Who Hates The Jews?
A couple of things happened at the Scottish Parliament this week.
They’re worth taking a moment to compare.
During a peaceful democratic debate in the Holyrood chamber, Mason noted that “it is not antisemitic for some to say that the present Israeli offensive has been over the top and has possibly crossed the line from defence to revenge”, a statement which seems extremely measured and entirely uncontroversial.
Greer, meanwhile, megaphone clamped in his tiny fist, led a loud intimidatory mob protesting against a reception for some arms dealers by blockading the Parliament entrance and preventing all sorts of people who had nothing to do with arms dealers from entering the building on their lawful business, causing concern to a wide range of people right across the political and civic spectrum.
The protest would seem to be in clear contravention of new rules introduced by the SNP/Green government in 2021, outlawing “disruptive” protests on the Holyrood site.
But of course that’s not really the disturbing part.
Greer repeatedly describes events in Gaza as a “genocide”, a hotly-contested and deliberately inflammatory term which accuses the Israeli government – the exact same people, remember, who were being mildly critiqued by John Mason – of a war crime.
As far as Wings is concerned that’s a legitimate subject of discussion, though it’s no kind of an excuse for indiscriminately and aggressively blockading the seat of the nation’s democracy. (And while arms dealers may well be distasteful, their business is perfectly legal, and indeed necessary in a world where armed forces exist.)
But what’s a lot more disturbing is Greer’s proposed solution.
Greer didn’t call for peace, or for a ceasefire, or for a two-state solution. He called for “Victory to Palestine”. In so far as there is a “war” going on in Gaza, the combatants on the Palestinian side are Hamas. Palestine has no traditional armed forces, and in so far as it has a government, that government is also Hamas.
(Who we note in passing, with 44% of the vote in the last election held in the territory, are approximately five times as popular with voters as the Scottish Greens.)
So when Greer calls for “Victory to Palestine”, he can only credibly mean “Victory to Hamas”. And Hamas’ policy is unambiguous and unequivocal: the only acceptable resolution to the conflict is the complete obliteration of Israel.
Greer also described a victory for Palestine as a “victory for humanity”, which can only sensibly be held to mean that Israel is not included in “humanity”. Defining a Jewish people as something sub-human is a view with somewhat problematic connotations.
So there is no reasonable interpretation of Ross Greer’s words other than that he is calling for the complete destruction of Israel. And why wouldn’t he be? He accuses its government of genocide, after all, and genocide is a terrible thing. When the Nazis undertook genocide in 1939-45, the world set out to completely destroy the Third Reich using all its military might, and nobody considered that an over-reaction.
What else could “Victory to Palestine” possibly entail? The closest thing it has to a legitimate government is Hamas. The only people taking up arms on its behalf are Hamas. The only people who could in any way achieve a “victory” on its behalf are Hamas. (The rest of the world, in the shape of the UN, seeks peace in the region, not a victory for one side or the other.)
The only reasonable interpretation that can be placed on Greer’s words is an endorsement of Hamas. If he wanted a peaceful solution he’d have said “Peace for Palestine”. He’d have squeaked into his megaphone that the two sides needed to learn to co-exist, renounce violence and share the land. But he didn’t. He called, expressly, for victory for one side – a side for whom victory means the complete expulsion/annihilation of their enemy, the Jews.
We are unable to understand how Greer’s comments are not a crime. Hamas has been a proscribed group in the UK since 2021, and expressing support for it is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Doing so by disrupting the democratic and lawful business of the Scottish Parliament only seems to exacerbate the offence, and doing so while actually being a member of that Parliament is extraordinary.
John Mason made a simple statement of fact with which no reasonable person could disagree – that it is permissible to criticise the actions of the Israeli government without it meaning that you hate Jewish people, something the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism explicitly notes is NOT anti-semitic.
Ross Greer called for Israel to be defeated, by an enemy for whom defeating Israel means wiping it and its people off the face of the Earth. He accused it of genocide, which by any sensible measure is “conspiring to harm humanity”. (The architects of the Holocaust were tried for conspiring in “crimes against humanity”.)
By the IHRA definition, John Mason is categorically not an anti-semite, but Ross Greer is. John Mason indulged in legitimate political discussion, Ross Greer equated Israel to the Nazis and endorsed its eradication – explicitly or implicitly, depending on how far you’re prepared to bend over backwards to put a charitable slant on his words, but implicitly at the bare minimum.
Wings Over Scotland takes no sides in the Gaza conflict.
But one need not support, endorse or excuse Israel’s actions to note the simple facts that the only entity attempting to secure “Victory for Palestine” in the conflict is Hamas, and that Hamas’ definition of “victory” is the liquidation of Israel.
Ironically, in 2017 Greer himself noted that it was “rarely appropriate” to draw political comparisons about genocide and urged “careful thought” around discourse on the subject.
Watching him urge the destruction of Israel through a megaphone while obstructing access to a democratic Parliament by intimidation – itself a favourite tactic of the Nazis – this week, Wings could not avoid hearing echoes of the Stormtroopers.
Didn’t see that debate but if the words used by John Mason are the ones quoted in the article he doesn’t talk about the Jews but the state of Israel which are not the same. Newspapers need to be a lot more careful to accurately report people’s words but I fear they stopped doing that a long time ago. Thanks again for reporting the truth.
I love pork but it’s not kosher, does that make me antisemitic?.
Mossad will consider Greer an enemy of the state.
I consider the little freak an enemy of the Scottish people.
People do get muddled – or dishonest – about anti-semitism. If I referred to the PM of Israel as Naziyahoo that’s not antisemitic, it’s just vulgar abuse of a particular politician.
But if I say “What do you expect from a Jew?” that is antisemitic since it insults a whole people.
“So when Greer calls for “Victory to Palestine”, he can only credibly mean “Victory to Hamas”. And Hamas’ policy is unambiguous and unequivocal: the only acceptable resolution to the conflict is the complete obliteration of Israel.”
And Israels’s policy is unambiguous and unequivocal: the only acceptable resolution to the conflict is the complete obliteration of the Palestinians.
You don’t say what you mean by “complete destruction” except by the analogy of the allied aims re the Third Reich – and what it meant there was the elimination of that government and its replacement by a normal democratic government under which all races had equal rights. Which seems (to me) perfectly reasonable for Israel/Palestine as well.
If your quote (starting Article 13) is intended to justify what you say about Hamas aims – well it doesn’t. Talking or negotiating has indeed proved to be a waste of time.
Nothing will come of this. Greer is a useless, virtue-signalling waste of air. I sincerely hope he is not re-elected.
He may prove useful in getting rid of the list MSPs ‘job-for-life’. I think a maximum of one term as a list MSP.
Yet another reason for not voting for the transcult ( not remotely green) party
Politicians gurning. No arrests.
Another slow news day obviously.
“he doesn’t talk about the Jews but the state of Israel which are not the same”
Maybe click the link and read the article.
“In a debate at Holyrood about the war in Gaza, John Mason, who has often fallen foul of his party leadership for a series of controversial comments, said it was possible not to be antisemitic while criticising the Israeli state.
However, he added that “neither are the two completely distinct and unconnected” because most Jewish people in the UK had relations or friends in Israel.
“It is the only Jewish state in the world and, according to the Bible, is the land which God gave his chosen people,” Mason said.
“Now, having said that, it does not mean that we cannot criticise the Jews or Israel. God himself is hugely critical of his people in much of the scriptures, not least when he punished them by exiling them to Babylon and elsewhere.
“So, it is not antisemitic for some to say that the present Israeli offensive has been over the top and has possibly crossed the line from defence to revenge.””
Astonished @ 12.34
If we are to continue to be landed with the D’Hondt closed List system of voting as one of the three voting procedures presently in force in Scottish elections then the “one term only” restriction is probably the most sensible and constructive modification I’ve seen suggested thus far.
As far as Mr Mason’s reported comments are concerned, it’s nice to see at least one politician recognising that criticism of zionism is far from criticism of the Jewish peoples themselves. A distinction which seems to be largely ignored by many media commentators.
Nice one Rev Campbell.
“You don’t say what you mean by “complete destruction” except by the analogy of the allied aims re the Third Reich – and what it meant there was the elimination of that government and its replacement by a normal democratic government under which all races had equal rights.”
The Allied powers considered simply wiping Germany as a state off the map after the war. And of course, the likes of Poland did not get what you describe after they were liberated from the Nazis.
“And Israels’s policy is unambiguous and unequivocal: the only acceptable resolution to the conflict is the complete obliteration of the Palestinians.”
This may be the case in reality, but it is not the stated position of the Israeli government, while the converse IS the stated position of Hamas.
While, so far as I am aware, the ICJ stopped short of ruling that Israel is committing genocide, the case did suggest that the ICJ took the accusation seriously and considered it plausible.
Accordingly it doesn’t seem that out there for someone to state that genocide is occurring.
There are clearly 2 sets of rules in public life, Mason, alas, is an un-person, who can be attacked at will, for what are very nuanced remarks.
– it is also a good example of why in general you should not get involved in other peoples fights; let’s bring all the diversity in – jews and arabs, muslims and hindus, buddhists and muslims, turks and kurds – what can go wrong? Imagine if the energy spent on virtue signalling went into indy?
I consider the conservative party of the UK to be a terrorist organisation which should be proscribed, I mean, what’s their body count? It must be impressive. By comparison Hamas are shite; it’s the Hezbollah who are the top boys, also shi-ite, but not shite.
Unusually, I think WoS comes to over-hasty conclusions in both cases. I’d say Greer and Mason each need to explain themselves better. Greer’s cry for ‘Victory to Palestine/Humanity’ could mean support for Hamas, equally it might have been clumsy/stupid/offensive but not criminal. Mason did more than criticize Israel, he also blundered into an explanation of how criticizing Israel is similar to criticizing Jews (which he said was legitimate in line with God’s criticisms of Jews). This left his comment ambiguous – when he criticised Israel was he including Jews more generally? It just beats me why so many UK politicians tie themselves up in knots about Israel/Palestine, over which we have little control and is hardly existential to us, when there are so many other global examples of man’s inhumanity to man for them to fuss about (e.g. Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar), some of which are of real importance to our future and security (e.g. Putin in Ukraine). I can’t help wondering how much of it is fueled by an unhealthy obsession with Jews.
I consider that there is clear evidence of genocide being committed by Israel.
The people in charge of that country are responsible for these actions, along with anyone who supports them financially, militarily and morally. It doesn’t matter what religion any of these people claim to follow.
Ceasefire would be a “Victory” for humanity. Rejecting the racist dehumanisation of a group of people that has allowed this to occur would be an even greater victory.
Greens are sometimes called “watermelons” — green on the outside, but red on the inside. Assuming this to be true — and I do — then it becomes apparent why he thinks he’s entitled, to use Roddy Dunlop’s language, to cross the line. That’s what the left always thinks. I’ve noted this in the past: Scottish nationalism has a major problem with the political left. It’s stopping independence because there is a major constituency of small c social conservatives in Scotland who are simply not wanted by nationalism. Why? Because the movement has been hijacked by the left who don’t see it as an end in itself, but as a means to creating their socialist utopia. Conservatives know where they’re not wanted. Problem is, without them, there’s not going to be an independent Scotland.
“The protest would seem to be in clear contravention of new rules introduced by the SNP/Green government in 2021, outlawing “disruptive” protests on the Holyrood site.”
