by Yukon Jack

The Eternal Wellspring of Hope trumps any evidence. The fact that there is absolutely not the slightest piece of evidence matters not, because humans want to believe. The Gospels give billions of people hope of a better life, in the afterlife. Add to that the promise of eternal life and you got a package deal, the car and a 10 year warranty to boot.

If you break down this religious stuff, disassemble the components to see how it works, humans have invented religions for one, and only one reason. They are sentient, meaning self aware that they are alive and do not want to die. They fear death, death is non-existence, and if you know you are alive, well who wants to not exist? So one promise religion makes is that with belief alone you can beat death.

Be sure to realize there is no evidence that anyone can beat death, but billions of people do believe and it is the main reason why the Gospels are so popular. Jesus beat death, and if you believe in him, you too can beat death. So when it comes to the Palestinians, they matter not, because the Christians want heaven so much, they have collectively decided to back Jews because Jesus was a Jew. And if some Palestinians have to be slaughtered, so what, if I’m going to heaven for all eternity to be with Jesus, and a few eggs have to be cracked, so be it. Christians, for that reason, are indifferent to the total humiliation and slaughter of the Palestinians. They have their eyes on the prize.

But that is not all, the other big reason the Gospels sell is because of hope of a better life. Life sucks, let’s face it, most people hate their jobs, the stress, taxes, relationships, and life in general. So the other big promise of the Gospels is that in the next life, heaven, it is perfection, no worries, no job, don’t have to work, no taxes, no suffering of any kind. With that promise, humans can then tolerate the horrible conditions on earth, because you see, all they have to do is reach the goal post, die and go to heaven – for all eternity. Hope is the cope dope while on earth.

Never mind, as you say, any proof. There is no proof, but belief goes on and what the believers really don’t like, is the naysayers like you and me. The reason why is that the doubter, the rational argument weakens their faith and belief, and they sure as hell do not want that. This is IMO why atheists are persecuted and even called “antichrists”. The thinking atheist is the mortal enemy to the faithful believing theist. Thus, anyone using reason and logic is held in contempt and will have venom spit their way. No religion can survive two words: “PROVE IT”.

What the preacher is doing is selling hope. The job of the preacher is to convince the flock of the literalness of the Gospels, because if you find one error the whole yarn could unravel. Reason is the mortal enemy of faith the sheep are told, and that is true. So another thing the believers do is exclude any non-believers from their fold, and this is a big deal, to maintain faith, the believers are very exclusionistic, they do not want to mingle with any other faith or non-faith persons. The preacher sells heaven, collects the money upfront, and never has to deliver the car. Because when you are dead, how can you sue? You can not, and so the preaching business is full of money grubbing charlatans, making outrageous claims, to collect mucho shekels.

How the Gospels sells Jesus power to beat death needs to be mentioned, Jesus starts out with small miracles, like the loaves and fishes, then the miracles increase in absurdity, he walks on water, makes the blind see, raises Lazarus from the dead. Then the big grand finale (con job), Jesus beats death himself, comes back to life, and if you believe that, you too can beat death. So the religious pitch is very clear, if you believe Jesus could raise himself from the dead, so you too will beat death by believing in him. Of course there is exactly zero evidence any of it could be true, just have to believe, so to convince you of the whopper ressurection, Jesus does a whole bunch of miracles, to convince you that he could come back to life.

So a quick recap, humans want to believe, which means the Gospels will probably never go away until humans go away (like if we are replaced by robots). The reason for religion, and why only humans have religion, is because humans are fully sentient. All one has to do is look at the Gorilla and wonder why Gorillas have no need for god to figure out why we humans are so damn weird, to believe in god and fantastic claims of afterlife. Humans are also not fit, they are domesticated. Humans have to get jobs to get money to buy food. No other animals has to do that, because all of the wild animals are fit – fit meaning they fit into the environment and just eat everything around them, and have fur and no need for houses or cars or bank accounts.

The most amazing thing about religion is that it actually has convinced billions of people that they can beat death – without any real evidence to proving it true – religion is a sales job, it convinces you of a narrative found in a book. It is not like God Almighty opening up the heavens and telling you any of this, the whole story is in a book. Thus this Gospel story held in “reverence”. But you see, it is all just make believe. Every single thing in the Gospels is fiction, Jesus is fiction, his miracles are fiction, his apostles are fiction, the very writers of the story, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are also fiction. Afterlife is fiction, the soul is fiction, the ability to survive death is fiction. All of it is 100% fiction and I am just a greatest of heretics for saying the obvious, a blasphemer, that in earlier times would of surely been burned at the stake.

