Calls for a ceasefire are immoral.
John Nichols is the contortionist in residence at The Nation magazine, the intellectual Rubberboy of the Madison WI Capital Times. The man could quote Colonel Sanders to justify veganism!
Hamas has traumatized Jews (baking babies in the oven, alive? !!!) and reignited pograms around the world. The response from Comrade Nichols and his Democratic Socialists of America, and 18 member of the Squad (including the guy who pulled the fire alarm)? CEASE FIRE!
Listen to Friar John’s pious cluck-clucking: “It is notable that [House Speaker Mike} Johnson, who has positioned himself as a Biblically-inspired leader, is so out of touch with the moral messages of religious leaders and faith-based international aid groups that are calling for a ceasefire.” (Well, it IS notable — and wonderful!)
After suggesting the prayer should be banned altogether under the dome of the Capitol, the flexible Nichols starts clacking the rosary beads. He cites the Sermon on the Mount. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” Supporting the immediate cease fire, he records, are the usual suspects: Unitarians, Quakers, Episcopalians, and (sigh) Pope Frankie One.
Hallelujah and pass the ammunition!
Nichols finds Abraham Lincoln praying for “the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.” The rest of the story, of course, is that Lincoln promoted General Grant (because “He fights!”). U.S. Grant laid waste to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and sent Sherman on his scorched-earth March to the Sea. Because slavery — another form of hate — had to be defeated, not accommodated with yet another cease fire. How “innocent” were the slave-owning families of Richmond?
Ecclesiastes famously says there is a time for peace and a time for war. The Catholic tradition, in which your irascible host was raised, embraces the just war doctrine. World War 2 is the quintessential “Good War.” (Reminiscent of Francis One’s ecumenism on state-sanctioned terrorism, Pius #12 remained tongue-tied on the evils of the Holocaust.) Demanding unconditional surrender, the Allies bombed Berlin and Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima.
May we suggest, Gaza City is Berlin 1945.
Did innocents die then and are innocents dying now? Only if you absolve the average German’s responsibility for the Holocaust. Only if you excuse Japan’s Rape of Nanking. Hitler, it should be remembered, won an elective plurality in the Reichstag in 1932.
Gaza’s Palestinians elected Hamas in its last election, back in 2006. Hamas won 44.45% of the vote and 74 seats, while Fatah won 41.43% of the vote and 45 seats. (Did Robin Vos draw the maps?) No elections since, if that tells you anything.
These Middle East experts write:
The sad fact is that Hamas, or at least its policy toward Jews, is quite popular. Recent polling performed in July 2023 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reveals that “57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas — along with similar percentages of Palestinians in the West Bank (52%) and East Jerusalem (64%).”
Polling from March 2023 reveals that if elections were held in Gaza between Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas head would win 61% of the vote to Abbas’s 35%.
— Eugene Kontorovich, Erielle Davidson in “Not Just Hamas“
“A country that commits barbaric acts cannot merely pin such acts, as post–World War II Germans had hoped to do, on a small clique." — Kontorovich and Davidson.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo might have lived to an old age had there been a ceasefire collaborationist like John Nichols after Pearl Harbor!
26 responses to “Gaza is Guilty”
Nichols, along with Editor emeritus Zweifel, are pathetic apologists for the lefties.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83b5aa84fae7b549e8c258a040f6232335b15c568790c89321b41de255b3afbe.jpg
The Gotch
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/11/01/gaza-is-guilty/ […]
“Demanding unconditional surrender, the Allies bombed Berlin and Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima.”
Yes, and it is noteworthy that, as historian Martin Kramer points out, the so-called “Dresden defense” was invoked at Nuremberg by SS commander Otto Ohlendorf, and rejected by the tribunal, reasoning thus:
“A city is bombed for tactical purposes… it inevitably happens that nonmilitary persons are killed. This is an incident, a grave incident to be sure, but an unavoidable corollary of battle action. The civilians are not individualized. The bomb falls, it is aimed at the railroad yards, houses along the tracks are hit and many of their occupants killed. But that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force marching up to these same railroad tracks, entering those houses abutting thereon, dragging out the men, women and children and shooting them.”
