HEROES, VILLAINS, THE END OF THE WORLD

and certainty is the last refuge of the fool

This is a catch up with apologies. I’ve been down for the count with something nasty during this week when the world is aflame. No sooner had I delivered our current podcast starring the one and only Graham Linehan, a brilliant British screenwriter, still standing after five years of attacks, abuse and deplatforming — and the Middle East explodes.

I have something to say about that - but first I welcome your comments on Graham’s interview. Excerpts from his book, Tough Crowd ran in the Daily Mail. You must read it and if you can manage it — perhaps buy a copy as he has lost everything over his valiant defense of women and children against dangerous trans ideology.

It would seem the latest, trademarked Current Thing for the informationally hypnotized is either blind support for Hamas no matter how grim the images coming out of Israel or clapping while Israel embarks on a mission that could wipe Gaza off the map, sending yet another generation of Palestinians into refugee camps. There, I’ve said it. Now both sides can hate me.

Let me state my views up front so there is no confusion: the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are a grotesque and era-ending monstrosity that needs a response. That response must be thoughtful, proportional and avoid punishing Palestinian civilians but I fear that train has left the station. When you can find them, the images already coming from Gaza are awful.

The photos and video of Hamas kidnapping Israelis, especially the ones of young women are horrific and have given me nightmares. Many have been murdered in terrible ways and I understand why Israelis and diaspora Jews are feeling emotional and terrified.

Protests in support of the Hamas horrors reveal much about both our immigration system and the stupidity of a postmodern-focussed university education. There is plenty to protest on behalf of the Palestinians but this is not the time. A round of applause in our House of Commons for a Nazi explains why virtually every Jew I know, regardless of commitment, is on edge right now.

Meanwhile world leaders who are polling badly, including Benjamin Netanyahu, our own prime minister and Joe Biden, have discovered there is an uplift for all sinking political boats during war time.

They are declaring unwavering support with no public plea for temperance. (update- since I wrote that Blinken has urged caution). Again, I believe Israel is the aggrieved party and denounce all that happened — but there is no such thing as a free pass in war time. American troops have been convicted of war crimes and sent to prison for shooting Iraqi civilians who didn’t report the planting of insurgent IEDs. How is this different than killing civilians in Gaza under the rubric that Hamas uses them as shields? Various Israeli officials, including one who appeared on Channel Four, justified it on security grounds.

We should be worried, given the self-serving bent of our elected officials, that they would blindly march us into World War 3 — if it means upping their polling numbers. And of course they will manipulate us through fear to get there.

Seymour Hersh has a new piece with inside info on why Israel was vulnerable and predicts that the minute the shooting stops, Netanyahu will be ousted. It is a shocking tale.

The most important thing I needed to understand, the Israeli insider told me, is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is finished. He is a walking dead man. He will stay in office only until the shooting stops . . . maybe another month or two.” He served as prime minister from 1996 until 1999 and again, as leader of the right-wing Likud Party, from 2009 to 2021, returning for a third stint in late 2022. “Bibi was always opposed to the 1993 Oslo Accords,” the insider said, which initially gave the Palestinian Authority nominal control over both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When he returned to office in 2009, the insider said, “Bibi chose to support Hamas” as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority, “and gave them money and established them in Gaza.” 

……The attack by Hamas was a direct result of a decision Bibi made, over the protest of local military commanders, “to allow a group of Orthodox settlers to celebrate Sukkot in the West Bank.” Sukkot is an annual fall holiday that commemorates the ancestral journey of Jews into the depths of the desert. It is a weeklong festival that is observed by building an outdoor temporary structure known as a sukkah in which all could share the food that their predecessors ate and viscerally connect to the harvest season. 

The request came at a time of extreme tension over another West Bank incident in which Jewish settlers, according to the Associated Press, “rampaged through a flashpoint town” on October 6 and killed a 19-year-old Arab male. The youth’s death, the AP report added, “marked the latest in a surge in Israeli-Palestinian fighting that so far has killed nearly 200 Palestinians this year—the highest yearly death toll in about two decades.”