I don’t care about religious threats, what I care about is how religion is playing out in end times, the believers are voting a certain way to make their beliefs come true. They will destroy the entire earth to prove that their god and beliefs are true, so with great delight they love all this death and destruction around Israel, because you see, it is prophecy coming true. But it isn’t, what is really happening is that they are willfully making their horrid beliefs come true. Christians are allied with Israel because it will force their savior to come back, or so they think. But since Jesus was never real, he can not come back, thus they will have to double down on their insanity again and again until the whole world blows up. That is the threat they pose us.

by Yukon Jack

Whites had their own tribal myths, but they were mostly erased with the forced conversion to Christianity, after Rome itself, was swallowed up by it. You might be interested in how it happened, and the story begins when Rome under Titus Flavian sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D. During the war against the Jewish Zealots, Josephus was captured early on. The Romans were putting the rebels all to death, but Josephus was a general and got his life spared first by tricking his comrades:

Flavius Josephus was a famous historian of the first century. During the Jewish-Roman war, he was among a band of 41 Jewish rebels trapped in a cave by the Romans. Preferring suicide to capture, the rebels decided to form a circle and to kill every third remaining person until no one was left. But Josephus, along with an unindicted conspirator, wanted none of this suicide nonsense and therefore quickly calculated where he and his friend should stand in the circle so that they can survive.

Josephus, now the sole survivor, is going to be put to the sword upon capture but tells Vespasian, he will become Emperor, and since the Romans are really into prophecy, they hear him out. Vespasian soon does become emperor, and Josephus is brought back to Rome and given the Flavian name.

Titus Flavius Josephus was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer who was born in Jerusalem – then part of Roman Judea – to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.

He initially fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War as the head of Jewish forces in Galilee, until surrendering in 67 to Roman forces led by Vespasian after the six-week siege of Jotapata. Josephus claims the Jewish Messianic prophecies that initiated the First Roman-Jewish War made reference to Vespasian becoming Emperor of Rome. In response Vespasian decided to keep Josephus as a hostage and interpreter. After Vespasian did become Emperor in 69, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the emperor’s family name of Flavius.

Flavius Josephus then writes the Gospels, and casts himself as the savior of the Jews. In the Gospels teenager Jesus in the temple amazing the scribes is also in Josephus autobiography as himself in the temple amazing the scribes. This is how we know for sure, Jesus is a fictional character made in the image of the primary Gospel writer Josephus, and he even used his own name:

Jo S E p h U S becomes J E S U S in the New Testament

The reason for the Gospels is explained in detail in Caesar’s Messiah, and you can read it free online of just watch the movie:

CAESAR’S MESSIAH: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus – OFFICIAL VERSION

But the Jews were not converted in great numbers, what happens is the greatest of tragedies for the white race Nico, the Roman slave class loved the new myth, and in the next 2 centuries the myth swallows the empire while Rome collapses – and Rome morphs into the Catholic Church. Joseph Atwill explains this crystal clear, the official title of Caesar, Pontiff Maximus now becomes the Pope’s official title. The rest is history, Christianity sweeps the lands north of Rome, all of Ireland, Scotland, Britain, Spain, France, Germany, etc. get swallowed up by the new myth, the the western world then goes to sleep, a deep sleep caused by rigid beliefs, called the Dark Ages.

Then when the white people wake up, you have the Protestant revolt and reformation – which leads to much persecution and death as the Church tries to hold onto their monopoly of faith, which results in thousands of new Christian denominations, especially in the New Worlds of the Americas, which then is also forcibly converted along with mass deaths. Eventually Rothschilds subvert these new Christian protestors with the Scofield Bible which leads us directly to today, the Evangelicals and their support for Israel.

Zionist Jews can not exist in a vacuum, they must have some political support, and the only reason Israel gets away with their crimes is because 100 million Christians in Amerika feverously support Israel because of their own beliefs, and this power centers around Christians United for Israel. So if you want to save white people, and Amerika, and even the Jews themselves, you must first defeat Christianity.

https://www.johnkaminski.info/pages/the_next_chapter/three_sides_of_the_same_coin.html

The only thing about your below comments is that Judiasm and Christianity are JOINED AT THE HIP SEAMLESSLY ALL THE WAY UP TO THE TOPS OF THEIR HEADS in an inoperable Siamese twin condition. The only way you can destroy Jews and Judiasm is to destroy Christianity. You cannot put the cart before the horse.

The Christian cannot divest himself of the influence of the Jew without throwing out the dogma of the Bible. If you rally around Christianity you circle the wagons around the Jew.

And to destroy Christianity in order to destroy Jews, you have to attack the foundations of the myth. And that is easy to do, since it is only myth. Abraham never existed, neither did Saul, Solomon, King David or even Jesus. Israeli archeology and ancient historiography has proved that already, and that makes the entire Holy Bible story sitting on a foundation of quicksand. You can not take it literal, yet millions of fundamentalists do, in fact they make a point of it, the center of their faith.

Typical Christian saying in modern Amerika:

God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

The fundamentalist Christian movement throws out science and surrenders the mind to blind belief, which has been manipulated in support of Israel and Jews over all others, including themselves. The modern Evangelist does not exist in the “now”, they are fully consumed by getting to heaven, getting Raptured to be with the Jew man Jesus, while the rest of us burn in Apocalyptic hell – and this belief is manifesting in real time in Gaza. Thus a self fulfilling loop, the worse it gets, the more they believe.

There is no such thing as sin, that gets on your soul, and prevents you from going to heaven – that is all horrible fear mongering religious literature meant to control you in this life. The afterlife is an oxymoron. No one can prove it. There’s life, all you know is that you are alive right now, and that’s it. Everything else is just speculation. No one knows what happens when you die, and the default position is nothing, you are just dead. So it is the overcoming the fear of death as the key to your salvation from religion, and all he insane wars that stem from belief.

