He is completely captured and unreachable. Goes around with a Zionist rabbi by his side, and makes ridiculous unhistorical claims about Israel daily. Now he is in favor of banning free speech on college campuses. So that's two major planks of his platform he's exploded. His whole field team resigned a couple of days ago.
Even if RFK understood this (which seems unlikely as he seems to be VERY ignorant & misguided on this issue and invested in the story of only one side) even then I don't think it would really touch the heart of the matter which is that the local people need to see this for ourselves.
As someone who was given at birth the labels 'Jewish' and Israeli', it seems to me that the most important factor that perpetuates this continuous horror is that there is an incredible lack of awareness (in each "side") of the IMMENSE AND PROFOUND TRAUMA that each "side" has caused the other, mostly becasue each side is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and has no contact with the other side, doesn't feel their pain, doesn't hear their stories (how they make sense of reality) and therefore have no full understanding of the life experience & trauma experience of those on the "other side".
(and before I proceed I'd just like to qualify what I just said and acknowledge that the sides are not equal here and that the trauma that newly-arrived supremacist zionists caused the local people in Palestine over the last century - in their brutal ruthless cruel and insensitive/inconsiderate project of dispossesion, annihilation, dehumanization and ERASURE of the local people in Palestine - is many many orders of magnitude greater than the other way around (which is something that I think the majority of Jews, and definitely Zionists, are not aware of). Some of it is detailed in this shocking documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4 which i can confirm is 100% true based in my own personal experience. And this brilliant Israeli historian summerizes it quite well in this short dialogue https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MuzWDWBn55g )
As someone who was given at birth the label 'Jewish' and 'Israeli' (but have already long ago seen through their inaccurate, distorting, corrupting, limiting, imprisoning, divisive, sectarian and God-denying nature, and so have shed these labels) I notice that what allows this ongoing horror to happen (not only today but for more than a century now) is that there is such a total SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION between the "sides" (this is one of the greatest successes of nationalism, to separate people) so that people from both "sides" have no full understanding of the life experience & trauma experience of those on the "other side".
From what I see, this total DISCONNECTION is exactly what allows people to cheer when "our hero fighters" (whom the other side calls terrorists or invaders/dispossesors) murder, torture, oppress, abuse, slaughter and bomb "them", because each side says "they are evil people who only want to harm us, take our land and kill us/kick us out", and each side has countless examples of actions by the other side that are supposed to "prove" the supposed rightness of their claim.
Each "side" is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and tells itself its own story, about its trauma and difficulties, and is completely unaware of the life experience and trauma of the "other side".
And so, when the other side reacts (in what it calls self-defense) then the first side interprets it as an attack (becasue of its DISCONNECTION from the stories and sense-making of the other side) and tells a story that "those people on the other side" are evil monsters who only want to harm our side for no reason
It's quite amazing how similar the story that each side tells itself to the story that the other side tells itself, it is practically the SAME STORY - we are the victims here who are only protecting ourselves from the aggression of those evil people over there who only want to harm us and hate us for no reason. We have no one to talk to and negotiate with, they are not human beings, they are sons of Satan who hate us from birth, who only want to destroy us and take our land and kick us out - each side speaks the exact same stories!!
And all this lack of understanding happens simply because there is NO CONTACT between the "sides". This is the tremendous success of nationalism/tribalism, there is a complete disconnection, so that I don't hear the story that the other side tells itself and how they make sense of things, I don't experience their life experience, I don't know anything about their pain, I don't realize how much the story they tell themselves is the same as the story I tell myself, and therefore there is no possibility of experiencing the HUMANITY (the fear, the search for security) that motivates the other, just as it motivates me, and therefore also indifference to the trauma that the other goes through at the hands of "our heroic fighters"
It seems to me that the main engine that drives all of this is that people in tje region (and especially Israelis) undergo a very deep conditioning/indoctrination from a very young age into a separative and SECTARIAN RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST IDENTITY and learn to believe (contrary to what reality shows) that this separate and divisive identity is what will provide them with protection and security, even though it does THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!
This indoctrination into the separative exclucivist religious-nationalist identity is much more than just mental brainwashing, but it is mainly the conditioning the of the nervous system and emotional system into IDENTIFICATION with a nationalist-religious label (this label equals me. This is me, This label is where my safety & security is to be found), which causes the emotions and the body to react very strongly to anything that they teach me is at odds with this identity.
Strong reaction that comes from the fact that the body/brain/nervous system has been conditioned to learn - through constant repetition in the first years of life (when the personality is formed), again and again and again, and without questioning - this is who I am, that I am this national-religious identity, therefore anything that questions or does not align with or appears to be at odds with this national-religious system of ideas is immediately perceived as a threat to my very existence, because I am this identity/the nationalist-religious label, this is me, and the people over there who do not carry this sacred label are my enemies, a threat to my existence..
It seems to me that those who have fallen into the abyss of sectarianism/tribalism/nationalism (and especially those whose tribalism also involves divisive, excluding, supremacist and God-denying sectarian religious beliefs) have been conditioned to believe that their saftey & security will be found through group separation and exclusion and a sense of uniqueness from the rest of humanity (a feeling that is so deeply imprinted in those who believe that the label of "Jewish" is who they actually are), that security will be found through an attempt to ensure the safety of ONLY one group of people, only those who were born into the "correct" religious-national label (and anyone who was not born into the correct national-religious label can go to hell. She matters a little but not nearly as much as the Chosen People, the most valuable and important people in the universe). It sounds ridiculous, but this is a VERY common & mainstream worldview in the extremely nationalist, ethnocentric, fascistic & exclucivist Israeli society, and it plays a huge part in what brought about this conflict in the first place, since the very early days of sectarian exclucivist zionist nationalism, and its arrival in the middle east from (mostly) eastern Europe.
To me, this is precisely the blindness of the sectarian nationalist-religious identity: trying to create security ONLY for one group, only for a part of the whole (through division, exclusion, separation from the whole and working to secure the narrow interests of only one nationalist-religious identity), such an attempt - of trying to create security ONLY for the part and ignore what this does to the whole - such an attempt can NEVER ever lead to real security but exactly the opposite - this is the number one factor that creates constant conflict and INSECURITY!!!
TRYING TO CREATE SECTARIAN SECURITY (SECURITY ONLY FOR THE PART AND NOT THE WHOLE, ONLY FOR ME AND MY GROUP) IS THE VERY CAUSE OF INSECURITY!!!
In my understanding, tribalism/nationalism and sectarian divisive exoteric religion (which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God actually is) is the great disease and blindness of humanity. Is the most destructive and deadly invention that humans have ever invented (not because we are bad, but because we have not psychologically matured yet, and are still blind, and in our naiveté we believed that this is how we will find safety & security, without understanding what we are doing, without realizing that we are actually creating constant INSECURITY when we search for security through the sectarian divisive nationalist-religious identity, when we seek security only for the part and not for the whole).
To me it is absolutely clear that it is the number one cause of human division, separation, antagonism, hatred, conflict, violence, murder and war..
IMHO, the bloodshed can never stop and there will never be security for anyone unless we have the courage to step out of our sectarian bubble and actually listen and truly understand the profound trauma we inflict (this is true for both sides but especially so for Israelis who are incredibly brainwashed and ignorant of the UNSPEAKABLE HORROR CRUELTY INHUMANITY AND TRAUMA that supremacist right-wing zionist immigrants inflicted and inflict on the local people.
Without feeling the pain endured and understanding the trauma, cruelty and terrible injustice that Palestinians are actually reacting to, without this, indoctrinated supremacist zionists will just continue with the dispossession, cruelty, pushing out and erasure of the local people, and keep telling themselves 'they are hostile to us for no reason, simply becasue they are evil antisemite monsters by nature..'
I deeply appreciate everything you are saying, and mostly share your perspective. However I wonder what you think about a perspective that my husband recently brought to my attention, which is that of Max Blumenthal, a journalist we love, who said that we have to quit accepting the assertion of Jewish victimhood, and that actually Jews today are living in a golden age. My husband brought this up to push back against my constant invoking of victim consciousness, and I think there is something to what he and Max are saying.... It is certainly true that Jews today, especially Israeli Jews, have the perception of eternal victimhood stoked in their consciousness from a very young age, by being told that Jews are nowhere safe and that gentiles have some primordial urge to kill them. But I think that Max is right that their victimhood is not a reality today, but just a manufactured, weaponized perception (and to the extent that it is a reality, it is created by Zionism), and we have to start pushing back against it. On the other hand, I would say that the reverse is true for Palestinians: they are actual victims of the Zionist colonial project, and yet for so long much of the world has refused to recognize this truth (which is obviously changing given the overtly fascist nature of Israel now), and despite being alone and abandoned in their victimization, they actually found and claimed their agency and power, thus overcoming their victimization. Another thing I would say is that Israelis and Palestinians are kept apart by Israel, and that this forced separation furthermore began early on with Zionist false flag terrorist events against Jews living in North Africa and the Middle East in order to drive them to join the Zionist project in Israel.
Yes, I would agree with all you pointed out here, and would add that one of the differences between the world-renowned zionist sense of victimhood (heavily and cynically weaponized against the local people in the land that the zionists seek to take over and dominate) and between the palestinian trauma (inflicted by the traumatised unhealed neurotic and violent zionist psyche) is that the zionists are much much better at PR (public relations) :-) with a very intense Hollywood and popular media cultural propaganda blitz to constantly put their trauma front and center nonstop, and cynically weaponize it to give them entitlement and free hand to be as cruel and violent as they wish since they are the eternal victims who can do no wrong and are always the moral ones..
Not only do the palestinians have nowhere near that level of PR but the zionist complete domination of the eternal victim space (domination not just culturally but also politically and literally putting themselves in positions of control over the narrative and censorship and criminalization of deviation from their imposed narrative), not only that, this domination is also being used to cruelly dismiss and prevent any palestinian claim for being brutalized and wronged. Palestinians simply have no chance against this complete zionist colonization of the victim space. Zionists will always be depicted as the victims and palestinians will always be depicted as the aggresors, no matter how completely opposite the reality is..
In addition to that, I'll also share this short and interesting article that I just read by a Jewish historian that sheds a little more light on the forces that shaped the (traumatised neurotic and violent) zionist psyche
And if there is interest in this then I'd highly recommend the works, books, writings, lectures, dialogues and discussions with the Israeli historian Dr. Ilan Pappe (many are available online, in videos and transcripts), as well as of the Israeli historian prof Shlomo Zand. Both of whom wrote extensively on this.
This subject - of psycho-history, the psychological forces that shape the character and motivations of groups and nations - is of deep interest to me personally, specifically with relation to the traumatised dysfunctional neurotic brutal heart-corrupted violent sectarian and entitled zionist psyche, because i sense that understanding the injured and reactive psychology (and the resultant motivations and actions) is really the key to this whole ongoing horror, which i think affects far more than just the middle east, but keeps the spirit of most of world hostage to it, in a state of division, antagonism, and separation from our Godly nature. This might sound dramatic but it seems to me that such is the depth and level of unconsciousness and blockage surrounding this wound, and such is the enormous potential of what is possible for humanity if this wound is healed (becomes whole again) through deep loving sensitivity, caring, listening, attention and in-sight (not through shaming and attacking and revenge and dehumanizing, which can never lead to real healing and departure from the cycle of trauma)
In my view, things will not change unless there is a very deep awakening in the Israeli psyche from the separative, divisive, self-righteous and tone-deaf spirit and psychological position from which israelis operate. This separative self-righteous tone-deaf ethnocentric supremacist arrogant and dismissive spirit will NEVER provide them with security, no matter how many times they tell themselves that they are the victims and the righteous ones, becasue this nationalist self-absorbed tone-deaf arrogant separative divisive excluding and supremacist spirit is exactly what DIVIDES them from the organic culture and land that they invaded and claim as their own, and this spirit is exactly what keeps them as a FOREIGN ELEMENT in the middle east, an unintegrated element, a seperative arrogant antagonistic invasive foreign element, that has to always live behind walls and fortifications and billion-dollar weapons and massive surveillance and oppression apparatus against the very neighbourhood that they plunked themselves into, in an unorganic manner, in a hostile, insensitive, arrogant, unfriendly, supremacist invasive and aggresive manner. They will NEVER ever find security as long as they operate from this sectarian antagonistic supremacist psychology towards the very region they invaded (psychology which israelis are deeply indoctrinated into from birth).
I envision a healing process in which israelis awaken out of this deep hypnosis and deeply apologize to local people (authentic and heart-felt apology) for what they have done to them at that period in the 20th and early 21st centuries when they were profoundly unconscious and under the spell of the trauma and nationalistic separative ideology. And after deeply apologizing, sincerely and from the heart, and asking for forgiveness, the israelis might then humbly and respectfully ask the local people if they's be kind enough to allow them to stay and live together as equals on this land (since the descendants of the zionist immigrants now also live here and have nowhere else to go and have already established a home here (yes, it was done in a horrible violent and deeply unjust manner, but the chidren of the violent and dispossesing zionist immigrants were already born here and don't know any other place and have nowhere else to go, this is their home now too.. )
This humble and respectful question (if we are allowed to share this land with you locals, since we have come here in distress and escaping persecution, and in return for allowing us to live together with you on this land, we will work together with you to bring the gifts of both our people for the mutual benefit of all of us) this human approach should have been done from the very first moment, rather than the violent supremacist taking-away brutally invasive and hostile antagonistic approach that guided the zionists from the start) but the zionist psyche was unfortunately too immature traumatised neurotic and undeveloped to do that at the time and brought about this collosal disaster to the land. But now we can mature and heal and wake up out of this hypnotized nationalistic supremacist antagonisitc violent psychology that guided the zionist immigrants, change our ways and bring about a new reality, a sane way of living, based on shared humanity, shared divinity, respect, learning, sharing, and heart openness
Your words bring tears to my eyes, especially being that they come from someone who was born "Jewish" and "Israeli." How rare you are. You give me hope; thank you.
I love Ilan Pappe and Shlomo Sand, and have read much of their work and I think especially the latter (as in "The Invention of the Jewish People") can help bring to life the insights you provide in your comments. I have studied this issue and been engaged in activism around it for 20+ years, but until relatively recently I was a philosophical materialist who would have rejected psychological or narrative-based explanations or prescriptions (even as I have of course always recognized the centrality of the narrative of Jewish victimhood, and the very real trauma inflicted upon Jewish children who are told they are nowhere safe in the world amongst gentiles). However, in the past 3ish years I have approached something like your perspective on the explanatory importance of psycho-history and the practical necessity of healing the Jewish psyche. It is why I wish Charles would direct his writing on this issue specifically towards his Jewish brothers and sisters, in the spirit awakening and transforming the Jewish traumatized/manipulated/controlled psyche, rather than trying to make the rest of us feel bad about being triggered by watching genocide unfold in technicolor!!!