Not exactly. The declaration of Scottish Parliament as a SOCPA site, requested from the Home Office by the SP Corporate Body, chaired by Alison Johnstone, in June 2021 (https://www.parliament.scot/-/media/files/spcb/spcb-papers/spcb-papers-2021/24062021/spcb-minutes–24-june-2021.pdf) means that ANYONE who is present at Holyrood without a “lawful authorisation” is committing a criminal offence. The only other site in Scotland with the same status is Faslane nuclear base. It’s horrific legal overkill, brought in by stealth (just before the COP26 meeting in Glasgow). While the SCPB has never yet used the legislation, they now have the power to ban ANY type of protest at Parliament if they so desire, disruptive or not. Henceforth, SPCB guidelines are all that determines the type of protest that is permitted. And mark my words, they will use those powers, sooner or later, but not against those favoured by the regime, like Ross Greer and his ilk.
“Accordingly it doesn’t seem that out there for someone to state that genocide is occurring.”
“I consider that there is clear evidence of genocide being committed by Israel. Ceasefire would be a “Victory” for humanity.”
“As far as Wings is concerned, that’s a legitimate subject of discussion, though not an excuse for indiscriminately and aggressively blockading the seat of the nation’s democracy.”
The issue here is not his use of the term genocide, the issue is his call for “Victory for Palestine”. He did not call for a ceasefire.
As we’ve absolutely zero control over the arms trade whose bright idea was to invite a debate in Holyrood about it?
“As we’ve absolutely zero control over the arms trade whose bright idea was to invite a debate in Holyrood about it?”
It wasn’t a debate, it was a reception.
In the arabophone context there is no separation between the State of Israel (Medinat Yisrael) and the Jews as such. The establishment of the state resulted in the forced expulsion of ancient Jewish communities throughout the Arabic speaking world.
Jews were enemies period, and still are. Those who argue differently soon meet with consequences.
Yassar Arafat grew to realise the futility of that outlook, acknowledging that Jews were a people from the region, but met with strong opposition from militants.
HAMAS, in its Arabic version constitution, seeks the destruction of the «Jewish state» and the conversion of Jews to Islam, should they refuse, expulsion or death.
Nothing new there, the concept of toleration in the Western/Enlightenment sense does not exist. Dhimmitude, the jizya tax, expulsion or death as an infidel is the orthodox road map.
As a member of an ethnicity that, like the Jews, has known authentic genocidal initiatives I thank Mr Campbell for daring to face the turbulent current head on.
With reference to your closing words, isn’t Ross a little short to be a Stormtrooper?
Stu
“This may be the case in reality, but it is not the stated position of the Israeli government, while the converse IS the stated position of Hamas.”
There has been enough of them televised saying so & then there is also their actions. I think we can take it as read that is their stated position.
I haven’t followed this story so don’t know who invited arms dealers to the Scottish parliament. Greer is a tit but in the current climate & the FM calling for a ceasefire this does smack of stirring.
Sorry Rev Stu. Had clicked on the link but it didn’t take me to the full article so I was commenting on the paragraph shown.
“It wasn’t a debate, it was a reception.”
Thanks.
Just googled. It was Labours Paul Sweeney.
USA, French & Italian arms dealers.
In a Scottish “administration”
That definitely wasn’t a set up given the current climate & we have hee-haw say on them stopping production.
If God can just sign and post his latest legislation on who owns what where and when we can all sort this out quite quickly.
He must be a little frustrated there have been wars in some parts of the world ever since man
Learned how to swing a club.
If your family bought the house you live in one hundred years ago would you move out with nowhere to go because a man came to the door with the army to say get out as my family lived here 2.000 years ago?
No is the answer and that is exactly what faces the Palestinians.
If the Westminster terrorist escaped and held a whole appartment block hostage would it be OK to blow up the entire block and kill everyone as he is in there.
It’s 1984 shit where common sense reason and truth are not allowed to matter.
Is that article 13 from the 1988 Hamas charter, or the 2017 revision?
Victory for Palestine is peace, and that which was stolen returned to them.
It’s an obdurate fact there is no equivalence between what a colonial occupier does, and what a “national” can do to combat the illegal occupation of their land.
What is happening in Gaza is not a war between equals, nor can there be any like for like comparisons. One of the “combatants” has lawful legitimacy on their side, while the other most certainly does not. There IS a victim here, and a hostile aggressor, and don’t let Western propaganda persuade you otherwise.
That their “military” action of Hamas comprises the taking of hostages might indeed be thoroughly reprehensible, but against this, we must also remember what capacities the Palestinians have at their disposal to take any military initiative whatsoever.
I have nothing except contempt for Greer and Chapman; entitled, opportunistic carpetbaggers with deluded perceptions which are an embarrassment upon Scotland. What’s happening in the Middle East needs an overdose of truth and public exposure, and a great deal less posturing and political chicanery.
And before our resident whiners latch onto the equivalence of a colonial aggressor in Palestine versus a colonial aggressor in Eastern Europe, there is virtually no equivalence between Gaza and YooKrane, but a great deal of equivalence between Eastern YooKrane and NATO’s military intervention in the former Yugoslavia.
There will only be equivalence in Gaza when “somebody” steps in to defend the Palestinians citing Article 51 of the UN Charter which legitimises a Military intervention when a nation or its nationals are attacked by an aggressor. Bit late after 50+ years of turmoil, but better late than never.
NATO bombed Yugoslavia to “address” the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, and the Ru$$ians occupied the Donbas to stop the shelling and attempted ethnic cleansing of Ru$$ian nationals living there. I know, I know, it’s a real can of worms to go much deeper than that, but these are the “acorns” of equivalence. The “annexation” of the Donbas has echoes of the NATO intervention in Serbia and recognising Kosovo.
But before the Zionists (and Trolls), claim the same equivalence, misrepresenting Zionist barbarity and aggression as “defending” their people from attack, we are back to the beginning… they are illegal occupiers of somebody else’s land and cannot claim to be “innocents” when the people dispossessed of their land rise up legitimately to end the illegal occupation of their land.
Keep it simple, enforce the law early, or war and carnage will follow. That the Palestinian people are still dispossessed of their lands after decades, despite dozens of UN Resolutions and forced into taking hostages, – is a stain on all of us. We, the developed world who pretend we are civilised, should properly have intervened a long time ago and put an end to this.
Independently of how much I might agree or disagree with Mr Greer’s stance on the conflict Israel/Palestine, I am of the opinion this is an international conflict that is not going to be resolved at Holyrood level, it is not a matter that, for as long as our MSPs keep hiding behind the Scotland Act, does not belong at Holyrood level, and it is not a matter Mr Greer was elected to resolve.
It seems this conflict is being used by politicians and activists of pet causes as a convenient distraction to continue pushing Scotland’s independence to the bottom of the priority list. I am getting rather fed up with it.
At this point, what I am most concerned about, because it directly affects Scotland, is Mr Greer’s enforced blockade of the Scottish Parliament with his protest. He had no right to do that and I find it completely unacceptable.
Such action has been aggravated by the fact that Mr Greer is a MSP and therefore he was expected to know much better and behave with respect towards Scotland’s parliament and the Scottish people. In my view, he failed in both counts.
Because of this, and this only, I am of the opinion Mr Greer should be subjected to a no-confidence motion, severely disciplined and potentially ejected from his seat for gross misconduct.
I respect Mr Greer’s views on the Israel/Palestine conflict, but I do not respect, condone or accept his blockade of our parliament.
All our MSPs and MPs should be reminded in the strongest possible terms that they were elected to represent Scotland and fight for Scotland’s interests. They were not elected to represent Palestine, Israel, England or indeed USA or their geopolitical and economic interests.
MP’s are frightened of Islam and will do anything to appease them.
Which is mad because it’s such a peaceful religion.
And Britains age old Crusades continue into the new millennium
Pick a side and find your excuse to use a war cry,
We are not capable of freeing or bringing democracy to Scotland while trying to avoid war, why poke our noses into Englands constant battles, which is in the proxy Uck rain, it is talking up war with China and escalating death battles in the eastern Countries.
The battle cry of England as a warmongering nation has always found a reason through many a foreign Country to them, including Scotland, Ireland and Wales on the isles of Britain. The have to pretend they are always on the right side of history to justify killing.
” Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous Wolves”.
(Matthew 7:15)
Let’s be clear on this, when you say victory to Palestine you are agreeing with the notion that an antisemitic terrorist hate group should destroy Israel and kick every Jew out of the area.
When they lazily accuse Israel of genocide they are using the language of Hamas, using the single most provocative word in the dictionary designed to hurt Jews, as is the intention of Hamas.
I remember a time when the racist extremists were on the right but deary me the world has turned upside down.
link to nymag.com
Breaks @2. Well put .
Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
23 February, 2024 at 12:57 pm
““And Israels’s policy is unambiguous and unequivocal: the only acceptable resolution to the conflict is the complete obliteration of the Palestinians.”
This may be the case in reality, but it is not the stated position of the Israeli government, while the converse IS the stated position of Hamas.”
Israeli Government ministers have been quite explicit recently I think, not to mention the seven decades previously.
link to twitter.com
Zioninism is not really about Palestine and Israel as much as it is about AngloAmerica and oil.
Propagators of War will always use its own nations people for cannon fodder as a shield to protect the politicians.
While they profit from the spoils,
alive and safe at home,
The only requirement is to get the “Cannon Fodder” hyped up enough, through propaganda to blindly and thoughtlessly throw themselves in front of the arrows and cannons for that profit,
I tried to contact Sir Keir of the Stitch-up to get his views. No joy as it’s Friday pm and the Jewish sabbath is almost upon us.
Athanasius;
Day off from your Daily Mail column, is it?
What a pile of bollox.
Do I understand you properly? A call to end genocide is the same thing as calling for the obliteration of Israel, because of the Third Reich and World War II?
But Germany is still there! It was most certainly not obliterated.
Usually I find your points interesting and eye-opening, even when I don’t agree with them, but here the argument seems just odd.
Just to be clear about what genocide is and whether in the circumstances of this blog post it is up for debate.
“In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.[1][2]”
Anyone got any doubts about what is happening in Gaza?
With only 5.3% of the vote we can hardly call him an “elected” MSP. He is an apparatchik, a political creature who has never held a job outside politics and from his school days has been a political opportunist. He did not even manage to complete his degree at Strathclyde. The problem with “list MSPs” is they cannot really be voted out by a constituency.
Were Gaza anywhere else but the benighted «Holy Land» would it receive the attention?
Or end up a forgotten matter, like this,
link to digitalcommons.usf.edu
I wonder if Mr Greer, a Kirk adherent, has noted the decline in Arab Christian numbers in the area. Effectively, taking a historic perspective, it does not matter a jot who «wins» Christians are likely to be the biggest losers. Twas ever thus in the power game, Sir.
Iran which supports HAMAS is currently on one of its get the unbelievers moods. He might go and remonstrate with them maybe?
But who cares when within easy reach you can stick one on a guy in a kippa for everyone, wink wink, knows their knavish tricks.
Might there be a knavish set of tricks to send nationalist politics up a creek without a paddle?
Never, those fly guys would spot that on the political satnav….sure as hell.
WHO HATES THE CONSTANT HUNDRED/s of YEARS WARS of WARMONGERING WESTMINSTER?
Falklands, Iraq, France, Spain, America, Africa, India, WW1, WW2, wars against Ireland, Italian wars war of the roses, Dutch portugese wars the Barons wars, the Scottish wars, the America revolution war, the pheasants revolt,
Wether with their own people or abroad, This is only a fraction of the Wars that Westminster and therefore England have been involved in.
Scotland, Ireland and Wales should not become or get themselves involved as we have been on the receiving end of those wars of England many many times,
To back a warmongering Countries war cries when that very Country is oppressive and holds Scotland a Captive to Colonialism of a treaty,
Is wrong immoral, and inhuman to become a active participant doing the same to other Countries.