Prove sin, hell, heaven, god, judgment. None of those things can be proved, so why believe any of it? Sin is a theological construct. It is taught to you to control you, right now, not in some fanciful “after” life. It is a mind trick. The priest uses sin to control the plebs, plain and simple. The way to defeat Zionism is simply stop believing in any of it. It is all horrible fiction. All anyone needs to do is overcome their own fear of death, stop believing unproved things, take a deep breath, and realize most of humanity is batshit insane, Jews especially. There is no god, no god chose them, the holy land ideas all came out of India and have nothing to do with Palestine.

by ALISON WEIR via Counterpunch Excerpts
▼

Schneerson has been praised widely for a public persona and organization that emphasized “deep compassion and insight,” worked to bring many secular Jews “back” into the fold, created numerous schools around the world, and had offered, in the words of the Jewish Virtual Library, “social-service programs and humanitarian aid to all people, regardless of religious affiliation or background.”

▲▼However, there is also a less attractive underside often at odds with such public perceptions. And some of the more extreme parts of Schneerson’s teachings – such as that Jews are a completely different species than non-Jews, and that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews – have been largely hidden, it appears, even from many who consider themselves his followers.

As we will see, such views profoundly impact the lives of Palestinians living – and dying – under Israeli occupation and military invasions.

…While Chabad sometimes openly teaches that “the soul of the Jew is different than the soul of the non-Jew,” Schneerson’s specific teachings on this subject are largely unknown.

▲▼Quite likely very few Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, are aware of Schneerson’s teachings about the alleged deep differences between them – and about how these teachings are applied in the West Bank and Gaza.

▲▼Let us look at Schneerson’s words, as quoted by two respected Jewish professors, Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, in their book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (text available online here). This book, praised by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and many others is essential reading for anyone who truly wishes to understand modern day Israel-Palestine. (Brackets in the quotes below are in the translations by Shahak and Mezvinsky.)

▼Some of Schneerson’s rarely reported teachings:

“The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression: “Let us differentiate.” Thus, we do not have a case of profound change in which a person is merely on a superior level. Rather, we have a case of “let us differentiate” between totally different species.”
“This is what needs to be said about the body: the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world … The difference in the inner quality between Jews and non-Jews is “so great that the bodies should be considered as completely different species.”
“An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.”
“As has been explained, an embryo is called a human being, because it has both body and soul. Thus, the difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish embryo can be understood.”
“…the general difference between Jews and non-Jews: A Jew was not created as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews.”
“The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim.”
“The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.”

▲▼Most people don’t know about this aspect of Schneerson’s teaching because, according to Shahak and Mezvinsky, such teachings are intentionally minimized, mistranslated, or hidden entirely.

▲▼For example, the quotes above were translated by the authors from a book of Schneerson’s recorded messages to followers that was published in Israel in 1965. Despite Schneerson’s global importance and the fact that his world headquarters is in the U.S., there has never been an English translation of this volume.

Sent from my iPad

by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

Not even in revolutionary times have Russian elections been waged on the issue President Vladimir Putin proposed a few days ago of what it means, what it costs, what it risks for Russia to lead the national liberation of the world.

Nor has Putin revealed after two days of intensive talks with Emirati, Saudi, and Iranian leaders, and then a telephone call with the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, what plan of action for the Gaza war they discussed. “Russia is thinking about an initiative on Gaza,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has announced after the talks concluded.

El-Sisi was so negative about this, the Kremlin record of his Saturday morning telephone call reveals no more than that he and Putin talked over “a number of issues related to Russian-Egyptian cooperation, which has been developing very successfully. Both parties expressed their interest in further expanding cooperation in various areas in a traditionally friendly manner based on the principles of strategic partnership.” The two presidents then wished each other good luck for their re-elections.

The Egyptian presidential vote is running for three days from Sunday with the result to be declared on December 18; the Russian poll will be held on March 15-17. The outcome is certain for both.

Two hours after Putin put down the phone with el-Sisi, he picked it up again to call Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Kremlin communiqué has omitted to report what Netanyahu said.

Instead, Putin gave the Israeli his personal assurance there will be no Russian participation in a Gaza blockade-busting plan to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinians by sea, or across the Egyptian land border. Nor will the Russian military intervene to threaten Israeli aircraft if they commence bombing Beirut and southern Lebanese targets in the war against Hezbollah.

A Russian source on military strategy believes the Russian objective is to protract the Palestine war on all fronts simultaneously, and exhaust the US and Israel by threatening Israeli ports and shipping, Israel’s offshore gas supplies, and the economy’s principal sources of income. Exhausting the US in the Middle East helps exhaust the US and NATO in the Ukraine, the source adds.

Tactically, the source said, this should mean an international humanitarian operation to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in order to deliver as much aid as the besieged Palestinians need; action at the international level to deter the Israelis using uranium radiation warheads, poison gas, and other weapons to attack the Hamas tunnel network; and a no-fly zone to cover Lebanon and Syria from Israeli bombing and missile attacks. Military action, the source cautions, should be indirect and confined to proxy forces like Hezbollah on the northern front; Iraqi groups in the east; the Houthis in the south; and support for the Palestinians fighting in the West Bank.