(https://martinkramer.org/2023/10/26/nazi_case_for_hamas/). Kramer then elaborates:
“Nuremberg enforced a fundamental distinction. All civilian lives are equal, but not so all ways of taking them. The deliberate and purposeful killing of civilians is a crime; not so the taking of civilian lives that is undesired, unintended, but unavoidable. The errors made by a bomber squadron cannot be deducted from the murders committed by a death squad. It’s a difference compounded many times over when those civilian men, women, and children are subjected to torture, rape, and mutilation before their murder. To borrow Khalidi’s phrase, “in the last analysis,” this distinction is what separates modern civilization from its predecessors.
More disturbing is the thought that it separates the contemporary West from its peers. Otto Ohlendorf and the regime he served did all they could to conceal their deeds from Western eyes. Nazi Germany still operated in a West founded on Enlightenment values. So massive a violation of a shared patrimony needed to be hidden from view.
In contrast, Hamas initially sought to publicize its deeds, assuming they would win applause, admiration, or at least tacit acceptance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Here they succeeded beyond their expectations. The many millions who don’t share the West’s patrimony, and who know next to nothing about the Holocaust or Nuremberg, do see things as Khalidi says they see them. (So, too, does a sliver of alienated opinion in the West, where such views are cultivated and celebrated.)
Finally, and still more disturbing, is the fact that Ohlendorf’s defense has been revived to frame the massacre of Jews. Let’s be clear: this isn’t a world war. October 7 isn’t the Holocaust continued: in three months of 1942 alone, on average, the Nazis killed more than ten times the amount of Jews killed on October 7, every single day (Operation Reinhard). And Gaza is not Dresden, Hamburg, Pforzheim, Kassel, or any of the other German cities bombed so intensively that they literally burst into flames. The Israel-Hamas war is a skirmish by comparison.
But the Ohlendorf and Hamas defenses are the same, and so is the identity of their victims. …”
None of that matters, I assume to Nichols, but I thought others might find it interesting.
In other words: It’s ok to kill children if you do it with high tech machines from a distance and “you don’t mean it”. So basically the rich get to kill whoever happens to be generally around a “military target” (which can be as common as any roadway) but poor people without fighter jets better just get used to being killed.
“Let’s be clear: this isn’t a world war. October 7 isn’t the Holocaust continued”
Yes, but is this clear to you? Using this thought, the Israeli government’s apparent goal of collective punishment is outsized compared to the threat their country currently faces. While the Hamas attack was horrific and vast, it did not threaten the lives of millions, nor does it continue to be a significant threat given the overwhelming response already undertaken by the IDF.
The popular opinion now seems to be that the killing of the entire population of Gaza (millions) is necessary and justified. At least that’s where Blaska seems to be given his “Gaza is Guilty” headline.
I guess to really rattles your cage that Grothman and VanOrden voted not to censure Tlaib.
Bobby Knight, after living a full life, died. When he got to heaven, God was showing him around. They came to a modest little house with a faded IU flag in the window. “This house is yours for eternity, Bobby,” said God. “This is very special; not everyone gets a house up here.”
Bobby felt special, indeed, and walked up to his house. On his way up the porch, he noticed another house just around the corner. It was a three-story mansion with a cardinal and white sidewalk, 50-foot tall flagpole with an enormous Wisconsin flag and, in every window, a Bucky Badger logo.
Bobby looked at God and said “God, I’m not trying to be ungrateful, but I have a question. I was a good coach, I won 3 NCAA titles, 600+ games and I even went to the hall of fame. So why does John Powless get a better house than me?”
God chuckled, and said “Bobby, that’s not John’s house, it’s mine!”
C’mon, who in their right mind would think that Powless (who was hired as Bucky’s HC the same day in 1968 that the Army HC [Bob Knight] turned ’em down) would get a house before Foster, Bennett, and/or Ryan?
‘Course, the last two (2) would have to die, first, am I right?
Anywho, The General (902 career wins) also won the 1960 National Title as a player with OSU, but was always proudest of the high graduation rate of his players.
The lovely and long suffering Mrs. Gotch, and the husband who adores her, were lucky enough to see Knight coach his last B1G Ten game against Dick Bennett’s Final Four bound Badgers at the Kohl Center in March of 2000.
There was what Knight thought was a bad call at the end, and when time expired he raised his clip board above his head and prepared to smash it on the floor, but caught himself, and joined the hand-shake line.
