A major very public protest against Hamas by Gazans
Protest against Hamas, in Gaza
In what might signal a major turning point in Israel’s war against Hamas, many hundreds of Gazans earlier this week marched through the ruins protesting against Hamas quite publicly and apparently with no fear.
Hundreds of Gazans marched through the northern town of Beit Lahiya carrying white flags and chanting anti-Hamas slogans, according to videos posted from the scene, which showed participants calling for peace, press coverage, and the release of hostages.
In a rare public uprising against Hamas rule in Gaza, demonstrators took to the streets outside the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. Footage shared on social media on Tuesday captured a crowd of protesters demanding an end to what they called “tyrant rule,” with chants of “Out, out, out! Hamas out!” and “We want to live!” echoing through the streets.
The images to the right are a screen capture from this video. The tweet claims thousands participated in this protest, with chants of “Down with Hamas, we’ve had enough, Hamas!”
Hamas has controlled Gaza for almost two decades. In that time any hint of protest against it has been routinely met quickly with brutal and violent retaliation. It now appears however that its power within Gaza has been severely damaged by Israel’s aggressive war, killing one leader after another with amazing efficiency.
Recently for example I have noticed in watching videos posted by Hamas supposedly showing Gazans cheering its effort, that if you look closely at the people in the crowd, many do not appear to be enthusiastic or supportive. Instead, these so-called Hamas supporters often have appeared sullen, joining the chants reluctantly almost out of fear.
These new protests against Hamas I think give us a better sense of the situation. Even though there is ample evidence that until recently Gazans of all stripes supported Hamas and were willing to eagerly aid it in its terrorist acts of murder, rape, and torture, it appears that Hamas’s failures in the war are finally taking their toll on its popularity.
These protests are a great opportunity for Israel, if it moves fast. If it can find and identify these protesters, especially their leaders, and protect them, it will further isolate Hamas and make its destruction more likely. It will also sow the seeds of a new leadership in Gaza that might actually be willing to live in peace with Israel.
Readers!
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For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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Protest against Hamas, in Gaza
In what might signal a major turning point in Israel’s war against Hamas, many hundreds of Gazans earlier this week marched through the ruins protesting against Hamas quite publicly and apparently with no fear.
Hundreds of Gazans marched through the northern town of Beit Lahiya carrying white flags and chanting anti-Hamas slogans, according to videos posted from the scene, which showed participants calling for peace, press coverage, and the release of hostages.
In a rare public uprising against Hamas rule in Gaza, demonstrators took to the streets outside the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. Footage shared on social media on Tuesday captured a crowd of protesters demanding an end to what they called “tyrant rule,” with chants of “Out, out, out! Hamas out!” and “We want to live!” echoing through the streets.
The images to the right are a screen capture from this video. The tweet claims thousands participated in this protest, with chants of “Down with Hamas, we’ve had enough, Hamas!”
Hamas has controlled Gaza for almost two decades. In that time any hint of protest against it has been routinely met quickly with brutal and violent retaliation. It now appears however that its power within Gaza has been severely damaged by Israel’s aggressive war, killing one leader after another with amazing efficiency.
Recently for example I have noticed in watching videos posted by Hamas supposedly showing Gazans cheering its effort, that if you look closely at the people in the crowd, many do not appear to be enthusiastic or supportive. Instead, these so-called Hamas supporters often have appeared sullen, joining the chants reluctantly almost out of fear.
These new protests against Hamas I think give us a better sense of the situation. Even though there is ample evidence that until recently Gazans of all stripes supported Hamas and were willing to eagerly aid it in its terrorist acts of murder, rape, and torture, it appears that Hamas’s failures in the war are finally taking their toll on its popularity.
These protests are a great opportunity for Israel, if it moves fast. If it can find and identify these protesters, especially their leaders, and protect them, it will further isolate Hamas and make its destruction more likely. It will also sow the seeds of a new leadership in Gaza that might actually be willing to live in peace with Israel.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I would wonder if the support for Hamas and its ideology have diminished, or if the change is more self-serving, with continued agreement with the ideology, but not the organization itself, which initiated the current crisis.
In other words, has there been a real and sincere change of heart, or is this merely a hope for different leaders who would take a different pathway to the same ideological goals?
The situation in Palestine is terrible..
( I have been chastised by our host for my language describing it as I see it… ). The actions of Hamas are reprehensible, the actions of Israel are also reprehensible… ( Over 50,000 dead, the complete destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, schools and abodes of innocent civilians).
The fact that the Palestinians are beginning to rebel against Hamas is a good sign, but a blind eye should not be turned to the actions of “settlers” against the native population in the west bank.
As an outside observer I see no “good guys” in this stupid conflict, only the wounded and dead bodies, mostly from civilians…. I just hope that peace can be brought, and the area rebuilt ( with no help from Trump’s sea side resort plans!) , so the general Public can go back to doing what they genuinely want to do… Go to work everyday, sit down and break bread with the family in the evening, and not have to worry about having a bomb land on their house.