Hezbollah forces flying the Hezbollah and Syrian flags in Syrian operations to support President Bashar Assad.

The Israeli reaction – “what we can do in Gaza we can do in Beirut” — is to deter Russia, Iran, and the Arab states from allowing their “initiative” to adopt any of these tactics; and to deter an expanded operation by Hezbollah. “If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war,” Netanyahu declared publicly just before he spoke to Putin, “then it will, by its own hand, turn Beirut and southern Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Younis.”

Russian sources acknowledge the blackout on debate of these options in the Russian media, including the military bloggers who have become the most outspoken journalists in the country. “One war at a time, one election at a time”, according to one source. “That’s how Putin is thinking right now. How can the General Staff argue with that?”

The official Russian record on Hezbollah is almost empty; Russian officials are reluctant to pronounce the name in public. In 2005, asked what Russian policy was towards Hezbollah, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “It is necessary to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 in all its aspects. Like all the other decisions on the Middle East, they cannot be implemented just by one half or one third. This concerns matters related to Hezbollah and the Palestinians. As to the role of Hezbollah, I think that it is in the interest of Lebanon and the entire Middle East that the political role of Hezbollah should be taken into consideration and that the party receive a possibility to represent its interests through the elections for the power structures to be formed in Lebanon. Russia can help by being in contact with the Lebanese friends and the Syrian friends, the US, the Europeans, and the countries of the region and by advocating a well-balanced, comprehensive and just implementation of UNSCR 1559 and that in its implementation no one would pursue aims which do not relate to it.”

Source: http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1559

A year later, Lavrov’s ministry attempted “well-balance” between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah. “The Russian MFA resolutely condemns the abduction of the [IDF] servicemen, and the firing of rockets at Israeli territory. At the same time we regard the military actions launched by Israel as a disproportionate and inadequate use of force, endangering the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon and peace and security across the region…We urge Israel to cease incursions into Lebanon and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in the country and lift the blockade of its territories…In its turn, the Hezbollah movement should give up anti-Israeli actions that endanger the interests of its own country as well, release the kidnapped Israeli servicemen, cease firing into Israeli territory and respect the UN Blue Line.”

The same balancing act is being attempted now, as Lavrov told Al-Jazeera on Sunday in answer to questions on Russia’s policy towards Hamas. “Hamas committed a terrorist attack on the 7th of October, which we condemned immediately. Hamas has a political branch which operates in Doha, and we have relations with this political branch. We immediately got in touch with the people in Doha to negotiate the fate of the people taken hostages, Russian citizens (but not only Russian citizens), Israeli citizens, and citizens of the neighbouring countries to Russia, and some others. We managed to reach a deal which, as far as I can say, Israelis understand and even appreciate it as far as their citizens are concerned.”

Lavrov attempted to distinguish between national liberation as a political strategy which the Kremlin supports, and Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi operations which amount to “terrorism” the Kremlin condemns.

Listen to the exchange on “terrorism” from Min 13:40 to 16:14.

“I don’t believe I am hypocritical or Russia is hypocritical,” Lavrov said. “We never have been hiding the operations which we conducted in the Republic of Chechnya. We never have been hiding what we have been doing in Syria at the request of the legitimate government, member of the United Nations, fighting ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other organizations which have popped up after the American interventions in Iraq when Al-Qaeda was created, then in Libya, Jabhat al-Nusra, and you know this story. And we will continue to fight terrorism. Exactly with the rules.”

One of the “rules” to which Lavrov refers is that Russian military engagement in the Middle East must be requested by a government for the security of its territory. In August 2019, when then- Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri requested Russian intervention after the IDF flew drones over Beirut, the response from the Foreign Ministry in Moscow was: “The Russian side reaffirmed its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and stability of friendly Lebanon and underscored the need for unfailing compliance by all sides with international law.”

There is no reliable evidence that Russian air defence missile systems have been supplied to the Lebanese government. Hezbollah is better equipped, but there is also no reliable evidence for Israeli and US propaganda claiming Russian deliveries of the Pantsir system to Hezbollah since the Gaza War began.

The evidence is much clearer that there has been no Lebanese government request for Russian air cover, nor even a Lebanese government conversation with the Russians since November 2021.

Last official communication between Lebanon and Russia – November 22, 2021.

“If the Egyptians won’t agree to request Russian backing for a blockade-busting operation,” comments a Moscow source, “and the Lebanese government will not request Russian military support for its airspace, what can the Kremlin do, let alone the General Staff? Considering the Russian attitude towards Hezbollah, and the position in Syria leaving gaping holes in their air defence against Israeli attack, I think we should expect nothing. I do not see the Arabs, Russians, and Chinese forming an alliance of any military consequence for now.”

How long is now?

A veteran of NATO military operations in Afghanistan observes: “The Ukrainian lines are breaking up all along the front. The push is on and that’s where Putin will put his effort to keep his credibility at home. If [Chief of the General Staff General Valery] Gerasimov can keep destroying the fascists riding NATO junk at the current rate of a battalion per day and gain ground doing it, everyone is happy — for now. As for the Arabs, no one in the region will directly take Israel on. The Lebanese Government is petrified of Israel — and they know better than to ask for Russian help. Sisi, with the most capable military, is a coward. The rest will make noise while clandestinely helping the Palestinian resistance, and causing trouble for the US in the neighbourhood. The Iranians know how to fight and won’t stop. The Israelis should and do see them as threat number-one.”