I think you are also right that this psychological transformation and healing will not only liberate Jews but all of humanity. And finally I want to say that having been to Palestine and stayed in the homes of many families there, I can tell you that I genuinely believe that they would forgive their Jewish brothers and sisters if they awakened from their hypnosis and embarked on a healing process, and would accept them as brothers and sisters of the land. I have always found it ironic that we hear so much about the supposedly hateful racist psyche of Arabs and Muslims (encapsulated in the stereotypes of the jihadist), since I did not at all experience that in all the many many months I have spent in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Morocco (even and especially when it was known that I am American!)... On the contrary, the level of hate and hostility I have encountered from Zionist Jews is completely fucking insane! Reality inverted.
Yes, I also deeply appreciate and resonate with your words. Thank you for your heart and for bringing all of that.
And just a small note, since I don’t want to give the wrong impression (and false hopes) as if my views are representitive of those of Israelis. They are not!! they are very VERY extremely rare among Israeli society, which is becoming more and more rabidly fascistic, militaristic, religiously extremist and nationalistic by the day. With each passing day Israelis are becoming more and more hermatically enclosed in their own nationalist-religious bubble, more and more rabidly right-wing, the dehumanization of palestinians is becoming more extreme with each passing day (vast majority of Israelis are simply not able to comprehend palestinian suffering or have any empathy or compassion towards them, the hatred is becoming more and more extreme by the day). Israeli society is getting more and more violent, more nationalistic, more extreme, and more entrenched in its own historical narrative & its own self-victimization. If I am completely honest, it is very hard for me to have much hope that change and transformation can willingly happen from within Israeli society. It seems to me that the shift to the nationalistic-religious right wing fascism in Israeli society (which happened slowly over the last 40 years but greatly accelarated in the last 6-8 years) might have now gone beyond the point of no return.. the separative nationalistic-religious indoctrination is so deep and the entrenchment in its own narratives is so deep that to me it seems that the only way change and awakening might happen is NOT through sobering up and awakening to reality out of the hypnosis in the Israeli psyche (it seems we’ve gone past the point already where this is possible) but rather it seems to me that the more likely scenario and course of events to happen now is that the sobering up and reckoning might happen only AFTER the major major catastrophe that the fascist-religious maddness is leading israeli society into (catastrophe of the nature of either becoming themselves the perpetrators of a Holocaust, or a nuclear world war, or something of this sort, something akin to the catastrophe that lead to the sobering up of the German psyche after WWII. The german psyche was also on an unstoppable nationalist frenzy of being deeply entrenched in its own narratives and its own sense of righteousness, so braimwashed and hypnotised by its own narratives of ‘it’s either us or them’ that it went beyond the point of no return, and the sobering up could happen only after a major catastrophic climax (that the nationalist frenzy must lead a society into).
When I see the level of nationalistic-religious brainwashing and dumbing-down and emotional manipulation going on in Israeli schools and media (you can see it also in many commet sections, how extremely deeply brainwshed heart-corrupted cruel and entrenched Israelis are in their own narratives of self righteousness and being the victim, their level of hypnosis and devotion to the "it's either us or them" ideology is simply beyond reach) when seeing all this then i’m afraid that israeli society is also beyond the point of no return and is on a collision course with an inevitable catastrophe.. only then might the sobering up and reckoning happen, if there’s anyone at all left by then…
I'm really NOT optimistic at all that there can be an awakening in the deeply indoctrinated self-assured arrogant and sectarian zionist psyche.. The societal trends and cultural zeitgiet in Israel indicate to me that the likelihood of a catastrophe is much higher than an awakening.. voices like mine are a tiny tiny miniscule minority in a violently fascistic and rabidly nationalist sea..
Jihadists like Hamas want to kill Jews and destroy Israel. There can be no peace unless all sides want it. Therefore Israel (and Jews) are forced to play this terrible hand. Unfortunately, there can be no bluffing for this ‘golden age’ of the Jewish people.
If you or anyone else had lived under violent oppression since the ethnic cleansing of 1948, you would want to destroy your oppressor. Moderate and genuine Jews increasingly understand and reject the indoctrination required to accept the State of Israel as the "Jewish Homeland." To the rest of the world, it is obvious that State of Israel cannot possibly be any such thing as a Jewish Homeland or Promised Land. God does not endorse genocide. At least, not in 2023.
Have you ever read or listened to the Harold W Rosenthal interview from the 1970’s? Here’s the audio recording which a lot of people would rather not want to still be available. And Rosenthal paid for his arrogance and nonchalance with his life being murdered in an alleged highjacking shortly after he spilled the beans about THE PLAN, something so secretly hidden from the goyim they so despise. https://www.bitchute.com/video/NsLptrOjTakC/
Thank you. Was this reply meant for me or a mistake? If it was meant for me, then I am not sure what is the relation between this reply and my comment (if you have actually read my comment in full). There is no explanation added to the link you gave, so I am not sure what you are attempting to convey with this reply, how is it related to what was pointed out in my comment..
PS. As a side note, the only relation i can find between this reply and my comment is that it (both the adversarial reply itself, in its righteous "We are right and they are wrong" mentality that Charles writes so much about, as well as the rabidly ethnocentric separative nationalist and erasing-of-others mentality in the video you linkedd) both of these are actually a good example of exactly what I was pointing out in my comment above, examples of how very very deeply entrenched and enclosed each side is in their own righteous SECTARIAN BUBBLE and its own ethnocentric exclucivist identity, and how each side is in an antagonistic hostile mindset with relation to 'the other side' (the immature tribalistic mindset that says "it's either us or them. The only life possible is one group dominating destroying and stomping over the other, so its better we do it to them before they do it to us'). A good example of how each side tell themselves over and over and over again their own sectarian tribaliatic stories and logic and mythologies about themselves being the righteous good guys who are tne victims of the evil aggressors over there (nationalist mythologies which they are absolutely sure is the truth and real) AND how each side (and especially israelis, in my experience) completely erase from existence and cruelly de-value and dismiss the profound pain, trauma and life experience of 'the other side'.
And as i showed at length above, this arrogant dismissal of the life experience of 'the other side', the indifferemce and erasing of the very deep pain endured by 'the other side', is in turn the result of the TOTAL DISCONNECTION of the groups from each other, so that is no understanding whatsoever of the life experience, the deep pain and trauma of "them", no understanding whatsoever of what it is actually like to be born into a different religious-nationalist label, the religious-nationaliat label of 'the opposite side'. Complete disconnection that leads to zero compassion, rabid ethnocentric tribalism and no comprehension whatsoever what does such a pain and traumatic life experience actually feel like..
For example, I wonder when was the last time you or the creator of the video in the link lived with a Palestinian family (those that zionists are conditioned to view as 'the evil enemy') for a few months? Have you? Or has the (arrogant and blind) creator of the video ever lived for even just a few weeks with a palestinian family and deeply felt what it is like? Have the vast majority of zionists ever truly and actually experienced first hand the life experience and the profound trauma & pain of those that they dismiss de-value and dehumanize so carelessly and easily? Of those that they are indoctrinated to view as 'the enemy'. Have you?
I wrote in the comment above much more at length and in depth about this total separation and disconnection and deep tribalistic indoctrination and what it does to the psyche of a human being, as well as about the arrogance and the heart-corruption and inevitable antagonism, conflict, hostility and cruelty brought about by the very deep IDENTIFICATION with an ethnocentric nationalist-religious label that most people in the region are indoctrinated into, so because i wrote about it at length above then with your permission I won't repeat it here all over again, but instead would invite you to read my comment above again, perhaps more carefully this time (and less adversarially/antagonistically, less from a position of 'US vs THEM'), becasue this reply to my comment is actually a good example and illustration of EXACTLY the kind of mentality that my comment was pointing to.
PPS. Showing the falsity of the claims he made in the video is NOT at all the main point here and NOT what what I was trying to convey in my comment (I was pointing to a much deeper and more fundamental dynamic than the tribalistic war mentality of 'US vs THEM' 'its either us or them', 'we are the righteous ones and they are the evil ones, we are the victims and they are the aggresors', I was pointing to the separative, divisive self-righteous and tone-deaf spirit and psychological position from which he made the video and from which you made the comment and from which zionists operate. This separative self-righteous tone-deaf ethnocentric supremacist arrogant and dismissive spirit will NEVER provide you and the other zionists with security, no matter how many times you tell yourselves that you are the victims and the righteous ones, becasue this nationalist self-absorbed tone-deaf arrogant separative divisive excluding and supremacist spirit is exactly what DIVIDES you from the organic culture and land you invaded and claom as yoyr own, and this spirit is exactly what will keep you as a FOREIGN ELEMENT in the middle east, an unintegrated element, a seperative arrogant hostile foreign element, that has to always live behind walls and fortifications and billion-dollar weapons and massive surviellance and oppression apparatus against the very neighbourhood that you plunked yourself into, in an unorganic, hostile, insensitive, arrogant, unfriendly supremacist invasive and aggresive fashion. You will NEVER ever find security as long as you and the zionists operate from this sectarian antagonistic psychology towards tne very region you invaded (which israelis are deeply indoctronated into from age zero. That is tje main point here
so showing the falsity and error of his claims isn't at all the main point here, the focus is much deeper and more fundamental than that, but since you already brought it up by giving this link to the video then I will just briefly mention that every single false claim he made is addressed in the documentary i linked in my comment above, as well as in the second link I gave in that comment to the discussion with the Israeli historian. Kindly see the comment above for both these links (and more importantly, please rrad tne entirety of my comment more carefully and perhaps this time without the filter of a tribalistic identity and of a life-destroying nationalist war mentality of "it's either or them" )
JFK JR is Zionist who supports Israel and their genocide! He might be talking about been against Convid vaccines but he's controlled opposition! A hypocrite paid by Zionist Lobby!
"Early in a conflict an atrocity committed by The Enemy is selected and given considerable publicity…It is elevated to be the moral yardstick against which your side’s atrocities are judged, and, by comparison, your side’s atrocities always pale …
Thereafter The Enemy’s atrocity is the central referent of your side’s propaganda…Their atrocity justifies any your side subsequently commits." —les Online
Emotional manipulation using fabricated defenseless children is not new. To get WW1 rolling German soldiers were bayoneting non-existent Belgian infants. In order to ignite the gulf war imaginary newborns were being yanked out of incubators in Kuwait.
These horrific tall tales - written by the very puppetmasters who created and are benefiting from the carnage and which are propagated through the dishonest media they own and control - are designed to provoke an emotional response in the recipient so that they act (and advocate) in a way that is favorable to the powers that shouldn't be.
The stories are counterfeit which is the point: emotions are so much easier to control than facts. Cue the _very real_ slaughter, plundering, pillaging, & propaganda by the collective elite dark triad. Lights Camera. Action.
The important thing here is to never conflate a nation's people with a nation's government as both administrations are owned and controlled by the same apparatus. Like those babies this war is counterfeit and is only meant to further the goal of globalization: the decimation of freedom and the centralization of power. It is citizens on both sides of the contrived conflict who are the victims of this horrific madness.
Hey Tritorch, The first thing I heard was about rape and infanticide - the two worst things possible to create a response. I may have missed it, but I have not seen conclusive proof that it was true, but lots that it wasn't. As they say, the first casualty of war is the truth.
Of course, war is not just bombs and bullets, it's all about propaganda too. It does make me pissed that so many people think that war should be fought like a gentleman's fight with rules and legal boundaries: it's the f#&!ing annihilation ('scuse my French) of one side by the other, kill or be killed by any and all means - all gloves are off - that is the truth of WAR! And this one REALLY needs to STOP NOW!
"I do think it is important that all aspects of the situation are made visible. We need to understand as much as possible in order to know how to change the conditions that have created it.."
***
Have you considered the following "aspect"?
The vast majority of humans will NOT connect the dots between mutilating children's bodies and minds and the normalisation of violence and atrocity in a culture.... I am specifically referring to genital mutilation practiced by both Jews and Muslims...
Incidentally, the USA is the ONLY developed western country to also practice ROUTINE genital mutilation of baby boys... about 3000 per day ... WITHOUT so much as a religious EXCUSE!!
EVERYTHING humans think, believe and DO happens DOWNSTREAM from the way we treat children during their FORMATIVE years. The human brain is not fully developped until the early 20's!! As long as we raise children with violence... however subtle and insidious... we will NEVER put an end to war... because SOME of those children WILL grow up to perpetrate their pain on others... on ANY level of society.
Anyone interested in the roots of violence would do well to read Alice Miller and James Prescott.
Here is one example by Alice Miller:
The total neglect or trivialization of the childhood factor operative in the context of violence and the way it evolves in early infancy sometimes leads to explanations that are not only unconvincing and abortive but actively deflect attention away from the genuine roots of violence."
One area of the CIA’s research that is rarely talked about, or even known, is male circumcision or genital mutilation. PRACTICED ROUTINELY by #JEWS, #MUSLIMS and #AMERICANS!!
Cansever describes a study of the psychology of boys circumcised between the ages of 4 and 7 both before and after the surgery, based on various methods of psychological examination, and reports the following trends among the subjects:
- lower IQ as measured 7 days after the operation
- infantile regression of drawings and expressed wishes
- greater measured levels of aggression
- new fears and anxieties
- weaker control over primitive impulses to the point of maladaption
- greater aggression towards their mothers
- withdrawal from human relationships and difficulty responding to demands of external world
- perceptions of having been castrated
It turns out that in 1961, the CIA had payed “Cansever” to study the effects of circumcision, and he found that it made boys dumber, more infantile, more fearful, and more aggressive, with less control over their base instincts and a healthy dose of aggression towards the most significant female figure in their lives, their mothers.
If the findings of this study hold true for boys circumcised younger, it might suggest that the United States contains some 100+ million men who have been psychologically altered, from as early as infancy, to be stupider, to have lower impulse control, to tend towards aggression and violence, and to possess an instinctual distrust of women. Throw in the diminishing effects of circumcision on penile sensitivity and the consequent difficulties of sex and tendency towards paraphilias, and a picture begins to emerge of an organic golem that can be manipulated more easily by carrots and is less able to establish a normal, healthy relationship with a woman—splitting the family apart or preventing its formation has always been a goal of oppressive regimes, including the one that currently rules over the US.