“Greer also described a victory for Palestine as a “victory for humanity”, which can only sensibly be held to mean that Israel is not included in “humanity”. Defining a Jewish people as something sub-human is a view with somewhat problematic connotations.”
Without knowing what Greer thought “victory for Palestine” might mean that paragraph holds no meaning for me.
Al Jazeera sets out the history of Palestine at the link below which might offer alternative views of what the Palestinians themselves might see as “victory”. Peace, for example?
link to aljazeera.com
Turabdin
“Western/Enlightenment sense does not exist. Dhimmitude, the jizya tax, expulsion or death as an infidel is the orthodox road map.”
I forgot about that tax.
Well said Breeks as per usual on the button.
Everything is a genocide these days.
I just committed a genocide on the bog. I had a curry last night, you see.
Nobody tell Ross Greer or the UN.
“But one need not support, endorse or excuse Israel’s actions to note the simple facts that the only entity attempting to secure “Victory for Palestine” in the conflict is Hamas, and that Hamas’ definition of “victory” is the liquidation of Israel.”
Interesting words, the Zionists, not the fair minded folk of Israel who are also Jewish, are at this moment enacting the liquidation of Palestinians from Gaza, in occupied lands that the UN say it has no right to defend itself in due to the lands belonging to to others.
Also with the Zionists attempting to eradicate the “Human Animals” what some Israeli politicians and military commanders have called Palestinians, does this mean that the IDF should also be a proscribed body within the UK?
It is without doubt that the State of Israel, which has in its cabinet, at least one Israeli-proscribed ‘Terrorist’, is just as guilty of wishing to destroy its neighbours as Palestinian Hamas. They are equally intransigent and inhumane in their methods of destruction but they are nowhere near equal in their strength.
AND I really object to the Israeli government being able to manipulate other Parliaments throughout the Western world to make political decisions in the seat of Government. The SNP ‘motion’ of Wednesday being an example. AND too many people have been and are bought by the Israeli Government in the name of Jews, whether or not all Jews wanted that behaviour or not.
I do think that this is a problem for the whole area to sort out and that all Western Countries should impose an arms embargo on sales. That won’t happen of course and it suits the USA purpose to have unrest in the East continue ad infinitum as it continues to plunder and pillage whatever, wherever – just like the ‘British’ Christians have done for years.
For me, it’s a plague on all your houses.
Start caring about each other instead of Mammon, just for a change.
Can somebody else report Ross Greer to the police for support of a proscribed organisation? I’ve got to go to the dentist.
link to twitter.com
What happens to MSPs if they have a criminal conviction?
Asking for a few million fellow Scots….
Forgetting the annoying gadfly Greer for a moment, we know what “Victory for Hamas looks like, but we also know what as Netanyahu and some of his Lukid party politicians and IDF commanders have said “Victory for Israel” looks like as well, and both are identical. The difference is that Israel is currently carrying it out in occupied lands that the UN says it has NO right to defend itself in.
Also I’m not suggesting that Israel should be wiped out, I’d imagine there are many decent people in Israel who are against what’s happening now in Gaza.
(1982).
“UNGA resolution 37/43 removed any doubt or debate over the lawful entitlement of occupied people to resist occupying forces by any and all lawful means. The resolution reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.”
The Palestinians have the RIGHT to take up arms (in whatever form that takes).
I suggest folk read this.
link to aljazeera.com
I’m pretty surprised genocide hasn’t been added to the list of proscribed words. It is used with such abandon these days that it appears to have lost all meaning.
It would seem that it’s constant misuse by low information cranks is far more deserving of being put on the WoS BTL naughty step than say, *tractor, country 404 or Uncle Vlad.
There’s certainly a strong case to add genocide to the list….as well as “Great Satan”
It is if nothing else use of either serve as useful red flag for the “ignore” function.
Is this “victory”?
link to nymag.com
“We’re about three months into the war in Gaza. But despite Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion, which have killed more than 23,000 people, Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel, and its leadership has not been eradicated. Certainly the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, is still alive. From Hamas’s perspective, has this whole thing been, in a twisted way, a win?
?Yeah, I think we can talk about a kind of victory. We need to recall Hamas’s first objectives and think about how it is really a victory concerning those first objectives.
Just after October 7, Hamas leaders declared three main objectives. The first was to capture Israeli soldiers in order to achieve a prisoner exchange. The second was to respond to attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque from settlers. The Hamas leaders, if you remember, claimed to have acted on behalf of Al-Aqsa, which is why the operation was called Al-Aqsa Flood. The third objective was putting the Palestinian cause at the center of international concerns and preventing the consolidation of regional agreements between Israel and Arab countries.”
“This may be the case in reality, but it is not the stated position of the Israeli government, while the converse IS the stated position of Hamas.”
Stated Position, have you been paying attention to what’s actually going on in Gaza? It would appear that in your urgency to attack Greer (he’s a minor irritation compared to this) you’ve overlook what the IDF are actually doing in Gaza, and its mostly not stopping Hamas. Its mostly killing women and children who make up the bulk of casualties.
Watch what they do, not what they officially say.
“Just to be clear about what genocide is and whether in the circumstances of this blog post it is up for debate.”
Sam.
If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know that Israel has been breaking Article (2).
Sub-sections (A) (B) and (C) of the Genocide Convention.
link to en.wikipedia.org…,or%20mental%20harm%20to%20members%20of%20the%20group%3B
The ICJ gave them a month to amend their ways ie protect citizens from harm that hasn’t happened.
link to archive.is
We must focus on crime not mental health, says police chief
Before going to the police it might be worth considering if this issue is a crime or a mental health issue.
People on here are under no illusion what Genocide means. Sam has even posted the definitive.
Shame the apologists on here don’t read it.
It’s not rocket science that is exactly what is happening so meets the definition.
I’m very confused about the issue with the arm dealers.
How can you have any form of military without arms.
Are we not keeping people in jobs here in Scotland by building warships?
Maybe Greer should start protesting outside Govan’s ‘frigate factory’
He could take his megaphone & his blue haired pals and try to convince the shipbuilders to down tools.
All for the sake of humanity.
After that he could go to Faslane.
Errrr… This ridiculous language (Man the barricades!) other than being downright pathetic, reminds me of ‘Hagar the Horrible’, a cartoon figure of the Daily Record. Onwards to Victory! Hagar shouts at the head of the battering ram with his fellow vikings, storming a castle. And then he shouts, Victory or death! and looks round and nobody is there but him.
And has been often said, shouldn’t someone also tell Ross Greer (the knobhead that he is), that Hamas aren’t actually his ‘mates’ on the ideological front?
What difference does it make it it’s geno*cide or not geno*cide?
Also what bloody difference does it make it it’s discussed or not discussed at Holyrood?
It seems to me it’s all a total waste of time.
“Is that article 13 from the 1988 Hamas charter, or the 2017 revision?”
Balls, I don’t know what happened to the link that was attached to that picture, which addressed both versions. Have added it back in now.
link to archive.is
“In fact, the new document differs little from its predecessor. Much like the original, the new document asserts Hamas’s long-standing goal of establishing a sovereign, Islamist Palestinian state that extends, according to Article 2, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Lebanese border to the Israeli city of Eilat—in other words, through the entirety of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. And it is similarly unequivocal about “the right of return” of all Palestinian refugees displaced as a result of the 1948 and 1967 wars (Article 12)—which is portrayed as “a natural right, both individual and collective,” divinely ordained and “inalienable.” That right, therefore “cannot be dispensed with by any party, whether Palestinian, Arab or international,” thus again rendering negotiations or efforts to achieve any kind of political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians irrelevant, void, or both. Article 27 forcefully reinforces this point: “There is no alternative to a fully sovereign Palestinian State on the entire national Palestinian soil, with Jerusalem as its capital.””
“Keir Starmer has confirmed that he spoke with Israeli President Herzog before lobbying the Speaker of the House to ruin the SNP ceasefire motion.
Sky News deleted the interview with Keir Starmer in which he admits speaking with Israeli President Issac Herzog before ruining the Gaza ceasefire vote”
But you can watch it here.
link to nitter.unixfox.eu
Also Sir Lyndsey Hoyle the Speaker of the House, who has visited Israel and his father helped set up LFI, met with Starmer just before the ceasefire discussion in the HoC.
Greer is just a silly wee laddy and another classic example of the “Peter Principle” when applied to the Regional List candidates at Holyrood.
Incidentally, does his mother know he’s not in his bedroom doing his homework?
Jesus H. Christ a link to the Atlantic, you might as well have linked to the Whitehouse.
link to wikispooks.com
As for the proscription of Hamas.
“The British government’s plan to proscribe the political wing of Hamas has passed through the House of Commons without a vote, as sources in the opposition Labour Party told Middle East Eye it would be too politically sensitive to raise objections.
The amendment to the Terrorism Act 2000 passed through the lower house of the UK parliament on Wednesday afternoon following a debate. It will go to the upper chamber, the House of Lords, on Thursday.
Members of parliament have to object to a motion for approval in order for it to be put to a vote. A source on Labour’s left wing said that while opposing the proscription of Hamas might be the correct position, publicly doing so would mean “putting a cross on one’s back”. ”
link to middleeasteye.net
@ Breeks. I agree on every single point.
@ Red. I work with three Muslims.I couldn’t ask for three better human beings by my side. Stick yer blanket racism up yer arse!
There are no shortage of good reasons to dislike Ross Greer, but you seem to have aimed in a very strange direction.
There is of course no danger whatsoever that Israel will be militarily defeated by a people it illegally occupies who are denied any armed forces. Not to mention food and water. So that’s a meaningless shibboleth.
But the dismantling of the apartheid state of Israel is something I would unreservedly welcome.
RUBY
Genocide is a term determined by those official agencies who choose to define it and their geopolitical perspective on the matter. I linked an article on the complex nature of defining the term and the pitfalls earlier.
The Arabs of Gaza are at war, Hamas leadership has no illusions about that, with the State of Israel.
The Israelis are in a conflict/war of survival as Hamas wants rid of all Jews in the region.
I know the mood very well. It is frightening to be so hated.
Things, however, are changing even the Saudi régime is softer in its mood regarding Israel.
Hamas needs Iran, without the ayatullahs beneficence it would collapse as a force.
The West’s metropolitan left leaning «liberals»are mad keen on the Palestine fiction but would actually hate living in any state with the name.
This is an interesting test of an iScotland’s nous re international «affairs».
I’d give it a could try harder in background research.
Good Evening.
As someone with family and friends in Israel I fervently hope that Israel will finish what the Hamas medievalists started when they broke the ceasefire on Oct 07. My contempt for useful idiots like Greer and the appalling words of Murray @5.14 knows no bounds. You clearly don’t go as far as me but you have written a superb piece Rev and credit to you.
This confusion between race & religion especially with regards to Muslims often happens.
Muslim is a religion and so is Judaism.
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
I like the idea of their being no religions.
Being a woman a particularly dislike what I know about Islam.
“There is of course no danger whatsoever that Israel will be militarily defeated by a people it illegally occupies who are denied any armed forces. Not to mention food and water.”
I agree with you. But it’s still what he called for. I could call for the slaughter of everyone in Belgium by ISIS, of which there’s also no actual prospect, but I’d still get in bother for it.
Wings: “What else could “Victory to Palestine” possibly entail? The closest thing it has to a legitimate government is Hamas. The only people taking up arms on its behalf are Hamas. The only people who could in any way achieve a “victory” on its behalf are Hamas. (The rest of the world, in the shape of the UN, seeks peace in the region, not a victory for one side or the other.)“
I would say victory for Palestinians means recognition of their human rights and the creation of a Palestinian state, amongst other things (including reparations).