“The only way I see a direct intervention is if China takes the lead on, or announces support for, one. But [President] Xi [Jinping] has some trouble at home, and nothing I’m reading shows Chinese popular support for intervening. If anything, they’re indifferent.”

In wars for national liberation and in civil wars, the terrorism label is one side’s propaganda against the other – this is the consensus of the Russian sources, unspoken and unpublished for the time being. Russian public policy has yet to resolve the contradiction between Russian support for Palestine’s national liberation and opposition to Hamas’s “terrorism” – this can’t happen, the sources say, before the presidential election in March, and the success of the Russian military offensive in the Ukraine by then too.

“There’s nothing new here. Putin is following the old Soviet line on exercising ‘the greatest possible caution’ towards the ‘frightful collisions’ which Stalin’s famous speech on revolution and tactics spelled out a century ago.”

by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

Religious fundamentalists think that because God is on their side – more, that God has Chosen Them to be His People — they can leave it to Him to keep tabs on history, remember the lessons of the past, count the years, tote up the gains, costs, and losses. So long as God doesn’t issue any red alerts or insolvency notices during their prayers, when the Chosen People get up they can concentrate their minds and resources on preparing for the future. When the murder of a million or two Palestinians is the future which the Israelis and Americans are concentrating on now, it’s obvious that they and their God have not been re-reading the Melian Dialogue, if He did in the first place.

That’s Sections 84 to 116 of Book Five of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which he wrote over twenty years of the war, from 431 to 411 BC, leaving off before Athens and its army were defeated and lost everything they thought they had won.

It was in 416 that the Athenian army laid a starvation siege to Melos; then when the Melians surrendered, the Athenians murdered every man and enslaved every woman and child. After that, the Athenian empire of Melos lasted just eleven years before the Athenians were driven off the island by a Spartan force the Hellenes had become too weak to resist. The German empire of the island didn’t murder as many; they were driven off after just two years, from 1943 to 1945.

What Thucydides has reproduced in his book is the argument for genocide if you think you are strong enough to get away with it.

Its main point — the most remembered today of the lines from the book — is the Athenian declaration: “When these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they must.”

This is what US President Joseph Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are insisting upon. It’s what Biden means to demonstrate with his fleets in the eastern Mediterranean, northern Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.

This is slaughter of everybody in Gaza because the Americans and the Israelis have the power, for the time being.

Practical people is the phrase Thucydides put in the mouth of the Athenian side in the dialogue.

ATHENIANS

Left to right: Olaf Scholz (Germany), Joseph Biden (US), Rishi Sunak (UK), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel).

These days it means politicians running for election. They are Vladimir Putin in March 2024; Olaf Scholz in June 2024; Biden in November 2024; Rishi Sunak in January 2025; the French election is in 2027 but Emmanuel Macron cannot run for a third term. Netanyahu’s term is likely to run out as soon as the war against the Palestinians of Gaza ends. If all of them are dead or gone, Netanyahu may win.

The only certain winner on this list of practical people is Putin; he has now agreed with the Russian Army to concentrate their force against the US on the Ukrainian battlefield. The terms of this agreement can be found on, and also between, the lines of Putin’s speech of October 30. Read between the lines here.

In Thucydides’s reconstruction and dramatisation of the negotiations between the attacking and the defending sides, the Melians acknowledged it was pointless appealing to commonly held ideas of justice, morality, and fair play because the Athenians made clear they didn’t share them. Worse, the Athenians said they were convinced that only by demonstrating their superior force against the weaker Melians could they deter others, including their own critical and restive fellow citizens at home. “It is not so much your hostility that injures us,” the Athenians said. “It is rather the case that if we were on friendly terms with you, our subjects would regard that as a sign of weakness, whereas your hatred is a sign of our power.”

So the Melians tried arguing instead that there were common and shared political and economic interests which should spare them from the Athenians’ liquidation plan. “If yours and ours happen to coincide, we must try to persuade you of the fact. Is it not certain that you will make enemies of all states who are at present neutral, when they see what is happening here and naturally conclude that in the course of time you will attack them too?”

Forget it – there is only the present for you, leave the future to us, the Athenians replied. “This is no fair fight , with honour on one side and shame on the other. It is rather a question of saving your lives and not resisting those who are far too strong for you.”

Death-dealing is the power – for those who are victims, and even more for those who are witnesses. Hope for another outcome which the Melians expressed, “is by nature”, said the Athenians, “an expensive commodity, and those who are risking all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined.”

The Melians tried the Chosen People line. That wasn’t because they were Semites, although God had sailed westward from ancient Palestine to make landfall on the island. The Phoenicians, a Semitic people but not a Jewish one, had established trading posts on Melos and intermarried with the Caucasian arrivals from Sparta, on the Hellenic mainland. The Athenians dismissed the theology – God, like history and warfare, chooses winners, not losers. “So far as the favour of the gods is concerned, we think we have as much right to that as you have,” the Melians were told. “Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can.”