Unfortunately for many of us, there exists, at this point, ample evidence that events in infancy can and do have measurable effects on the hindbrain, the part of our brain that drives instinctual, “gut” reactions and behavior. This is especially true when it comes to traumatic events that trigger stress hormones such as partial amputation of the penis, routinely performed at birth in this country. Although humans are cognizant of their lives, making behaviorism a dead area of psychology, it is still understood that instinctual behavior plays a role in decision-making, which is why propaganda and advertising are so widespread. How attached will men be to their women if they are surgically predisposed more to masturbate to pornography than to enjoy normal, PIV sex? Is it really a stretch to claim that enjoyment of sex is determined, in part, by the existing or removed enervation of the sex organ involved, and that this might have an effect on the interpersonal relationships of men and women across the country?
It is also worth noting that, according to Leonard Glick in Marked in Your Flesh, circumcision of gentiles is twice used in the Old Testament as a means of disfiguring humiliation and domination by Israelites, and it may still be interpreted as such by a certain religiously-minded tribe. I am not a mind-reader, and intelligent minds can differ on the motivations of various groups that encourage circumcision in the United States, but the historical context of mass, non-consensual circumcision of gentiles may be a clue as to what is going on here."
"We cannot possibly survive if we are concerned only with our own survival. All human beings the world over are interrelated today. What happens in one country affects the others. Humans have considered themselves individuals separate from each other, but psychologically a human being is inseparable from the whole of humankind.
There is no such thing as psychological survival. When there is the desire to survive or to fulfill, you are creating a situation which is totally unreal. Psychologically, you cannot be separate from another.
The desire to be separate is the very source of danger and destruction. Each person by asserting oneself threatens one’s own existence.
When the truth of this is seen and understood, one’s responsibility undergoes a radical change, not only towards the immediate environment, but towards all living things. This total responsibility is compassion. This compassion acts through intelligence. This intelligence is not partial, individual, separate. Compassion is never partial. Compassion is for the sacredness of all living things."
~ J. Krishnamurti
Excerpt from The Whole Movement of Life is Learning
Reading Alice Miller and Aletha Solter in my 20s when I was just starting trauma therapy changed my life! As a sociological and activism-oriented person, it was paradigm-shifting to say the least to have abusive parenting (Miller) and healthy parenting (Solter) put in context of history / society / social problems / social change... as the arena of causes and cures for the endless cycles of violence
Thank you for bringing attention to this serious issue. Humans have no end of their ability to inflict harm on other humans, and it is all done from profound ignorance.
A nearly taboo subject in the U.S. is the even worse mutilation performed on female infants and young girls in many Muslim countries, with Somalia being one of the worst. The degree of injury far surpasses that inflicted on boys by the act of circumcision. In girls, it is much more than the "foreskin" being removed. It is done to different degrees up to cutting off the labia and amputation of the clitorus, comparable to removal of the entire penis in males. This is beyond horrific and is completely unconscionable! Girls so mutilated often suffer lifelong health consequences also, getting frequent urinary tract infections. Then, if they conceive, they must be cut open to allow for the birth of the baby. Unbelievable! Those people doing it are utterly barbaric!
In no way do I want to minimize the horrific damage done to girls undergoing the most severe forms of female genital mutilation.
However, it is a fact that those procedures you described are NOT the most commonly inflicted procedures AND male genital mutilation, ie the removal of the entire foreskin... is in fact FAR more severe than the most commonly practiced forms of female genital mutilation.
Having said that, I really cannot stand what too often devolves into a SICK competition of sorts as to who has been damaged more.
The bottom-line is that NO child should have their genitals nicked, scraped, cut or otherwise mutilated.
FYI...
FGM/MGM
...."But in medical ethics, the appropriate test for a non-therapeutic surgery performed in the absence of disease or deformity is not benefit vs ‘risk of surgical complications’ but rather benefit vs risk of harm."
"Yes, The U.S doesn't like to look at itself in the mirror and see itself for what it is...and see the psychopathic sexist and hypcritical Double Standard it has with Genital Mutialtion. Sad when an advocate of female circumcision can be more honest about what the United States does to males than the controlled corrupt phony mainstream media...Sad when an advocate of female circumcision has to show the U.S what it looks like in the mirror and has to call out the United States Sexist and Hypocritical DOUBLE STANDARD with circumcision...."
Words DO matter if they are used to obfuscate and minimize the true situation to sway public perception of something THAT atrocious! "Political correctness" is just another form of deception.
I don't completely disagree with you. I feel equally outraged by people calling male genital mutilation "just a little snip" or "circumcision" for that matter. It makes it sound so benign. Nothing could be further from the truth.
However, the vast majority of people have NO idea of the PERMANENT damage done to boys! AND how this damage affects WOMEN.
Look, I have spent years looking into this issue.
MY point is still that NO child should have their body violated... male, female or whatever!
I am definitely NOT interested in political correctness... It is ALL mutilation of the most private and sensitive part of a human being. It needs to STOP!
In WWII my father and thousands of other fathers were sent to fight the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My Uncle Douglass, my dad’s younger brother, had already been killed in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. My dad went into China as Truman brought 50 thousand Marines into China to free the country from Japanese occupation or so the political script read. My dad didn’t come home the same man who had fathered two children with my mom who stayed on a military base in Starke, Florida supporting the war effort with my sister Diane and my brother Randy and my widowed grandmother Anna to help her take care of my older siblings. I inherited the photos of my dad in his USMC uniform on a outdoor swing with my young mother and their two babies as he received orders to be shipped out from Treasure Island to fight in the Pacific. He looked thin, sad, and terrified as he said goodbye to them at twenty two years old convinced he would never see them again. I was one of the next four children they would have after my father made in back to the states. My parents divorced when I was five years old in 1957. Yesterday my granddaughter Ciena a ten year old fifth grader asked me why her great grandparents divorced. I said, “war” PTSD the collateral damage of hand to hand combat.
When I moved with my Vietnam Veteran newscaster husband to San Francisco in the early 80’s my dad came to visit. We took him to see Treasure Island and the Golden Gate Bridge, the bridge he sailed under as a 22 year old Marine barely trained to fight hand to hand in the Pacific. He was happy he had lived to see our four children, Briana, Yuri, Jessica, and Anna. They were too young to understand war and the consequences of PTSD on old soldiers lives. I felt happy at that moment forgetting all the pain of my childhood watching my father and mother fight through a rage born in a terrible war where many innocent people died as Truman dropped the bombs on Japan ending the war the Pacific, the occupation of China, the ovens of Europe where millions of my children’s future friends grandparents perished in the antisemitism fires of hate which led to the founding of Israel.
Daddy had tears in his eyes on the boat making its way to the Golden Gate Bridge. “Darlin,” I’m afraid for you and for my grandchildren that you will see the end of humanity,” my father said as he looked toward the great Pacific Ocean as the waters charged into San Francisco Bay. “Man isn’t finished with war and the bombs are now capable of destroying all of this, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the peace needed for my descendants to survive.”
I know this essay isn't really about this, but still:
"the universities have done nothing to stem the rising tide of anti-Semitism"
If you look at foxnews.com, a photo that has a Palestinian flag in it will frequently have the word "anti-semitism" or "anti-semitic" under it, implying that being "pro-Palestine", waving a Palestinian flag, or saying that Israel shouldn't bomb Gaza is "anti-semitic".
When a student threatens to kill Jewish students, that is anti-semitic. Having a pro-Palestine rally is not anti-semitic. This is an important distinction. It matters, because too many people think that saying what Israel is doing right now is wrong is a form of anti-semitism. It is not.
Well Charles, I read up to "babies in their cribs" and then stopped reading. You do realize there were NO infant victims on October 7th according to Israeli data, right? And half the people who WERE killed were killed by deliberate Israeli bombs and incendiaries? The IDF has a policy called the "Hannibal Directive," in which any hostages are killed right along with their captors. The photos you see of burned out houses in kibbutzes were the result of ISRAELI incendiaries. Hamas had no such weapons and could not have carried them over the wall. Multiple Israeli survivors of the attack have testified to this. Haaretz senior military reporter reported that on the IDF base that Hamas attacked, the base commander hid in a bunker and called in an airstrike on HIS OWN MEN. All of these people are uncynically counted as "deaths committed by Hamas." Now Haaretz is even counting Israeli soldiers killed in the current invasion of Gaza as Oct. 7th Hamas victims. They have a running total of victims that gets added to with every death in Gaza.
Incidentally, I hope by now you have abandoned that toad RFK Jr. Not only has Dennis Kucinich left, but now his whole field team resigned. Every day that goes by he utters some new ridiculous Zionist propaganda. Now he is coming out against free speech on college campuses.
If this were the case, then at least some of the (majority non-zionist, pro-Palestinian) survivors of the slaughter would have alerted us to it. Even if there were one case of what you claim, someone would have mentioned it. You're right that propaganda occurs, and zionist engage in it, but this scenario is unlikely given what I said above. Still, there is no way to disprove it (e.g. anyone who could testify that it happened was suppressed in some way), and so you will go on believing it, because it helps you in some way.
You have convinced me (thanks to your first ref, the second was not what you think and was not a testimony of IDF friendly fire killing Israelis, it was a political screed) that the "beheaded and burned alive babies" stories were either not true or (in the case of burning), due to IDF weapons. Still, there was plenty of carnage due to Hamas, and the IDF was only the proximal, not the root cause of the "friendly fire" carnage either. They have a policy that is meant to deter terrorists for using human shields, whether they are babies, women, men, Israelis or Palestinians. It's now also a policy not to trade prisoners for hostages, for the same reason of not encouraging terrorists in their strategy of taking hostages (or human shields). They believe the benefits of this policy outweigh the costs.
In any case, I don't condemn either Hamas or the IDF or Bibi and his crowd. They are all acting for good reasons, having to do with Islam, bad conditions in Gaza, childhood trauma. But they are all acting like predictable automata, I could almost predict what they do with my simulation software. Wouldn't it be great if someone acted in an unpredictable manner?
Yes, I agree that it would be great if someone acted unpredictably. However, I just watched, at another commenter's recommendation, Scott Ritter's (the weapons inspector) podcast from last Friday night. It's called Ask the Inspector, and it's on Spotify and I think YouTube. He explains not only the uncertain number killed by Hamas, but what Hamas's objectives were and why they had no choice but to do what they did militarily to achieve their objectives: to take hostages to exchange for Palestinian hostages, and to make impossible the Abraham Accord about to be signed by Israel and Saudi Arabia. No other strategy was possible, because peaceful strategies or negotiation gets absolutely nowhere with the Israelis. That has been true since 1948. At any rate, I recommend watching the podcast.
Yeah, I saw most of that yesterday. Ritter is not too up on the history of Palestine, and off-putting to me with his militaristic machismo. He also seems ignorant about the gas pipeline deal that Israel, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, the US and the EU were trying to implement, that was competing with Russian and Iranian gas and oil, something that he should know about.
There were plenty of other choices for Hamas after Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. They could have invested the millions in aid they got in making life good for Palestinians, building up infrastructure, tourism and agriculture (instead of burning down the greenhouses Israelis left them). Instead they invested in weapons, tunnels and terror.
The leaders of Hamas (just like the Israeli right wing part of the govt) do not want peace. Their choices reflect that. Hamas' objectives are clearly stated in their documents. Peace is not one of them.
I think if he had been up on the history of Palestine before this, he would not have been such a big cheerleader for Israel for such a long time. It was not on his radar because his expertise is military matters. His militaristic machismo is perfectly in character with his military career, is it not? I certainly would not get military information from someone who was NOT a military expert. If he knew about the gas pipeline, that would only strengthen his argument, right? Israel grabbing the Gaza oil fields does not strengthen their case. Your statement that Hamas did nothing to make life good for Gazans is rather jaw dropping to me. This is like saying that the prisoner governments within the camps did nothing to make life better in the Nazi concentration camps. What could be done within a concentration camp with two million people in it was done. There was music, entertainment, going to the beach, etc. There were restaurants. However, nothing Hamas could have done could counteract Israel making sure Palestinians only had so many calories a day, or only had 2-4 hours of electricity. Nothing Hamas could have done would make up for routine kidnappings, rape, detention for no crime and no due process. Nothing Hamas could have done would make up for 75 years of beatings, murder and few or no civil rights. Of course Hamas does not want peace--they want their country back, and according to International Law, they have a right to use violence to get it. As Norman Finkelstein argued, this was a slave revolt.
In 2005, Israel moved troops and settlers from inside Gaza to its perimeter, and adopted a strategy of "freezing political process" and "de-development" (economic restrictions) in order to prevent the development of a Palestinian state. A year later, Israel invaded Lebanon and carried out atrocities, including the total destruction of Dahiya, the precedent for the IDF's Dahiya Doctrine: "We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction." [Gadi Eisenkot, Head of IDF Northern Command] Such a doctrine obviously includes collective punishment of civilians, which is a war crime. The Turkel Report managed to "legalise" Israel's stranglehold on Gaza from 2005-8 because "Palestinians were not starving."
I'm going to provide just one because this article has links to many others. Yesterday I provided links separately to someone and it took me most of an hour. But there were other survivor testimonies than the ones listed here. If you want to listen to Yasmin Porat's whole testimony just go to YouTube and type her name in. This article links to her original testimony on Israeli radio. thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters
Scott Ritter also expands on this topic (that it could only be the IDF who burned the cars & houses and fired indiscriminately at the hostages) in his last Ask the Inspector podcast. His deep military knowledge, experience, and intelligence could serve as a testimony. He also explains how Israelis missed the Hamas breakthrough.
Here's another testimony, also from Haaretz, but it's in Hebrew (they don't do English for everything). Google translate should help. I read the translation in a post on X, which of course I can't post here. archive.md/JtyES#commentsSection
So I'm supposed to listen to a half-hour video when I have read multiple books on the subject by Israeli historians? I am very very very familiar with the history of Palestine and the state of Israel, thanks.
Can we make the first step calling for a ceasefire? Still didn't hear you state that...or touch upon why RFK Jr. hasn't? No idea why the long winded posts don't translate into an initial step that advocates for an end to the immediate slaughter of innocent people.
I think there will be a ceasefire very soon, because there are people in the Israeli government with not only a heart, but a mind that can understand that this carnage will produce more Jihadists than it kills.