The Palestinian Authority still exists and is the organisation that Israel and others have dealt with over the last few years rather than Hamas, so I am not sure why we are to assume now that Hamas is the closest thing Palestine has to a Government.
As for the arms industry, if we are going to assume Ross Greer has hurt any feelings, we would need to assume the industry had feelings in the first place. There’s no evidence that the arms industry is constrained by anything resembling ethics or morality. The question of legality pivots on Government policy and the granting of (DTI) licences; in this case, we now know that civil servants as recently as this week have expressed concerns.
In Holland I believe a court has essentially stepped in and decided that the country could no longer sell arms to Israel under the circumstances. It’s likely that will happen in other countries too, possibly even the UK. Ipso facto, there is no universal definition of legal and at the national level it is subject to change in response to changing events, political climate, etc.
The same applies to proscription. There’s a long list of parties and politicians who were once proscribed but who ended up celebrated government officials, and the list includes the ANC, Mandela, and Sinn Fein.
I get that this article is intended as some sort of attack on the Greens and Greer, but to me it reads like an advert for them. And well done Ross Greer, on this if nothing else I agree with him 100%.
WingsOverFrance says:
@ Red. I work with three Muslims.I couldn’t ask for three better human beings by my side. Stick yer blanket racism up yer arse!
That’s great news! We dinnae need to worry about anything, because you work with three Muslims. Somebody tell Salman Rushdie to stop being racist, and tell all they cringing MPs tae stop fashing about their personal safety.
How’s things in France, by ra way? I heard everything’s brilliant, and people are delighted by how it’s becoming more like North Africa every day. Lucky French!
Greer repeatedly describes events in Gaza as a “genocide”, a hotly-contested and highly inflammatory term which accuses the Israeli government – the exact same people, remember, who were being critiqued by John Mason – of a war crime.
What’s happening in Gaza isn’t a genocide. It’s brutal and Israel have definitely committed war crimes, though there’s the argument to be had that bombing hospitals is legitimate as Hamas use them for bases. It is as said, incredibly complex but it isn’t genocide though I do worry there’s parts of the far right in Israel who’d love it to be.
The other thing is that Greer, and 99% of the current protestors say nothing about the multiple other actual genocides happening right now on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people are being slaughtered for who they are but nothing from protestors and when you do push them on the issue, the answer invariably is ‘Ah yes, well our government isn’t involved’ as if being against war depends purely upon the UK’s actual or perceived involvement. If that excuse was valid there’d have been no protests against Vietnam.
TO be blunt, the biggest reason this is a massive cause with people is because a primarily Jewish state is involved and there’s a lot of people who have been empowered in their antisemitism in the last decade. There’s always been a section of the hard/far left who hate Jews and women and right now Gaza and Trans ideology is like all their Christmases come at once.
Greer didn’t call for peace, or for a ceasefire, or for a two-state solution. He called for “Victory to Palestine”. In so far as there is a “war” going on in Gaza, the combatants on the Palestinian side are Hamas. Palestine has no traditional armed forces, and in so far as it has a government, that government is also Hamas.
We should know by now that that means, and like ‘From the River to the Sea’, it means the eradication of Israel & all that entails. One may not like it’s hard/far right government and it’s right to condemn them and their response to the rape and murder Hamas executed on the 7th of October, not to mention the rockets they still send into Israel (a fact often forgotten in this that Hamas are still trying to kill Israelis) however voicing this puts Greer right on the side of Hamas.
Right now there’s no real prospect of a two-state solution, and if there were it’s almost certain Israel won’t accept it and Hamas won’t either as they’ve made it clear they want to commit their own genocide now just on Jews, but the 20% of Israel which are Muslim Arabs, Christians and other faiths or not holding any faith. So yes, I agree Stu, there’s no place for him in Holyrood and he needs to be disciplined by it and his party but nothing will happen. Even though it’s quite clear Greer, and his Green colleagues, have been doing their best to limit or deny democratic debate and access in Holyrood.
I’m ashamed to have supported the Greens in the past but then again, this is not the Green Party of the past. This is a group of often dangerous radicalised activists who’ve done nothing good for Scotland, their consituients or the environment. What Greer is doing in this and in the Trans debate is scare people into silence or submission.
At some point what’s happening with people’s radicalisation is going to have larger consequences than it is right now & I fear it’ll drive decent people out of public life.
link to declassifieduk.org
Among the interesting information given here is that the Deputy Speaker (Winterton) has visited Israel and received funding from Friends of I.
She it was who pretended, when in the Speaker’s chair, not to hear dissenting voices when asking for “ayes” and “nos” and so nodded through the Labour amendment to the SNP motion without allowing a vote.
No wonder the SNP walked out. Yesterday’s post by Stu is well off the mark
@Ted
Craig Murray appears to have utterly lost it. I think the Alba Party dodged a bullet there! Thankfully more and more people in the movement are now seeing him as the liability he so obviously is.
It is no huge surprise of course to those of us paying attention to his descent that his fringe nutter extremism and “Galloway Complex” would eventually lead him to pick a fight with Rev Stu.
Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight!
Humza should fuck off down to London beside his script writers and paymasters. Worst, most blatant plant in the history of shitty, sub-standard plants. He should simply fuck dafuq off. Everything the guy does is deliberately geared towards alienating independence advocates away from the main vehicle. Every day he remains in situ serves as a reminder of the fact that London has zero respect for the Scottish public, and zero respect for actual democracy.
TURABDIN
Ignored
RUBY
This is an interesting test of an iScotland’s nous re international «affairs».
Also a test of your nous re Scottish affairs.
Scotland is not independent.
Maybe come back when we are independent in the meantime keep following your pals John Main & Andy Ellis for an idea on how au fait we are here in Scotland re international “affairs”
The real test imho is who will come up with a solution. Could just as easily be iScotland as any other country in the world.
Let me you to the test. What is your solution to the problems in the middle east.
You did tell me you were an 18 year old boy from Iraq but you never did tell me where you live.
«the dismantling of the apartheid state of Israel is something I would unreservedly welcome»
[Craig Murray]
There’s seemingly no end to the fantasy despoiling of the region by those who have no first hand experience of it and its terrifying complexity.
Maybe Mr Murray, the ex diplomat, assuming it is he, is just having a rather bad day….I do hope so.
While, so far as I am aware, the ICJ stopped short of ruling that Israel is committing genocide, the case did suggest that the ICJ took the accusation seriously and considered it plausible.
Accordingly it doesn’t seem that out there for someone to state that genocide is occurring.
It isn’t. At times it feels like it but compare it to the genocide in say, Darfur (one that the likes of Greer cares nothing about), or what’s happening under the rule of Assad (again, something Greer cares nothing about) it isn’t. War isn’t nice and as bad as Israel’s response has been to what Hamas did, it’s often missed that Hamas want the destruction of Israel and all Jews.
It’s also worth noting that under Hamas, political opponents are executed, women don’t have equal right, gay men are executed and/or tortured & most Gazans live in abject poverty even though billions in aid has flooded into Gaza. One needs look only as their leadership living in luxury in Qatar to know where the money is going.
I am however worried by the increasing hardline Netanyahu is taking and what his plan for Gaza if Hamas is eliminated.
Orwell once wrote that, in his experience, it was impossible to mention ‘Jews’ verbally or in print without getting into trouble.
And that was before ‘Israel’ existed.
Mhairi MacCallan’s just posted a ministerial statement, wanting to turn the Grangemouth oil refinary into a green sewage plant.
Dear oh dear!
Would it have been ok for the British Army to bomb west Belfast into dust in ‘self defence’ since that’s where many IRA terrorists lived?
Why is McCallan – Humza’s Saturday girl and Dubai fling – minister for energy.
Remember she sat on the question time panel and dismissed Alex Salmond? Remember? I do!
The Alba Party is making the best voices to save that plant. Since the owner fucked off to buy Manchester United one of the Queens 11. We need to save Scotland.
@Turabdin 5.58pm
Maybe Mr Murray, the ex diplomat, assuming it is he, is just having a rather bad day….I do hope so.
How on earth will we be able to tell?
It can’t be long until Craig hoves in to view on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here eating Wombat testicles or in the Big Brother House giving us his rendition of the Genocide of Gaza through the medium of interpretativ dance clad only in a mankini.
When we start to prosecute the use of certain words as a crime we are moving into a dystopian future of ‘thought crimes’.
Corrupt Governments (ie them all) are salivating at the power they will soon have when they can freely shut down debate with hate/terrorism crimes legislation based solely on someone’s Facebook posts. It’s started already.
Champions at this are the Israelis who have attempted to roll the definitions of race, ethnicity, nationality and religion into one, creating a nonsense where any criticism of Israel can be attacked as anti-semitism and labeled a hate crime.
In 2011, Brendon O’Connell in Perth Australia got jailed for three years because of conflation of such nonsense and was the first case I was aware of.
link to archive.org
The BBC are currently pushing a case against Richard D. Hall over his work looking into the Manchester bombing event.
See
Proof on CCTV, Apparently
The object is to kill public debate using threat.
It just beats me why so many UK politicians tie themselves up in knots about Israel/Palestine, over which we have little control and is hardly existential to us, when there are so many other global examples of man’s inhumanity to man for them to fuss about (e.g. Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar), some of which are of real importance to our future and security (e.g. Putin in Ukraine). I can’t help wondering how much of it is fueled by an unhealthy obsession with Jews.
It’s entirely driven by an obsessional hatred of Jews. There are obviously people who are disturbed by what’s happening in Israel/Gaza and do want to voice their opposition to it, but again, most of these people are deathly silent on other wars which eclipse what’s happening in Gaza.
What’s exceptionally disturbing is how the far right and far left are intersecting on the issue. Where you share an ideological position with Nick Griffin then perhaps the likes of Owen Jones can stop slurring women as Nazis. Add into the mix people being radicalised, even to the point where they excuse the rape and murder Hamas executed on October as ‘resistance’. The plight of Gazans is not going to be cured by rape, murder and kidnapping people not just from Israel, but from across the world, not to mention Israeli Muslims.
As some say, Stop the War Coalition should be called Stop Some Wars.
President Xiden
23 February, 2024 at 6:09 pm
“Would it have been ok for the British Army to bomb west Belfast into dust in ‘self defence’ since that’s where many IRA terrorists lived?”
If the brylcreem boys had started that Ellis and Main would have been cheering them on. Nodding donkeys.
* Proof on CCTV, Apparently
On RICHPLANET TV
RUBY
A possible aid to sorting out the levantine mess would be for those who are not directly involved to keep their noses out ie US,UK, some Scots, those with good intentions (paving the way to hell) and of course Iran, a country with a permanent grudge.
The something must be done «meddlers» simply make things worse….then failing to sort matters they walk away, everybody’s «fault» but theirs.
My parents, who live in a Gulf state, reported a conversation with a local re the posturing in the West, it loses a great deal of flavour in translation but essentially it is that classic Brit expression of dismissing an unwanted, bothersome individual.
You know the one, but with added bells, whistles, neon lights, full symphony orchestra and solar flares.
As salamu alaiki ya madam!
How lucky are we in Scotland to have so many experts posting on ‘Wings’! As if anybody outwith Scotland will take any interest or notice of the comments here!
Probably best if Israel immediately orders a ceasefire. The fact that this would allow the terrorists to regroup and rearm and start all over again is irrelevant to some. I do not think the terrorists will have any difficulty in finding countries to provide them with whatever weapons they want or need.