An Israel Air Force strike on October 10 destroyed this mosque in Khan Younis, Gaza.

The Melians then tried to argue that if they fought on for long enough, their ethnic allies, the Spartans, would come to their rescue, break the Athenian siege, defeat Athens. “Where danger is concerned,” came the Athenian reply, “the Spartans are not as a rule very venturesome.”

The force calculus would prevail on the Spartans, the Athenians were confident – Melos was too small and was surrounded, so a Spartan relief operation was out of the question. “What is looked for is a positive preponderance of power in action. And the Spartans pay attention to this point even more than others do.”

Inferiority wasn’t so dishonourable, the Athenians offered as they prepared to wind up the talks. “There is nothing disgraceful in giving way to the greatest city in Hellas when she is offering you such reasonable terms – alliance on a tribute-paying basis and liberty to enjoy your own property…And when you are allowed to choose between war and safety…this is the safe rule – to stand up to one’s equals, to behave with deference to one’s superiors, and to treat one’s inferiors with moderation.”

MELIANS

Left to right: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

The two sides then adjourned for internal consultations; later they returned to the table for the last round. The Melians said they had decided not to surrender their seven-hundred year old city state. “We put our trust in the fortune that the gods will send and which has saved us up to now, and in the help of men — that is of the Spartans; and so we shall try to save ourselves.” They added they were still open to negotiating terms of “a treaty which shall be agreeable to both you and us”. One condition was non-negotiable — the Athenians must “leave our country”.

The Athenian negotiators stood up. “As you have staked most on and trusted most in Spartans, luck, and hopes, so in all these you will find yourselves most deluded.”

The Athenian army built a new wall completely cutting off the Melians inside their city from the outside. Several months of siege followed while the Athenians withdrew their heavy forces to fight elsewhere. The Melians made sallies to capture food. Then the Athenians returned in force; but even then they didn’t risk a frontal assault. Instead, they bribed several Melians inside the city to betray the others. “As there was also some treachery from inside,” Thucydides concluded his account without more detail, “the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took over for themselves, sending out later a colony of 500 men.” Book Five ends at this point.

That was almost two thousand five hundred years ago.

It’s near-certain that Biden and Netanyahu haven’t read the Melian Dialogue. If men like US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jacob Sullivan were required to read the book during their undergraduate studies at Harvard and Yale, they have forgotten that after the genocide of the Melians, the Athenians were defeated – first their army and foreign empire, then their domestic democracy.

These practical men can hear the political clock ticking. They can’t hear the gods counting down.

by Robert Inlakesh via The Cradle

Two weeks after the Hamas breakout assault on Israel on 7 October, a clearer picture of what happened – who died, and who killed – is now beginning to emerge.

Instead of the wholescale massacre of civilians claimed by Israel, incomplete figures published by the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz show that almost half the Israelis killed that day were in fact combatants – soldiers or police.

In the interim, two weeks of blanket western media reporting that Hamas allegedly killed around 1,400 Israeli civilians during its 7 October military attack has served to inflame emotions and create the climate for Israel’s unconstrained destruction of the Gaza Strip and its civilian population.

Accounts of the Israeli death toll have been filtered and shaped to suggest that a wholesale civilian massacre occurred that day, with babies, children, and women the main targets of a terror attack.

Now, detailed statistics on the casualties released by the Israeli daily Haaretz paint a starkly different picture. As of 23 October, the news outlet has released information on 683 Israelis killed during the Hamas-led offensive, including their names and locations of their deaths on 7 October.

Of these, 331 casualties – or 48.4 percent – have been confirmed to be soldiers and police officers, many of them female. Another 13 are described as rescue service members, and the remaining 339 are ostensibly considered to be civilians.

While this list is not comprehensive and only accounts for roughly half of Israel’s stated death toll, almost half of those killed in the melee are clearly identified as Israeli combatants.

There are also so far no recorded deaths of children under the age of three, which throws into question the Israeli narrative that babies were targeted by Palestinian resistance fighters. Of the 683 total casualties reported thus far, seven were between the ages of 4 and 7, and nine between the ages of 10 and 17. The remaining 667 casualties appear to be adults.

Age distribution of the Israelis killed during Hamas’ October 7 operation (as of 23 October).

The numbers and proportion of Palestinian civilians and children among those killed by Israeli bombardment over the past two weeks – over 5,791 killed, including 2,360 children and 1,292 women, and more than 18,000 injured – are far higher than any of these Israeli figures from the events of 7 October.

Revisiting the scene

The daring Hamas-led military operation, codenamed Al-Aqsa Flood, unfolded with a dramatic dawn raid at approximately 6:30 AM (Palestine time) on 7 October. This was accompanied by a cacophony of sirens breaking the silence of occupied Jerusalem, signaling the start of what became an extraordinary event in the occupation state’s 75-year history.

As per the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, around 1,500 Palestinian fighters crossed the formidable Gaza-Israel separation barrier.

However, this breakout was not limited to Hamas forces alone; numerous armed fighters belonging to other factions such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) later breached the armistice line, along with some Palestinians unaffiliated with any organized militia.

