Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Response to Biden

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    I know the President has the best of intentions, but he cannot wish away the reality that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians have repeatedly made it clear that they support Hamas and approve of the October 7th massacre and consider it justified “resistance”. Even those who are critical of Hamas, are not critical of the ideology of “From the River to the Sea” that bred Hamas and legitimized October 7th. There are few courageous Palestinian voices that are indeed critical of the entire ideological infrastructure of “From the River to the Sea”, but they themselves will tell you how rare they are.

    Any path to peace must rest on a clear-eyed recognition of the reality and the steps needed to address it. This means confronting the ideology of no Jewish state anywhere “From the River to the Sea”. This is an illegitimate ideology that has been built on a singular obsession with the idea of Jewish sovereignty and a century long multi-front effort to prevent and then undo a Jewish sovereign state in any part of the land where Jews had their previous sovereignties.

    All societies and ideologies that became obsessed with the Jewish state and its undoing, with “Antizionism”, who have flocked the collaborate with and expand and globalize the Palestinian cause of no Jewish state – whether they were the Nazis in the 1930’s and 40’s, the Pan-Arabists of the 1950’s and 60’s, the Soviets of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, the Sunni Jihadists of the 1990’s and early 2000’s – have all found themselves in the dustbin of history. That is because Antizionism and an obsession with the collective Jew is always, but always, the mark of failed societies ideologies.

    There is a path to peace, and it is based on the deep transformation of the Palestinian ethos away from destruction and toward construction, away from the mistaken notion of the Jews as foreigners in this land, and toward the Abrahamic understanding of Jews as belonging in the land, and of Zionism as the realization of the millennia long connection between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland.

    This may be a tall order. It may be challenging. There is no guarantee it can be achieved. But one thing is guaranteed: wishing reality away and failing to confront it will definitely not lead to peace.

  • What Hamas say

    Just to be clear:

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  • Hamas propagandists in Britain

    There's the hard left, of course, and then there's the other side of this toxic mix:

    Sir William Shawcross, who reviewed the government’s counter-extremism programme last year, said the failings of the Prevent scheme had allowed Hamas supporters to intimidate MPs.

    He said: “I am now seriously concerned that Prevent is simply failing to challenge the pro-Hamas campaign that is running riot on our streets. In my review I explicitly warned the government that the UK Hamas support network urgently had to be confronted. Yet since then, the problem has been left to worsen.

    “Prevent should use all available means to disrupt Hamas propagandists in Britain. In the current climate, Islamist ideology is being left to capture the hearts of young people. This poses a grave danger to our country.”…

    A number of MPs have expressed concerns about their safety and warned that threats from “Islamist extremists” were stifling democracy.

    The Conservative MP Andrew Percy criticised the police for allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to project the slogan “from the river to the sea” onto the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, on Wednesday night. He said: “That message says no Jew is welcome in the state of Israel or in that land. This is going to continue happening because we’re not dealing with it.” [see here – MH]

    Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, said: “We have allowed our streets to be dominated by Islamist extremists, and British Jews and others to be too intimidated to walk through central London week after week. Now we’re allowing Islamist extremists to intimidate British members of parliament. It has to stop.”

  • Defining genocide

    Douglas Murray:

    By every measure, what is happening in Gaza is not genocide. More than that – it’s not even regionally remarkable.

    Hamas’s own figures – not to be relied upon – suggest that around 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October. Most of the international media likes to claim these people are all innocent civilians. In fact, many of the dead will have been killed by the quarter or so Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that fall short and land inside Gaza.

    Then there are the more than 9,000 Hamas terrorists who have been killed by the Israel Defence Forces. As Lord Roberts of Belgravia recently pointed out, that means there is fewer than a two to one ratio of civilians to terrorists killed: ‘An astonishingly low ratio for modern urban warfare where the terrorists routinely use civilians as human shields.’ Most western armies would dream of such a low civilian casualty count. But because Israel is involved (‘Jews are news’) the libellous hyperbole is everywhere.

    For almost 20 years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, we have heard the same allegations. Israel has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza during exchanges with Hamas in 2009, 2012 and 2014. As a claim it is demonstrably, obviously false. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the population of the Strip was around 1.3 million. Today it is more than two million, with a male life expectancy higher than in parts of Scotland. During the same period, the Palestinian population in the West Bank grew by a million. Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are uniquely bad at it. Which is it? Well, when it comes to Israel it seems people don’t have to choose. Everything and anything can be true at once….

    I often wonder why this obsession arises when the war involves Israel. Why don’t people trawl along our streets and scream by their thousands about Syria, Yemen, China’s Uighurs or a hundred other terrible things? There are only two possible conclusions.