Hamas needs to be obliterated but it never will be. Wars may stop hostilities for a period but the underlying feelings are never far away and ready to erupt. It is human nature for many, rightly or wrongly to fight. It will never change.
I have never knowingly met a Jew or a Palestinian.
I would say victory for Palestinians means recognition of their human rights and the creation of a Palestinian state, amongst other things
Every single time since the British pulled out of the area, the Palestinian leaders have been offered a state it’s been refused. Bill Clinton famously bent over backwards to offer Arafat a deal in 2000 after gaining huge concessions from Israel but it was rejected to Clinton’s frustration.
The thing protestors and activists for the Palestinian people need to deal with is they need better leaders. Right now Hamas can’t be voted out, having executed their political opponents on gaining power and withdrawing elections before imposing harsh Islamist laws. Gaza could have been a stable, relatively wealthy state by now & Hamas hold a large chunk of the blame for the position it’s in, not to mention as we’ve seen, Hamas hold the lives of ordinary Gazans in contempt.
As much as a future involves better leaders than the far right government of Israel (who may well be voted out of office), the solution isn’t going to happen til Palestinians get better leaders and ones who aren’t a death cult like ISIS.
The BBC are currently pushing a case against Richard D. Hall over his work looking into the Manchester bombing event.
I hope Hall is convicted and suffers a fate akin to Alex Jones, who has also spread bullshit ‘theories’.
And antisemitism is a very real thing. It’s entirely possible for Israel to be both a perpetrator while at the same time suffering attacks based upon the fact it was founded by Jews and is now a mainly Jewish, if secular, state. It’s always a clue that people are talking nonsense if they state Israel is an ethno-state when it isn’t. Even in the 80% or so of Jewish people in Israel, many of them aren’t practising Jews.
It’s entirely possible to condemn Israel without using their actions to attacks Jews there, or anywhere. Just like I wouldn’t use the actions of Hamas to condemn Muslims everywhere which, sadly, some are also doing.
“By the IHRA definition”
IHRA, does not allow for criticism of Israel, and impinges on free speech, effectively its a gagging order against saying anything bad against Israeli activities.
“Even the Board of Deputies of British Jews – a supporter of the IHRA document – has acknowledged that “there is a worrying resistance from universities to adopting it [the definition] and free speech is given as the primary reason for their reluctance”.”
link to jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk
If you want to see where this is leading, then look at the case of the Green Party supporter today found guilty of planning to kill MPs.
link to news.sky.com
Or the council chamber in Walsall being full of protestors who stopped a meeting, because the one thing a seriously deprived area needs it to talk about a conflict it has no power over.
We’ve seen a culture develop where masked men can walk through our streets, shouting and abusing women, or activists can threaten people or disrupt democracy through the threats of violence, or we have hate crimes happening weekly with no action from the authorities. There’s such a high threshold of prosecution even if these people are arrested and when they are tried, we see that the judicial system is also being captured by activists so people walk out free or with a minor sentence.
I fear now the Gazan situation has become an essential part of people’s identity along the lines of what we see with Trans activism. In fact there’s a large crossover. When political leaders like Starmer can be influenced by activists negatively, and when our own FM sits there doing nothing to condemn the likes of Greer I wonder where all this ends?
“I hope Hall is convicted and suffers a fate akin to Alex Jones, who has also spread bullshit ‘theories’.”
“So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause”
Princess Amidala
You wake up one morning to find over a thousand of your fellow citizens have been killed. You then watch the celebrations in Gaza as men women and children take to the streets in celebration. Sweets are handed out and dancing ensues.
What was Hamas thknking? Did they truly believe Israelis watching would do nothing. Especially under leadership of one
such as Netenyahu.Gross miscalculation by Hamas. acting on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza.
Are therefore all Israelis complicit of have I been wrong in watching Israelis protesting about the violence.
Craig Murray___ you yourself have fallen into the pit of being unable to distinguish one from another. All are lumped together which is somewhat lazy intellectually for you.
There is. nor has there ever been any love lost between Jews and Arabs. Peace initiatives by Arab leaders have cost some of them to be killed by their own side
Craig you seem to be espousing that for Jews which you find unacceptable for Palestinians. What fosters that opinion?
This situation seems to put people on one side of the debate of the other. Neither can help. In my view. Israel is wrong in what they are doing in Gaza.but I understand the view that Hamas must be dealt with to ensure future security . Surrounded on all sides by opponents who have already tried several times to invade and eradicate that which you call home is not condusive to trust.
Ask yourselves why all the Arab nations support Palestine but will not just like Egypt allow them to enter their country.
It will take more wisdom than Solomon to solve.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
TURABDIN
Very disappointing response but I’ll let you off being that you are only a boy of 18 with very little experience of life.
Jeezo I agree with Craig Murray above. Wings I love you man but you are suffering from cognitive dissonance on this particular subject IMHO. I can’t make sense of these articles. It is like you are trying to back two opposing points at the same time.
The ethnic cleansing is 100% undeniable and that alone should be enough.
But the genocide is also blatant and all that is left is the revisionist arguments of how fast and how much… instead of on the incredibly explicit intent. Intent that could not be clearer, really.
“The BBC are currently pushing a case against Richard D. Hall over his work looking into the Manchester bombing event.
I hope Hall is convicted and suffers a fate akin to Alex Jones, who has also spread bullshit ‘theories’.”
John.C
If only you knew the half of it, Jonathon Cook and Peter Oborne wrote good articles on it, I’ll say no more.
If you think Richard D Hall is the voice of ‘liberty’ then I’m afraid you need to touch grass as the kids say.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
What is your solution to the problem Mac?
I don’t like what you write these days. Seems you’ve turned into a fucking cunt. Do I hate the greens yeah, do i hate snp current policies yeah, do I hate you’re current writting yeah.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Struan Born
What is it you hate about the writing?
@Mac.
” It’s like you are trying to back two opposing views at the same time”.
Is that not how EVERY conflict resolution begins?
“And antisemitism is a very real thing. It’s entirely possible for Israel to be both a perpetrator while at the same time suffering attacks based upon the fact it was founded by Jews and is now a mainly Jewish, if secular, state.”
& What of its illegal expansion or is that perfectly acceptable?
I don’t think Clinton offered them a state.
I think I*real renegade on it & refused to recognise Palestine.
Seizing more & more land because they’ve invited everyone to join them in a fancy new Jewish State, & people from everywhere took them up on the offer, isn’t everyone else’s problem & doesn’t give them carte blanche to massacre people out of their homes or turf them off their lands.
Things don’t work like that in the real world.
This isn’t a war either when one side doesn’t have an army.
What if the English just decided to expand north with an army & start cleaning some space!
Oh, wait…
The BBC doing what it does best, protecting Israel.
link to consortiumnews.com
Ruby
The full force of international law, obvs.
They’re on illegal territory.
It’s not the spoils of war either. They’ve no army to fight.
What’s the point of international laws if they’re just going to be ignored?
The end of Israel won’t be a holocaust, this is laughable. At worst they will just be militarily routed and flee en masse to the point the state collapses. This is how all colonial states end.
And given the psychopath direction they have gone this is now very possible. Their astonishing military weakness has been exposed by 7th October. Their subsequent entirely predictable overreaction genocide and ethnic cleansing are sealing their fate just as Hamas planned.
As I said at the start Hamas have outsmarted them. A strategic blinder…
Racial supremacists don’t like being outsmarted by those they consider subhuman. Hence the mental rage… all very predictable and exploitative. All built into the plan.
Israel is destroying itself. I am not going to interfere with it. I suggest you don’t either.
@Mac.
Every expert on the Middle East with no dog in the fight, feels Hamas made a huge blunder. You however, having analysed your own world view feel it was a military masterstroke. Oh dear !.
Rev Stu
My admiration and respect for you has gone up 100% after reading this article.
You must have known that publishing it would lose you support and hard cash from the salivating anti-semites currently infesting here BTL.
But you went ahead and published it anyway. A standing ovation is well earned.
The truth shall set you free – if Scotland is to endure, then we need to learn to once again value truth above all else.
Those of us who value truth salute you tonight.
@Geri
“& What of its illegal expansion or is that perfectly acceptable?”
link to aljazeera.com
@James,
I understand. You’re absolutely staggered at the thought of a right-leaning supporter of independence. You will probably be floored by the idea that there are thousands of such people, all waiting for somebody in the independence movement to give them a reason to vote for it. Telling them what they believe is bollox probably won’t do it.
@John C 5:59
Thank you for your reasoned and measured post.
I think you accurately captured the reality of the situation.
The BBC was captured long ago.
The UK doesn’t know it’s own identity now either LOL
American or Jewish.
Jewish or American.
Oh fck it. Choose both.
No one seems bothered shit is passing through parliament with zero votes. Is that place just a one man band now? They’ve finally gone full d*ctatorship?
Geri
The full force of international law, obvs.
I honestly don’t know what international law is.
How does it work?
Israel is a very damaged society.
Look for
Defamation – by Yoav Shamir Films – on YouTube
The population from school age is taught that everyone hates them.
It is so obvious that there must be a two state solution, but Zionists (of all religions or none) cannot allow that to happen because peace might break out and ruin their plans.
Just a fact.
Out of a population of over 9 million 20% ( over 2 million) of that are Israeli citizens and passport holders who class themselves as Arab ethnicity
Funny thing to give citizenship and passports to those you allegedly hate.
“You however, having analysed your own world view feel it was a military masterstroke. Oh dear !.”
It was really if you counted the sympathy vote.
The whole world (protests everywhere) is all out of the sympathy card as they’ve witnessed them become the hunter against unarmed civilians & for illegal land expansion. In that regard they have. It’s brought it to the forefront of what’s been happening with the full agreement of the Yanks.
@TURABDIN 6:37
Don’t let the nay sayers and reflexive shit stirrers stop you from posting on here. I value your contributions and I don’t believe I’m the only one.
Your personal knowledge of the politics and lived worldview of adherents to the “religion of peace” are invaluable.
We Scots used to be a smart bunch. It could be we will one day recover our ability to deal with reality. Right now though, we’re suffering from 200 years during which our brightest, hardest working and most ambitious fecked off abroad to exterminate the indigenes of their new homelands.
Like much else, we’re mostly in denial about that, but your posts are helping to shatter our comforting illusions.
Keep them coming.
It all started a 100 years ago due to a total fuck up by ‘The British’ called ‘The Balfour Declaration’
(Was a huge donation from Rothschild to the Tory Party involved).
I don’t fully understand what ‘The British’ were doing in Palestine and what right they had to give away land to the Jews.
More than 100 years ago, on November 2, 1917, Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community.
The letter was short – just 67 words – but its contents had a seismic effect on Palestine that is still felt to this day.
It committed the British government to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and to facilitating “the achievement of this object”.
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, FRS, FBA, DL also known as Lord Balfour, was a British statesman and Conservative politician
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild,[1] FRS[2][3] (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937) was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was presented with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Rothschild was the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926.
Walter Rothschild was born in London as the eldest son and heir of Emma Louise von Rothschild and Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, an immensely wealthy financier of the international Rothschild financial dynasty and the first Jewish peer in England.
Well you set out to stick it to Ross Greer (a fair enough cause), but this monster has snowballed, and now you have the admiration of John Main (which to me feels really creepy) and no doubt the UK security services (which defends Israel to the hilt) will be thinking that you’re not that bad a guy afterall.
Oh and you’ve left Craig Murray scratching his head with this one.
Bob Mack
Thanks for posting facts on here.
Generally speaking, facts are unwelcome on Wings BTL and indeed, many regulars on here wouldn’t recognise a fact if it detonated an explosive vest in their face while screaming “God is great”.
