She is one of the greatest contemporary German writers. Now, Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller has written a shocking wake-up call to the West – The madness that has gripped parts of Western society since Hamas attacked Israel
In most narratives about the war in Gaza, the war does not begin where it began. The war did not start in Gaza. The war began on October 7, exactly 50 years after Egypt and Syria invaded Israel. Palestinian Hamas terrorists committed an unimaginable massacre in Israel. They filmed themselves as heroes and celebrated their bloodbath. Their victory celebrations continued back home in Gaza, where the terrorists dragged severely abused hostages and presented them as spoils of war to the jubilant Palestinian population. This macabre jubilation extended all the way to Berlin. In the Neukölln district there was dancing on the streets and the Palestinian organization Samidoun distributed sweets. The internet was buzzing with happy comments.
More than 1,200 people died in the massacre. After torture, mutilation and rape, 239 people were abducted. This massacre by Hamas is a total derailment from civilization. There is an archaic horror in this bloodlust that I no longer thought possible in this day and age. This massacre has the pattern of annihilation through pogroms, a pattern that the Jews have known for centuries. That is why the whole country has been traumatized, because the founding of the state of Israel was intended to protect against such pogroms. And until October 7, it was believed to be protected. Although Hamas has been sitting on the state of Israel’s neck since 1987. The Hamas founding charter clearly stated that the destruction of the Jews was the goal, and that “death for God is our noblest wish”.
Even though there have been changes to this charter since then, it is clear that nothing has changed: the destruction of the Jews and the destruction of Israel remain the goal and desire of Hamas. This is exactly the same as in Iran. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the destruction of the Jews has also been state doctrine since its foundation, that is, since 1979.
When talking about the terror of Hamas, Iran should always be included in the discussion. The same principles apply, which is why big brother Iran finances, arms and makes little brother Hamas its henchman. Both are merciless dictatorships. And we know that all dictators become more radical the longer they rule. Today, the government of Iran consists exclusively of hardliners. The state of the mullahs, with its revolutionary guards, is an unscrupulous, expanding military dictatorship. Religion is nothing more than camouflage. Political Islam means contempt for humanity, public floggings, death sentences and executions in the name of God. Iran is obsessed with war, but at the same time it pretends that it is not building any nuclear weapons. The founder of the so-called theocracy, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree, a fatwa, stating that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic.
In 2002, international inspectors had already uncovered evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program in Iran. A Russian was hired to develop the bomb. The expert from Soviet nuclear weapons research worked in Iran for years. It seems that Iran is seeking to achieve nuclear deterrence, following the example of North Korea – and that is a scary thought. Especially for Israel, but also for the whole world.
The mullahs’ and Hamas’ obsession with war is so dominant that – when it comes to the extermination of Jews – it even transcends the religious divide between Shiites and Sunnis. Everything else is subordinated to this obsession with war. The population is deliberately kept in poverty, while at the same time the wealth of the Hamas leadership is increasing immeasurably – in Qatar, Ismael Haniye is said to have billions at his disposal. And the contempt for humanity knows no bounds. For the population, there is almost nothing left except martyrdom. Military plus religion as a complete surveillance. There is literally no room for dissenting opinions within Palestinian politics in Gaza. Hamas has driven out all other political currents from the Gaza Strip with incredible brutality. After Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2007, Fatah members were thrown from a fifteen-storey building as a deterrent.
This is how Hamas seized control of the entire Gaza Strip and established an unchallenged dictatorship. Unchallenged because no one who questions it lives long. Instead of a social network for the population, Hamas has built a network of tunnels under the feet of the Palestinians. Even under hospitals, schools and kindergartens financed by the international community. Gaza is a single military barracks, a deep state of anti-Semitism underground. Complete and yet invisible. In Iran, there is a saying: Israel needs its weapons to protect its people. And Hamas needs its people to protect its weapons.