C E's thoughts can wander hither and thither. And they always come home to roost. Not so, RFK' Jr.'s. Like far too many in the legalism world, RFK,Jr. tends to get lost in certain legal dungeons of his own creation. No matter how dark the dungeon, until he subsequently finds some prudence for his pet legalisms, he remains in the darkest corners of the world.
No one I know of knows how to trigger in RFK, Jr. such revelations.
Like certain other Kennedies, it may only require one particularly attractive babe. Or, like many of whom seem to get lost in such arms, it may take an extraordinary such attractive babe to show him the brightest political-sociology/anthropology/religious/spiritual light.
One must suspect that until we learn otherwise, RFK, Jr. remains an idiosyncratic reader/thinker.
So Charles is the wrong sex and not attractive enough for RJK to receive "the brightest, political-sociology/anthropoplogy/religious/spiritual light"? Oh, well.
Thank you, Charles, so much. I'm an Israeli, living in this nightmare for the past month. I'm heart-broken by the horrors that happened in Israel on October 7th and the following days, and by what's been happening to Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Israel. What's most difficult for me in these days is to see what this horrible situation brings out of people - the hatred, the wish for vengeance, the one-dimensional perspective of good and evil, with no room for any other voices. What we miss the most, here and in the rest of the world, is the ability to see complexity. Everybody seems to have an opinion, but so little willingness to learn and discover things they don't know yet. The perspective that you bring, here and in your previous essays, which shows the complexity, the width and the depth of the situation, gives me hope. Please keep writing!
Wow, Charles. Your commitment to not "take sides" is admirable. In your essays, you have pointed us to see that both sides are consumed by blind vengeance, both sides have committed atrocities, both sides are justifying violence, and both sides are suffering. OK, thanks. 🤷♂️
You mention the accusations of "False equivalancy" and "Both-sidesism," as you can hear them coming. But you falsely mischaracterize that critique as being that one side's violence is "justified" and one side is not. The real critique of "both-sidesism" is that it paints the transgressions of both parties as equally wrong. The natural result is passive inaction. "Both sides are awful. Oh well." This simply perpetuates the status quo, which currently is a genocidal massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza, currently at over 10,500 dead and another child murdered every 10 minutes.
I wonder if the scale of this slaughter might reach a point where you feel compelled to "take a side." If the Israeli war machine kills 100,000 Palestinians would you "take sides." How about 1 million? Do the numbers matter, or does our concern for avoiding the binary of "sides" and being associated with hate and anti-semitism override that no matter the numbers?
Somehow there are thousands of Jewish people of conscience around the world and even in Israel who have come out passionately and adamantly against the Israeli war machine genocide and in support of the suffering Palestinian people. Perhaps our whole concept of the "sides" is part of the problem. We have been fed a narrative about what the "sides" are and what they believe and demand and justify and are guilty of. It looks to me like in your noble effort to avoid taking "sides," you have actually affirmed and adopted a false narrative about what the "sides" are and what they entail. Can there be a side that is solely against bombing and killing 5,000 children with nothing else attached?
I agree with your pushback against the tired demands for "condemnations." What does a condemnation really do, anyway? But can we demand that the U.S.-backed Israeli war machine stop this continuing slaughter of innocents in Gaza? There is absolutely no justification for it. It is wrong, and we must do everything we can to stop it. That is urgent and necessary, and I hope you have the courage at some point to speak clearly and unequivocally about it.
(Side note: You described your Palestinian friend's family as "collateral damage." Do you see any problem with that language? It used to be that people like you found that term unacceptable. Do you really think the suffering of his family is "unintended" or "inadvertent"? I wonder what he would say. I invite you to rethink that framing.)
If Im honest , all of the words written comes across as a"waffle" if he can't do the simple, most basic thing and call for an immediate cease fire. In that context, or lack of it, all of his words come across as empty. Surely, we can all agree the killing should stop now. Then, let's do the deep dive into the shadows, etc.
I have to say, Charles inability to state the obvious, has been sad to see.....
Having read Charles' work for quite some time already, I am sure he did not mean the collateral damage statement to be taken literally. It was meant sardonically for the despairing lack of humanity of those who speak of people in those terms.
I appreciate your good opinion of Charles. I am not as "sure" as you are about what he meant. If he was being sardonic/sarcastic he could have easily put it in quotes. I think it is a blind spot, that even people of conscience sometimes have.
And he added the line that they are Christian as if that somehow mattered if they are deserving our not. Weird. Praying for better from him and us all.
Charles, you are one of the (very) few writers in the public sphere willing to acknowledge something called the Galactic Council. How much blowback an article like this will receive, I don't know (loved the phrase about the Comments sections). But I assure you it won't come from beings who live by the rule of looking at both sides with clarity without judgment. Write as much of this as you can--it's the lesson we're trying to teach ourselves.
It's pretty stupid that the UN hasn't ever negotiated for peace.
When two groups disagree, there needs to be a mediator.
With the Israel situation, despite the condemnations, there's no power to bring them to the table until the security council dictator nations with veto power allow it.
Same with Ukraine and Russia.... From 2014 until the war, shelling of the East has been called out but nothing could stop it!?!
Perhaps this disaster will build a movement where member nations of the UN start calling out this ridiculous single veto power given to "world powers".
I'll be honest, in school when we learned about the UN, I found that veto power as designed to keep corrupt power in control. Sadly, my teachers thought it was a good thing, as they grew up during prosperous times in the USA. Most students didn't see an issue with veto power either.
Rfk Jr also seems to think everything is "fair" by his huge ignorance of the Israel/Palestine situation. I find it crazy that he still believes the propaganda fed to him through his childhood etc despite the assassinations of his uncle and father!
Perhaps he isn't as intelligent as we think, or perhaps he's got huge emotional blocks.
It's almost like they assumed that the world powers would be fair.
Haha, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and others prove that it's just another extension of imperialism framed as "protecting the world"..
Yes, the veto power needs to be removed. You nailed it. Otherwise the UN can't exercise its function as a mediator of conflict at the international level.
The irrelevant corrupt UN should be abolished and destroyed. They're useless as mediators of anything. The betrayal of Uyghur victims last year was just par for the course. Who exactly do they censure? Saudi Arabia? No. China? No. Venezuela? What other shit run Arab countries with their atrocious abuse of women and girls have they censured? North Korea? They spend their days censoring Israel but not Hamas. I look forward to the end of Hamas. Isreal is sending them to Hell as I type.
The corrupt U.N. needs to disappear into the depths of hell along with WHO, and the mainstream corporate media.
"My friend’s family members are all Christians. Not supporters of Hamas." Implying that you could not both be Christian and support Hamas or some other Islamic resistance movement/organization is naive and wrong. Your Christian friends are not collateral damage, Charles; they are the intended target of Israel's stated genocidal intentions. I am genuinely curious what is the basis of your historical and moral judgment that the Jewish holocaust of WWII was the "most heinous episode of human history" -- since that judgment reveals that you are indeed capable of such judgments and do not actually see them as beneath your enlightened perspective!....... Anyhow, if anyone wants a perspective on this issue which is both spiritually attuned (not provoking hatred or desire for vengeance) but does not equivocate on the truth, look to Alec Zeck or Ali Zeck, Ihsan Abbas or his wife Sister Shanti, Nizami XIII on Substack, or of course Chris Hedges or Norman Finkelstein.
Really stunning to hear Charles describe the whole family as "collateral damage." His own "friend!" I wonder what his friend would say about that. I pray that I never find myself using that despicable term.
We all are the collateral damage in a world that prefers destruction and slavery to peace and collaboration. We throw ourselves, our families, our communities, our world under the bus every day to become the collateral damage of the system we are enmeshed within, which eats the earth and its inhabitants alive and spits out the bits with no concern for the damage it does... And then it is of course ‘just part of war' or so they say... someone is going to get in the way and get hurt, so they say - this is 'collateral damage' (***see note below). Somehow the war mongers and control freaks on all sides using violence forget and /or are willfully blind to the fact that this includes human families, friends, husbands, wives, children... Blessedly Charles has the courage to state out loud this is the case... and of course it is despicable, because it IS despicable that this is happening, now so obviously in the Middle East; but until we see clearly that we are all collateral damage in a game of control run by those in power who will stop at nothing to gain upmanship; who also have capacity to rope in fearful people to become collaborators by suggesting that they will be on the winning side and once they (the good guys) have won all will become ‘okay’…. all the while allowing someone, somewhere is collateral damage, a story told a hundred thousand times will continue well into our future.
I know for many they want Charles to ‘take action’ but if you have read much of Charles work you will know that ‘taking action’ for the sake of it is far from his way. His work is always about understanding what is below the thinking of all the sides… and usually it is the same thinking, only made different by their own point of view and their desire to be right and have others be wrong.
***Barry Fleming notes in this comment thread:
"During WWI, 10% of all casualties were civilians.
During WWII, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.
During the Vietnam War, 70% of all casualties were civilians.
In the War in Iraq, civilians account for up to 90% of all deaths.
The killing of civilians and willfully causing great suffering is a war crime.
- Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949"
H/T John Pilger
ie civilians (humans!) as collateral damage is 'just part of the way it is', especially in war.
There comes a point—perhaps the bombing of wounded children in hospitals, whether or not "justified" by a 3D graphic of "terrorist bunkers" beneath the hospital, or debunked "evidence" of phone calls "between Hamas terrorists"—where non-partisanship becomes "justification" for bombing wounded children in hospitals. The correct action for Mr Eisenstein, as a man of conscience and champion of a More Beautiful World, is to join others in calling for an immediate ceasefire and mounting robust challenges to those invested ideologically and/or financially in the totalitarian experiment being conducted in the crucible of Gaza.
Or several thousands of other teachers from around the world, from almost every tribe (don't know all of them). As one of the Buddha's taught, anyone or anything can become a lesson, a blessing, a gift from the vast universes of universes, for any one of us, for each one who chooses to let the light shine from the inside out.
Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Attwood, Berry, M. Oliver, Tim O'Brien's war stories,Native American wisdom traditions, a vast array of poets from around the world. The opportunities are far more vast than any of us shall live sufficiently long to fully appreciate. The question rapidly becomes how shall we sober ourselves. And when.
For another way to think and communicate, this came today from the brilliant poet, In-Q:
"The world is pretty messed up right now so I won’t pretend like everything is fine, because it’s clearly not. And honestly, I’m not fine either. It’s with a heavy heart that I write this. Obviously, people are going through a lot of pain and suffering. I don’t have any answers but I’ve been trying my best to treat everyone with extra care, consideration and compassion lately.
"I’ve been mostly staying off social media for my own mental health, and posting less because I haven’t wanted to use my voice to be a part of all the noise. And I haven’t wanted to take up space by explaining why I’m not taking up space. Instead, I’ve been actively listening, continuing to share my poetry and facilitate for other people to use creativity as an outlet. I’ve hosted a bunch of workshops and keynotes over the past few weeks, which, if nothing else, has brought another few hundred poems into the world. When I don’t know what to do to help, I at the very least try not to add to the hurt. My thoughts are with all those affected by the ongoing conflict, and I am praying for peace."
RFKJ spoke at the Rubin report that he would sit at the table with all international players in the ME (China, Russia, Iran, SA, etc) and initiate a series of discussions, work out a plan to fix the Palestine situation once for all, together. I really liked it as a possible approach. It is the only thing that might work if done with honesty.
Here is the link. The relevant part starts about 22 minutes in. I’m glad to see RFKJ favoring global mediation and a willingness to work with Xi and Putin for peace. I see this as the only realistic pathway to ending this and other wars. https://youtu.be/kCYDsAB1_0A?si=vLBo9OHnUpW6ZpTj
And... this is the reason that I don't watch the lame stream news and haven't for over 30 years. I will only agree to watch the news if you can show me how I can directly affect a situation and have a meaningful effect on the problem. Though I don't criticize anyone wanting to have a discussion on a 'news' topic from anywhere around the world or to 'vent' their frustrations, as is their right, I don't see any benefit in it on affecting the situation. How about we just let those folks in the conflict work it out exactly as they will with or without our pontificating about their situation and instead focus on something we have direct control over? How about we DO something instead of just Discussing what we could DO or hope someone else Does? How about we just focus on Loving the person next to us with Agape Love? That's something we can DO to Affect this world. What would the world look like if we just Agape Loved the person next to us and they, in turn, did the same thing to the person next to them and so on? What would that world look like? How can we ask groups of people in lands most of us have never been to with cultures we have never fully experienced to Agape Love one another when we haven't taken the time to Love OUR Neighbors unconditionally?
I will be so bold as to answer one of my questions above myself. Do you know what the world would look like if we just focused on Agape Loving the person next to us and they did the same thing and so on? It would look like Heaven. The only thing standing between heaven on earth and what we're observing in the world is US. When we take ownership of the fact that WE are the cause of the conflict, turn off the TV and all media and focus on Unconditionally loving those next to us (our neighbors) AND do all the things that loving someone unconditionally entails, AND the people next to us do the same thing to the people next to them, then and only then will we have the peace on earth and the heaven on earth that our hearts all seek and desire. "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."
Thank you Charles, it would be great if you could get RFK jr to say something to that effect.
He is completely captured and unreachable. Goes around with a Zionist rabbi by his side, and makes ridiculous unhistorical claims about Israel daily. Now he is in favor of banning free speech on college campuses. So that's two major planks of his platform he's exploded. His whole field team resigned a couple of days ago.
Even if RFK understood this (which seems unlikely as he seems to be VERY ignorant & misguided on this issue and invested in the story of only one side) even then I don't think it would really touch the heart of the matter which is that the local people need to see this for ourselves.
As someone who was given at birth the labels 'Jewish' and Israeli', it seems to me that the most important factor that perpetuates this continuous horror is that there is an incredible lack of awareness (in each "side") of the IMMENSE AND PROFOUND TRAUMA that each "side" has caused the other, mostly becasue each side is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and has no contact with the other side, doesn't feel their pain, doesn't hear their stories (how they make sense of reality) and therefore have no full understanding of the life experience & trauma experience of those on the "other side".
(and before I proceed I'd just like to qualify what I just said and acknowledge that the sides are not equal here and that the trauma that newly-arrived supremacist zionists caused the local people in Palestine over the last century - in their brutal ruthless cruel and insensitive/inconsiderate project of dispossesion, annihilation, dehumanization and ERASURE of the local people in Palestine - is many many orders of magnitude greater than the other way around (which is something that I think the majority of Jews, and definitely Zionists, are not aware of). Some of it is detailed in this shocking documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4 which i can confirm is 100% true based in my own personal experience. And this brilliant Israeli historian summerizes it quite well in this short dialogue https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MuzWDWBn55g )
As someone who was given at birth the label 'Jewish' and 'Israeli' (but have already long ago seen through their inaccurate, distorting, corrupting, limiting, imprisoning, divisive, sectarian and God-denying nature, and so have shed these labels) I notice that what allows this ongoing horror to happen (not only today but for more than a century now) is that there is such a total SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION between the "sides" (this is one of the greatest successes of nationalism, to separate people) so that people from both "sides" have no full understanding of the life experience & trauma experience of those on the "other side".