It’s great to see sane realists posting.
link to archive.is
How Britain Destroyed the Palestinian Homeland
At the time, Britain was not even in control of Palestine, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Either way, my homeland was never Balfour’s to so casually transfer to anyone else.
That’s a very interesting read.
Aaaaand Main arrives with his usual fact free contribution and wrong analysis.
Elegiac, pompous, yet still insulting.
Johnny Cope, admiring, yet praying for a loss in revenues.
My admiration for JM has also gone up 100%. (Still zero)
Entertaining to see aw the wee radgies losing their absolute shit because Rev Stu has the temerity to tell them a few home truths.
Doubtless it will be treated by most as a forgivable offence on his part, much like his distaste for nativism and franchise restriction, because they think he’s right on a’ the rest.
Here’s a thought….what if he’s right about them too, just like a’ the rest of his stuff? Makes you think, eh?
@RoS 8:24
As I have posted before, it’s a free country and you are welcome to openly post what you really want to happen. Maybes you want every last Jew exterminated, maybes you will settle for all of them to be shipped out of Israel to somewhere else.
We’re all big boys and girls here, we can’t be shocked.
Just show us the respect of being honest and explain how you want it all to work out.
Run it up the flagpole, see who salutes. Expose your plans for assessment by us all.
How many years have you being banging on about Indy now? Yet you still lack the cojones to ever post what you really think and what you really want for us Scots. Alert readers really have to wonder why that is.
I wish I could believe in the good intentions of young Mr Greer… but like the young green supporter in my area, who boasts about taking the FlexiBus (electric, don’t you know) and ignores the fact that is charged overnight with a plug in diesel generator that uses 1.5 times the amount of fuel the modern diesel buses use for the same journeys.
So, cynic that I am, I suspect it has more to do with attempting to woo a large Asian vote in West Scotland political arena.
And I very much wish he was the only politician behaving in that manner. Alas, other parties suffer similar opportunists, who will bang that drum for their own fortunes.
It seems reasonable to me, that the word genocide can be used with integrity, since the ICJ had to carry out procedings with those charges being libeled. If the charge of genocide had no merit, it would have been dismissed without any formal hearing.
Man with blog has opinion.
Man with blog allows unrestrained free speech in blog comments section.
Commentators making use of free speech facility on a blog that is not theirs tell man he is not allowed to voice his own informed opinion on his own blog.
Commentators (probably) publicly reiterate from time to time their belief in free speech and often fulsomely thank man with blog for articles on blog and sometimes for the blog itself.
Except for today…
Furthermore, a lot of people BTL are showing a notable lack of self-awareness in their comments. Almost all of you have no influence on what happens, you just voice your opinion. That’s fine…obviously. One long-held and often-voiced opinion BTL was that Sturgeotti was completely closed off to other opinions from almost everybody else and this was universally deemed a bad thing. Yet here you all are…demanding uniformity in comments, shutting down alternative viewpoints, virtually crying real tears if someone doesn’t agree with you, some of you even seem to regard some viewpoints as ‘not valid’. Remind you of anyone…?
The educational function that BTL used to have is almost completely absent…which is why people give up on it eventually.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Ding! Ding!
Badger! Badger!
This is all because someone suggested that Andy Ellis’ mail order bride may not get a chance to vote NO in the IndyRef because she hadn’t been residents in Scotland long enough.
It comes up almost everyday.
I could be wrong but it seems Greer says A so man with blog says B.
Only Britnats think it’s perfectly acceptable to steal land that doesn’t belong to them.
Just because…
PMSL at male bride.
Oh, you said Mail.
You never know these days..
An indy blog surely isn’t on the side of illegal expansion & just killing the natives to make room for themselves..
Tell me it ain’t so…
Wait til Geri finds out what happened to the native peoples in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand.
Are we obliged to take all of the folk who settled there and their descendants back?
We better increase the house building programme a fair bit.
Daisy
“It seems reasonable to me, that the word genocide can be used with integrity, since the ICJ had to carry out procedings with those charges being libeled. If the charge of genocide had no merit, it would have been dismissed without any formal hearing.”
Well said.
My Venn diagram of opinions overlap with Craig Murray in a lot of areas and also with Stuart Campbell in a lot of areas. But it does not overlap with all of them in all areas all of the time.
So what. Both are good guys.
I spit venom at George Galloway, have told Craig to go fuck himself but on this topic especially I’d be listening to them.
Alastair Crooke is also excellent and Col Doug McGregor.
The shit storm of 77th brigade etc above is testament we are over the target here Stu.
But this is very dangerous territory and in it Galloway is a 6th dan black belt and Craig is not far behind… I am just saying you better be ready.
Maybe Balfour wasn’t the only worker for Rothschild.
Hitler seems to have had a very lucky political life.
His rise to power assisted by American money.
His little incursions into the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia indulged.
In fact, being an Austrian, he could have been deported anytime after the Munich Beer Hall putsch, but wasn’t.
Jan 30 1933 – Hitler appointed chancellor
March 1933 – Anti-Nazi boycott by Jewish groups and others worldwide
Aug 25 1933 – Haavara Agreement signed between Zionist Jews and Germany for the assisted emigration of Jews to Palestine.
All conveniently timed for getting people, who didn’t want to go live in a desert, to move.
Was John Main’s hero a Zionist?
Ellis
I’m well aware what happened.
That’s why it’s a Britnat thing. Ingrained at birth..
They’re entitled to everything that doesn’t belong to them & fck the natives. Burn them out. Seize their lands. Ship them off somewhere else. It’s all good sport.
Only it isn’t. There have been repeated resolutions violated. International laws broken. Yanks a law unto themselves. You Britnats just don’t play by the laws or rules of the game. Yer a happy wee fckwit standing shouting insults Fae behind the Yankies skirt. That doesn’t make you big & clever.
Wait until Genocide John discovers this is where asylum seekers come from. Destabilising whole regions in the quest to loot & pillage. Empire part two.
link to interactive.aljazeera.com
“My own Palestinian identity is affected by the undeniable fact that moving around so often can turn a sense loyalty or adherence to one culture into an abstract and unattainable concept. You become fragmented, unable to piece yourself together into a coherent whole, and unable to satisfy a craving for a strongly rooted, independent identity. And it is difficult to accept that you can have your own unique identity, unassociated with a flag or a specific set of norms.”
Stuart I have supported everything you have done for Scotland’s independence since the referendum campaign in 2014 and from the bottom of my heart I thank you for all of it. However I find your attitude regarding what many people call the unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people, to say the least, extremely disappointing and quite frankly nauseating. This is a personal opinion and others might feel differently, but my disappointment is profound. The SNP have made this last 10 years unbearably difficult for independence supporters and I have always, throughout that time, looked upon you as a light at the end of the tunnel. I fear that light has just been extinguished. the Palestinian people are fighting for their freedom and indeed their very existence. Who will fight for them?
As they used to say in Poland : “The jew cries out in pain, even as he strikes you”
the gaza “special military operation” is seeing about 70% civilian casualties; this is a very dirty war, almost as bad as in Korea – the americans flattened everything, not one brick lay on top of another brick, continued bombing the only purpose of which was – turn gravel into fine gravel.
a good middle eastern tear-up provides a useful comparative framework … – let us remember the amalekites. Who were the amalekites?
They attacked the chosen people on their way to the promised land, thus by the will of God, their only destiny was annihilation; it is forbidden to go easy, compromise, treat fairly, an amalekite.
Be careful if a jew calls you “amalek”.
link to motherjones.com
Getting biblical, awful people though they are, the jewish s3ttlers in palestine, show exactly what you need to do to beat a bigger opponent (lessons for us); they played a sophisticated, multi level, game, involving realpolitik, bribery, corruption, international lobbying, right down to politics, lawfare and at the bottom, terrorism.
Think of the genius of this – they have managed to make good on a 3000 year old “property deal” between imaginary persons, despite them (ashkenazis) having no genetic connection to the middle east, coming from the steppes. And they have made the entire world “suck on it”. They even make the British their cuckolds and b1tches, even though they did appalling acts of terrorism against them. Like hanging squaddies from trees … then sticking the landmine underneath them, so their rescuers would be blown up too; that jewish IQ is real high (- within 10 years of Israel’s formation they had the British stealing heavy water for them, and they made absolute fools of the British over Suez.)
And you see, in jewish morality, there was nothing wrong in this, for the goyim are mere animals, whose souls come from the 3 satanic spheres, their deaths represented a good for israel and thus an absolute good, entirely. Jews invented modern terrorism, and it works; they even dress it up in the language of game theory. “israel must be like a mad dog … ” and all that. Jews treat viciously anyone who they regard as a tr4itor; loyalty must be absolute, fanatical, and anyone who backslides, or even gets a bit “nuanced”, gets hit so hard they never do it again. Tell a jew his beliefs are “ancient guff”, see how much blood is spilt from your mouth. Jews, wonderful, awful, people. But they ain’t losers
Be the Jew. Don’t be a Pal. FFS – don’t be a pal.
Craig Murray @5:15
Quite right Craig, I’ve never read such a pile of bollox from Stu Campbell, and I’ve been reading his articles for years.
the Palestinian people are fighting for their freedom and indeed their very existence. Who will fight for them?
Bob, ah dinnae ken if ye ken this. But there are quite a lot of other Arab Muslims in the Middle East, place is hoaching wi them and they have plenty of young men who like a fight. Not including the millions of military aged Palestinians.
Scotland has a declining birthrate so war is not our business, cannae afford the youngsters.
Ah blame the telly by ra way
Know how in the 80’s, when the news was only on for 2 hours a day?
Millions of people didnae get hyper emotionally invested in foreign wars. Did they? Yer Da wasn’t greeting like a wumman over the Soviet Union’s totally legitimate war in Afghanistan. He wisnae flying wee flags to show off his goodthink, or sending messages tae other men scolding them for not feeling the correct feelings about (thing in the news).
But noo, their poor wee eyeballs are blasted 24/7 wi the fear and violence porn of the day. They think American presidential elections, border disputes in Eastern Europe and ethnic bloodlettings in the world’s oldest Battle Royale zone are things where they need tae pick a side and fly the wee flag. A murder could happen in their street, and they’d be on the internet raging about the murder of a guy in Siberia.
The world’s pishiest game of Red Rover.
Geri: “I could be wrong but it seems Greer says A so man with blog says B.”
Yip, which is quite funny on a certain cage-rattling level.
As for Ross Greer, anyone that says Churchill was a “white supremacist” and “mass murderer” has my admiration and I think it would be hard to construe that as someone simply trying to win friends.
Craig Murray
Ignored says:
23 February, 2024 at 5:14 pm
There are no shortage of good reasons to dislike Ross Greer, but you seem to have aimed in a very strange direction.
..
The Palestinians need to fight to survive. That is the way it is. There is no right and wrong here. That’ s bullshit. If they were supine they would have long gone. Hamas are as far as I understand a ruthless outfit. All Palestinian groups are fighting now. We can’t transfer our bullshit onto them or Israel for that matter. It is not our affair. I also hope the Palestinians survive. It wont be pretty,
Bob Costello
Ignored says:
23 February, 2024 at 10:37 pm
Stuart I have supported everything you have done for Scotland’s independence since the referendum campaign in 2014 and from the bottom of my heart I thank you for all of it. However I find your attitude regarding what many..
True. a clearer case of oppression you could not see, however . good causes win fuck all. They are fighting for their existence. We’ll have no input.