This is an indicator that human beings just want to live a normal life and not have themselves and their children be used by extremists among them as human shields in order to further their religious zealot master’s dark agenda.
Will they have to take up arms against their own to live that normal life?
With the correct management might it be possible? Unknown.
I guess the concept of the TRUMP GAZA hotel might be a motivating factor?
You know what the great philosopher PLAYDOUGH said: Don’t do what don’t work.
@F….
I doubt if the Palestinians and Israelis will ever hold hands and sing cum by are, but I think it’s a fair guess that the vast majority of folk of both countries would rather have peace than never ending conflict. Yes… Hamas has to go… But also I think that it serves Netanyahu to keep the conflict hot. It’s a mess, and Israel needs to turn down the volume a little to enable some real dialogue… As I mentioned above, especially showing some respect for the residents of the west bank instead of either turning a blind eye or actively encouraging settler violence. Not the way to win friends…
Lee S,
I would suggest you obtain REAL facts regarding what has happened in Gaza. Most of the supposed casualty numbers, for instance, are being provided by Hamas, and careful reviews of those figures have brought their veracity into question. Hamas’ use of human shields and its tendency to place its military operations in populated areas have unnecessarily increased those numbers. The Left-leaning media have refrained from reporting such facts.
Further, there is zero doubt that there had been peace on October 6th, and Hamas ended that peace on October 7th. Hamas enjoyed overwhelming support among the people of Gaza for its actions.
Israel, if anything, has been restrained in its own efforts. It was well within its capabilities to wipe all of Hamas and its supporters of the face of the Earth, but it has not done so. On the contrary, Israel has delivered food and other humanitarian aid to Gaza since the beginning. What other nation would feed the enemy that is seeking to destroy it?
Lee S has a point. While, as he suggests, Israelis and Palestinians probably aren’t going to join hands and sing together in the near future, some way must be found to break the endless cycle of tit for tat violence in this region. Likewise, the idea that we’ll match *your* latest atrocity with a *bigger* atrocity* is also not the way to lasting pace. (Does anyone else read what appears to be the more objective, yet nonetheless horrendous accounts of what has been happening to the civilian population in Gaza, and does anyone care?)
*Or match your latest sortie of missiles and drones with a bigger and more deadly one.
On the other hand, as Robert suggests, some way must be found to completely destroy / discredit Hamas in the eyes of the Palestinian people. Hamas has brought nothing but misery and death to the people of Gaza (all the while lining the pockets of its officials), and they have not been well served by allowing it to “represent” them. As in the case of the people of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the civilian population of Gaza must be freed from their bondage to these criminals, and it has not been a pretty process. Wars never are. Yet, at some point, they must be recognized as human beings and brought back into the fold of civilization.
Also, given the long history of indifference / complicity of “the Arab leadership” in Hamas’ exploitation of the Palestinians, it would probably be a good thing if Israel could take the lead in offering them a better deal than what they have received from the people who have supposedly “supported” them for all of these decades. The Palestinians may not be entirely innocent, but they have not been dealt a very good hand by history, either.
Whatever, to the extent possible, both sides need to work toward tamping down the hatreds that have divided them, recognizing and responding to injustice where it has occurred, and working toward some way to live productively with one another. Otherwise, as terrible as the Gaza campaign has been, we are merely looking at a preamble to even more tit for tat, an eye for an eye horrors. And, again, it will probably be left to the Israelis — if they can tolerate the irony — to take the first step and begin some kind of a long term campaign for reconciliation and a lasting peace**. And, as Robert seems to suggest, what are the prospects of finding / creating some responsible indigenous leaders among the Palestinians who are not so consumed by history and ideology that they are willing to work with others to build a durable peace?
**There was once this Jewish fellow named Jesus who had some ideas along these lines…
The worst thing Israel can do is to help these protesters–that, sadly, would play into Hamas’ hands.
When people remind us that freedom’s cost is blood–that doesn’t always extend to proxies.
Alone, unarmed and unafraid doesn’t only extend to spy plane pilots.
In the past, spies were on their own–often on the understanding that their work would be disavowed/disowned.
Spooks then wanted to protect their assets–but that could make things worse.
The super-Inman Embassy in Baghdad had security–but no stealth.
Assets like Buckley might have a bit of stealth but no security if discovered.
Reagan’s Beirut debacle was on account of Marines having neither stealth, nor security.
Benghazi wasn’t just on Hillary.
Better to just have a handful of folks that are less likely to arouse suspicion, otherwise you might as well be shouting your location.
These protesters are going to have to fight their own battles with neither aid nor interference.
It sounds hard-hearted, I know.
Poor people. It’s almost like the ones still alive don’t want to be martyr pawns in an islamist death cult.