From what I see, this total DISCONNECTION is exactly what allows people to cheer when "our hero fighters" (whom the other side calls terrorists or invaders/dispossesors) murder, torture, oppress, abuse, slaughter and bomb "them", because each side says "they are evil people who only want to harm us, take our land and kill us/kick us out", and each side has countless examples of actions by the other side that are supposed to "prove" the supposed rightness of their claim.
Each "side" is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and tells itself its own story, about its trauma and difficulties, and is completely unaware of the life experience and trauma of the "other side".
And so, when the other side reacts (in what it calls self-defense) then the first side interprets it as an attack (becasue of its DISCONNECTION from the stories and sense-making of the other side) and tells a story that "those people on the other side" are evil monsters who only want to harm our side for no reason
It's quite amazing how similar the story that each side tells itself to the story that the other side tells itself, it is practically the SAME STORY - we are the victims here who are only protecting ourselves from the aggression of those evil people over there who only want to harm us and hate us for no reason. We have no one to talk to and negotiate with, they are not human beings, they are sons of Satan who hate us from birth, who only want to destroy us and take our land and kick us out - each side speaks the exact same stories!!
And all this lack of understanding happens simply because there is NO CONTACT between the "sides". This is the tremendous success of nationalism/tribalism, there is a complete disconnection, so that I don't hear the story that the other side tells itself and how they make sense of things, I don't experience their life experience, I don't know anything about their pain, I don't realize how much the story they tell themselves is the same as the story I tell myself, and therefore there is no possibility of experiencing the HUMANITY (the fear, the search for security) that motivates the other, just as it motivates me, and therefore also indifference to the trauma that the other goes through at the hands of "our heroic fighters"
It seems to me that the main engine that drives all of this is that people in tje region (and especially Israelis) undergo a very deep conditioning/indoctrination from a very young age into a separative and SECTARIAN RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST IDENTITY and learn to believe (contrary to what reality shows) that this separate and divisive identity is what will provide them with protection and security, even though it does THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!
This indoctrination into the separative exclucivist religious-nationalist identity is much more than just mental brainwashing, but it is mainly the conditioning the of the nervous system and emotional system into IDENTIFICATION with a nationalist-religious label (this label equals me. This is me, This label is where my safety & security is to be found), which causes the emotions and the body to react very strongly to anything that they teach me is at odds with this identity.
Strong reaction that comes from the fact that the body/brain/nervous system has been conditioned to learn - through constant repetition in the first years of life (when the personality is formed), again and again and again, and without questioning - this is who I am, that I am this national-religious identity, therefore anything that questions or does not align with or appears to be at odds with this national-religious system of ideas is immediately perceived as a threat to my very existence, because I am this identity/the nationalist-religious label, this is me, and the people over there who do not carry this sacred label are my enemies, a threat to my existence..
It seems to me that those who have fallen into the abyss of sectarianism/tribalism/nationalism (and especially those whose tribalism also involves divisive, excluding, supremacist and God-denying sectarian religious beliefs) have been conditioned to believe that their saftey & security will be found through group separation and exclusion and a sense of uniqueness from the rest of humanity (a feeling that is so deeply imprinted in those who believe that the label of "Jewish" is who they actually are), that security will be found through an attempt to ensure the safety of ONLY one group of people, only those who were born into the "correct" religious-national label (and anyone who was not born into the correct national-religious label can go to hell. She matters a little but not nearly as much as the Chosen People, the most valuable and important people in the universe). It sounds ridiculous, but this is a VERY common & mainstream worldview in the extremely nationalist, ethnocentric, fascistic & exclucivist Israeli society, and it plays a huge part in what brought about this conflict in the first place, since the very early days of sectarian exclucivist zionist nationalism, and its arrival in the middle east from (mostly) eastern Europe.
To me, this is precisely the blindness of the sectarian nationalist-religious identity: trying to create security ONLY for one group, only for a part of the whole (through division, exclusion, separation from the whole and working to secure the narrow interests of only one nationalist-religious identity), such an attempt - of trying to create security ONLY for the part and ignore what this does to the whole - such an attempt can NEVER ever lead to real security but exactly the opposite - this is the number one factor that creates constant conflict and INSECURITY!!!
TRYING TO CREATE SECTARIAN SECURITY (SECURITY ONLY FOR THE PART AND NOT THE WHOLE, ONLY FOR ME AND MY GROUP) IS THE VERY CAUSE OF INSECURITY!!!
In my understanding, tribalism/nationalism and sectarian divisive exoteric religion (which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God actually is) is the great disease and blindness of humanity. Is the most destructive and deadly invention that humans have ever invented (not because we are bad, but because we have not psychologically matured yet, and are still blind, and in our naiveté we believed that this is how we will find safety & security, without understanding what we are doing, without realizing that we are actually creating constant INSECURITY when we search for security through the sectarian divisive nationalist-religious identity, when we seek security only for the part and not for the whole).
To me it is absolutely clear that it is the number one cause of human division, separation, antagonism, hatred, conflict, violence, murder and war..
IMHO, the bloodshed can never stop and there will never be security for anyone unless we have the courage to step out of our sectarian bubble and actually listen and truly understand the profound trauma we inflict (this is true for both sides but especially so for Israelis who are incredibly brainwashed and ignorant of the UNSPEAKABLE HORROR CRUELTY INHUMANITY AND TRAUMA that supremacist right-wing zionist immigrants inflicted and inflict on the local people.
Without feeling the pain endured and understanding the trauma, cruelty and terrible injustice that Palestinians are actually reacting to, without this, indoctrinated supremacist zionists will just continue with the dispossession, cruelty, pushing out and erasure of the local people, and keep telling themselves 'they are hostile to us for no reason, simply becasue they are evil antisemite monsters by nature..'
I deeply appreciate everything you are saying, and mostly share your perspective. However I wonder what you think about a perspective that my husband recently brought to my attention, which is that of Max Blumenthal, a journalist we love, who said that we have to quit accepting the assertion of Jewish victimhood, and that actually Jews today are living in a golden age. My husband brought this up to push back against my constant invoking of victim consciousness, and I think there is something to what he and Max are saying.... It is certainly true that Jews today, especially Israeli Jews, have the perception of eternal victimhood stoked in their consciousness from a very young age, by being told that Jews are nowhere safe and that gentiles have some primordial urge to kill them. But I think that Max is right that their victimhood is not a reality today, but just a manufactured, weaponized perception (and to the extent that it is a reality, it is created by Zionism), and we have to start pushing back against it. On the other hand, I would say that the reverse is true for Palestinians: they are actual victims of the Zionist colonial project, and yet for so long much of the world has refused to recognize this truth (which is obviously changing given the overtly fascist nature of Israel now), and despite being alone and abandoned in their victimization, they actually found and claimed their agency and power, thus overcoming their victimization. Another thing I would say is that Israelis and Palestinians are kept apart by Israel, and that this forced separation furthermore began early on with Zionist false flag terrorist events against Jews living in North Africa and the Middle East in order to drive them to join the Zionist project in Israel.
Yes, I would agree with all you pointed out here, and would add that one of the differences between the world-renowned zionist sense of victimhood (heavily and cynically weaponized against the local people in the land that the zionists seek to take over and dominate) and between the palestinian trauma (inflicted by the traumatised unhealed neurotic and violent zionist psyche) is that the zionists are much much better at PR (public relations) :-) with a very intense Hollywood and popular media cultural propaganda blitz to constantly put their trauma front and center nonstop, and cynically weaponize it to give them entitlement and free hand to be as cruel and violent as they wish since they are the eternal victims who can do no wrong and are always the moral ones..
Not only do the palestinians have nowhere near that level of PR but the zionist complete domination of the eternal victim space (domination not just culturally but also politically and literally putting themselves in positions of control over the narrative and censorship and criminalization of deviation from their imposed narrative), not only that, this domination is also being used to cruelly dismiss and prevent any palestinian claim for being brutalized and wronged. Palestinians simply have no chance against this complete zionist colonization of the victim space. Zionists will always be depicted as the victims and palestinians will always be depicted as the aggresors, no matter how completely opposite the reality is..
In addition to that, I'll also share this short and interesting article that I just read by a Jewish historian that sheds a little more light on the forces that shaped the (traumatised neurotic and violent) zionist psyche
https://www.pressenza.com/2023/11/on-the-impasse-of-political-violence/
And if there is interest in this then I'd highly recommend the works, books, writings, lectures, dialogues and discussions with the Israeli historian Dr. Ilan Pappe (many are available online, in videos and transcripts), as well as of the Israeli historian prof Shlomo Zand. Both of whom wrote extensively on this.
This subject - of psycho-history, the psychological forces that shape the character and motivations of groups and nations - is of deep interest to me personally, specifically with relation to the traumatised dysfunctional neurotic brutal heart-corrupted violent sectarian and entitled zionist psyche, because i sense that understanding the injured and reactive psychology (and the resultant motivations and actions) is really the key to this whole ongoing horror, which i think affects far more than just the middle east, but keeps the spirit of most of world hostage to it, in a state of division, antagonism, and separation from our Godly nature. This might sound dramatic but it seems to me that such is the depth and level of unconsciousness and blockage surrounding this wound, and such is the enormous potential of what is possible for humanity if this wound is healed (becomes whole again) through deep loving sensitivity, caring, listening, attention and in-sight (not through shaming and attacking and revenge and dehumanizing, which can never lead to real healing and departure from the cycle of trauma)
In my view, things will not change unless there is a very deep awakening in the Israeli psyche from the separative, divisive, self-righteous and tone-deaf spirit and psychological position from which israelis operate. This separative self-righteous tone-deaf ethnocentric supremacist arrogant and dismissive spirit will NEVER provide them with security, no matter how many times they tell themselves that they are the victims and the righteous ones, becasue this nationalist self-absorbed tone-deaf arrogant separative divisive excluding and supremacist spirit is exactly what DIVIDES them from the organic culture and land that they invaded and claim as their own, and this spirit is exactly what keeps them as a FOREIGN ELEMENT in the middle east, an unintegrated element, a seperative arrogant antagonistic invasive foreign element, that has to always live behind walls and fortifications and billion-dollar weapons and massive surveillance and oppression apparatus against the very neighbourhood that they plunked themselves into, in an unorganic manner, in a hostile, insensitive, arrogant, unfriendly, supremacist invasive and aggresive manner. They will NEVER ever find security as long as they operate from this sectarian antagonistic supremacist psychology towards the very region they invaded (psychology which israelis are deeply indoctrinated into from birth).
I envision a healing process in which israelis awaken out of this deep hypnosis and deeply apologize to local people (authentic and heart-felt apology) for what they have done to them at that period in the 20th and early 21st centuries when they were profoundly unconscious and under the spell of the trauma and nationalistic separative ideology. And after deeply apologizing, sincerely and from the heart, and asking for forgiveness, the israelis might then humbly and respectfully ask the local people if they's be kind enough to allow them to stay and live together as equals on this land (since the descendants of the zionist immigrants now also live here and have nowhere else to go and have already established a home here (yes, it was done in a horrible violent and deeply unjust manner, but the chidren of the violent and dispossesing zionist immigrants were already born here and don't know any other place and have nowhere else to go, this is their home now too.. )
This humble and respectful question (if we are allowed to share this land with you locals, since we have come here in distress and escaping persecution, and in return for allowing us to live together with you on this land, we will work together with you to bring the gifts of both our people for the mutual benefit of all of us) this human approach should have been done from the very first moment, rather than the violent supremacist taking-away brutally invasive and hostile antagonistic approach that guided the zionists from the start) but the zionist psyche was unfortunately too immature traumatised neurotic and undeveloped to do that at the time and brought about this collosal disaster to the land. But now we can mature and heal and wake up out of this hypnotized nationalistic supremacist antagonisitc violent psychology that guided the zionist immigrants, change our ways and bring about a new reality, a sane way of living, based on shared humanity, shared divinity, respect, learning, sharing, and heart openness
Your words bring tears to my eyes, especially being that they come from someone who was born "Jewish" and "Israeli." How rare you are. You give me hope; thank you.
I love Ilan Pappe and Shlomo Sand, and have read much of their work and I think especially the latter (as in "The Invention of the Jewish People") can help bring to life the insights you provide in your comments. I have studied this issue and been engaged in activism around it for 20+ years, but until relatively recently I was a philosophical materialist who would have rejected psychological or narrative-based explanations or prescriptions (even as I have of course always recognized the centrality of the narrative of Jewish victimhood, and the very real trauma inflicted upon Jewish children who are told they are nowhere safe in the world amongst gentiles). However, in the past 3ish years I have approached something like your perspective on the explanatory importance of psycho-history and the practical necessity of healing the Jewish psyche. It is why I wish Charles would direct his writing on this issue specifically towards his Jewish brothers and sisters, in the spirit awakening and transforming the Jewish traumatized/manipulated/controlled psyche, rather than trying to make the rest of us feel bad about being triggered by watching genocide unfold in technicolor!!!
I think you are also right that this psychological transformation and healing will not only liberate Jews but all of humanity. And finally I want to say that having been to Palestine and stayed in the homes of many families there, I can tell you that I genuinely believe that they would forgive their Jewish brothers and sisters if they awakened from their hypnosis and embarked on a healing process, and would accept them as brothers and sisters of the land. I have always found it ironic that we hear so much about the supposedly hateful racist psyche of Arabs and Muslims (encapsulated in the stereotypes of the jihadist), since I did not at all experience that in all the many many months I have spent in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Morocco (even and especially when it was known that I am American!)... On the contrary, the level of hate and hostility I have encountered from Zionist Jews is completely fucking insane! Reality inverted.
Yes, I also deeply appreciate and resonate with your words. Thank you for your heart and for bringing all of that.