This saying is the shortest description of the dilemma that in Gaza you cannot separate the civilian from the military. And that applies not only to the buildings, but also to the personnel in the buildings. The Israeli army was forced into this trap in its response to October 7. Not lured, but forced. Forced to defend itself and to make itself guilty by destroying the infrastructure with all the civilian victims. And it is precisely this inevitability that Hamas wanted and is exploiting. Since then, it has been directing the news that goes out to the world. The sight of suffering disturbs us daily. But no war reporter can work independently in Gaza. Hamas controls the selection of images and orchestrates our feelings. Our feelings are their strongest weapon against Israel. And by selecting the images, it even manages to present itself as the sole defender of the Palestinians. This cynical calculation has paid off.
Since October 7, I have been thinking again and again about a book about the Nazi era, the book “Ganz normale Männer” by Christopher R. Browning. He describes the annihilation of Jewish villages in Poland by the Reserve Police Battalion 110, when the large gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz did not yet exist. It was like the bloodlust of the Hamas terrorists at the music festival and in the kibbutzim. In just one day in July 1942, the 1,500 Jewish inhabitants of the village of Józefów were slaughtered. Children and infants were shot in the street in front of their houses, the old and sick in their beds. All the others were driven into the forest, where they had to strip naked and crawl on the ground. They were mocked and tortured, then shot and left lying in a bloody forest. The murder became perverse.
The book is called “Ganz normale Männer” (Quite Normal Men) because this reserve police battalion did not consist of SS men or Wehrmacht soldiers, but of civilians who were no longer considered suitable for military service because they were too old. They came from completely normal professions and turned into monsters. It was not until 1962 that a trial began in this case of war crimes. The trial records show that some of the men “got a huge kick out of the whole thing”. The sadism went so far that a newly married captain brought his wife to the massacres to celebrate their honeymoon. Because the bloodlust continued in other villages. And the woman strolled around in the white wedding dress she had brought with her, among the Jews who had been herded together in the market square. She was not the only wife who was allowed to visit. In the trial documents, the wife of a lieutenant says: “One morning, I was sitting with my husband in the garden of his accommodation, having breakfast, when a simple man from his platoon approached us, took up a stiff posture and declared: ‘Mr. Lieutenant, I have not yet had breakfast! When my husband looked at him questioningly, he explained further: ’I have not yet killed a Jew.
Is it right to think of the Nazi massacres on October 7? I think it is right to do so, because Hamas itself wanted to evoke the memory of the Shoah. And it wanted to demonstrate that the State of Israel is no longer a guarantee for the survival of the Jews. That their state is a mirage, that it will not save them. Logic forbids us to be close to the word Shoah. But why does it have to forbid it? Because the feeling that you have cannot avoid this pulsating proximity.
And then there’s something else that occurs to me and reminds me of the Nazis: the red triangle from the Palestinian flag. In the concentration camps, it was the symbol for communist prisoners. And today? Today, it can be seen again in Hamas videos and on the facades of buildings in Berlin. In the videos, it is used as a call to kill. On the facades, it marks targets that are to be attacked. A large red triangle looms over the entrance to the techno club “About Blank”. For years, Syrian refugees and gay Israelis danced here as a matter of course. But now nothing is a matter of course anymore. Now the red triangle screams over the entrance. A raver whose Jewish family comes from Libya and Morocco says today: “The political climate awakens all demons. For the right, we Jews are not white enough; for the left, we are too white.” The hatred of Jews has taken root in Berlin’s nightlife. After October 7, the Berlin club scene literally cowered. Although 364 young people, ravers like them, were slaughtered at a techno festival, the club association did not comment on it until days later. And even that was only a perfunctory exercise, because anti-Semitism and Hamas were not even mentioned.
I lived in a dictatorship for over thirty years. And when I came to Western Europe, I could not imagine that democracy could ever be called into question in such a way. I thought that in a dictatorship, people are systematically brainwashed. And that in democracies, people learn to think for themselves because the individual counts. Unlike in a dictatorship, where independent thought is forbidden and the forced collective trains people. And where the individual is not a part of the collective, but an enemy. I am appalled that young people, students in the West, are so confused that they are no longer aware of their freedom. That they have apparently lost the ability to distinguish between democracy and dictatorship.