Hamas must be significantly weakened because those people would be killed for protesting, and everybody knows it.
Hope they can elect something different and build something different from the rubble.
The problem isn’t just Hamas. While these protestors are deriding Hamas, the basic problem is Islam. It is less a religion as the West views religion and more a total societal construct. From the days of Islam’s founding, violence has been its mainstay. One tenant of Islam is that the Jews would never again have a Nation. The founding of modern Israel to Muslims is total mockery and blasphemy. That is why Muslims refer to Israel and the United States as Satan. So whatever happens in Gaza, if it is still Islamic, the Gazan’s will want the destruction of Israel.
All: Gosh, what pessimism from my readers.
The problem with so many people who want to talk about the Middle East and the Palestinian problem is the desire to refuse ever to see any glimmer of hope. These protests are an example of hope that should not be ignored. So are the many very public Abraham Accord treaties that Israel signed with a number of its Arab (and Islamic) neighbors in Trump’s first administration that have held and prompted real cooperation and trade.
These hopeful facts are real, and they all point to the possibility that a true peace, albeit shaky, can be achieved between Israel and its neighbors. Trump realizes this. In fact, everything he does on ALL issues works from the position that a solution is always possible, if we pursue it without fear.
I wish my readers might consider that approach as well in their thinking process.
I vote with Robert. After emerging from the crucible of defeat in a total war, the people of both Germany (at least until recently) and Japan were able to create new, free, and remarkably vibrant societies under the tutelage of the Americans. With even a semblance of decent leadership — and, yes, a change of heart as BillB observes* — what could the people of Gaza and the West Bank do along these lines with a bit of help?
*I am not aware enough of the history and background of Islam to state categorically that Palestinians “can’t” live with Israel and Israelis, but as Robert observes, there seems to be a trend among many Arab states in the region to at least acknowledge their right to exist. That’s a start, and Iran remains more of a fundamentalist outlier than a center of contemporary Islamic thought. (Once upon a time it was “fundamentalist” *Christians* who sought to kill, conquer, and enslave the infidels…)
Extending this analogy a bit further, I would be the first to admit that our attempt at de-Baathification in Iraq did not go very well, and this may serve as a cautionary tale for thinking about how to deal with the Palestinians, but haven’t we learned anything at all from this?
Lee S,
If you see no good guys in the Israel-Hamas war I can only recommend an urgent trip to an optometrist. But the Middle East is, admittedly, a long way from Sweden. Even someone with keen eyesight might legitimately have a problem discerning matters plainly at that distance.
How, I wonder then, is your eyesight anent all the violence that has been visited upon your chosen nation of residence by recent Muslim immigrants who, far from wishing to fit into extant Swedish society or expressing gratitude for being offered a way out of their native national hellholes, instead see themselves as settler-pioneers of what they see as being Islam’s next demesne – aided and abetted, I might add, by recent spineless leftist Swedish dhimmi administrations.
In order for peace to reign on planet Earth, it will be necessary to expunge the three intrinsically intolerant and aggressive ideologies that singly, or in various combinations, are behind the vast majority of the world’s conflicts – Marxism, in all of its various forms, Islam, in all of its various forms and tribal barbarism, in all of its various forms.
Anent “Palestine,” my own recommendation is for a one-state, rather than the cliched two-state, solution – with that one state being Israel. Gaza was, de facto, a “Palestinian” state from 2005 until 2023 and one which was ceaselessly at unprovoked war with Israel that entire time – culminating in the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.
The only way to end this war is to end “Palestine.” The ends of many past wars have been marked by significant movements of population – many involuntary on the part of the move-ees – as well as significant alterations to national borders or even their abolition. The end of the decades-long “Palestine”-Israel War should just be one more such. Israel should simply seize both Gaza and the so-called “West Bank” in their entireties and dump all of the self-styled “Palestinians” somewhere else.
I recommend Syria. Their “Arab brothers” there can be reliably counted upon to promptly kill or enslave all of the new arrivals in very short order and then the “Palestinian” problem will be over for good. This will occur because the rest of the Arabs have even less use for “Palestinians” than do the Israelis. The wall between Gaza and Egypt is even more formidable a barrier than the one between Gaza and Israel for a reason. And the Jordanians saw what happens to those who foolishly take in “displaced Palestinians” back in the late 1960s.
“But the ‘Palestinians’ deserve a country of their own,” many will wail. No, they don’t. There are a lot of ethnicities far more distinctly separate from their neighbors than the “Palestinians” are from their “brother” Arabs who also deserve nations but don’t have them and are unlikely to get them anytime soon, if ever. In the Middle East, the Kurds and the Druze come to mind. Both have traditionally been far better behaved than the “Palestinians” yet remain stateless. If there were a line whole peoples could get into in order to eventually be granted a state at its far end, the Kurds and Druze would, by rights, be far closer to the front of it than the wretchedly psychopathic “Palestinians.”