    The first is a journalistic one. Ever since Marie Colvin was killed it became plain that western journalists were a target in Syria. Not eager to be the target, most journalists hotfooted it out of the country. Some who didn’t fell into the hands of Isis. Israel-Gaza wars by contrast do not have the same dynamic and on a technical level the media can applaud itself for reporting from a warzone where they are not the target.

    But I suspect it is a moral explanation which explains the situation so many people find themselves in. They simply enjoy being able to accuse the world’s only Jewish state of ‘genocide’ and ‘Nazi-like behaviour’. They enjoy the opportunity to wound Jews as deeply as possible. Many find it satisfies the intense fury they feel when Israel is winning.

    Jews now seem to function as surrogate whites – über-whites – for many on the left. The historical situation is irrelevant: that over half the Jews in Israel are as dark as the Arabs, lived for generations in North Africa and the Middle East and have no connection to Europe; that Israel is the ancestral home of the Jews, who lived there thousands of years before the Arabs arrived. None of that matters. It's all about contorting the history to squeeze it into some kind of colonialist narrative, with Jews as whites, but other whites, so the self-hatred and historic guilt is happily and enthusiastically directed towards this other group – Jews! What delight to be be able to turn all that self-hatred against the very people who've historically been persecuted more than any other, and to use the Holocaust against the Jews. All the vicious old antisemitic tropes given an exciting new frisson of righteous anger. 

    The fact that Hamas has openly proclaimed its goal of killing all the Jews, and that the slogan "from the river to the sea" calls for the destruction of Israel – ie genocide – just adds another layer of irony.

  • Trans judge resigns

    Ah the tragedy:

    Britain’s only transgender judge has resigned, claiming that she cannot remain on the bench “in a dignified way” and that she risks making the judiciary political.

    Victoria McCloud, a High Court judge, has told the senior judiciary that she is quitting because “I am now political every time I choose where to pee” and that she has become “a target”….

    McCloud, an Oxford University graduate, said the rise of the “gender critical” movement — which holds to what she acknowledges is the “uncontroversial notion” that a person cannot alter their biological sex — has also meant that she can be referred to as a man, despite being legally female.

    She argues that as a result, “it has been open season on me and others”. The judge, who will formally stand down in April, added that she feels that “the dignity of the court as well as personal dignity is at stake”.

    In the letter, McCloud refers to Rosa Parks, the black US civil liberties campaigner. “Rosa Parks’ choice of seat was political because of the colour of her skin,” McCloud said, adding: “More prosaically, for me I am now political every time I choose where to pee. Less prosaically, the judiciary by continuing to let me be a judge is now at risk of being political.”

    Hmm. Rosa Parks couldn't help being black. McCloud chose to transition. 

    Not exactly the victim, anyway, as noted here:

    Victoria has already been politicising the judiciary, having been on the committee that updated the Equal Treatment Bench Book. This is the document which leads courts to refer to people by their pronoun of choice, and is why rape victims are being asked to refer to their rapists in court as she. It leads to newspapers, when they report such cases, also using preferred pronouns, rendering many newspaper articles indecipherable. Victoria should never have tried to be both a trans rights activist and a judge, and this decision is welcome.

    Also:

    Mccloud

    Confusion on confusion. No, gender critics do not believe that gay people are sinful. No, gender identity is most certainly not a biological characteristic….

    And it's you on the way out, not the gender critical movement.

  • Behind Blue Eyes

    A project for Ukrainian kids, Behind Blue Eyes gives old-style disposable cameras to children at the frontline of the Russian invasion who've seen their villages and their lives devastated.

    After a week, the cameras are returned to the volunteers, who then publish them and collect rewards for the young photographers from their wishlists.

    So far, more than 2,500 photos have been taken by over 1,350 children who live on the front line in liberated villages. These include 17 villages that endured the brunt of the invasion and have been transformed the most. Over 200 dreams have been fulfilled by the wishlist scheme, with hopefully many more set to come true soon….

    Speaking about her experiences working on the project, Behind Blue Eyes team member Liliia Sosnytska says she was struck by how people in the region were processing their experiences. "Every child has their own trauma story, even if they don't think about it that way," she reveals.

    "Little Sabrina told us about how her father was kidnapped by the invaders and tortured, how there were lots of Russian soldiers in the village, and how they captured and destroyed the village buildings. The child talked about it calmly, without any sadness, while we walked along the village of Bobrovyi Kut, holding hands and watching the sunset."…

    As for the project's future, Behind Blue Eyes PM Nataliia Sosnytska says they have a lot of work ahead of them. "We want to test different educational and cultural formats of working with children," she says. "We believe creativity and support can be the key to unlocking any child's potential. Someday, we will open an educational institution where children learn to turn their boundless energy and creativity into real things.

    "Nothing is better than giving children a good education and the opportunity to create because they are the country's future. We managed to see during these years of war that, despite everything, our children can show their talent under favourable conditions and with support, even after experiencing terrible pain. We must create a place that can give and multiply this experience because they deserve it."