As it became apparent this was no ordinary resistance operation, hundreds of videos quickly flooded social media, most of which have been viewed by The Cradle, depicting dead Israeli troops and settlers, fierce gunfire battles between various parties, and Israelis being taken captive into Gaza.

These videos were either taken on the phones of Israelis, or were released by Palestinian fighters filming their own operation. It wasn’t until hours later that more gruesome and downright dubious allegations began to surface.

Unsubstantiated allegations of ‘Hamas atrocities’

Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for the Israeli mission to the UN, was the first Israeli of note to spread the claim that there were reports of “Israeli girls being raped and their bodies dragged through the street.”

She posted this on X at 9:18 PM (Palestine time), on 7 October, although an op-ed Klompa published with Newsweek at 12:28 AM (Palestine time), on 8 October, made no mention of any sexual violence.

Klompas is also the co-founder of Boundless Israel, a “think-action tank” that works “to revitalize Israel education and take bold collective action to combat Jew-hatred.” An “unapologetically Zionist” charitable group that works to promote Israeli narratives on social media.

The one case touted as proof of rape was that of a young German-Israeli woman named Shani Louk, who was filmed face down in the back of a pickup truck and was widely assumed dead.

It was unclear whether the fighters filmed with Louk in the Gaza-bound vehicle were members of Hamas, as they do not sport the uniforms or insignia of the Al-Qassam troops identifiable in other Hamas videos – some even wore casual civilian clothing and sandals.

Later, her mother claimed to have evidence that her daughter was still alive, but had suffered a severe head wound. This rings true with information released by Hamas that indicated Louk was being treated for her injuries at an unspecified Gaza hospital.

Complicating matters further, on the day these rape allegations arose, Israelis would not have had access to this information. Their armed forces had not yet entered many, if not most, of the areas liberated by the resistance and were still engaged in armed clashes with them on multiple fronts.

Nevertheless, these rape claims took on a life of their own, with even US President Joe Biden alleging, during a speech days later, that Israeli women were “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies” by Hamas fighters. It is important to note that The Forward’s article on 11 October reported that the Israeli military acknowledged they had no evidence of such allegations at that point.

When the army later made its own allegations of decapitations, foot amputations, and rape, Reuters pointed out that “the military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.” To date, there is no credible evidence of these atrocities that has been presented.

Other outrageous allegations, such as the story of Hamas “beheading 40 babies‘ made headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. Even Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies.” The claims trace back to Israeli reserve settler and soldier David Ben Zion, who has previously incited violent riots against Palestinians and called for the West Bank town of Huwara to be wiped out. No evidence was ever produced to support these claims and the White House itself confirmed later that Joe Biden had never seen such photos.

The Hamas plan

There is little to no credible evidence that Palestinian fighters had a plan to – or deliberately sought to – kill or harm unarmed Israeli civilians on 7 October. From the available footage, we witness them engaging primarily with armed Israeli forces, accounting for the deaths of hundreds of occupation soldiers. As Qassam Brigades’ Spokesman Abu Obeida made clear on 12 October:

“Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to destroy the Gaza Division (an Israeli army unit on Gaza’s borders) which was attacked at 15 points, followed by attacking 10 further military intervention points. We attacked the Zikim site and several other settlements outside the Gaza Division headquarters.”

Abu Obeida and other resistance officials claims that the other key objective of their operation was to take Israeli prisoners that they could exchange for the approximately 5,300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention centers, many of whom are women and children.

Hamas Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Saleh Al-Arouri, in an interview after the operation, stressed: “We have a large and qualitative number and senior officers. All we can say now is that the freedom of our prisoners is at the doorstep.”

Both sides play this game: Since the start of its military assault on Gaza, Israel has rounded up and imprisoned more than 1,200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. To date there have been 38 prisoner exchange deals between the resistance factions and Tel Aviv – deals that Israelis often resist to the very last minute.

While these kinds of testimonies trickle out, reports are emerging that Israeli authorities have dialed up the mistreatment, torture, and even killing of Palestinian prisoners in their custody – a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which ironically, a non-state actor like Hamas appears to have followed to the letter.

In relation to the events of 7 October, there are certainly some videos depicting possibly unarmed Israelis, killed in their vehicles or at entrances to facilities, so that Palestinian troops could gain access.

There are also videos which show the fighters engaging in shootouts with armed Israeli forces, where there were unarmed Israelis taking cover in between, in addition to videos of fighters shooting toward houses and throwing grenades into fortified areas. Eyewitness testimony also suggests grenades were thrown into bomb shelters, though by whom is unclear.

Even at the Israeli “peace rave”, which has been cited as the single deadliest attack committed by Palestinian fighters during their operation, videos emerged that appeared to show Israeli forces opening fire through a crowd of unarmed civilians, toward targets they believed to be Hamas members. ABC News also reported that an Israeli tank had headed to the site of the festival.

An Israeli massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri?

In its report on the events at Be’eri Kibbutz, ABC News photographed artillery pieces resembling Israeli munitions outside a bombed-out home. The reporter, David Muir, mentioned that Hamas fighters, covered in plastic bags, were found in the aftermath.