It is absurd that homosexuals and queer people, for example, demonstrate for Hamas – as they did in Berlin on November 4. It is no secret that not only Hamas, but the entire Palestinian culture, despises and punishes LGBTQ people. Just a rainbow flag in the Gaza Strip is unimaginable. Hamas’s sanctions for gays range from at least a hundred lashes to the death sentence. In a 2014 survey in the Palestinian territories, 99 percent of respondents said that homosexuality was morally unacceptable. You can also take a satirical approach, as blogger David Leatherwood does on “X”: demonstrating for Palestine as a queer person is like demonstrating for Kentucky Fried Chicken as a chicken.
I also wonder whether the students at many American universities know what they are doing when they chant at the demonstrations: “We are Hamas” or even “Beloved Hamas, bomb Tel Aviv!” or “Back to 1948”. Is that still innocent or already moronic? Although the massacre of October 7 is no longer mentioned at these demonstrations. And it is outrageous when October 7 is even interpreted as a staged event by Israel. Or when not a single word is said about demanding the release of the hostages. When, instead, Israel’s war in Gaza is portrayed as an arbitrary war of conquest and annihilation by a colonial power.
Do young people only ever watch clips on Tiktok? Meanwhile, the terms follower, influencer, activist no longer seem harmless to me. These sleek internet words are serious. They all existed before the internet. I translate them back to the time. And suddenly they become rigid as sheet metal and overly clear. Because outside the internet they mean followers, influence agents, activists. As if they had been taken over from the training ground of a fascist or communist dictatorship. Their suppleness is an illusion anyway. Because I know that the words do what they say. They promote opportunism and obedience in the collective and spare people from taking responsibility for what the group does.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the demonstrators were students who, just a few months ago, were protesting against the oppression in Iran with the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom”. It appals me when the same demonstrators today show solidarity with Hamas. It seems to me that they no longer understand the abysmal contradiction of the content. And I wonder why they don’t care that Hamas would not even allow the smallest demonstration for any women’s rights. And that on October 7th, women who had been violated were paraded as spoils of war.
On the campus of the University of Washington, protesters play the group game “People’s Tribunal” for entertainment. Representatives of the university are put on trial for fun. And then the verdicts follow, and everyone roars in chorus: “Off to the gallows” or “guillotine”. There is clapping and laughter, and they baptize their campsite “Martyr’s Place”. In the form of happenings, they celebrate their own collective stupidity with a clear conscience. One wonders what is being taught at universities today.
It seems to me that since October 7, anti-Semitism has spread like a collective finger snap, as if Hamas were the influencer and the students the followers. In the media world of influencers and their followers, only the quick clicks of the videos count. The flutter of the eyelashes, the tapping of lively emotions. The same trick works here as in advertising.
Is the susceptibility of the masses, the reason for the disaster of the twentieth century, taking a new turn? Complicated content, nuances, contexts and contradictions, compromises are foreign to the media world.
This is also evident in a stupid call from internet activists against the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. It is the oldest short film festival in the world and is celebrating its seventieth anniversary this year. Many great filmmakers started their careers here with early works. Miloš Forman, Roman Polański, Martin Scorsese, István Szabó and Agnès Varda. Two weeks after the Hamas celebrations on the streets of Berlin, the festival director Lars Henrik Gass wrote: “Half a million people took to the streets in March 2022 to protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That was important. Please let us now send an equally strong signal. Show the world that the Neukölln Hamas friends and Jew haters are in the minority. Come all! Please!”
This prompted a hostile response on the internet. An anonymous group accused him of demonizing solidarity with the Palestinian liberation. The group assured him that it would “encourage” the international film community to reconsider its participation in the festival. A veiled call for a boycott, which many filmmakers followed and canceled their commitments. Lars Henrik Gass rightly says that we are currently experiencing a regression in political debate. Instead of political thinking, an esoteric understanding of politics prevails. Behind this is the desire for consistency and the pressure to conform. In the art scene, too, it has become impossible to differentiate between standing up for Israel’s right to exist and criticizing its government at the same time.
That is why it is not even considered whether the worldwide outrage over the many dead and the suffering in Gaza might not be part of Hamas’ strategy. It is deaf and blind to the suffering of its people. Why else would it fire on the Kerem Shalom border crossing, where most aid supplies arrive? Or why else would it fire on the construction site of a temporary harbor, where aid supplies are soon to arrive? We have not heard a single word of sympathy for the people of Gaza from Mr. Sinwar and Mr. Haniye. And instead of a desire for peace, only maximum demands that they know Israel cannot fulfill. Hamas is betting on a permanent war with Israel. It would be the best guarantee of its continued existence. Hamas also hopes to isolate Israel internationally, at any cost.