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  • “I actually feel safer in Israel than I do in this country at the moment”

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  • Protesting Hamas in Gaza

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    Northern Gaza Today: Civilians in Northern Gaza who are experiencing famine-level starvation have for over two days been protesting against Hamas, blaming the group for their misery and suffering and calling out Yahya Sinwar & Ismail Haniyeh. Hamas units repeatedly shot at those hungry people who are marching in Jabaliya with empty pots and plates to intimidate and disperse them.

    Additionally, the group launched attacks against Israeli ground units today in the Zeitoun neighborhood in southern Gaza City. It published propaganda videos of the attacks and IDF helicopters evacuating casualties on Al Jazeera Arabic to re-energize the "spirits of resistance." Hamas is also hoping to draw IDF ground units back into Gaza to weaken potential protests and ensure that the IDF allocates resources in the north instead of amassing troops for an offensive against Rafah in the south. Some sources suggest that Hamas has re-organized remnants of its decimated battalions in the north and is once again trying to maintain a cohesive presence that could threaten the Israeli military and engage in a long-term insurgency, while ensuring continued control of the population.

    Hamas is absolutely counting on famine and widespread hunger to create political pressure on Israel & ensure that Gazans are too weak to challenge the group's authority. That's why it's crucial to get large quantities of food into the north as soon as possible through airdrops to guarantee that the population doesn't starve. It is vital to foil Hamas's designs to hide behind widespread famine, which is inevitable at this point, in large part due to Israel's blocking of food supplies/trucks going into the besieged City. Nevertheless, it is shameful that the @WFP halted deliveries of food into the north at a time when the need is the greatest and didn't publicly and diplomatically push for continued access to Gaza.

  • China hypocrisy

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  • Neither the babies nor the truth matter any more

    The row over male milk for babies rumbles on. Mary Wakefield:

    Over the weekend a letter came to light written recently by a Dr Rachael James in her role as medical director of Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. In this letter, Dr James insisted that the milk a man can sometimes induce is just as good for babies as their biological mother’s breast milk. They’re both ‘human milk’, says Dr James, and therefore ‘ideal food for infants’. She includes in her letter, by way of proof, a link to the WHO page on the subject of breastfeeding.

    Dr James is engaging here in a truly ballsy bit of subterfuge. Yes, the WHO says that breast milk is best, but it’s referring only to ordinary breast milk produced by actual women. It makes no mention of man milk. But Dr James knows that. She’s a senior consultant in the NHS and there’s not a chance she doesn’t also know that the milk produced by a baby’s biological mother is by far its best bet. Unlike man milk, a mother’s milk at first contains colostrum, which has all the antibodies, antioxidants and nutrients a newborn needs and it changes magically, in response to the needs of a child. No man has ever produced colostrum, hard as he pumps, nor anything like enough milk to feed a baby.

    But Dr James’s really unforgivable omission is not to mention that domperidone, the drug used to induce lactation, might well be unsafe for a child. Domperidone has not been licensed for use in America because of concerns that it causes heart problems. Trans activists can insist till they’re blue in the hair that the small amounts of domperidone in chest milk are unlikely to harm a baby, but they just don’t know. Dr James hasn’t a scooby doo whether the milk she advocates is safe for babies. So what in God’s name does she mean when she calls it ‘ideal’?

    In all studies cited, much is made of the ‘affirmation’ a trans woman (man) feels when he’s allowed to breastfeed. It helps with his dysphoria, we’re told. There must be some official NHS document that shows how to weigh the brief satisfaction of a trans woman against the possibility of lifelong harm to an infant. I’d love to see it….

    On Monday night, the BBC chose to discuss the man-milk affair with a young woman called Kate Luxion, an unqualified ‘trainee lactation consultant’ and a researcher at UCL. With a composed and serious expression, Luxion insisted that not only was man milk safe, but ‘studies’ had actually found that a trans woman’s milk contained more nutrients than the milk of a baby’s mother. The presenter nodded happily along. Nod, nod, smile, smile. Yep, sounded right to her.

    The BBC didn’t think it necessary to quiz the trainee consultant, to examine the study she cited or to ask how it could possibly be true that trans milk is actually suddenly more nutritious than the milk from a biological mother. Neither the babies nor the truth matter any more.

    For more detail see Milli Hill's thorough debunking. The expert so credulously interviewed by the BBC, Kate Luxion, is a "non-binary/genderqueer postgraduate researcher studying at University College London with a focus on LGBTQ+ reproductive health and parenting", and not a qualified expert on lactation. No, the one study cited did not show that trans milk is actually more nutritious than mother's milk, but it's clearly the ideological line the Beeb is happy to run with. Yay, trans women – men – are better than women, even at producing baby milk.