@Dick…..
It’s a good job I pay very little attention to the ramblings of the misinformed… Your post makes so little sense factually, historically or humanitarianly that im not going to bother answering. I just suggest you read a history book rather than the right wing propaganda sites you obviously get your “facts” from. ( And it is worth remembering that Israel didn’t exist in modern times until western forces carved up the middle east. I have no problem with Israel in principal, but you also cannot expect the locals, who continue to be expelled by force in the west bank to be a little annoyed)
@F
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/mar/27/gaza-palestine-children-injuries?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Try a news source that isn’t dedicated to your right wing agenda. Every FACT is sourced and sources linked to. It might not fit in with your narrow right wing view on the world… But it may open your firmly closed eyes, and pull the fingers out from your ears. The truth will out, and your denial will never change the truth. The blood of babies lies all over the middle east. Your opinions are bigoted and simplistic. Think on.
Lee S: Dick Eagleton responded to you with grace and reason. You have responded in insulting tones that are amazingly condescending. You discredit yourself for doing so.
Oh my…. I can’t help myself…..
@Dick….
You do realize that Palestine is a country? A nation of Arabs that has been pushed and pulled apart from foreign invaders for millennia… And the land lived upon mostly by regular folk who just want to go about their business, but who have been uprooted by foreign powers.
You do realize that the USA is a nation of immigrants who stole the land by force and deception from the natives. And by your measure, it would be better if Canada took control of the US… A much calmer and peaceful land that has never started a war with anyone.
Your ignorance of history is both startling and worrying. I know that many of you guys over there think you drop off the edge of the earth if you go too far east or west, and that history started in the 1600s, but a little more research and a little less spouting absolutely nonsense would very much behove you.
No Bob….
Dicks comments offend me deeply…. And I have had many, many worse comments over the years regarding my ( ignorant, stupid, naive, whatever ) viewpoints ….
I feel that Dick is bringing a very wrong minded and dangerous viewpoint to a sensitive subject. I have kept my language clean, and have used no language worse than has been used against me in the past.
This is a subject very close to my heart for several reasons, and I stand by my words. I refuse to be silent in the face of indifference or stupidity.
Lee S: No, you can’t help yourself. You have to respond in an insulting and condescending manner.
1. Palestine did not exist ever prior to World War I. Before that war it was part of the Ottoman Empire. After it was part of Jordan, then labeled Trans-Jordon. Palestine as a concept only appeared when the British said they were leaving and it became necessary to settle the political conflict there. The Jewish refugees from the Nazis wanted to live there. The Arabs wanted them out, and were willing to commit genocide to do it.
Farther back in time, this region was the homeland of the Jewish people, before the Romans kicked them out. Archeology has proven this so definitively that it is a joke for anyone to deny it (as you appear to do). So, don’t we always respect the rights of indigenlous peoples? Wasn’t this land then “stolen” from the Jews by the Arabs?
2. You claim the Israelis steal the land from the Arabs. This is false. They carefully document every land purchase. I described this process in detail in my long five part essay on this subject many years ago, a series I asked you to read. You claimed you did, but I never believed you. You comments today proved you were lying.
3. Once again, you claim to be all-knowing in history and that anyone who disagrees you merely exhibits “ignorance.” This is hubris of the worst sort. History is complex. It does not fit into your very neat shallow leftist boxes that make all sides morally equal so that the left’s allies (Hamas) can look good.
I have a rule about insults on this webpage, but I prefer in your case to allow you to keep commenting. Every time you do speak up on political subjects you do yourself harm and help to convince others you are wrong by your very words.
Lee S: Dick’s comments offended you because you disagree with him. (By the way, in this case so do I.) He was not attacking you personally, only stating what he thinks must be done to solve the Middle East conflict.
Your comments however were simply offensive and insulting. Because you dislike his opinions, you consider it justified to call him “ignorant” and “spouting nonsense,” without any documentation to back up those insults. And in fact, your actual historical claims about Israel (in another comment today) are wrong, as I noted in another comment.
Regardless, you do this all the time. Someone disagrees with you and tries to explain why, in detail, and you take their response personally as an insult. The result? You learn nothing.
I do seem to remember hearing that Egypt will admit some Gazans..so there’s that.
Besides, there’s already an Islamic State.
It’s called Dearborn.
Robert Zimmerman,
“I wish my readers might consider that approach as well in their thinking process.”
I suspect that your readers are pessimistic due to the history of the region. If there were signs of lasting peace, then the Abraham Accord treaties might look like they could have a lasting effect and are worth doing. If only there were a lasting peace treaty that worked so well that someone, like Jimmy Carter, maybe, got a Nobel Peace Prize for creating it, then we might be able to muster up some enthusiasm, especially if the next rulers of Gaza signed up with an Abraham Accord treaty.