In Thomas Mann’s novel “Doktor Faustus”, National Socialism is said to have “made everything German unbearable to the world”. I have the impression that the strategy of Hamas and its supporters is to make everything Israeli, and therefore everything Jewish, unbearable to the world. Hamas wants to maintain anti-Semitism as a permanent global mood. That is why it also wants to reinterpret the Shoah. The Nazi persecution and the rescue flight to Palestine are also to be called into question. And ultimately, the right of Israel to exist. This manipulation goes as far as to claim that German Holocaust remembrance only serves as a cultural weapon to legitimize the Western-white “settlement project” of Israel. Such ahistorical and cynical reversals of the perpetrator-victim relationship are intended to prevent any differentiation between the Shoah and colonialism. With all these stacked constructs, Israel is no longer seen as the only democracy in the Middle East, but as a colonialist model state. And as an eternal aggressor, against whom blind hatred is justified. And even the desire for its destruction.
The Jewish poet Yehuda Amichai says that a love poem in Hebrew is always a poem about war. Often it is a poem about war in the middle of a war. His poem “Jerusalem 1973” is reminiscent of the Yom Kippur War:
“Sad men carry the memory of
their loved ones in their backpack, in their side pockets
on their ammunition belts, in the bags of their souls,
in heavy dream bubbles under their eyes.”
When Paul Celan visited Israel in 1969, Amichai translated Celan’s poems and read them out in Hebrew. This was where two survivors of the Shoah met. Jehuda Amichai was called Ludwig Pfeuffer when his parents fled from Würzburg.
The visit to Israel stirred Celan. He met school friends from Czernowitz in Romania who, unlike his murdered parents, had been able to escape to Palestine. Paul Celan wrote to Jehuda Amichai after his visit and shortly before his death in the Seine: “Dear Jehuda Amichai, let me repeat the word that came spontaneously to my lips during our conversation: I cannot imagine the world without Israel; nor do I want to imagine it without Israel.”
We also recommend reading:
Dina Rubina — OPEN LETTER. Frequently Asked Questions, AHMED FOUAD ALKHATIB — OPEN LETTER.
This post was last modified on June 8, 2024 13:31
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View Comments
Beautifully written, thanking you
I appreciate your response
Perfection.
Thank you for your comment "perfection". I have MANY faults. In a sense, I try with the basics that I possess. Understanding, critical thinking, wisdom, etc. First of all, for myself, whether or not there's a heaven in return............
Well written and insightful.
Thank you. Appreciated.
Sehr klug und informativ. Danke
Thank you. From a third generation holocaust and pogrom survivors who thought this was behind us, thank you for your words of wisdom.
Hello BZB. You're definitely welcome. I recall a time not so long ago whereas I visualized concentration camps of the Holocaust. I'll make it brief. I immediately became emotionally handicapped. I knew the ONLY thing I could do is go to bed at once. Took a long time for me to actually recover. At least 2 weeks. It's simple.Very simple. True understanding of "Human Rights" is & equates to understanding of the sufferings of others. All my imperfections. I am at least trying the right path.......
unfassbarer Mist – Israel-Propaganda hoch 10. Araberhasserin No. 1, wat?!
Was Sie schreiben ist absoluter Mist!
Hey Zohar Gisela! I am not writing with my feet. I am writing with my thoughts. Are you aware the involvement of Germany when it comes to the Armenian Genocide ???.....
Hey Xris. I find your arrogance quite severe. Would you like me to take the highest level of lie detector test to prove to you I am an individual person AND this has NOTHING to do with Israeli propaganda????..... What answer will you find then as an Advanced Primate? I can predict the prophecy of the future. According to your faith, it is already done unto you.......
Es ist alles gesagt.
Herta Mueller has been one one my favourite writers but with this piece.... I struggle to believe it's really by her. How could somebody with her personal history and so critical regarding the usage of language by state and institutions lose their moral compass SO COMPLETELY????!
