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I struggle with this war knowing that Israel’s intelligence is superior to most combined with Netanyahu being protested 8 months prior due to manipulation of the media among other things.

There are no words to describe the atrocities that Hamas committed which are truly fitting.

But in the same breath logically I know that tunnel warfare will not be an easy undertaking.

Being mortified that AI systems are used to pinpoint bombing locations, I am perplexed on why those same systems didn’t fetter out the tunnels prior of which were a known problem.

Why weren’t the tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt boarder ever addressed knowing that they were funding Hamas economically for years. The same tunnels are sparsely mentioned.

These are questions that I have that are constantly rolling back & forth in my mind.

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I feel compelled to share something. I heard the news of the atrocities and attacks by Hamas early on Sunday the 8th which is the day before Canadian Thanksgiving. Our family attended mass where we heard 'not a single mention' of the attacks during the prayers of the faithful. It was shocking because during the Responsorial Psalm, Israel was mentioned, which is not something chosen by the priest that day, at least I don't think so, it was coincidental. Anyway, it's surprising because they mentioned what was happening in Ukraine weeks before it happened and throughout the take over of Crimea. They also mentioned the terrorist attack on a Catholic mass at a University in the Philippines. It took a week before they mentioned anything and by then they were referring to both Israel and Gaza. I wondered if they were told not to mention it that first day. The second part of my story is that I now keep seeing by leftists in my instagram feed say that the Government in Canada should stop putting up Christmas trees and act like nothing is happening in Gaza or something like that. But nobody said, hey let's not have Turkey on Thanksgiving because of what happened in Israel. I guess what I am saying is that I noticed immediately that there was no moment of condemnation toward Hamas immediately after even though, I was in shock at the brutality of the attacks. I am getting annoyed by the social media platforms because people think they are experts about things and unfortunately I follow the left because I follow mostly artists and generally speaking they are all captured by ideology. I have yet to meet any that are nuanced about anything.

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This is indeed concerning. Without taking a stance on the war itself, I was troubled by the speed at which progressives chose to identify with Palestine. This was quickly followed by an exclusive focus on the actions and potential actions of Israel. All this before they had even responded.

The only explanation is the oppressor-victim script is so well embedded it dominates all that they see. They have been accused of that for a long time, and this seems like proof.

I do not believe most of the people i have seen cheering on Palestine or Hamas have anything like a well thought out position. I do think they are just superimposing a convenient conflict over a deeper belief system of wealthy, white oppressors hammering poor brown people. I suspect it is that basic.

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Outstanding piece

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Thank you so much, Yul! And for your support.

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🙏🙏🙏

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Hi Katherine - thanks for this piece, some of which I agree with (although I think that a lot of the evidence you provided is hand picked and not beyond reproach). However, I also think a lot of it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. There’s a fog of war - what we do know is that close to 20,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, thousands more will be and that 75% of Gazans have been displaced.

Of course the Hamas attack was barbaric - but I think where you miss the wider point is that you can’t use it to retro-justify the behaviour of the Israeli state over the last 75 years and you can’t use it to justify what they are doing now.

Otherwise it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy - a dystopian real life version of Minority Report whereby you justify the oppression of the Palestinians because of what you think they might do. As Ilan Pappé is fond of saying ‘the argument is on one side what might have happened and, on the other, what did.’

Oct 7th was an awful atrocity and those responsible should be held responsible. But Oct 7th does not justify 2021 or 2018 or 2014 or 2008 or 2006 et al. and that’s what people are upset about.

You’re making this into a binary issue when it clearly isn’t. Was it a greater atrocity than when 1,200 Palestinians were executed in Khan Yunis in 1956? How many of those who hadn’t heard of the Holocaust had heard of the Nakba?

It is perfectly logical to have two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time. One can both see Palestinians as oppressed and disagree with the methodology and ideology of Hamas.

That shouldn’t complicated. And, by falling into that trap, one removes any ability to emphasise with the ‘other side’ and this leads to fundamental attribution error. And, from someone who has lived in the region for the best part of 20 years, I can tell you that the Middle East desperately needs our empathy right now.

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It is truly horrendous! I cannot believe the antisemitism in USA today. Something is very SICK in our culture and it scares me. I wish more jewish people would fight back harder. I see many of them folding to the progressive left even now...

I wrote about confusing a power compass with a moral compass in this short post. https://arrivalsanddepartures.substack.com/p/pyrrhic-victories

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And the one person the supposedly rational left like Blinken & Co. wants to head up Gaza “the day after” is none other than Abu Mazen- who wrote his doctoral dissertation denying the Holocaust.