The Sukkot celebration, held near a Palestinian village known in Hebrew as Haware, would need extraordinary protection, given the tension over the latest violence, and the local Israeli military authorities, with the approval of Netanyahu, ordered two of the three Army battalions, each with about 800 soldiers, that protected the border with Gaza to shift their focus to the Sukkot festival. 

“That left only eight hundred soldiers,” the insider told me, “to be responsible for guarding the 51-kilometer border between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel. That meant the Israeli citizens in the south were left without an Israeli military presence for ten to twelve hours. They were left to fend for themselves. And that is why Bibi is finished. May take a few months, but he is over.”

The insider called the attack in southern Israel “the great military failure in Israeli history” and pointed out that “only soldiers were killed in the ’73 war”—the surprise attack on Yom Kippur in which Israel was briefly overrun by Egyptian and Syrian troops. “Last Saturday twenty-two settlements in the south were under control of Hamas for hours, and they went house to house slaughtering women and children.”

Bluster from Western governments supporting Israel is a diversion from a massive intelligence failure especially for Israel and Mossad who are world-famous for getting it right. Ask any foreign correspondent who they would want to rescue them in a worst case scenario and most would answer: Mossad. So what happened here?

In a twist that would make Tony Fauci squirm, the Hamas attacks that Biden is theatrically denouncing were likely financed and supported with US help by Iran, which is a client state of the Biden/Obama foreign policy doctrine. We know from the WSJ that Iran, fresh off of its 6 B windfall and on-going revenue from previously sanctioned oil sales — started planning with Hamas in August. They were greenlit week before last.

Biden’s hopelessly inept team, including Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan — think the way to get Iran to behave is by showering it with cash. Six billion recently unfrozen added to 1.7 billion from Obama. They are now crafting a narrative that Iran never had control of the cash but that contradicts an earlier statement made by NSC spokesman, John Kirby. Check out Kirby just weeks ago.

I will never understand the Obama/Biden obsession with sucking up to a country that sponsors terrorism and wants Israel gone. It is the ultimate Be Kind psychosis. The mullahs hate Israel, they hate the West and they hate women but handing them cash will somehow change all of that.

This is the foreign policy equivalent of trusting Hannibal Lecter to prepare a vegan meal. Once you’ve swallowed and realize you’ve been had, the damage is done. Why does America keep creating problems it must later solve? From viruses to war — the so-called leadership class is a dangerous failure.

Now Biden is pledging that America is all-in to support Israel with a fleet on the way and rumours of Seal Team Six, on-the-ground involvement to free hostages. Cearly a deal has been struck. Netanyahu will be quiet about America’s massive screw up if Biden supports some really bad shit going down in Gaza.

Meanwhile Biden gambles that a big war will cloud the issue of his disastrous foreign policy including the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. There are credible stories Hamas has been using weapons America left behind there. And Ukraine is a nightmare.

What I know in my soul is that the death count is about rise inexorably and forces in the world will have us bickering with each other instead of pointing the finger at failed leadership that never takes us into account.

I’m a pretty discriminating watcher of news and work to discern the difference between truth and lies during wartime. Because I trust the people who read this blog, I am going to lay out a current online debate — so heated that sane people are accusing those who disagree with them of holocaust denial because they are questioning an explosive, so-far unsubstantiated narrative.

First an actual atrocity: the story of Shani Louk is real. It is unclear if she is dead. I’ve seen the video, the Hamas fighters spitting on her body, the limbs broken in ways unspeakably cruel and it’s clear this is not fake. You can see in the unblurred footage she has a serious head injury.

Then this story broke a few days ago.

This report lead to multiple retellings with the detail that the babies were beheaded — a shocking claim that people pushing for a devastating Israeli response have latched on to and repeated. Beheaded babies were mentioned in nearly every single story on both CNN and Fox. Even Joe Biden latched on to it and lied about having seen photographic evidence. Click the above link. Even those who have criticized his integrity, used Biden’s statement as proof the story was true.