This will not age well... a stain on her legacy that will remain for ever.
Maybe, since you love her writing, you should think through what she says. Maybe it is that part of the left that cheered the massacre of Israelis on Oct 7 that have lost their moral compass? Should a tiny country made up of survivors of World War 2 and Jews banished from Arab lands be seen as a 'colonizer'? Yes, the UN declared the state in part of Mandatory Palestine, which was previously part of the ottoman empire. Jordan was similary created in 70% of Mandatory Palestine. And a piece was also offered for another Arab State. The Arabs refused and declared war. The reason: every part of the land was holy Muslim land. That is how Hamas sees it still. It is a religious war. And you identify with that? And with their methods?
Yes, obviously, if you dare to disagree with 36000 people, most of them women & children, having been murdered, you're obviously cheering Hamas. You ppl are pathetic beyond belief....
I dare to disagree with the Hamas given numbers on the dead and the wounded.
Oh really - how many deaths is not enough?
Sinwar is said to have described civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices” while citing past independence-related conflicts in countries like Algeria
The whole population of Gaza could be protected if moved into the tunnels. The fact that you're blaming Israel for their deaths in a defensive war they never asked for, rather than see this as the cynical strategy of a bloodthirsty tyrant rolling in billions of foreign aid money shows both your blind hatred for Jews, and your total disregard for the Arab population foisted into the line of fire by the terrorist regime it elected. Faulty logic won't save you.
No entiendo
until Hamas is gone
Apparently 6 million wasn’t enough.
A bit of history to the fool ignorants that don’t even know what river they are talking about/
Antisemitism has been around since the days of Abraham, when he had the wisdom to recognize and chose there is only one HaShem. Oh boy, all those polytheistic imperiums didn’t like that, so the prosecution against the Hebrews (people from the river) began millenniums ago. Abraham and the Hebrews chose to believe in one and only one: HaShem; it was not G-d who chose us; that ideology distorts reality. G-D is within each one of us.
Abraham was told by HaShem to move west, Haaretz Israel. Yes, the promised land. At that time the words “palestine” and Islam were nowhere in anyone’s vocabulary (the roman empire named that part of their conquest palestine). And again, no matter what, those imperiums around began to attempt the annihilation of then the Hebrews. And I say attempted. So going back to the rest of ignorants, we Jews, have survived the mesopotamians, assyrians, philistines, babylonians, persians, egyptians, greeks, romans, musulmán bizantanians (which still live in the 7th century), spain,nazis, soviets, england, Iraq, persia (again), egypt (again), lebanon (i.e. hesbollah, who displaced the Christian population), tunisia, algeria, lybia, syria, jordan,saudi arabia, uae, yemen, qatar, somalia, Sudan, stupid ignorants from south africa ( how quickly apartheid evaporated in their limited gray matter), the other iranian poppets, turkey ( who actually commited a total genocide of the armanians), also, we see today even the western/eastern world, canada, hot air from present usa administration, sweden, denmark, ireland, spain (again), indonesia, taliban, isis, islamic jihad (and other terrorist animals that escape the asylum) and of course the inventors of homicide bombers, the clowns of arafat’s fatha, (plo) and now the worthless pa, which was run over by their same clan hamas (they can’t even get along, shittes (the chest pounders) vs sunnis. And history goes on and on.
So dear company of ignorants, when you say “we are going to get you” don’t hold your breath”, and I say “bring it on”.
Be a bit original, your words have been echoed forever and for almost 6000 years, and have all disappeared into a black hole; we are still standing stronger than ever and we are going nowhere, but the land of milk and honey.
By the way, the arabs, including the musulmans, scream it out loud, they have better lives in Israel, than they would in any arab country.
Regarding hamas and the rest of other muslim terrorist cults, they are the ones oppressing their own people; otherwise why would they use them as human shields; hiding like the cowards they are, under schools, mosques, hospitals, children grounds, so call U.N. facilities and transporting weapons on ambulances ? In addition, why the multitude of arab countries don’t want them in their land ?
What occurred on October 7th, 2023 (by the way, where is the hypocrite #me2 movement; obviously it doesn’t apply to Jewish women, little girls and placing alive babies in ovens in front of their mothers), has been another excuse for the blanket of antisemitism covering the world to show their ignorance and cowardness heads.