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Thank you for this.

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Quite a damning indictment of Hamas as a bunch of psychotic thugs, and of Palestinians and Muslims in general. Though in many ways it is an indictment of all of us, at least to some degree. But one seriously hopes that the atrocities committed by Hamas will cause some reassessment of support for them among the Muslim world.

However, not to (overly) play the blame game, the "but, but ..." game, and as I put it in a recent response to one of your Notes, Jewish terrorism has been a thing, and for more than a few millennia:

https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-45398112

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_extremist_terrorism

Moot the extent to which the pots are blacker than the kettles, the extent to which the rest of us are entitled to say "a pox on both your houses". You may wish to reflect on Mordecai Richler's "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" where he -- from a hazy recollection of having read it some 50 years ago -- argued that the Jews were a rather "stiff-necked bunch":

https://archive.org/details/AishKodeshMay92013ParshaBamidbar

Moot also the ramifications of that outlook. But while I'll cheerfully concede, with Huxley and Balfour, that the Western world has something of a moral and philosophical debt to much of Judaism, that really shouldn't be seen as a get-out-of-jail-free card:

https://www.balfour100.com/resources/balfour-declaration-the-basics-2/

https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE4/

You may also wish to reflect on Philip Wylie's "Generation of Vipers" which provides something of a more or less accurate review of the roots of that conflict, much of which turns on the various genocidal atrocities committed by Jews themselves:

Wylie: “There is this same anti-Semitism in America. I hear the swirl and mutter of it around me in restaurants, at clubs, on the beach, in Washington, in New York, and here at home. No basis exists for the statements that accompany it in any measurable fact. ....

The so-called ‘case against the Jew’ is the case against humanity. The fault of the Jew is the fault of mankind. But it happens that, in every large nation, there exists a minority of Jews who have carefully maintained their separate identity. To ascribe to them the faults of common man—and to them solely—furnishes a convenient alibi for common man, whose doting vanity has now got him in such shape that he can bear neither to continue as he is nor to look at himself for the reasons of his course. ....

The Jews, beyond all men until the Nazis, carried that particular vanity [of racial superiority] to its outermost excess—the segregation of themselves from the rest of humanity, into a ‘superrace.’ Their vainglorious beginnings are traceable in the Old Testament. Under Joshua, and others, they rolled over the Near East, burning cities, leveling them, sowing salt in the ruins, carrying away the woman for concubines, and putting the males to death. If you will take the trouble to read the Talmud, you will find that the orthodox Jews had a code (which they practice no more than we do the villainous codes of our Old Testament) whereby there was even a separate morality for Jews. It was necessary for them to be honest and decent only with each other. ....” [pgs. 82-86]

https://vultureofcritique.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/philip-wylie-generation-of-vipers.pdf

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Dec 15, 2023Edited
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If you think my Wikipedia citation was "weak", you might try reading some other ones in the same vein:

https://substack.com/profile/21792752-steersman/note/c-45465687

As for Wylie, you might try reading the whole chapter if not the whole book, at least the section from which those quote snippets came.

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Dec 15, 2023
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🙄 "Don't confuse me with facts, my 'mind' is made up", amirite? 🙄

You're misinterpreting what Wylie has said; you're judging a book -- just a section, in fact -- by its cover, by a very abbreviated quote.

You're just engaging in some "virtue signalling" -- a hallmark of the Woke if I'm not mistaken ...

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Dec 15, 2023Edited
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🙄 You're reading between the lines of what I'd quoted of Wylie.

And "Woke" is a tribe, not a deity ...

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Perpetrating an atrocity upon us that would naturally take months to investigate and that would inevitably lead to panic and inexact reports, and then using the confusion over exactly how many decapitated babies there are to discredit us, was a brilliant move. Terrorists will be copying that one world over.

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😢

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Kat - I thought this was really good. I admire your tenacity. You wrote this without hate and that’s rare. It’s not hateful to confront those who did wrong. There were no apologetics, which has been rare as well. By focusing on that moment, its horrors, its victims, and its place in the historic record, this, to me, is one of the best pieces I’ve read about October 7 since, well, October 7th. ❤️

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Thank you so much for your words.

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You’re welcome 🤗

I hope you’re doing okay. Between Ukraine and now this, it seems like it’s been a pretty rough time. You’re throwing some pretty powerful punches in some fights you probably never expected to be in.

Please know that there are people in your corner - even if you don’t always see us.

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So very true. Never expected any of this. Appreciate knowing there are people in my corner. You're right, I don't always know and it means a lot to me.

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