30 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Toby Block's avatar

Yeah. That awful little country which shares its advances in agriculture, technology, and medicine with the world. The Jewish country where an Arab Supreme Court Justice sent a President to jail. The tiny country which, while under attack and suffering food shortages, rehabilitated Holocaust survivors and Mizrachim driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa and which still sends rescue teams when disaster strikes world wide (even to countries with which it doesn't have diplomatic relations). Israeli teams are often the first to arrive and the most effective in giving help.

Compare that to the Arabs -- despite having huge landholdings and some being oil rich, they used their numerous votes in the UN to set up a special "refugee"agency" which hasn't resettled a single "refugee" but teaches second, third, and fourth generations of Palestinians who fled or were displaced from PAlestine in Arab-initiated wars, that killing Jews is an Arab's ticket to Heaven. Consider what money wasted on the Palestine refugees' eternal internment in UNRWA "terror towns" could do for current refugees and survivors of natural disasters.

Many Israelis are troubled by the "administrative detentions." But a tiny country surrounded by enemies depends heavily about being able to act pre-emptively. And open arraignments could threaten the exposure of intelligence-gatherers' identities. Israel is not the evil entity you think it is. And the Palestinian leaders aren't the innocent victims you think they are.

Expand full comment
Jeffery John Higgs's avatar

Thanks again. I admire many Jews...illan Pappe who I once had the honour to pass a few words with on a pavement as we made our individual ways to a lecture he was giving...a very good man. Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Matte, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Matte, Gideon levy and others I very much like listening to though my hearing is defective and don't always hear all their interesting words. There are many in Israel that I admire...the young "refusniks"...The Peace activists...the brave individuals that attend the persecuted shepherds and farmers as they struggle with the regular incursions of those thuggish louts...in gangs and protected by IOF and police. Also some film-makers and academics that speak the truth. I must say too that I agree with what Yair Lapid stated about the recent inflammatory celebrations..."violent and degrading". Amongst the punk like gyrations of the indoctrinated, perhaps the worst and most hideous to witness was the ungracious leaps of extremely ungainly old women! But then one took in the equally repellent capers of the young ones only marginally less offensive perhaps because they so easily led. As i have said in a post elsewhere "it is hard to see how Israel could degrade itself yet further but I am certain it can find a way".

Expand full comment
Toby Block's avatar

I don't know how old you are but I certainly hope that you have not been so firmly cemented into WOKE oppressed/oppressor delusions that you will never be able to look at life outside your completely predetermined notions.

Expand full comment
Jeffery John Higgs's avatar

Hi Toby...I am 78 and still groovin' on pretty well except for my knees! I have never understood that term WOKE and haven't bothered to investigate. I usually ignore new catch words such as "gobsmacked" etc that I presume are propagated by the crap mainstream papers. Yes I am about the same age as Israel's illegal occupation! Don't worry...the "world" has a very tenuous hold on me! Do you like this Don Vliet phrase "there would be no game brother if no-one would play"? I do. I watch birds bathe and drink. It is very relaxing.

Expand full comment
Toby Block's avatar

Israel is not an illegal occupier. Modern Zionists posited that the way for Jews to end persecution and repeated expulsions was to return to their ancient homeland. They began returning in the mid to late 1800's and found that Zion had become Palestine, a sparsely populated, underdeveloped area in the Southern Syrian administrative district of the Ottoman Empire. The Jews bought land and improved its productivity, built schools and hospitals, organized civil defense units, and lobbied world leaders for the cause. Many of today's Palestinians descend from Arabs who entered the area only after Zionist activity had raised its living standards. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after entering WWI on the losing side, its land was divided into mandates and, later, modern states, the Zionists had a de facto government ready to rule.

The Arabs of Palestine might have gotten a state of their own had Arab leaders accepted the UN Partiton Plan and helped the "Southern Syrians" get ready for autonomy. But the Arab states went to war and the Jews had to defeat them so Israel could be reborn.

Instead of moaning and groaning about the "nakba" (getting trapped in refugee limbo (by their own leaders)), the Palestinians should follow the Jews' example. Remember your past, but always work to build your future.