@Breeks upthread, when you mentioned Albania, with regard to the lack of coverage in the UK press about how Albanian organised crime groups run the cocaine trade in London from their base in a towerblock scheme there and instead print fawning pieces on its prime minister Edi Rama, for the last decade plus the role of freelance strategic advisor to him has been held by Alastair Campbell. Source Private Eye #1596.
With regard to Judaism it is a religion, ethnicity and culture. Claiming that those who are secular are not still invested in the ethnicity is a ruse. They are possibly the only demographic who have access to all three of those statuses, they can convert religious wise, see the current Moderator Of The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland, but they are still ethnically Jewish. No one would willingly give up the status of accuser, jury and judge which the purchase of political, academic, media, publishing and judicial capital has provided.
We are witnessing a struggle for ownership of nations across the West, in the UK Labour are accused of antisemitism whilst the Conservatives are accused of Islamophobia and the golem the Zionists have brought into the West to destroy Christianity has turned on them. In the middle of all of this white people are being written out of their own histories and dehumanised in preparation for the knackers yard.
This might make everybody laugh…
Despite all of the shenanigans outside the Scottish parliament, the student politics of our most illustrious list MSP, and the wide news coverage, the Wikipedia page for Ross Greer hasn’t been edited for ten days!
Literally no-one at all thinks this pound shop Che Guevara is worth an update of the digital age’s version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Now that’s got to hurt an inveterate attention-seeker on some level…
Ruby
Ignored says:
23 February, 2024 at 8:19 pm
I don’t fully understand what ‘The British’ were doing in Palestine and what right they had to give away land to the Jews…
The Balfour Declaration would not have possible without the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement, which arguably, instigated a century of murderous and acrimonious instability throughout the Middle East.
British and French colonialism colluding and conspiring to exploit and profit from the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in the shadow of WW1, but never letting wisdom get in the way of greed, self entitlement and deluded exceptionalism, and whole Middle East has been blighted ever since by direct and indirect consequence.
Breeks , succinct!
Surprised that in the comments section there has been no mention of the “latest” election results from 2006, some eighteen years ago. This was the first time Hamas won an election and they took full control of the country ( not without considerable violence). They have not organised any further elections since that time. Israel is in the wrong here but the Palestine Government are not democratic and I think this is why neighbouring Arab countries are reluctant to support the Palestinians.
Breeks @ 5:07 am
“British and French colonialism colluding and conspiring to exploit and profit from the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in the shadow of WW1, but never letting wisdom get in the way of greed, self entitlement and deluded exceptionalism, and whole Middle East has been blighted ever since by direct and indirect consequence.”
Aye Breeks, and that is really what the stushie in Westminster is about – the guilt of British-English Imperialism and the ongoing consequences of its brutal ideology and worthless values; which Scots aye endure, though need to discard, like all other ex colonies. Lats cast oot the colonial yoke in aw its mankit naitur.
@Breeks 5.07am
The “what ifs” of history are often more interesting than the quotidian reality. It’s impossible to tell of course how things would have turned out if the British and French hadn’t carved up the former Ottoman provinces in the middle east, if for example they’d been left to their own devices to establish independent states, which wouldn’t necessarily have looked anything like the current borders.
As one regular poster BTL here Turabdin has observed, there are other peoples in the area who have also endured decades, or indeed centuries, of injustice. Armenians (who know what a real genocide is when they experience it, unlike far too many armchair generals in the West today), Kurds, Assyrian Christians, Mandeans and the Jewish minorities across the Arab world.
What ever the sins of commission or omission of the former imperial masters, whether Ottoman, British or French, there’s no guarantee that a different outcome in 1918 would have delivered better outcomes either at the time or in the decades since.
@Iain Lawson 8.34am
The main reason neighbouring Arab countries are unwilling to open their borders is the example of Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. They (rightly) fear that the “heritable” status of Palestinian refugees will serve to make them a destabilising influence in their own already unstable countries.
Oppressive, authoritarian regimes in the Arab world have always preferred to keep the Palestinians who fled to their countries post 1949 in their place as second class non-citizens rather than integrate them as happens with most other situations of mass emigration, whether Greeks from Anatolia in the 1920’s or Germans from Eastern Europe post 1945.
The perpetual right of return is a non-starter, but has been weaponised as a useful way to keep Palestinians in their place for generations. As Rev Stu rightly observed, there is no possibility that the Israelis will accept Hamas as part of the solution as long as it persists with its maximalist aims, anymore than the Palestinians will accept Eretz Israel, or anything less than a “full-fat” two state solution.
Recent events would appear to make the prospects of a two state solution less likely rather than more, but nobody has yet come up with a more plausible resolution.
IAN LAWSON 08:34
Correct, I would go further «Palestinianism» is an aberration, a creation of the 20th century split up of the Ottoman imperium and the British mandate in the so called Holy Land, a territory about which Lloyd-George and Woodrow Wilson appear to have had a «religious» obsession.
The Arabs of the Levant have had largely mediocre leaders and governance. Among the former only Yassar Arafat came to realize the anti Jewish state theme was leading nowhere.
He recognized the ancient historic Jewish right to live in the region, not a tone set by HAMAS and its supporters in Tehran.
Understanding the Levantine question is more than a simple black hat v white hat situation. Historic realities and events and successive ethno-cultural occupations going back two thousand years have to be accommodated.
Too difficult for too many to grasp. That however is the entire Middle East in a nutshell, an ever shifting human sand in which «colonialists» over the centuries have attempted to mark with border lines.
John Mason is a member of the group: Building Bridges with Israel
“The purpose of the Group will be to engage with Israel and build links based on business, culture and academia as well as exploring and countering issues of anti-Semitism at home and abroad.”
Other members include: Jackson Carlaw, Fergus Ewing, Murdo Fraser, Jamie Greene, Rachael Hamilton, Paul O’Kane and Douglas Ross
link to parliament.scot
People can decide for themselves if MSPs should be building bridges with the state of Israel. Likewise, people can draw whatever conclusions from the words and actions of Ross Greer MSP.
Me? I just want the killing and cruelty to stop. I want people to live in peace and treat each other with kindness and compassion whatever race or religion they are or aren’t.
Holyrood is seat of colonial limited democracy, so despite it only being a Micky Mouse pretendy parliament, I don’t approve of it being used to host a reception for arms dealers: they can conduct their perfectly legal sordid business elsewhere.
@Iain Lawson 8.34am
Is this relevant to your remarks, Iain?
link to coppolacomment.substack.com
Victory for Humanity could sensibly mean stop this war, stop the killing to any sensible person.
I THINK that’s more likely the idea than obliterating Israelis.
Palestine is not Hamas either.
Palestine govt is not Hamas either, West Bank controlled by other entity.
Both sides crap, no denying.
Not sure this article is you’re finest. Just my opinion.
Why are you surprised? Do you expect everyone commenting here to know the entire history of the region?
What I’m not understanding is the point of this debate. What exactly is it you are trying to achieve?
Maybe I’m totally out of the loop because I never watch TV so am not caught up in the hysteria.
If I thought there was anything I could do to stop people being killed or to stop people killing I would do it.
I have no idea what Ross Greer was doing but I suppose like the outpouring of grief when Diana died he’s just keeping up with the trend.
As for the SNP they too are just just being trendy!
SAM
With the exception of Saudi Arabia, certain Gulf states and possibly Morocco there is not one arabophone state whose economy is truly «sound».
Why? Israel cannot be blamed for everything.
Is there something deep seated responsible for the malaise?
Lack of sense of a civic/civil society maybe?
Some of these issues go back before the colonial/Ottoman times.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Colin Alexander
You say:
Me? I just want the killing and cruelty to stop. I want people to live in peace and treat each other with kindness and compassion whatever race or religion they are or aren’t.
John Lennon was singing about that way back in 1971.
I’m not getting the disapproval about arms dealers.
Would you be expecting an iScotland to have no arms. I fail to see how you can have any form of military without arms.
Would you also expect iScotland to refuse any contracts to build warships.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
TURABDIN
I’m always disappointed with your answers.
You ask
Is there something deep seated responsible for the malaise?
but then give some wishy washy answer.
My answer would be religion. Everyone forced to be ‘good muslims’
Islam seems to have a very powerful hold of people in the middle east & elsewhere.
Coilin Alexander.
Thanks for the link.
The UN slammed Scottish Tories for visiting the occupied (Syrian) Golan Heights which has illegal Israeli settlements built upon it.
After this jaunt Jackson Carlaw set up the controversial cross-party group, Building Bridges with Israel, in reality it was set up to offer an alternative view to pro-Palestinian views, that dominated the Holyrood parliament in 1999.
The party also lodged a motion in Parliament calling for more direct flights between Scotland and Israel.
There are more Scottish politicians names in the link who went on the jolly to Israel.
Mossad agent Shia Masot and SNP bigwig Angus Robertson are good friends.
link to wikispooks.com
Israel is not a Jewish nation, it is a Zionist state illegally occupying the country of Palestine, victory for Palestine would be to not have its land taken by force, its people bombed indiscriminately. Victory would be having the right to exist. Zionism is evil, it states that they have the sole right to the land “from the river to the sea” a phrase first used by the Zionists. They are the Nazis, they are the ones implementing their “final solution” as the west looks on, even supplying the means to wipe out the Palestinians. Israel is destroying itself through its own actions. Greer is a side show.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Geri
England has moved into full dictatorship where there is absolutely no point in electing anyone. Just pass & decline shit without the bother of any pesky consultation or vote.
648 ornaments can just watch on as just two eejits run the entire shit show. Labour & Tory now on the same page of just ushering stuff through without the need for anyone else being there.
This has been coming since Labour did a Clintonian Triangulation under Tony Blair.
It seems people in England agree with you. The last couple of by-elections in England saw under 40% turn out.
What possible difference does it make to Scotland who is in power at Westminster?
You wrote
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Scotland never gave an inch of territory.
What about the transfer of 6,000 square miles of Scottish sea to England in 1999 and
the entire country in 1707
One of the main unresolved issues is we don’t actually know what happened on October 7. Were 40 babies beheaded or not? Were women raped and have their unborn children cut out of their wombs or not? How many concert goers were directly killed by Hamas and how many were killed in the crossfire or shot by Israeli gunships mistaking them for terrorists ….and so it goes on. Add to that that the Israeli Government have ‘justified’ their response by citing many of these stories which turn out to be extremely dubious.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Hatuey
So, a big thanks to Wings, thanks to Chris, and thanks to everyone who has helped draw attention to the subject. The more attention the subject gets, the more likely it is that people will find out the truth and something will be done.
Like what Hatuey?
What can Scotland do?
Greens help form the current Scottish
GovernmentAdministration of Devolved Powers since 2021.It’s fairly inevitable mega wealthy companies involved in the manufacturing of arms industry will visit the parliament building on occasion when said Administration hands them taxpayer funded grants.
From November last year.
“Questions over taxpayer funds given to Fife-based firm supplying Israel with weapons
US arms manufacturing giant Raytheon was handed £600,000 of public money as recently as last year.”
link to archive.is
RUBY 10:35
I challenge people by being oblique to find answers for themselves to these existential matters. I do not hold with spoon feeding my views to others. I sense you do have an inquiring mind.
Islam is a total worldview. It has no secular elements unlike most forms of Christianity and Judaism. There is no render to Caesar etc in Islam’s DNA.
It is ALL or NOTHING, you are with it or you are not. The dar al islam/ the Islamic world is a virtual parallel universe.
As a non Muslim quite steeped in Muslim culture by cultural osmosis I know from personal and family experience that toleration may be conditional. My Syriac Catholic parents, living in an Gulf state will fast during Ramadhan, a month coming soon, in respect to those friends and acquaintances who do. Socially, it makes life easier too and iftar, the breaking of the fast at sundown is a jolly family, communal affair with loads of great food to which all are, in theory, invited.