So, brained washed fools, have a nice Shabbat Shalom and may HaShem blessed your poisoned souls. ✡️✡️✡️✡️✡️
“From the river (it’s the jordan river you stupid ignorants) to the sea (the mediterranean assholes) hamas will NEVER see”.
So there you hater ignorants.
And for the media poppets distorting as usual the actual facts, stop saying “oh, the IDF should be more careful regarding civilians”. Well, when cowards use their own controled citizens as shields in the supposedly “off limits areas”, you know, schools, mosques, etc, you tell me how more precise the IDF can be. It’s not Israel the ones commiting genocide, it’s hamas and the rest of the ayatollahs themselves and their poppets.
AM ISRAEL HI
gosh what a bone deep racist.
Shame on you. Get an education instead of parroting terrorists.
And what a revolting misogynist handle
Is that All you can say to such a thought-provoking writ?? You have No substance thereby proving your racism & close-mindedness. G-D will protect Israel from its enemies, even end-times prophecies confirms that. I stand with Israel!
Amen
You just iterated the ultimate truth...G-d, Hashem, is within us...b' tochainu.
BE STRONG AND OF GREAT COURAGE.
IN GOD WE TRUST.
Could not have said it better myself.
Let all the multitude of Arab countries take in there own brethren.
You're the ignorant fool.. Sad that you have MD next to your name and yet supporting and approving of a genocide.
Hello Eduardo Lichi. I am a bit confused her.ls your negative thumbs down towards me? Please clarify my confusion if possible. Briefly,without going into details. I do recall not too long ago when I visualized the Jewish Holocaust. All I could do is rush to bed right away. I was emotionally handicapped for at least 2 weeks. Was VERY difficult to recover........
Hey Mickey roach, if Israel really had tried to commit genocide, the war would have been over Oct. 8th.
Pathetic me. (and also deprolable and irredeemable). ✡️✡️✡️✡️✡️
Mike, you forgot it's war and Hammas started the Massaker by slaughter Jews. Hamas doesn't care about Palestinians, just using their own people.
Israeli conduct has been atrocious.
🇮🇱 has hoodwinked us Christians of North America into believing 🇮🇱 participation toward a Two-State "Solution" for 75 years.
There will be only a One-State "Solution" ..... and that one state will NOT be Israel .
The failed experiment of "zionism" precipitously declines to where 50 years hence 🇮🇱 no longer exists.
To ignorant Alexander Dunez
Go back and read basic Middle East history Mike boy!
A sliver of a dusty, rocky land cut for Jews and they offered a sliver not once but times and times over to the “peaceful “ Jordanian Arabs!
They gave Gaza back which could have been the Singapore of the East! Instead, these nose picking barbarians built tunnels under each building, oppressed the Jordanian squatters - where is the “Palestinian” language ? Borders? “Palestinian language”? Never was Mike boy!
I am a defiant, proud 2nd Generation child of survivors - born in Romania and Israel will live on into eternity! These Gazans abuse their poor working animals, the poor unfortunate dogs snd cats born in their hell, if not for our majestic IDF soldiers - who no other nation will ever match in humanity, all creatures small and large would have the fate of the Jews they stollen from their homes!
Ignorant, barbarian Mike boy …..
Yes that’s right it’s more like 200,000 murdered Palestinian Arabs considering how the count is done and how many are buried under the ruble.
« 36 000 people, most of them women & children »!?
The Hamas leadership of Gazan Palestinians have been providing these data and many seem to swallow them hook, line, and sinker. Between 30,000 - 35,000 dead may be a right figure, yet the break-down into innocent vs guilty, civilians vs. combatants, women vs men, minors vs adults is most probably wrong or twisted so as to match the very Hamas agenda. Mind Herta Muller when she says that “our feelings are Hamas’s strongest weapon”: The useful idiot supporters of Palestine in the West bring water to the Hamas mill and tip the scales of the public opinion war against Israel through playing on the bulk of uneducated masses, relying on the global South-led-UN, watching university campuses and most media in the West exactly as described in her letter.