Let’s just change that to: Biden himself now confirms the vaccine works and see what these same people would post.

A few hours later, Biden’s own comms team was walking it back.

So why does this detail even matter? Why would I even write about one atrocity being inaccurate when their are so many legitimate ones to focus on? Is it any less sad and troubling that the babies may have died by other means? I’ve taken a bit of beating on Twitter — including being accused of holocaust denying and blood libel — that’s how emotional everyone has become. So let me explain.

That phrase beheaded babies started appearing in virtually every story about the Hamas attacks since it was first reported. It came from a young journo attached to the IDF, quoting an Israeli general with a reputation for trouble-making and conflict with the Palestinians near his settlement.

He is the single source for the beheading story as far as I can tell. Every person who confirms it has looped back to the general. When questions first started being raised about it — the story softened that maybe it wasn’t forty babies but only a few. Then the bodies were mutilated but not specifically decapitated. And then asking for evidence made one the enemy. Photos have been released of what look like infant corpses but they do not prove what has been alleged.

History will show that this is the story used to support a brutal response, one that is killing many civilians and one we will be ashamed of should clearer heads ever prevail. There are enough atrocities to put forward but this one has a special twist.

Why this story? I suspect it is because for Netanyahu to get unfettered support he needs to link Hamas to a threat the West understands and fears — Isis — whose signature terror move was beheading. More and more you will see Hamas equals Isis rhetoric and this story seems to be the beginning.

Watch as it unfolds and please don’t hate me for reporting things as I see them. I take no joy in this but now is the time for people to be stalwart in their commitment to critical thinking — like my friend CJ Hopkins.

Both things can be true — atrocities did happen but this one fails the accuracy test. You should wonder why it has taken off.

I recall from my time at The Fifth Estate, a story in which an atrocity was used to prompt America to enter the first Gulf War in Kuwait. Babies were being ripped out of incubators by Iraqi troops and left to die on the floor — it was reported by news media. But that was a lie and the so-called “eyewitness” to the crimes turned out to be the Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter.

Watching this old-school, first class journalism made me emotional this morning. The CBC has since been destroyed. Behold how it should be done.

Hamas, beyond a doubt, is guilty of extreme violence but the story used to sell an aggressive Israeli response, is very likely untrue and unneeded.

Our readers know that I seek truth before weighing in and I can honestly say that having reported from Israel and the West Bank, all I can hope is that cool heads prevail.

As usual our CUPE union brothers and sisters are making asses of themselves. Weighing in with trendy anti-Israel talking points before the first spilled blood has even dried.

What you are witnessing is incompetence and corruption off the scale. The world is on the brink of major warfare that could drag all of us in — because the Democrats are in power, because they support a demented leader, because the people were manipulated away from a president working toward a peaceful world. I’m sure the GOP would be just as bad but I did have hopes for Trump.

In the meantime, with the globalist fools holding open our borders, remember Bin Laden’s stated reasons for 9/11.

The 9:40-minute audio by bin Laden showed an old photo of his face over a brown graphic and included the title, "A Message to the Peoples of the West: From Sheik Osama bin Laden," with the subheading: "The Reasons for the Struggle on the 60th Anniversary of the Creation of the Occupation State of Israel."

Bin Laden began his message by telling listeners that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has always been the primary cause for friction between the West and the Muslim world - a struggle which he said was getting more difficult due to European policies biased in Israel's favor.

"The Palestinian cause has been the main factor that, since my early childhood, fueled my desire, and that of the 19 freemen (Sept. 11 bombers), to stand by the oppressed, and punish the oppressive Jews and their allies," the al Qaeda chief said.

I’m down with something nasty and will not be doing my podcast or regular TNT radio gig. I’ll try and produce an audio note for podcast subscribers.

I will be checking here for your comments and will reply for sure.

Stay critical, people.