RIP Robert Montgomery Knight.
The Gotch
“ who in their right mind would think that Powless…”
Anyone who ever met the man.
Ryan may get a house but in a different zip code if you know what I mean.
Met him for a photo op on the Field House floor in January 1970 (made the front page of the Sports Peach!) because The Gotch won a circulation contest for his State Journal route. Ran into him 8 or 9 years ago coming out of Woodmans’ Liquor Store; I introduced myself and referenced the incident. He didn’t recall, but said we should hoist a few sometime; sadly we never did.
Sat in Press Row seats with legendary Sports Writer Glenn Miller; a coupla rows from there was late, former Milwaukee Bucks coach Larry Costello.
Anywho, Powless was a helluva nice guy (so was John Jardine) but abysmal facilities, late 60s/early 70s campus unrest, and its disastrous, snowballing effect on recruiting doomed them both to horrendous win-loss records; the final arbiter of any coach.
The Gotch
yippie skippie crotch.
Single Parent Households Are One Of The GREATEST INDICATORS Of An Idiot’s Future Poverty And Substandard Education!
The Gotch
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, religion is the last refuge of a desperate socialist.
correct Gary. The name Tuberville fits that perfectly.
The problem with Blaska’s logic is that he also excuses the terrorism of Hamas, if his logic were to be applied in a race-neutral form.
Hamas believes Israeli citizens are themselves responsible for the murderous acts of their government which predated Hamas’ attack. Just as Blaska doesn’t want to “absolve the average German’s responsibility for the Holocaust”, Hamas doesn’t want to absolve the average Israeli citizen for their government’s crimes. Just as ISIS doesn’t want to absolve American citizens for the crimes of our government.
But it’s only a one way street for the white power worldview. If brown skins punish civilians for the crimes of their government, it’s terrorism. If white skins punish civilians for the crimes of their governments, it’s honorable warfare.
Fun for you to bring up the pretzel logic that’s necessary for a supposedly Christian group to support war. Yep, where the money points, most organized Christianity will follow. The Bible means exactly what they say it does, check back next week for our updated interpretation. Don’t believe your lying eyes, that Jesus guy said a lot of stuff that you’ll be better off having me interpret for you. “Kill” is a much more nuanced word than you’d think: I have the footnotes for the commandments, I’ll let you know what god really meant by that. 🙂
“But it’s only a one way street for the white power worldview. If brown skins punish civilians for the crimes of their government, it’s terrorism. If white skins punish civilians for the crimes of their governments, it’s honorable warfare.”
Rollie…buddy…when you’ve dug yourself in deep (and deep you’ve dug yourself in, here!),DROP the shovel, DON’T bring in the backhoe.
The Gotch
So our resident racist claims that Israel defending itself is… wait for it.. racially based! Rollie, the fact that you accuse somebody of “pretzel logic” is funny as hell!
If you kill my child, and I respond by killing your entire apartment building, I’m not defending myself.
I won’t bother rehashing the racism discussion, but you do insist on calling me a racist in most every post regardless of the topic at hand, and provide no rationale. Triggered much? I guess I could say Kooter the White Supremacist randomly too, but it seems weird.
Yet another dumbass analogy. The war is not two neighbors squabbling.
That’s the definition of an analogy. An analogy is never the exact same situation, it’s a similar situation set forward to provide a new context and insight into what is being discussed. Anyway, none of this war is self defense. And if any of it is, both sides have similar claims to it.
kill them all and let whatever god sort’em out.
Stay with me Rollie: the reason I claim you are racist in every post is because your posts ultimately are always racial-based.
If the standard for being tagged with a label is a person constantly mentioning it, your comments fall woefully short of earning you the Rollie-Issued sobriquet of “White Supremacist.”
The Gotch
This is part of using words according to their definitions. Contextualizing the world using a racial frame of reference is not the definition of racism. Orwell writes with a lot of insight into this technique, where language is stripped of meaning and words lose definitions or are simply discarded when they don’t support the party goals.
Racism:
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
3. The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes.
Rollie @ 9:31. No, that is a dumbass definition of an analogy. It’s a shame this has to be pointed out to you.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c283bf2ca4fec3bc3c9be8ecd0692014f6e91d17e03449749175800a38faf601.png
The Gotch