And just a small note, since I don’t want to give the wrong impression (and false hopes) as if my views are representitive of those of Israelis. They are not!! they are very VERY extremely rare among Israeli society, which is becoming more and more rabidly fascistic, militaristic, religiously extremist and nationalistic by the day. With each passing day Israelis are becoming more and more hermatically enclosed in their own nationalist-religious bubble, more and more rabidly right-wing, the dehumanization of palestinians is becoming more extreme with each passing day (vast majority of Israelis are simply not able to comprehend palestinian suffering or have any empathy or compassion towards them, the hatred is becoming more and more extreme by the day). Israeli society is getting more and more violent, more nationalistic, more extreme, and more entrenched in its own historical narrative & its own self-victimization. If I am completely honest, it is very hard for me to have much hope that change and transformation can willingly happen from within Israeli society. It seems to me that the shift to the nationalistic-religious right wing fascism in Israeli society (which happened slowly over the last 40 years but greatly accelarated in the last 6-8 years) might have now gone beyond the point of no return.. the separative nationalistic-religious indoctrination is so deep and the entrenchment in its own narratives is so deep that to me it seems that the only way change and awakening might happen is NOT through sobering up and awakening to reality out of the hypnosis in the Israeli psyche (it seems we’ve gone past the point already where this is possible) but rather it seems to me that the more likely scenario and course of events to happen now is that the sobering up and reckoning might happen only AFTER the major major catastrophe that the fascist-religious maddness is leading israeli society into (catastrophe of the nature of either becoming themselves the perpetrators of a Holocaust, or a nuclear world war, or something of this sort, something akin to the catastrophe that lead to the sobering up of the German psyche after WWII. The german psyche was also on an unstoppable nationalist frenzy of being deeply entrenched in its own narratives and its own sense of righteousness, so braimwashed and hypnotised by its own narratives of ‘it’s either us or them’ that it went beyond the point of no return, and the sobering up could happen only after a major catastrophic climax (that the nationalist frenzy must lead a society into).
When I see the level of nationalistic-religious brainwashing and dumbing-down and emotional manipulation going on in Israeli schools and media (you can see it also in many commet sections, how extremely deeply brainwshed heart-corrupted cruel and entrenched Israelis are in their own narratives of self righteousness and being the victim, their level of hypnosis and devotion to the "it's either us or them" ideology is simply beyond reach) when seeing all this then i’m afraid that israeli society is also beyond the point of no return and is on a collision course with an inevitable catastrophe.. only then might the sobering up and reckoning happen, if there’s anyone at all left by then…
I'm really NOT optimistic at all that there can be an awakening in the deeply indoctrinated self-assured arrogant and sectarian zionist psyche.. The societal trends and cultural zeitgiet in Israel indicate to me that the likelihood of a catastrophe is much higher than an awakening.. voices like mine are a tiny tiny miniscule minority in a violently fascistic and rabidly nationalist sea..
Jihadists like Hamas want to kill Jews and destroy Israel. There can be no peace unless all sides want it. Therefore Israel (and Jews) are forced to play this terrible hand. Unfortunately, there can be no bluffing for this ‘golden age’ of the Jewish people.
If you or anyone else had lived under violent oppression since the ethnic cleansing of 1948, you would want to destroy your oppressor. Moderate and genuine Jews increasingly understand and reject the indoctrination required to accept the State of Israel as the "Jewish Homeland." To the rest of the world, it is obvious that State of Israel cannot possibly be any such thing as a Jewish Homeland or Promised Land. God does not endorse genocide. At least, not in 2023.
@Nizami, wtf are you talking about?
Are you unable to read?
Have you ever read or listened to the Harold W Rosenthal interview from the 1970’s? Here’s the audio recording which a lot of people would rather not want to still be available. And Rosenthal paid for his arrogance and nonchalance with his life being murdered in an alleged highjacking shortly after he spilled the beans about THE PLAN, something so secretly hidden from the goyim they so despise. https://www.bitchute.com/video/NsLptrOjTakC/
Text - http://www.antichristconspiracy.com/HTML%20Pages/Harold_Wallace_Rosenthal_Interview_1976.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk
Thank you. Was this reply meant for me or a mistake? If it was meant for me, then I am not sure what is the relation between this reply and my comment (if you have actually read my comment in full). There is no explanation added to the link you gave, so I am not sure what you are attempting to convey with this reply, how is it related to what was pointed out in my comment..
PS. As a side note, the only relation i can find between this reply and my comment is that it (both the adversarial reply itself, in its righteous "We are right and they are wrong" mentality that Charles writes so much about, as well as the rabidly ethnocentric separative nationalist and erasing-of-others mentality in the video you linkedd) both of these are actually a good example of exactly what I was pointing out in my comment above, examples of how very very deeply entrenched and enclosed each side is in their own righteous SECTARIAN BUBBLE and its own ethnocentric exclucivist identity, and how each side is in an antagonistic hostile mindset with relation to 'the other side' (the immature tribalistic mindset that says "it's either us or them. The only life possible is one group dominating destroying and stomping over the other, so its better we do it to them before they do it to us'). A good example of how each side tell themselves over and over and over again their own sectarian tribaliatic stories and logic and mythologies about themselves being the righteous good guys who are tne victims of the evil aggressors over there (nationalist mythologies which they are absolutely sure is the truth and real) AND how each side (and especially israelis, in my experience) completely erase from existence and cruelly de-value and dismiss the profound pain, trauma and life experience of 'the other side'.
And as i showed at length above, this arrogant dismissal of the life experience of 'the other side', the indifferemce and erasing of the very deep pain endured by 'the other side', is in turn the result of the TOTAL DISCONNECTION of the groups from each other, so that is no understanding whatsoever of the life experience, the deep pain and trauma of "them", no understanding whatsoever of what it is actually like to be born into a different religious-nationalist label, the religious-nationaliat label of 'the opposite side'. Complete disconnection that leads to zero compassion, rabid ethnocentric tribalism and no comprehension whatsoever what does such a pain and traumatic life experience actually feel like..
For example, I wonder when was the last time you or the creator of the video in the link lived with a Palestinian family (those that zionists are conditioned to view as 'the evil enemy') for a few months? Have you? Or has the (arrogant and blind) creator of the video ever lived for even just a few weeks with a palestinian family and deeply felt what it is like? Have the vast majority of zionists ever truly and actually experienced first hand the life experience and the profound trauma & pain of those that they dismiss de-value and dehumanize so carelessly and easily? Of those that they are indoctrinated to view as 'the enemy'. Have you?
I wrote in the comment above much more at length and in depth about this total separation and disconnection and deep tribalistic indoctrination and what it does to the psyche of a human being, as well as about the arrogance and the heart-corruption and inevitable antagonism, conflict, hostility and cruelty brought about by the very deep IDENTIFICATION with an ethnocentric nationalist-religious label that most people in the region are indoctrinated into, so because i wrote about it at length above then with your permission I won't repeat it here all over again, but instead would invite you to read my comment above again, perhaps more carefully this time (and less adversarially/antagonistically, less from a position of 'US vs THEM'), becasue this reply to my comment is actually a good example and illustration of EXACTLY the kind of mentality that my comment was pointing to.
PPS. Showing the falsity of the claims he made in the video is NOT at all the main point here and NOT what what I was trying to convey in my comment (I was pointing to a much deeper and more fundamental dynamic than the tribalistic war mentality of 'US vs THEM' 'its either us or them', 'we are the righteous ones and they are the evil ones, we are the victims and they are the aggresors', I was pointing to the separative, divisive self-righteous and tone-deaf spirit and psychological position from which he made the video and from which you made the comment and from which zionists operate. This separative self-righteous tone-deaf ethnocentric supremacist arrogant and dismissive spirit will NEVER provide you and the other zionists with security, no matter how many times you tell yourselves that you are the victims and the righteous ones, becasue this nationalist self-absorbed tone-deaf arrogant separative divisive excluding and supremacist spirit is exactly what DIVIDES you from the organic culture and land you invaded and claom as yoyr own, and this spirit is exactly what will keep you as a FOREIGN ELEMENT in the middle east, an unintegrated element, a seperative arrogant hostile foreign element, that has to always live behind walls and fortifications and billion-dollar weapons and massive surviellance and oppression apparatus against the very neighbourhood that you plunked yourself into, in an unorganic, hostile, insensitive, arrogant, unfriendly supremacist invasive and aggresive fashion. You will NEVER ever find security as long as you and the zionists operate from this sectarian antagonistic psychology towards tne very region you invaded (which israelis are deeply indoctronated into from age zero. That is tje main point here
so showing the falsity and error of his claims isn't at all the main point here, the focus is much deeper and more fundamental than that, but since you already brought it up by giving this link to the video then I will just briefly mention that every single false claim he made is addressed in the documentary i linked in my comment above, as well as in the second link I gave in that comment to the discussion with the Israeli historian. Kindly see the comment above for both these links (and more importantly, please rrad tne entirety of my comment more carefully and perhaps this time without the filter of a tribalistic identity and of a life-destroying nationalist war mentality of "it's either or them" )
JFK JR is Zionist who supports Israel and their genocide! He might be talking about been against Convid vaccines but he's controlled opposition! A hypocrite paid by Zionist Lobby!
Yep he lost my vote
Amen, Dragon Mountain dweller!
Food for thought:
"Early in a conflict an atrocity committed by The Enemy is selected and given considerable publicity…It is elevated to be the moral yardstick against which your side’s atrocities are judged, and, by comparison, your side’s atrocities always pale …
Thereafter The Enemy’s atrocity is the central referent of your side’s propaganda…Their atrocity justifies any your side subsequently commits." —les Online
Emotional manipulation using fabricated defenseless children is not new. To get WW1 rolling German soldiers were bayoneting non-existent Belgian infants. In order to ignite the gulf war imaginary newborns were being yanked out of incubators in Kuwait.
These horrific tall tales - written by the very puppetmasters who created and are benefiting from the carnage and which are propagated through the dishonest media they own and control - are designed to provoke an emotional response in the recipient so that they act (and advocate) in a way that is favorable to the powers that shouldn't be.
The stories are counterfeit which is the point: emotions are so much easier to control than facts. Cue the _very real_ slaughter, plundering, pillaging, & propaganda by the collective elite dark triad. Lights Camera. Action.
The important thing here is to never conflate a nation's people with a nation's government as both administrations are owned and controlled by the same apparatus. Like those babies this war is counterfeit and is only meant to further the goal of globalization: the decimation of freedom and the centralization of power. It is citizens on both sides of the contrived conflict who are the victims of this horrific madness.
Hey Tritorch, The first thing I heard was about rape and infanticide - the two worst things possible to create a response. I may have missed it, but I have not seen conclusive proof that it was true, but lots that it wasn't. As they say, the first casualty of war is the truth.
Of course, war is not just bombs and bullets, it's all about propaganda too. It does make me pissed that so many people think that war should be fought like a gentleman's fight with rules and legal boundaries: it's the f#&!ing annihilation ('scuse my French) of one side by the other, kill or be killed by any and all means - all gloves are off - that is the truth of WAR! And this one REALLY needs to STOP NOW!
Someone once said that, “man must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind”.
Yes, this is the saddest part of all these wars - that the people themselves become lost in the fabricated narrative of right and wrong.
Don't forget Ghdaffi feeding his troops Viagra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk
"I do think it is important that all aspects of the situation are made visible. We need to understand as much as possible in order to know how to change the conditions that have created it.."
***
Have you considered the following "aspect"?
The vast majority of humans will NOT connect the dots between mutilating children's bodies and minds and the normalisation of violence and atrocity in a culture.... I am specifically referring to genital mutilation practiced by both Jews and Muslims...
Incidentally, the USA is the ONLY developed western country to also practice ROUTINE genital mutilation of baby boys... about 3000 per day ... WITHOUT so much as a religious EXCUSE!!
EVERYTHING humans think, believe and DO happens DOWNSTREAM from the way we treat children during their FORMATIVE years. The human brain is not fully developped until the early 20's!! As long as we raise children with violence... however subtle and insidious... we will NEVER put an end to war... because SOME of those children WILL grow up to perpetrate their pain on others... on ANY level of society.
Anyone interested in the roots of violence would do well to read Alice Miller and James Prescott.
Here is one example by Alice Miller:
The total neglect or trivialization of the childhood factor operative in the context of violence and the way it evolves in early infancy sometimes leads to explanations that are not only unconvincing and abortive but actively deflect attention away from the genuine roots of violence."
~ Alice Miller
Full article 👇🏼
http://psychohistory.com/articles/the-political-consequences-of-child-abuse/
***
This may be of interest...
CIA MIND CONTROL EXPERIMENTS
One area of the CIA’s research that is rarely talked about, or even known, is male circumcision or genital mutilation. PRACTICED ROUTINELY by #JEWS, #MUSLIMS and #AMERICANS!!
Cansever describes a study of the psychology of boys circumcised between the ages of 4 and 7 both before and after the surgery, based on various methods of psychological examination, and reports the following trends among the subjects:
- lower IQ as measured 7 days after the operation
- infantile regression of drawings and expressed wishes
- greater measured levels of aggression
- new fears and anxieties
- weaker control over primitive impulses to the point of maladaption
- greater aggression towards their mothers
- withdrawal from human relationships and difficulty responding to demands of external world
- perceptions of having been castrated
It turns out that in 1961, the CIA had payed “Cansever” to study the effects of circumcision, and he found that it made boys dumber, more infantile, more fearful, and more aggressive, with less control over their base instincts and a healthy dose of aggression towards the most significant female figure in their lives, their mothers.
If the findings of this study hold true for boys circumcised younger, it might suggest that the United States contains some 100+ million men who have been psychologically altered, from as early as infancy, to be stupider, to have lower impulse control, to tend towards aggression and violence, and to possess an instinctual distrust of women. Throw in the diminishing effects of circumcision on penile sensitivity and the consequent difficulties of sex and tendency towards paraphilias, and a picture begins to emerge of an organic golem that can be manipulated more easily by carrots and is less able to establish a normal, healthy relationship with a woman—splitting the family apart or preventing its formation has always been a goal of oppressive regimes, including the one that currently rules over the US.
Unfortunately for many of us, there exists, at this point, ample evidence that events in infancy can and do have measurable effects on the hindbrain, the part of our brain that drives instinctual, “gut” reactions and behavior. This is especially true when it comes to traumatic events that trigger stress hormones such as partial amputation of the penis, routinely performed at birth in this country. Although humans are cognizant of their lives, making behaviorism a dead area of psychology, it is still understood that instinctual behavior plays a role in decision-making, which is why propaganda and advertising are so widespread. How attached will men be to their women if they are surgically predisposed more to masturbate to pornography than to enjoy normal, PIV sex? Is it really a stretch to claim that enjoyment of sex is determined, in part, by the existing or removed enervation of the sex organ involved, and that this might have an effect on the interpersonal relationships of men and women across the country?