Additionally, videos of the scene show homes that appear to have been struck by munitions that Hamas fighters did not possess. Muir reported that about 14 people were held hostage in a building by Palestinian fighters.

A Hebrew-language Haaretz article published on 20 October, which only appears in English in a must-read Mondoweiss article, paints a very different story of what went down in Be’eri that day. A Kibbutz resident who had been away from his home – whose partner was killed in the melee – reveals stunning new details:

“His voice trembles when his partner, who was besieged in her home shelter at the time, comes to mind. According to him, only on Monday night (9 October) and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”

Photo evidence of the destruction in Be’eri corroborates his account. Only the heavy munitions of the Israeli army could have destroyed residential homes in this manner.

Hamas behaviors: Evidence vs allegations

Yasmin Porat, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri, said in an interview for an Israeli radio-show, hosted by state-broadcaster Kan, that Israeli forces “eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” going on to state that “there was very, very heavy crossfire” and even noted tank shelling.

Porat had attended the Nova rave and testified to the humane treatment throughout different interviews she conducted with Israeli media. She explained that when she was held prisoner, the Hamas fighters “guarded us”, telling her in Hebrew to “Look at me well, we’re not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.” She also added the following:

“They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.”

Increasingly, and to the horror of some Israeli officials and news outlets, Israeli eyewitnesses and survivors of the bloodshed are testifying that they were treated well by Palestinian fighters. On 24 October, Israeli state broadcaster Kan bemoaned the fact that prisoner Yocheved Lifshitz, released by Hamas the day before, was allowed to make statements live on air.

As she was handed over to Red Cross intermediaries, the elderly Israeli female captive was caught on camera turning back to squeeze the hand of her Hamas captor in her last goodbyes. Lifshitz’s live broadcast, in which she spoke about her two-week ordeal, “humanized” her Hamas captors even further as she recounted her daily life with the fighters:

“They were very friendly toward us. They took care of us. We were given medicine and were treated. One of the men with us was badly injured in a motorbike accident. Their (Hamas) paramedics looked after his wounds, he was given medicine and antibiotics. The people were friendly. They kept the place very clean. They were very concerned about us.”

More questions than answers

It is essential to recognize that in many reports by western journalists on the ground, the majority of information regarding the actions of Hamas fighters comes from the Israeli army – an active participant in the conflict.

Emerging evidence now indicates that there is a high probability, especially due to the scale of the infrastructural damage, that Israeli military forces could have deliberately killed captives, fired on incorrect targets, or mistaken Israelis for Palestinians in their firefights. If the only source of information for a serious claim made is the Israeli army, then it has to be taken into account that they have reason to conceal cases of friendly fire.

Israeli friendly fire was rampant, even in the days that followed, from an army with very little actual combat experience. In the city of Ashkelon (Askalan) on 8 October, Israeli soldiers shot dead and shouted insults at the body of a man they believed to have been a Hamas fighter, yet later realized they had executed a fellow Israeli. This is just one of three such examples of friendly fire in one day, resulting in the killing of Israelis by their own troops.

Amid the fog of war, parties to the conflict have different perspectives on what occurred during the initial raid and its aftermath. It’s not disputed that Palestinian armed groups inflicted significant losses on the Israeli military, but there will be plenty of ongoing debate regarding everything else in the weeks and months to come.

An independent, impartial, international investigation is urgently needed, one that has access to information from all sides involved in the conflict. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans will agree to this, which itself suggests that Tel Aviv has much to conceal.

In the meantime, Palestinian civilians in Gaza endure ongoing, indiscriminate attacks with the most sophisticated heavy weapons in existence, living under the persistent threat of forced and potentially irreversible displacement. This Israeli air blitz was made possible only by the flood of unsubstantiated ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories that media began to circulate on and after 7 October.

(Republished from The Cradle)

“We categorically reject the UN’s despicable call for a ceasefire. We will act against Hamas the same way the world acted against the Nazis and against ISIS,” said the Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.
“A despicable call for a ceasefire” is a new term in diplomacy.

New Speaker of the House is Zionist Evangelical Christian Who Wants Americans to Believe He was Ordained by God to Support Israel and Destroy Palestinians

Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson has been elected as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Johnson is a Zionist Evangelical Christian, and his first act as the newly elected Speaker was to draw up a resolution supporting the current government in Israel.

Johnson apparently is also calling for the genocide of the Palestinian people, who at the time of this writing, have reportedly seen over 7,000 of their people killed in the recent conflict.

Do you Zionist Evangelical Christians not understand how supporting modern-day Israel will eventually lead to your belief also being declared illegal as hate speech, and “antisemitic”?

More information appears especially in the German media about the Hamas tunnels, which is preparing for a ground operation by the Israeli army. Tunnels with a total length of approximately 500 km have been dug in the Gaza Strip. Most often it is 2 meters high and 2 meters wide. But there is more. In total there are more than a thousand such tunnels, they call it 1300.

In the tunnels there are Hamas militants, all the necessary supplies, water, food, generators, weapons depots.

It is precisely because of the fear of Hamas militants from tunnels and apartment buildings that the Israeli army is afraid to launch a ground operation. Israel is simply afraid of losing this war.

Source: De Welt