I have cousins who are Muslim. I love them, I even think they love «infidel» me!
If only the pattern were transferrable to other situations.
Hope that enlighten a little.
@turabdin
Ms Coppola, economist, says this and does not go back forever to trace it.I am not an economist but I can certainly see that the events listed could greatly harm the economy of Gaza.
Are you an economist? I sense more knowledge of history
“So it was the Palestinian civil war, coupled with Israel’s blockade, international sanctions and the suspension of aid, that pushed Gaza’s economy into the deep recession from which it has never really recovered.
And although everyone likes to blame Hamas, the real culprits are Israel and its international supporters, President Abbas, and Fatah. They are jointly responsible for Gaza’s terrible economic weakness and the dire state of the Palestinian economy as a whole. It’s hard to tell how effective Hamas would have been as a government if Israel and its supporters weren’t throttling Gaza’s economy and the USA wasn’t trying to stage a coup by proxy.”
Athanasius: spot on. Been saying this for years now. The hard left is a huge problem for every political party. It has all but destroyed the SNP, the vehicle for its post modernist/queer theory agenda. Independence, they do not want any time soon – or ever, really.
SAM
The HAMAS brief as expounded in its constitution, heavily influenced by the Hassan al Bana’s Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood, is antiJewish, not just anti Israel. All who are not Muslim, their version of it, are infidel enemies of God and his messenger the Prophet Muhammad.
Fairly in your face.
Not an economist, studying physics, but history, given my background is rather important to my «being» who I am.
I do not gloat about the real suffering of the citizens of Gaza. Iwas born in Iraq after the US deposed Saddam.
Jeezo, Lorna Campbell, the SNP “hard left”.
Accepting a fiscal settlement that hampers both redistribution and the economy. Hard left?
Embracing neoliberalism. Hard left?
What is “hard left”?
Sorry I’m no more enlighten than I was when you posted as Ottomanboi.
I’m still wondering what you are doing here.
Where do you suggest I go to find these answers?
Are you obliquely suggesting you do not know the answers and you are looking for posters on Wings to do the research for you.
Are you practicising being a teacher for when you might become one when you leave school in 6-10 years time?
Or maybe you are thinking of politics. Your answers so far would suggest you would fit in well in the political scene.
You may already be there and the things you have told us so far are all just ‘political spin’
But hey not to worry both Leche-cul Ellis & John Main are big fans.
Keep challenging and I will do likewise.
@Turabdin
I hold no brief for Hamas. Humanity is on the side of the suffering.Compassion.
OK I know what I need to do. I need to go and read ‘The Arab Mind’ by Raphael Patai.
That might help in my understanding of TURABDIN’s posts.
I noticed Raphael Patai also wrote ‘The Jewish Mind’ that might also be helpful.
I’ll put both those books on my list along with the entire history of the middle east.
Only kiddin’ I will just carry on concentrating on Scotland and the things the UK Gov get up to.
Just had a horrible thought. Could Scotland end up in the same position as Gaza in the event of us getting too carried away with ourselves and forming ‘terrorist’ groups in order to achieve independence?
The story starts with poll showing 99% support for Independence and ‘A ‘Scottish’ terrorist group’ planting a firework in the House of Commons.
British Army sent to Scotland to destroy ‘The Scottish terrorist group’
Scotland has no army so are helpless against the might of ‘The British Army’ & ‘The Scottish police’
(Scottish police take a break from their 10 year long investigation into Operation Break Fast to help the British Army)
30 years after this tragic event when Scotland is still stuck in the Union it is discover that there never was a ‘A ‘Scottish’ terrorist group’ The group was made up of a Scottish Tory politician who thought he would do all he could to save his precious Union.
What do you think so far could it be a best seller? Is it too scary should we just concentrate on the middle east and not think about Scotland.
Finally, a bit of balance on this topic. Nice change from the one sided dissolve Israel or Hamas are bad rhetoric most folk are punting everywhere.
Be nice if everyone could forget their dogmatic leanings & focus on sorting out their own country… And if we did that successfully, then we might even be able to have a constructive influence on other parts of the world.
1. Could you please put a link for the Hamas “article 13” quote.
2. Also a link for that quote antisemitism about not including criticism of Israel.
3. Often wondered why the “Jews” weren’t just given the entirety of Germany as their safe homeland after WWII (would have been the perfectly symmetrical and proportionate recompense), and then supported by the US UK and the rest in forcibly expelling the uncooperative residents of that land to somewhere else or constantly oppressing and killing them for 75 years, rather than needing to be given Palestine to do the same thing to the innocent people of that place.
And as a PS: Hamas, whilst the democratically elected government of Gaza, is not the only force defending Gaza from the… what’s the word… very big indiscriminate killing of pretty much everyone there based on their ethnicity. Various groups are defending the people of that place with force, just like you would if it was being dome to you.
RUBY
Re me, i am not an «Arab» though i do understand, more or less, being Arabic speaking the «Arabic» mind.
The common error in the west is too think everybody in the region from the Atlantic to the Arabian or Persian gulf is Arab. T. E Lawrence is one of many to blame for that.
My Egyptian muslim cousins who have ancestral Scots dna and are proud Egyptians, the Scots deriving from an adventurous unorthodox lady who settled in Cairo over hundred years ago, consider Arabs as those rich guys who live in Riyadh and environs.
Calling someone an «Arab» in Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon etc might be seen as condescending, but forgivable.
Have a good evening.
@Andrew F 2.44pm
So tell us, is every conflict situation which results in lots of deaths a genocide then? Does the death of tens of thousands of people in Uncle Vlad’s war count as genocide?
As for whether we’d be defending ourselves if someone was attacking us, I’m sure most would agree with you.
Where things might be a bit different is most of us wouldn’t have crossed the nearest border and killed 1800 people, kidnapped a few hundred more, and filmed it all on body cams so the folks back home could celebrate and dance in the streets about it.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
RUBY
Re me, i am not an «Arab» though i do understand, more or less, being Arabic speaking the «Arabic» mind.
You are not an Arab you are not a Muslim.
Let me guess you are an Irish Catholic.
Is that correct?
You could have stopped me guessing by just telling me what you are instead of wasting time telling me all about your Egyptian Muslim cousins.
Whether I would have believed you is another matter.
Like Andy Ellis I think you are a hoot!
Are you now telling me because you speak Arabic you are an expert on Arabic thinking. If you are not an Arab why the interest in the Arab World with regard to knowing yourself/your history.
Would you not be better looking at the history of Ireland?
Calling someone an «Arab» in Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon etc might be seen as condescending, but forgivable.
I can’t envisage any situation where I would call anyone an Arab in Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon.
Hey Arab can you tell me where the train station is?
Is there something wrong with being an Arab or being called an Arab?
All the ‘Arabs’ in France are called ‘Algerians’ and all the Arabs in Spain are called Moroccans. No idea what the Catholic Arabs
from Dublin are called.
RUBY.
I attempt to be nice, but you are one ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, maybe racist self opinionated person. I shall not bother you again.
God Help Scotland if you are representative.
You may need to try harder to be nice. No idea what caused such an outburst. Maybe you are ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, racist self opinionated, misogynistic and a bloody liar.
What do you mean maybe racist? I am white, white, white therefore definitely racist. Yes 100% racist, extremely bigoted also totally transphobic. I am so bigoted I would like to see a world without any religion and am so transphobic I want the GRA 2004 repealed for there to be zero sex changes and the wearing of woman face to be made a hate crime.
I don’t represent Scotland and I would prefer if someone other than God could come along to help Scotland.
God isn’t doing much to help the people of Gaza or Israel.
@Turabdin 7pm
RUBY.
I attempt to be nice, but you are one ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced, maybe racist self opinionated person. I shall not bother you again.
God Help Scotland if you are representative.
Interesting to see the usual suspects increasingly being exposed for what they truly are. Issues like Gaza are good for that, they expose the unprincipled, the extremists, the just plain mentalists. No huge surprise you’ve finally got that ones number Turabdin: better late than never!
Oh Andy you are a hoot!
Take care you are drifting into what Stu refers to as ‘fuckin’ playground shit’
It would probably be better if you got back to posting about the franchise.
Stop encouraging ‘Turabdin’ he’s already had to change his user name.
You should advice against posting ‘personal abuse’.
Glad to know I’m one of the ‘Usual Suspects’
‘The Usual Suspects’ are the best.
I am mental. Totally mental. It’s great very liberating.
I am also all the things listed in Turabdin’s post.
I do fluff my pillows so yes I am also a fluffer.
I have had almost nothing to say about Gaza or Israel but I won’t mind if you decide I am a foul mouthed ‘Hamas fluffer’ like all the other ‘Brilliant Usual Suspects’
‘Hamas stands for the obliteration of Israel’.
Hmm. Doesn’t sound very good. But hang on…
Netan-Yahoo (sic*) doesn’t just ‘stand for’ the obliteration of Palestine and Palestinians, he’s actively DOING THE OBLITERATION.
So you have to either take sides, or use force/sanctions/diplomacy/everything including your kitchen sink and Russia washing-machine chips ** to stop the violence.
* ref Gulliver’s Travels
** to quote Ursula Von Der Liar.
The problem is many people confuse anti-zionist with anti-semitism.
The current government in Israel is absolutely zionist and the brutal illegal occupation of Palestine which has been going on for 75yrs must be ended and the zionists removed from power and not only in Israel but also America and the UK where zionists control both the governments and the opposition.
Hamas are Palestinians who were born in the largest concentration camp in the world with no past, no present and no future and who’s every second of life is controlled by the zionists.
I can say hand on heart if I were a Palestinian citizen I’d also be Hamas.
I stand 100% with Gaza and all of Palestine and I believe wholeheartedly that just as the world had to come together to destroy Nazis the same must happen again with zionism.
I’d like to hear the answer to that one myself.
link to twitter.com
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Why was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered the directorship of the company that stores the data of the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, Ministry of Defence, and even the NHS?
“Greer also described a victory for Palestine as a “victory for humanity”, which can only sensibly be held to mean that Israel is not included in “humanity”.
The jews in Israel might be free to live in Palestine and have all their human rights protected after the victory of Palestine. That would be a victory for humanity. How do we know what Hamas’s policy is?
There are other groups fighting for Palestine, including a Marxist one so I expect they would be for equality.
I think it is safe to say that Israelis and Palestinians hate each other with a fierce intensity that it seeps out to the rest of the world inflaming anyone watching, causing divisions. However, that does not give bawheid Ross an excuse to make a right twat of himself or our democracy. All his actions do is highlight the double standards and hypocrisy of Holyrood and ScotGov when seen alongside those of John Mason.
With so much hate on both sides, and each seeking the destruction of the other, due to the imbalance of fighting power and the current levels of death and destruction across Gaza, I’m fast coming to the conclusion that neither side is deserving or indeed capable of having or running their own state. As the days pass and the death toll continues to rise I cannot help but think it’s time for a neutral body to step in and take over, a kind of British Protectorate 2.0 as it were, but not the British or Americans. If they can’t let each other live in peace then maybe they need to be taken in hand and shown how.
All I know is the death and destruction cannot go on much longer and the world needs to do something to stop either side achieving their desired outcome. Humanity and world peace are at stake now.
On stated positions of Israel, there are a few in here:
link to twitter.com
airchie
says:
23 February, 2024 at 1:56 pm
Is that article 13 from the 1988 Hamas charter, or the 2017 revision?
No, Airchie, this truly DREADFUL article doesn’t refer to the revisions. Which are well known of.