It is also worth noting that, according to Leonard Glick in Marked in Your Flesh, circumcision of gentiles is twice used in the Old Testament as a means of disfiguring humiliation and domination by Israelites, and it may still be interpreted as such by a certain religiously-minded tribe. I am not a mind-reader, and intelligent minds can differ on the motivations of various groups that encourage circumcision in the United States, but the historical context of mass, non-consensual circumcision of gentiles may be a clue as to what is going on here."
Link to PDF:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:5efe4c81-59b6-483d-8283-8b2181c7b251
***
The ANTIDOTE to war ... in the long run:
Aware Parenting:
"It is paradoxical, yet true:
Children are the most
in need of loving attention,
when they act the least deserving of it."
~ Aletha Solter
www.awareparenting.com
***
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR the FUTURE of HUMANITY?
"We cannot possibly survive if we are concerned only with our own survival. All human beings the world over are interrelated today. What happens in one country affects the others. Humans have considered themselves individuals separate from each other, but psychologically a human being is inseparable from the whole of humankind.
There is no such thing as psychological survival. When there is the desire to survive or to fulfill, you are creating a situation which is totally unreal. Psychologically, you cannot be separate from another.
The desire to be separate is the very source of danger and destruction. Each person by asserting oneself threatens one’s own existence.
When the truth of this is seen and understood, one’s responsibility undergoes a radical change, not only towards the immediate environment, but towards all living things. This total responsibility is compassion. This compassion acts through intelligence. This intelligence is not partial, individual, separate. Compassion is never partial. Compassion is for the sacredness of all living things."
~ J. Krishnamurti
Excerpt from The Whole Movement of Life is Learning
Reading Alice Miller and Aletha Solter in my 20s when I was just starting trauma therapy changed my life! As a sociological and activism-oriented person, it was paradigm-shifting to say the least to have abusive parenting (Miller) and healthy parenting (Solter) put in context of history / society / social problems / social change... as the arena of causes and cures for the endless cycles of violence
Thank you for this enormously valuable truth. Everything here is absolutely foundational.
Thank you 🙏🏼
I have shared this information for YEARS in various forms and will continue as long as I live....
Please feel free to pass it on... far and wide!
Thank you for bringing attention to this serious issue. Humans have no end of their ability to inflict harm on other humans, and it is all done from profound ignorance.
A nearly taboo subject in the U.S. is the even worse mutilation performed on female infants and young girls in many Muslim countries, with Somalia being one of the worst. The degree of injury far surpasses that inflicted on boys by the act of circumcision. In girls, it is much more than the "foreskin" being removed. It is done to different degrees up to cutting off the labia and amputation of the clitorus, comparable to removal of the entire penis in males. This is beyond horrific and is completely unconscionable! Girls so mutilated often suffer lifelong health consequences also, getting frequent urinary tract infections. Then, if they conceive, they must be cut open to allow for the birth of the baby. Unbelievable! Those people doing it are utterly barbaric!
In no way do I want to minimize the horrific damage done to girls undergoing the most severe forms of female genital mutilation.
However, it is a fact that those procedures you described are NOT the most commonly inflicted procedures AND male genital mutilation, ie the removal of the entire foreskin... is in fact FAR more severe than the most commonly practiced forms of female genital mutilation.
Having said that, I really cannot stand what too often devolves into a SICK competition of sorts as to who has been damaged more.
The bottom-line is that NO child should have their genitals nicked, scraped, cut or otherwise mutilated.
FYI...
FGM/MGM
...."But in medical ethics, the appropriate test for a non-therapeutic surgery performed in the absence of disease or deformity is not benefit vs ‘risk of surgical complications’ but rather benefit vs risk of harm."
https://aeon.co/essays/are-male-and-female-circumcision-morally-equivalent
"In Our Culture, We Don't Discriminate"
~ Fuambai Ahmadu
Quote:
"Yes, The U.S doesn't like to look at itself in the mirror and see itself for what it is...and see the psychopathic sexist and hypcritical Double Standard it has with Genital Mutialtion. Sad when an advocate of female circumcision can be more honest about what the United States does to males than the controlled corrupt phony mainstream media...Sad when an advocate of female circumcision has to show the U.S what it looks like in the mirror and has to call out the United States Sexist and Hypocritical DOUBLE STANDARD with circumcision...."
https://youtu.be/09ed6t6yd_8
~*~
It is NOT "female circumcision"!!! That is a politically correct euphemism that is not at all descriptive of the procedure as it is usually performed!
Do we really need to debate what these things are called? They are ALL atrocious!!
Words DO matter if they are used to obfuscate and minimize the true situation to sway public perception of something THAT atrocious! "Political correctness" is just another form of deception.
I don't completely disagree with you. I feel equally outraged by people calling male genital mutilation "just a little snip" or "circumcision" for that matter. It makes it sound so benign. Nothing could be further from the truth.
However, the vast majority of people have NO idea of the PERMANENT damage done to boys! AND how this damage affects WOMEN.
Look, I have spent years looking into this issue.
MY point is still that NO child should have their body violated... male, female or whatever!
I am definitely NOT interested in political correctness... It is ALL mutilation of the most private and sensitive part of a human being. It needs to STOP!
Then there is the tranny thing...
In WWII my father and thousands of other fathers were sent to fight the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My Uncle Douglass, my dad’s younger brother, had already been killed in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. My dad went into China as Truman brought 50 thousand Marines into China to free the country from Japanese occupation or so the political script read. My dad didn’t come home the same man who had fathered two children with my mom who stayed on a military base in Starke, Florida supporting the war effort with my sister Diane and my brother Randy and my widowed grandmother Anna to help her take care of my older siblings. I inherited the photos of my dad in his USMC uniform on a outdoor swing with my young mother and their two babies as he received orders to be shipped out from Treasure Island to fight in the Pacific. He looked thin, sad, and terrified as he said goodbye to them at twenty two years old convinced he would never see them again. I was one of the next four children they would have after my father made in back to the states. My parents divorced when I was five years old in 1957. Yesterday my granddaughter Ciena a ten year old fifth grader asked me why her great grandparents divorced. I said, “war” PTSD the collateral damage of hand to hand combat.
When I moved with my Vietnam Veteran newscaster husband to San Francisco in the early 80’s my dad came to visit. We took him to see Treasure Island and the Golden Gate Bridge, the bridge he sailed under as a 22 year old Marine barely trained to fight hand to hand in the Pacific. He was happy he had lived to see our four children, Briana, Yuri, Jessica, and Anna. They were too young to understand war and the consequences of PTSD on old soldiers lives. I felt happy at that moment forgetting all the pain of my childhood watching my father and mother fight through a rage born in a terrible war where many innocent people died as Truman dropped the bombs on Japan ending the war the Pacific, the occupation of China, the ovens of Europe where millions of my children’s future friends grandparents perished in the antisemitism fires of hate which led to the founding of Israel.
Daddy had tears in his eyes on the boat making its way to the Golden Gate Bridge. “Darlin,” I’m afraid for you and for my grandchildren that you will see the end of humanity,” my father said as he looked toward the great Pacific Ocean as the waters charged into San Francisco Bay. “Man isn’t finished with war and the bombs are now capable of destroying all of this, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the peace needed for my descendants to survive.”
How do we get to peace?
WOW. Thank you. That is an important reflection and perspective.
I know this essay isn't really about this, but still:
"the universities have done nothing to stem the rising tide of anti-Semitism"
If you look at foxnews.com, a photo that has a Palestinian flag in it will frequently have the word "anti-semitism" or "anti-semitic" under it, implying that being "pro-Palestine", waving a Palestinian flag, or saying that Israel shouldn't bomb Gaza is "anti-semitic".
When a student threatens to kill Jewish students, that is anti-semitic. Having a pro-Palestine rally is not anti-semitic. This is an important distinction. It matters, because too many people think that saying what Israel is doing right now is wrong is a form of anti-semitism. It is not.
Well said. We need to keep saying it over and over again.
Well Charles, I read up to "babies in their cribs" and then stopped reading. You do realize there were NO infant victims on October 7th according to Israeli data, right? And half the people who WERE killed were killed by deliberate Israeli bombs and incendiaries? The IDF has a policy called the "Hannibal Directive," in which any hostages are killed right along with their captors. The photos you see of burned out houses in kibbutzes were the result of ISRAELI incendiaries. Hamas had no such weapons and could not have carried them over the wall. Multiple Israeli survivors of the attack have testified to this. Haaretz senior military reporter reported that on the IDF base that Hamas attacked, the base commander hid in a bunker and called in an airstrike on HIS OWN MEN. All of these people are uncynically counted as "deaths committed by Hamas." Now Haaretz is even counting Israeli soldiers killed in the current invasion of Gaza as Oct. 7th Hamas victims. They have a running total of victims that gets added to with every death in Gaza.
Incidentally, I hope by now you have abandoned that toad RFK Jr. Not only has Dennis Kucinich left, but now his whole field team resigned. Every day that goes by he utters some new ridiculous Zionist propaganda. Now he is coming out against free speech on college campuses.
If this were the case, then at least some of the (majority non-zionist, pro-Palestinian) survivors of the slaughter would have alerted us to it. Even if there were one case of what you claim, someone would have mentioned it. You're right that propaganda occurs, and zionist engage in it, but this scenario is unlikely given what I said above. Still, there is no way to disprove it (e.g. anyone who could testify that it happened was suppressed in some way), and so you will go on believing it, because it helps you in some way.
Survivors HAVE come forward. That is the basis of my comment. Also reporting in ISRAELI press.
Linda,
You have convinced me (thanks to your first ref, the second was not what you think and was not a testimony of IDF friendly fire killing Israelis, it was a political screed) that the "beheaded and burned alive babies" stories were either not true or (in the case of burning), due to IDF weapons. Still, there was plenty of carnage due to Hamas, and the IDF was only the proximal, not the root cause of the "friendly fire" carnage either. They have a policy that is meant to deter terrorists for using human shields, whether they are babies, women, men, Israelis or Palestinians. It's now also a policy not to trade prisoners for hostages, for the same reason of not encouraging terrorists in their strategy of taking hostages (or human shields). They believe the benefits of this policy outweigh the costs.
In any case, I don't condemn either Hamas or the IDF or Bibi and his crowd. They are all acting for good reasons, having to do with Islam, bad conditions in Gaza, childhood trauma. But they are all acting like predictable automata, I could almost predict what they do with my simulation software. Wouldn't it be great if someone acted in an unpredictable manner?
Yes, I agree that it would be great if someone acted unpredictably. However, I just watched, at another commenter's recommendation, Scott Ritter's (the weapons inspector) podcast from last Friday night. It's called Ask the Inspector, and it's on Spotify and I think YouTube. He explains not only the uncertain number killed by Hamas, but what Hamas's objectives were and why they had no choice but to do what they did militarily to achieve their objectives: to take hostages to exchange for Palestinian hostages, and to make impossible the Abraham Accord about to be signed by Israel and Saudi Arabia. No other strategy was possible, because peaceful strategies or negotiation gets absolutely nowhere with the Israelis. That has been true since 1948. At any rate, I recommend watching the podcast.
Yeah, I saw most of that yesterday. Ritter is not too up on the history of Palestine, and off-putting to me with his militaristic machismo. He also seems ignorant about the gas pipeline deal that Israel, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, the US and the EU were trying to implement, that was competing with Russian and Iranian gas and oil, something that he should know about.
There were plenty of other choices for Hamas after Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. They could have invested the millions in aid they got in making life good for Palestinians, building up infrastructure, tourism and agriculture (instead of burning down the greenhouses Israelis left them). Instead they invested in weapons, tunnels and terror.
The leaders of Hamas (just like the Israeli right wing part of the govt) do not want peace. Their choices reflect that. Hamas' objectives are clearly stated in their documents. Peace is not one of them.
I think if he had been up on the history of Palestine before this, he would not have been such a big cheerleader for Israel for such a long time. It was not on his radar because his expertise is military matters. His militaristic machismo is perfectly in character with his military career, is it not? I certainly would not get military information from someone who was NOT a military expert. If he knew about the gas pipeline, that would only strengthen his argument, right? Israel grabbing the Gaza oil fields does not strengthen their case. Your statement that Hamas did nothing to make life good for Gazans is rather jaw dropping to me. This is like saying that the prisoner governments within the camps did nothing to make life better in the Nazi concentration camps. What could be done within a concentration camp with two million people in it was done. There was music, entertainment, going to the beach, etc. There were restaurants. However, nothing Hamas could have done could counteract Israel making sure Palestinians only had so many calories a day, or only had 2-4 hours of electricity. Nothing Hamas could have done would make up for routine kidnappings, rape, detention for no crime and no due process. Nothing Hamas could have done would make up for 75 years of beatings, murder and few or no civil rights. Of course Hamas does not want peace--they want their country back, and according to International Law, they have a right to use violence to get it. As Norman Finkelstein argued, this was a slave revolt.
In 2005, Israel moved troops and settlers from inside Gaza to its perimeter, and adopted a strategy of "freezing political process" and "de-development" (economic restrictions) in order to prevent the development of a Palestinian state. A year later, Israel invaded Lebanon and carried out atrocities, including the total destruction of Dahiya, the precedent for the IDF's Dahiya Doctrine: "We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction." [Gadi Eisenkot, Head of IDF Northern Command] Such a doctrine obviously includes collective punishment of civilians, which is a war crime. The Turkel Report managed to "legalise" Israel's stranglehold on Gaza from 2005-8 because "Palestinians were not starving."
Can you provide citations for these claims?
I'm going to provide just one because this article has links to many others. Yesterday I provided links separately to someone and it took me most of an hour. But there were other survivor testimonies than the ones listed here. If you want to listen to Yasmin Porat's whole testimony just go to YouTube and type her name in. This article links to her original testimony on Israeli radio. thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters
Thanks very much!
Scott Ritter also expands on this topic (that it could only be the IDF who burned the cars & houses and fired indiscriminately at the hostages) in his last Ask the Inspector podcast. His deep military knowledge, experience, and intelligence could serve as a testimony. He also explains how Israelis missed the Hamas breakthrough.
That's great to know. I follow him on X but have never listened to a podcast.