______________
Lee S,
You do realize, don’t you, that the natives that the American Democrats stole the country from had themselves stolen it from the even earlier natives, none of whom survived their invasion. I’m neither startled nor worried that you don’t know that, because leftists are working very hard to erase the original natives, and they are doing a great deal to erase the more recent natives that you wrote of, and they embrace tightly the most recent illegal invaders, who are intended to steal the country from We the People: the current native Americans. That is some history that you were not expected to learn during your visit to the United States.
Lee S,
As others here have observed, it is not I who is deficient in my grasp of history. History is just facts. It doesn’t have a “wing,” either left or right. The left, having never had any respect for history, tradition or even for reality, makes a continual practice of ignoring or denying facts inconvenient to its case. What the left believes about “Palestine” isn’t even a particularly egregious example compared to, say, what the left believes about gender and race.
What has only fairly recently been labeled “Palestine” has been repeatedly fought over and changed hands for, literally, millennia. The Jews were far from being its first inhabitants, but they have the longest continuous presence down to the present day, even if the size of that presence has varied a lot over the centuries and their dominance of the area has, historically, been more miss than hit.
But the Jews have been on their uppers again these past eight decades and who’s to say they don’t deserve to be? It’s undeniable that modern Israel, after less than eighty years under continuous Jewish management, has become something far more impressive than what little the Arabs and Turks ever managed with the place over more than a millennium of dominance – said dominance being mostly by the Turks with the Brits getting a piddly three decades of “control” after WW1. Still, one must “credit” the Brits for making a far more durable and intractable mess of the place even than it had been before.
The Arabs, for their part, took the place, to be sure, during the early frothy expansionist phase of Islamic conquest. But the land, like their religion, was soon co-opted by the Turks. The Persians also co-opted Islam and also demoted the Arabs to mere hoi polloi in their empire and then arm-wrestled the Turks for centuries over who was to be the Capo di tutti capi of the racket that is Islam.
Thus, unless one goes back so far in human history that all of humanity was a mere few thousand clansmen in Africa, there is no part of the world that was ever innocent of previous human occupancy. Every habitable part of the world has a profoundly iffy title – many such up until quite recently.
That certainly includes the former demesne of “the noble red man” as Native Americans were once called by less politically correct ancestors of today’s finger-wagging leftists. Much of the present day Native American population – or “First Nations” as the Canadians prefer to call them – seems to descend from migrants across the then-extant Siberian land bridge that briefly existed at the end of the last ice age. But there have been quite a number of recent archaeological discoveries of human bones and artifacts dating back two and even three times that far into the North and South American past. A great deal of real estate has changed hands many times in the Western Hemisphere over the last 40 millennia, the vast majority, it is safe to assume, without recourse to contracts offered by pleasant brokers wearing trim skirts and blazers.
Nor is this at all speculative. Few aboriginal tribes had systems of writing and it is really quite interesting what advantage ambitious tribal elders will take of lacking any significant written history to claim all sorts of things about their ancestors and – more to the point – their alleged ancestral holdings and/or their alleged religious traditions when there is advantage to be taken of credulous guilty white leftists.
But all of the white populations that showed up following Columbus did have systems of writing and just the history of Native Americans since the arrival of Europeans is sufficient to establish that, while the former were certainly savages, they were hardly noble, particularly to their racial brethren of different tribes.
The history of the rise of what came to be called the Iroquois Confederation is instructive. You should look it up. Short form – the Iroquois adopted white settler technology – especially guns – and then used it to keep it from any other tribe. Think Cortez with feathers.
Also instructive is the history of the Comanche. The arrival of the white man – or, more specifically, his horses – was the making of the Comanche. Pre-Conquistador, the Comanche were a small, insignificant tribe of no distinction. But they took to horses more readily than any other culture before or since, including the Mongol Hordes. The Comanche quickly became the finest light cavalry in the history of mankind – something that was once, inaccurately said of the Apache. The Apache were good horsemen and fighters-on-horseback, but the Comanche were far better. War, as the libertarians like to say, is the health of the state. It was certainly the health of the Comanche tribe.
And horsemanship was so central to Comanche society that they became, in essence, the Sparta of Native America – a culture that consisted of little but the techniques of horse-borne warfare. No dances, no music, no “crafts” except the making of weapons.
So, yeah, we white Europeans took the land away from its previous owners – in Canada as well as in the US. The Canucks don’t get a pass on this. We did it because we could, having a more efficient social order that could support larger populations on much less land, and because the aborigines were in the way. Ours was just the latest in a long string of expropriations by aborigines of other aborigines. Said aborigines as are still pissed off about that are so mainly because they resent having lost, not because their peoples have ever had any objection to violent changes of land title per se.
And, as with the Jews in Israel, we have done a lot more with the place than its “original” owners ever did. If their descendants want it back, make us an offer that includes compensation for improvements and maybe we’ll talk.