Expand full comment
Jeffery John Higgs's avatar

Toby I think it not possible to continue taking up valuable space here on this subject. You can refer to the past history that you support while I shall continue to oppose the injustice...as I see it...that concerns the millions of oppressed people now. I hope that the Palestinian people attain a State where they can live free of any Israeli interference or American-designed terrorism. But that is asking a lot as the USA has wrought immeasurable harm to the world by its desire for complete control. Little Israel imitates it, fawns and purrs. At last Israel has been exposed to the world...biblical stories are expounded WHEN useful as propaganda etc but I fail to understand the latest one trotted out about Joshua and Jericho...surely that reveals that modern Israelis have not advanced one inch from the ancient ones. Do you really see Israel building a future that isn't an abomination in the eyes of the world?

Expand full comment
Toby Block's avatar

I know what you mean by "Israeli interference" -- those damn Jews actually strike back when they're attacked. The Arabs have a long history of playing the victim and demanding that everyone stand with them. I used to teach chemistry at a college which had an agriculture school. One of my students was a Nigerian who'd been sent by his government for training. He told me that Israel had been helping Nigeria to improve its farming practices but the Nigerian govenment put a halt to that because the Arab nations in North Africa had insisted that the black African countries should stand with their fellow Africans. I asked my student what help the Arabs had provided when Nigeria stop accepting Israeli assistance. He said, "Nothing. The Arabs didn't even give us the cheap oil they promised."

If exposure to thinking beyond your "everyone is either an oppressor or an oppressee and I (Jeffery John Higgs) know exactly who is in each group and I also know that no member of either group ever acts in opposition to my classification," you can stop my replying to your messages. Just stop writing to me.

Expand full comment
Jeffery John Higgs's avatar

You carry on supporting Israel's abominable strategies to expand and dominate and I will carry on denouncing them.

Expand full comment
Toby Block's avatar

I will continue defending Israel because Israel is obeying the Rules of Conflict (even going beyond what is required -- what other nation, while still being attacked, sends humanitarian aid to the enemy ?).

The entire Western world should be backing Israel against Islamists who want to defeat the West and replace democracy with Sharia. Israel needs a decisive victory against Hamas, as the first step in demilitarizing Gaza, yet the IDF is making valiant efforts to avoid killing civilians -- while Hamas works to endanger the civlians in Gaza -- and blame Israel--to get propaganda points from a gullible media and Woke antisemites.

Expand full comment
Jeffery John Higgs's avatar

I had to "break" my long post as I feared it was going to disappear as several have. I couldn't get the page to move to add my last lines, which is that I do not know where I learned "bugger" for my father in his short life was NEVER known to swear. Probably early schooling. That episode cemented( a word you used in an earlier post) a lifelong hatred of bullies and several "fights" ...my death grip until my adversary turned blue and capitulated. Very few were on my behalf but usually for somebody physically or temperamentally unable to stand up for themselves.

Expand full comment
Jeffery John Higgs's avatar

There are several points you make Toby that are manifestly lies...do you, a teacher of Chemistry challenge the specialist surgeons, the pediatricians, and reconstructive limb and face surgeons, highly skilled Palestinians and the extremely brave and dedicated volunteer doctors and medical experts compelled by conscience to attempt to carry out their chosen humanitarian work dare to refute their testimonies...to deny their knowledge, dismiss their hands-on experience? If you do you a fool. But I think you are an intelligent man that unfortunately so indoctrinated by the DESIRE to portray Israel as you would like to see it and the world to see it that way too, but we don't! You gave a anecdote about Israel...Africa, and Arabs. I shall give you a personal one in return if you will bear with me. When I was six years old my father had left the Royal navy in which he had served as a submariner. He left England to work in Aden as an electrical and refrigeration engineer from 1952-1954 and not returning for the duration. His object was to raise the necessary money to buy us a first family home or the deposit for the same. Whilst away for so long my mother had a formidable struggle to manage being a young woman buffeted by the gales of the world...not least among them the unwanted attentions of men. Father sent us the means to buy a television which as you will know were at that time by no means commonplace. The picture quality was poor (snowy) but we knew no different. And now here is my tale...I crept down the stairs of our rented home to peer unnoticed by my lonely mother through the almost closed door at this new instrument. What I witnessed...a very young boy, stays with me to this day. It was a film and the scene was of a large bullying Bosun attempting to force pork into the mouth of Jewish crew member of a ship...So outraged was I despite no knowledge of prejudice or racial discrimination... in tears I shouted out "bugger" alarming my mother.

Expand full comment
ErrorError