Here's another testimony, also from Haaretz, but it's in Hebrew (they don't do English for everything). Google translate should help. I read the translation in a post on X, which of course I can't post here. archive.md/JtyES#commentsSection
They have come forward. On Israeli TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk
So I'm supposed to listen to a half-hour video when I have read multiple books on the subject by Israeli historians? I am very very very familiar with the history of Palestine and the state of Israel, thanks.
https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/the-nothingness-of-a-war-consciousness
Can we make the first step calling for a ceasefire? Still didn't hear you state that...or touch upon why RFK Jr. hasn't? No idea why the long winded posts don't translate into an initial step that advocates for an end to the immediate slaughter of innocent people.
I think there will be a ceasefire very soon, because there are people in the Israeli government with not only a heart, but a mind that can understand that this carnage will produce more Jihadists than it kills.
Charles in an earlier post did lay out what he thought should be the plan towards peace. Though I don’t know if his thoughts have stayed there.
C E's thoughts can wander hither and thither. And they always come home to roost. Not so, RFK' Jr.'s. Like far too many in the legalism world, RFK,Jr. tends to get lost in certain legal dungeons of his own creation. No matter how dark the dungeon, until he subsequently finds some prudence for his pet legalisms, he remains in the darkest corners of the world.
No one I know of knows how to trigger in RFK, Jr. such revelations.
Like certain other Kennedies, it may only require one particularly attractive babe. Or, like many of whom seem to get lost in such arms, it may take an extraordinary such attractive babe to show him the brightest political-sociology/anthropology/religious/spiritual light.
One must suspect that until we learn otherwise, RFK, Jr. remains an idiosyncratic reader/thinker.
So Charles is the wrong sex and not attractive enough for RJK to receive "the brightest, political-sociology/anthropoplogy/religious/spiritual light"? Oh, well.
Thank you, Charles, so much. I'm an Israeli, living in this nightmare for the past month. I'm heart-broken by the horrors that happened in Israel on October 7th and the following days, and by what's been happening to Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Israel. What's most difficult for me in these days is to see what this horrible situation brings out of people - the hatred, the wish for vengeance, the one-dimensional perspective of good and evil, with no room for any other voices. What we miss the most, here and in the rest of the world, is the ability to see complexity. Everybody seems to have an opinion, but so little willingness to learn and discover things they don't know yet. The perspective that you bring, here and in your previous essays, which shows the complexity, the width and the depth of the situation, gives me hope. Please keep writing!
Hagar. Wishing you and your loved ones and everyone who lives in your region safety, security, and recovery.
“Out beyond all ideas of right and wrong there is a field.
I’ll meet you there”
- Rumi
Wow, Charles. Your commitment to not "take sides" is admirable. In your essays, you have pointed us to see that both sides are consumed by blind vengeance, both sides have committed atrocities, both sides are justifying violence, and both sides are suffering. OK, thanks. 🤷♂️
You mention the accusations of "False equivalancy" and "Both-sidesism," as you can hear them coming. But you falsely mischaracterize that critique as being that one side's violence is "justified" and one side is not. The real critique of "both-sidesism" is that it paints the transgressions of both parties as equally wrong. The natural result is passive inaction. "Both sides are awful. Oh well." This simply perpetuates the status quo, which currently is a genocidal massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza, currently at over 10,500 dead and another child murdered every 10 minutes.
I wonder if the scale of this slaughter might reach a point where you feel compelled to "take a side." If the Israeli war machine kills 100,000 Palestinians would you "take sides." How about 1 million? Do the numbers matter, or does our concern for avoiding the binary of "sides" and being associated with hate and anti-semitism override that no matter the numbers?
Somehow there are thousands of Jewish people of conscience around the world and even in Israel who have come out passionately and adamantly against the Israeli war machine genocide and in support of the suffering Palestinian people. Perhaps our whole concept of the "sides" is part of the problem. We have been fed a narrative about what the "sides" are and what they believe and demand and justify and are guilty of. It looks to me like in your noble effort to avoid taking "sides," you have actually affirmed and adopted a false narrative about what the "sides" are and what they entail. Can there be a side that is solely against bombing and killing 5,000 children with nothing else attached?
I agree with your pushback against the tired demands for "condemnations." What does a condemnation really do, anyway? But can we demand that the U.S.-backed Israeli war machine stop this continuing slaughter of innocents in Gaza? There is absolutely no justification for it. It is wrong, and we must do everything we can to stop it. That is urgent and necessary, and I hope you have the courage at some point to speak clearly and unequivocally about it.
(Side note: You described your Palestinian friend's family as "collateral damage." Do you see any problem with that language? It used to be that people like you found that term unacceptable. Do you really think the suffering of his family is "unintended" or "inadvertent"? I wonder what he would say. I invite you to rethink that framing.)
If Im honest , all of the words written comes across as a"waffle" if he can't do the simple, most basic thing and call for an immediate cease fire. In that context, or lack of it, all of his words come across as empty. Surely, we can all agree the killing should stop now. Then, let's do the deep dive into the shadows, etc.
I have to say, Charles inability to state the obvious, has been sad to see.....
Having read Charles' work for quite some time already, I am sure he did not mean the collateral damage statement to be taken literally. It was meant sardonically for the despairing lack of humanity of those who speak of people in those terms.
I appreciate your good opinion of Charles. I am not as "sure" as you are about what he meant. If he was being sardonic/sarcastic he could have easily put it in quotes. I think it is a blind spot, that even people of conscience sometimes have.
And he added the line that they are Christian as if that somehow mattered if they are deserving our not. Weird. Praying for better from him and us all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk
Yuval,
Why are you posting that lame, lie-ridden propaganda video here, in reply to my comment? It has nothing to do with Charles's essay or my comment.
Charles, you are one of the (very) few writers in the public sphere willing to acknowledge something called the Galactic Council. How much blowback an article like this will receive, I don't know (loved the phrase about the Comments sections). But I assure you it won't come from beings who live by the rule of looking at both sides with clarity without judgment. Write as much of this as you can--it's the lesson we're trying to teach ourselves.
It's pretty stupid that the UN hasn't ever negotiated for peace.
When two groups disagree, there needs to be a mediator.
With the Israel situation, despite the condemnations, there's no power to bring them to the table until the security council dictator nations with veto power allow it.
Same with Ukraine and Russia.... From 2014 until the war, shelling of the East has been called out but nothing could stop it!?!
Perhaps this disaster will build a movement where member nations of the UN start calling out this ridiculous single veto power given to "world powers".
I'll be honest, in school when we learned about the UN, I found that veto power as designed to keep corrupt power in control. Sadly, my teachers thought it was a good thing, as they grew up during prosperous times in the USA. Most students didn't see an issue with veto power either.
Rfk Jr also seems to think everything is "fair" by his huge ignorance of the Israel/Palestine situation. I find it crazy that he still believes the propaganda fed to him through his childhood etc despite the assassinations of his uncle and father!
Perhaps he isn't as intelligent as we think, or perhaps he's got huge emotional blocks.
It's almost like they assumed that the world powers would be fair.
Haha, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and others prove that it's just another extension of imperialism framed as "protecting the world"..
Yes, the veto power needs to be removed. You nailed it. Otherwise the UN can't exercise its function as a mediator of conflict at the international level.
The irrelevant corrupt UN should be abolished and destroyed. They're useless as mediators of anything. The betrayal of Uyghur victims last year was just par for the course. Who exactly do they censure? Saudi Arabia? No. China? No. Venezuela? What other shit run Arab countries with their atrocious abuse of women and girls have they censured? North Korea? They spend their days censoring Israel but not Hamas. I look forward to the end of Hamas. Isreal is sending them to Hell as I type.
The corrupt U.N. needs to disappear into the depths of hell along with WHO, and the mainstream corporate media.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/claudia-rosett/how-corrupt-is-the-united-nations/
"My friend’s family members are all Christians. Not supporters of Hamas." Implying that you could not both be Christian and support Hamas or some other Islamic resistance movement/organization is naive and wrong. Your Christian friends are not collateral damage, Charles; they are the intended target of Israel's stated genocidal intentions. I am genuinely curious what is the basis of your historical and moral judgment that the Jewish holocaust of WWII was the "most heinous episode of human history" -- since that judgment reveals that you are indeed capable of such judgments and do not actually see them as beneath your enlightened perspective!....... Anyhow, if anyone wants a perspective on this issue which is both spiritually attuned (not provoking hatred or desire for vengeance) but does not equivocate on the truth, look to Alec Zeck or Ali Zeck, Ihsan Abbas or his wife Sister Shanti, Nizami XIII on Substack, or of course Chris Hedges or Norman Finkelstein.
Really stunning to hear Charles describe the whole family as "collateral damage." His own "friend!" I wonder what his friend would say about that. I pray that I never find myself using that despicable term.
We all are the collateral damage in a world that prefers destruction and slavery to peace and collaboration. We throw ourselves, our families, our communities, our world under the bus every day to become the collateral damage of the system we are enmeshed within, which eats the earth and its inhabitants alive and spits out the bits with no concern for the damage it does... And then it is of course ‘just part of war' or so they say... someone is going to get in the way and get hurt, so they say - this is 'collateral damage' (***see note below). Somehow the war mongers and control freaks on all sides using violence forget and /or are willfully blind to the fact that this includes human families, friends, husbands, wives, children... Blessedly Charles has the courage to state out loud this is the case... and of course it is despicable, because it IS despicable that this is happening, now so obviously in the Middle East; but until we see clearly that we are all collateral damage in a game of control run by those in power who will stop at nothing to gain upmanship; who also have capacity to rope in fearful people to become collaborators by suggesting that they will be on the winning side and once they (the good guys) have won all will become ‘okay’…. all the while allowing someone, somewhere is collateral damage, a story told a hundred thousand times will continue well into our future.
I know for many they want Charles to ‘take action’ but if you have read much of Charles work you will know that ‘taking action’ for the sake of it is far from his way. His work is always about understanding what is below the thinking of all the sides… and usually it is the same thinking, only made different by their own point of view and their desire to be right and have others be wrong.
***Barry Fleming notes in this comment thread:
"During WWI, 10% of all casualties were civilians.
During WWII, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.
During the Vietnam War, 70% of all casualties were civilians.
In the War in Iraq, civilians account for up to 90% of all deaths.
The killing of civilians and willfully causing great suffering is a war crime.
- Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949"
H/T John Pilger
ie civilians (humans!) as collateral damage is 'just part of the way it is', especially in war.
There comes a point—perhaps the bombing of wounded children in hospitals, whether or not "justified" by a 3D graphic of "terrorist bunkers" beneath the hospital, or debunked "evidence" of phone calls "between Hamas terrorists"—where non-partisanship becomes "justification" for bombing wounded children in hospitals. The correct action for Mr Eisenstein, as a man of conscience and champion of a More Beautiful World, is to join others in calling for an immediate ceasefire and mounting robust challenges to those invested ideologically and/or financially in the totalitarian experiment being conducted in the crucible of Gaza.
Or several thousands of other teachers from around the world, from almost every tribe (don't know all of them). As one of the Buddha's taught, anyone or anything can become a lesson, a blessing, a gift from the vast universes of universes, for any one of us, for each one who chooses to let the light shine from the inside out.
Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Attwood, Berry, M. Oliver, Tim O'Brien's war stories,Native American wisdom traditions, a vast array of poets from around the world. The opportunities are far more vast than any of us shall live sufficiently long to fully appreciate. The question rapidly becomes how shall we sober ourselves. And when.
Namaste'.
Good point!
Interesting and goes to show no one is above getting feedback on these harmful tendencies built into our mindsets. Peace.
I have a crack at it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/nizamixiii/p/the-predator-from-the-depths-of-the?r=2vuer&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
For another way to think and communicate, this came today from the brilliant poet, In-Q:
"The world is pretty messed up right now so I won’t pretend like everything is fine, because it’s clearly not. And honestly, I’m not fine either. It’s with a heavy heart that I write this. Obviously, people are going through a lot of pain and suffering. I don’t have any answers but I’ve been trying my best to treat everyone with extra care, consideration and compassion lately.
"I’ve been mostly staying off social media for my own mental health, and posting less because I haven’t wanted to use my voice to be a part of all the noise. And I haven’t wanted to take up space by explaining why I’m not taking up space. Instead, I’ve been actively listening, continuing to share my poetry and facilitate for other people to use creativity as an outlet. I’ve hosted a bunch of workshops and keynotes over the past few weeks, which, if nothing else, has brought another few hundred poems into the world. When I don’t know what to do to help, I at the very least try not to add to the hurt. My thoughts are with all those affected by the ongoing conflict, and I am praying for peace."
It ends with this:
The only thing I know
is we're all in this together
And the future of this earth
depends on how we treat each other.
RFKJ spoke at the Rubin report that he would sit at the table with all international players in the ME (China, Russia, Iran, SA, etc) and initiate a series of discussions, work out a plan to fix the Palestine situation once for all, together. I really liked it as a possible approach. It is the only thing that might work if done with honesty.
Here is the link. The relevant part starts about 22 minutes in. I’m glad to see RFKJ favoring global mediation and a willingness to work with Xi and Putin for peace. I see this as the only realistic pathway to ending this and other wars. https://youtu.be/kCYDsAB1_0A?si=vLBo9OHnUpW6ZpTj
And... this is the reason that I don't watch the lame stream news and haven't for over 30 years. I will only agree to watch the news if you can show me how I can directly affect a situation and have a meaningful effect on the problem. Though I don't criticize anyone wanting to have a discussion on a 'news' topic from anywhere around the world or to 'vent' their frustrations, as is their right, I don't see any benefit in it on affecting the situation. How about we just let those folks in the conflict work it out exactly as they will with or without our pontificating about their situation and instead focus on something we have direct control over? How about we DO something instead of just Discussing what we could DO or hope someone else Does? How about we just focus on Loving the person next to us with Agape Love? That's something we can DO to Affect this world. What would the world look like if we just Agape Loved the person next to us and they, in turn, did the same thing to the person next to them and so on? What would that world look like? How can we ask groups of people in lands most of us have never been to with cultures we have never fully experienced to Agape Love one another when we haven't taken the time to Love OUR Neighbors unconditionally?
I will be so bold as to answer one of my questions above myself. Do you know what the world would look like if we just focused on Agape Loving the person next to us and they did the same thing and so on? It would look like Heaven. The only thing standing between heaven on earth and what we're observing in the world is US. When we take ownership of the fact that WE are the cause of the conflict, turn off the TV and all media and focus on Unconditionally loving those next to us (our neighbors) AND do all the things that loving someone unconditionally entails, AND the people next to us do the same thing to the people next to them, then and only then will we have the peace on earth and the heaven on earth that our hearts all seek and desire. "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."