So, to return to the original subject of conversation, the Gaza-Israel War, there is no “genocide” going on as many on the self-righteous and screechy left have alleged. The Jews are nothing if not efficient. If wiping out all the Gazans had been part of the plan, they would all most assuredly be dead, dead, dead by now.
But the Jews are – understandably – touchy on the subject of genocide. That is true even when killing an entire population of congenital troublemakers would not, in fact, constitute genocide so much as pest abatement. The Gazans are Arabs. There are a lot of Arabs in the world. The Jews have no interest in killing them all or even in killing any provided that they would behave their damned selves. But the Gazans, of course, do not.
Even so – and notwithstanding the fact that most Gazans would still support the extinction of Jews by force, the Israelis have – quite magnanimously in my view – elected to try minimizing casualties to the degree possible. The Hamas leadership, of course, makes this as impossible as it can manage. Building arms caches and such under hospitals and holding ordinary civilians hostage as human shields is just another typical day’s work in Gaza. So the Israelis do what they must and the Hamas leadership gets some “innocent civilian” bodies to excite the partisan passions of self-righteous Western leftists and other useful idiots.
The Israelis, for their part, seem to have finally decided that they will endure the opprobrium of the Jew-hating Western left over the impossible-to-avoid collateral damage attendant on actually exterminating Hamas. I think that is not only a good choice and a moral choice, but the only choice that makes any sense.
Jeff Wright,
Good one, there, about Dearborn. I still remember visits to family friends there in the early and mid-1960s when the long-serving, portly and unblushingly segregationist mayor Orville Hubbard was still running the place and doing his level best to preserve it as a bastion of lily-whiteness even after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His notion was that letting in anyone of a duskier complexion would surely convert his clean and pleasant town into a lesser version of what he saw as the Sodom and Gomorrah next door that was Detroit. He died in 1982 but I suspect Michigan could generate quite a bit of electric power by hitching a generator to his no-doubt briskly rotating corpse given what Dearborn is like these days.
Edward,
Good and tight abstract of the last 40 millennia of American history, though I think you give a tad too much credit – if that’s the word – to Democrats. I’m no fan of that party either, but the conquest of the Western Hemisphere was a joint project by partisans of many political stripes and the Democrats – while they have certainly packed a great deal of cynical villainy into their tenure to-date – said tenure is only a bit over two centuries in extent.
Dick–
Great word-smithery on all your contributions! (Do you write Stuff as part of your job?)
Had an aunt & uncle who lived in Dearborn. (Chemistry teachers for the Inkster school system)
Heard a lot of stories about Orville Hubbard essentially “kicking all the non-white people out of Dearborn, by hook or by crook.”
My cousin who took over the family house, just bailed last year and moved to the sticks. A life-long lefty, he started getting concerned when he was the “only” one who spoke English on his block and started referring to the city as “Dearbornistan.”
‘The Most Controversial Peace Treaty after WW1’
“Treaty of Trianon 1920”
https://youtu.be/HEoZMe8MSPM
(24:49)
“The last of the big peace treaties signed in Paris that finalized the borders in Europe was the Treaty of Trianon. Even at the time, Hungarians considered it a historic injustice while nations such as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia were quite happy with the result.”
Oh my..
I did stir up a hornet nest there didn’t I?
It is true that the history of mankind is a roadmap of killing and conquest, but I believe that when we are advanced enough to be exploring space, we should be beyond this nonsense by now.
I apologize if I offended anyone in my earlier comments, ( although Bob, nothing I said was any worse than has been said to me over the years, regarding my political views.)
The situation in Palestine cuts very deep for me… It breaks my heart how a good friend has lost family, and currently has no idea of the location or status of the rest of her family. They have nothing to do with Hamas, just regular folks like the rest of us.
I understand that pretty much every poster here is right leaning, and pro Israel, but you should all realize that Palestinians are people too, and most want nothing to do with Hamas, they just want peace, not having their homes, schools, and hospitals blown to bits. It’s not “collateral damage” if it’s your family.
( Did anyone bother reading the article I linked to regarding child amputees? I’m guessing highly unlikely)
And finally Bob… I did read your essay, and while if I recall correctly I am skeptical of some of the points , is there anything in there that justifies using sometimes lethal force with impunity, often with the help of the Israeli authorities to forcibly evict folks from their homes?
Remember what the great philosopher Playdough said: “Don’t continue to do what don’t work”.
Yowza…
I can hear the sound of keyboards being typed….
Tangentially:
Popcorn in Bed
Cassie reacts, first time watching:
“The Ten Commandments” (1956)
Part 1 of 2
https://youtu.be/KRN686XYsNY
36:57
If it was possible to ban me from commenting on political posts, while allowing me to continue on science/space posts it would be wonderful! I genuinely come for the excellent space / science reporting , but my politics and worldview are light-years away from 99% of the posters here, and of course from our host, and I’m not one able to bite my tongue, which has got me in trouble more than once… And not just here!
