with you or your viewpoint. What is absolutely true, is that it is not a winning position to say that “babies were not decapitated, they were only shot and stabbed and burned to death”. I only seek the truth of any situation and we are unlikely to learn it from our news media and our government. The point I made earlier still stands, there is no reason to lie or exaggerate about things, and doing so does give the opposition an opportunity to say that our position is based on lies (even if they are insignificant and irrelevant lies).
Ooooh sniff sniff mac called me a progressive boohoohoo. mac argues like the Dems saying “we don’t have real-time video of Biden taking money from China.”
When the first reports of babies being beheaded came out some people got a little too hand-wringy about it being “disinformation”. A proper response would have been, “This hasn’t been verified yet, it may be an initial ‘fog of war’ report but we’ll know soon. What we do know happened is so bad we should not get distracted by worrying about whether they beheaded the babies or simply murdered them.”
Mildly interesting, the similarity of “all Californians deserve what they get for electing Democrats”
and “all Palestine deserves to die for electing Hamas”.
Kinda suspect many unfortunate Gaza residents do not approve of Hamas.
“The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs. The thing any Palestinian desires the most is to be martyred for the sake of Allah, defending his land,” he continued. “We have been preparing for this for two years.
Right. Somehow this courageous high placed official will survive the war, I guarantee it.
FOAF: either your question was in bad faith or you are quite dense. I.e. it was very much the style of “debate” used by progressives, involving things imagined or invented and attributed without evidence to the person you’re attacking. So it deserves no reply. But for the record, your “proper response” is actually more or less the way I did in fact respond.
Fullmoon:
Good point in your 2:10 comment.
As for your comment above it – who said all Palestinians DESERVE to die? I believe what they are saying is that when there is a warmongering government, the people become at risk for death from any retaliation, and although one can try to protect innocent life it is simply not possible to do so. But such a government must be disabled and not allowed to function. In WWII, that meant a lot of non-Nazi Germans died at the hands of the Allies.
Mac says FOAF is either insincere or stupid, but then says FOAF is making the same point as Mac so then FOAF is wise?
Score own goal to Mac. 🙂
om: you and FOAF seem to suffer from the same deficiency in the capacity to discern distinctions. There is a really obvious one in what I’ve said. Your (plural) problem seems to be rooted in a reading comprehension difficulty.
In re the Kuwait baby incubators:
Wikipedia has a reasonably good outline of the controversy and it’s alleged debunking,
which followed the same kind of conflicting, sensationalized, back-and-forth that we are seeing about the Israeli babies, but it eventually still boils down to a “they said / they said” operation.
That’s how I read it, anyway (major points only, there are always nuances):
the debunkers relied largely on unverified testimony from Iraq, some of it given during the occupation; Nayirah’s testimony was dismissed primarily because it was not revealed at the time that her father was Kuwait’s ambassador to the US (that should have been done upfront IMO); and no genuine independent investigation was ever done (I, for one, do not credit anything the UN Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch says).
I’m not too convinced by any ABC reporters’ after-the-fact journalizing either.
This point was made by a firm involved in the gathering of testimonies, including Nayirah’s (who they may have coached, but that isn’t necessarily a refutation).
(I do quibble with the remarks about the ambassador’s relationship enhancing her credibility, since that was kept secret at the time, allegedly to protect her family — doxxing was not as big a thing then as now, and no Twitter mobs, but I can still respect the concern).
This is what her father said:
On the side of the debunkers, however, “In a subsequent letter to The New York Times, MacArthur pointed out that the testimony had been retracted.[68]” but the story is still behind the NYT paywall (since 1992!) so I don’t know if that means ALL the testimonies, or just the girl’s, or what kind of spin they put on it.
That the Time’s spins everything they print, especially if it damages a Republican (Bush II) is a given.
So there it is, just as clear as the recent brouhaha.
I do agree that it is “unnecessary and counterproductive to invent atrocities.”
However, there is a difference between stories that, essentially, spin up organically through the gossip-chain from a kernel of truth, and those that are manufactured in toto (which we know also happens).
And then there are those stories that fall somewhere along the line connecting the two extremes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
“…who said all Palestinians DESERVE to die?”
Not me. Alluding to those who say all Californians deserve the pain inflicted upon us by the Dem govt.
Unfortunate that many innocents will die, but without the ability to sort the good from the bad, not many realistic options.
Mac:
Nope, it is easy to understand what you say and that is your problem not mine. What you said wasn’t subtle or nuanced.
Mac’s own goal II.
Fullmoon:
The consequences of voting for Democrats in California are quite a bit less awful than voting for Hamas in Gaza.