I do however have a belief in free speech, and actually respect everyone’s right to their opinions, even if they are wrong! ( That’s a joke! )
At some point I will tell you the tale about how I made my sons last girlfriend hate me. She is extremely “woke”, and subscribes to an almost American left wing agenda. She didn’t really appreciate my views on free speech. Fortunately he now has a much broader minded girlfriend, who I get on much better with.
I will try to come for the space stuff, and avoid the political stuff because I know we see life thru different lenses, and I will never change your minds and you will never change mine… Indeed, believe it or not, I was much more right of center in my youth, but have leaned more and more to the left as the years have passed by.
I wish everyone a great weekend, and as the commie french say… “Viva la difference”
Lee S asked, “is there anything in [the West Bank] that justifies using sometimes lethal force with impunity, often with the help of the Israeli authorities to forcibly evict folks from their homes?”
I personally think Israel’s policy to bulldoze the homes of Palestinian supporters of terrorists to be misguided. At the same time, Israel is entirely justified in defending itself and its citizens (both Jewish and Arab) from violent terrorist attacks.
You continually try to draw a complete moral equivalency between Arab terrorists and the Israeli government, not only illustrating your utter ignorance of what has really been occurring in Israel but demonstrating repeatedly that you are only interested in facts that support your position. Any information that goes against that narrative — such as Hamas attack on Oct 7 that included the rate, torture, and murder of men, women, children, and babies — must be dismissed.
That Israel unilaterally left Gaza in 2006 so that the Gazans could have a state of their own is a fact you dismiss.
That Israel has been providing power, water, and utilities to Gaza for decades, even through most of this most recent war, is a fact you dismiss.
That many of the Israeli citizens massacred on October 7 were actually leftists who had been trying to work with Gazans for years, giving them jobs and assistance, is a fact you dismiss.
That, as I detailed at length in my five-part essay, that no Israeli settlement in the West Bank has ever been “stolen” from any Arab, but purchased legally, is a fact you dismiss.
That the leaders of the Palestinian territories in both the West Bank and Gaza have for decades called for the genocide of all Jews — in their founding statements — is a fact you dismiss.
I could go on. I, like you AND the government of Israel, don’t want to see all Gazans or Palestinians massacred. Sadly, however, the leadership of Gaza and the West Bank, has for decades wanted to massacre all Israelis. The difference is profound. That you insist on ignoring this difference to make believe there is a moral equivalency between the two sides is shameful.
You are like all leftists. You are always right, and anyone who disagrees with you is thus insulting you. In truth, you insult yourself by your close-minded view of politics.
Lee S,
“… but you should all realize that Palestinians are people too, and most want nothing to do with Hamas, they just want peace …”
A majority in Gaza elected Hamas, knowing that they intended the genocide of all Jews.
“although Bob, nothing I said was any worse than has been said to me over the years, regarding my political views.”
No, Robert was right in his first, second, and third replies to you. Especially this comment:
“I will never change your minds and you will never change mine …”
You won’t change our minds, because you do not try, and we will never change your mind, because you dismiss what we say. However, responding to you is a good exercise for us, because we further hone our own thoughts on political subjects. Rather than be banned from commenting on political topics, please continue to show us what you think, and we will continue to hone our thoughts.
“… Indeed, believe it or not, I was much more right of center in my youth, but have leaned more and more to the left as the years have passed by.”
That is completely believable. When you were young, you were healthy. Now you get subsidized pharmaceuticals as your benefit from leftism. Take from someone else and benefit from it is how marxists seduce most of their followers.
Not to attack our foreign friend Lee.
His attitudes permeate all of Europe.
(I just don’t want to have to save their sorry butts, a 3rd time, in 100 years. I have 2 dead uncles in France and lost another uncle in the Pacific.)
I remain very confused about Lee’s status. I am under the impression Lee is actually a British citizen who lives in Sweden and partakes in the socialist utopia thereof.
But, I don’t know how all that “multiple citizenship” stuff works in Europe.
That Clip from, “A Few Good Men.” (1992)
“I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way”
https://youtu.be/6X85pbSaOP0
(0:23)
wayne,
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve been retired for some years now, but probably made more money writing for a living than doing any of the other things I turned my hand to over the course of a rather checkered “career.” Not that I was ever exactly eating off the fat of the land even in the best of those times. So it goes.
Anent your cousin, it’s been my observation that lefties often recoil from the actual consequences of their smug beliefs when their noses get forcibly rubbed in the result. Out here, in the wake of so many white, wealthy lefties having been burned out of house and home by a municipal administration obsessed with DEI and intersectionality at the expense of basic administrative competence, we may finally get a Republican instead of an avowed communist as our next mayor – wonder of wonders.
In the case of your cousin it was running, nose-foremost, into that other leftist sacred cow “multiculturalism.” As generally tends to be the case when too many from any particular other culture are allowed to essentially colonize a piece of the USA, what results isn’t multi- so much as mono-culturalism. Each of these clusters is, in essence, a cultural tumor on the nation. Dearbornistan indeed. We will, unfortunately, be many decades curing the various afflictions attendant on too long a run of unchecked progressivism.
Small wonder the Czechs and Yugoslavs were pleased by the Treaty of Trianon as their countries were both carved bodily out of the corpse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a consequence of the latter losing WW1. That, of course, also explains the rather different attitude of the Hungarians.
One would hope they’re not still nursing a grudge, but that part of the world tends to be, as the lyrics of ‘Dixie’ put it, a place where “old times there are not forgotten.” Ah well, the Hungarians gave us goulash and the Gabor sisters so I will always think well of them for both gifts.
About Lee S’s living situation, it is my understanding that, as part of the EU’s longstanding goal of completely homogenizing Europe, a nominal citizen of any EU member state may take up residence in any other such member state he or she chooses. This inability to exert any consequential control over movements across national borders is much of the reason the Brits voted for Brexit and left the EU.
As Lee S’s native UK is now no longer an EU member state, I wonder if he might, at some point, be forced to pull up stakes in Sweden and return to the UK. I have no knowledge of the details of either EU or Swedish law anent such matters but I suspect Lee S does. Perhaps he will deign to tell us just what the future status of his evidently long-term tenure in Sweden is likely to be. Personally, I hope he can stay and not get caught up in the eddies of any sudden push to expel far more numerous and troublesome people of quite different national origins.
I’ll try to get to your linked videos as soon as I can – I tend to like nearly everything to which you thus provide us convenient entree.
Lee S,
It would, indeed, be nice if “we” were all beyond brute force – particularly unprovoked psychopathically aggressive brute force – but your complaints along those lines are better addressed to “Palestinians” than to Israelis.
I would be a great deal more sympathetic to your Gazan friend if I wasn’t pretty sure she was among the capering hordes dancing in the street and passing out sweets to celebrate the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.
No, I did not look at your link about “Palestinian” child amputees. I suspect you have never looked at any coverage of broiled, strangled and otherwise violently done-to-death Israeli babies. Call it square. You have your obvious sympathies. I have mine.
I will admit that “Palestinians” at least superficially resemble people, but no “people” I know revel like drunken trolls at the news of the mass slaughter and rape by their fellows of others who had done nothing to harm them. So far as I am concerned, if you celebrated on Oct. 7, you deserve everything you have subsequently gotten – and more. Anyone who ever cast a ballot for Hamas deserves a bullet in return.
Oh my….
Yes Hamas did an atrocious act on October 7th, there is no excuse for that attack, none. However the baby beheading and many of the other alleged acts have been completely debunked. It was even proved that your best friend Biden lied when he said he had seen photographic proof
@ Dick… Quote “I would be a great deal more sympathetic to your Gazan friend if I wasn’t pretty sure she was among the capering hordes dancing in the street and passing out sweets to celebrate the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.”
“if I wasn’t pretty sure ” is no basis for an argument. Indeed, you should be ashamed to believe that you can draw any conclusion from my statement other than I know a girl who has lost relatives in a war zone. She knew the repercussions from the Hamas attack would not be good, her family back in Palestine knew it also. Their fears proved to be far worse than they could have believed.
She was not handing out sweets and dancing in Palestine on that day… She was crying, fearful for the future of her family, she was crying here in Sweden where she has moved to in search of a better life.
It’s a very common propaganda technique to portray a people as “the other”, in this case to cast all the Palestinians as terrorist. This helps to remove any feelings of guilt, sorrow or empathy for the suffering of innocents.
I have to state, once again, that you should be filled with shame by presuming you have any insight whatsoever into a good friend of mine, who’s only crime in her life (under US law ) was being born in the wrong land.
And Bob. I offer out an olive branch, and you throw it back in my face. I accept you are a blowhard, and I accept that you rarely, if ever admit you are wrong. I understand you are Jewish, ( and I certainly am not being antisemitic, I am not critical of the Jewish faith, I am very critical of the politics of Israel), so of course you are pro Israel, but the politics of the region are not black and white. It would behove you to take a step or two back and consider the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and consider if Israel’s response to the terrible acts on that day are measured and proportionate.
And you didn’t really answer my point regarding the settlers in the west bank , with the help of Israeli authorities using murder and violence.
And here is a point to consider, ( I’m wearing my tin foil hat here…) given that Mossad is considered the best secret service in the world, is it really conceivable that they could have missed the preparation for the October 6th attack? Is it inconceivable that they allowed it to go ahead… Giving Israel the excuse to destroy Gaza, and keep Netanyahu in power? Just a little food for thought…
Enjoy the rest of your weekend, friends and foe’s alike!