A more correct stratification of the Gaza death toll is this:
- about 14 000 of the dead were active Palestinian terrorist combatants (ya’ani “militants”): mostly Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also members of lesser terrorist groups, i.e., Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Harakat al-Sabireen, Palestinian Liberation Front, and even (surprise!) the Palestine Liberation Organization (because many of the latter were NOT chucked off rooftops by Hamas in 2007). Since the sacred goal of them all is the “destruction of the Jews” and “death for God” their “noblest wish”, their deaths is the best outcome for both themselves and Israel along with the moral/civilized world. So, who finds fault with their being dead? Probably the said useful lefty idiots in the West / Jew-haters of sorts, such as the comment writer the present answer is directed to.
(BTW, if there were 35 000 active combatants on October 6, it follows that 40% are now dead, while the remainder are counting their days while hiding in underground tunnels or above ground among the civilians. Unfortunately this count is moot in the end because of the virtually infinite reserve for Hamas to replenish the losses from within the civilian population of Gaza, about 1.5-million “infinite” if one is to obviously discount newborns, toddlers and elementary-school children, but not teenagers – see below why)
- the other ≈ 16 000+ were non active combatants and break down as follows:
o support staff, many of whom were teenagers (mostly male, some female) who busied themselves as mules carrying and smuggling weapons, ammunitions, launch pads components, and therefore found themselves exposed to the IDF’s firepower; since 50% of the Gaza population is under 18, this is neither a surprise, nor a fact to be disputed
o hamulahs/families that surrounded and provided human shields to active combatants/members of Hamas and the above-listed terrorist groups
o those “innocent” Gazan male civilians that on October 7 flocked through the border openings into the Israeli kibbutzim/rural villages, in the wake of the head-banded ninjas on Toyota pick-up trucks, raping, mutilating, and then killing Israeli women and girls
o those “innocent” Gazan male and female civilians who also on 10/7 extolled the terrorists on their way back to Gaza City with trophies of maimed Jews and body parts thereof and joined in the macabre street jubilation that followed
o those “innocent” Gazan female and male civilians that guard(ed) kidnapped hostages
o those “innocent” Gazan male and female civilians that taught ‘humanities’ and ‘science’ in UNRWA schools, and now that those so-called ‘schools’ no longer exists, busy themselves with guarding kidnapped hostages
o finally, some true collateral civilian victims such as truly innocent small children; how many? Probably some thousands, nobody really knows the exact figure, not even Hamas even if they wanted to offer correct data. Two points about this:
1. Their death is regrettable yet still amounting to a 1:1 ratio of terrorists to noncombatants, which is by far the best in history, i.e., dwarfing the counterpart ratios in previous comparable warfare scenarios:
• In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul (the biggest urban battles since WWII) the US-led Iraqi Security Force killed 10,000 civilians to destroy 4000 ISIS in the city, amounting to a 1:2.5 combatant to civilian death ratio.
• In the 1945 Battle of Manila (which had some variables similar to Gaza, such as high number of defenders, tunnels, and hostages), the American military killed 100,000 civilians to destroy 17,000 Japanese defenders, i.e., a 1:6 combatant to civilian death ratio.
• The 1950 Second Battle of Seoul (another battle with similar variables to the battles in Gaza) American forces likely killed tens of thousands (there is no record out how many died in the city battle out of the 2 million civilians that died in the war) to kill 7000 North Korean enemy.
2. In May 2024, the United Nations admitted it overcounted the number of Gazan children who have been confirmed killed in the war by a staggering 42%. In March 20024, the U.N. Children’s Fund stated had that 13,450 children had been killed, citing figures from the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry. Mid-May-2024, however, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released updated casualty figures according to which 7797 Gazan children have died in the war as of April 30. Again, the “children” count also comprises the said terrorist teenagers and support staff who took part in combat and logistic support.
Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller writes “Gaza is a single military barracks, a deep state of anti-Semitism underground”, but she’s too kind and couth. With its 94% of questionnaire-expressed Jew-hatred and 99% anti-Israeli stance, Gaza is in reality the darkest Mordor-like stinkhole on Earth, a quasi-unanimous sinister cult of death and macabre orgy that puts ISIS and the Talibans to shame any day of the week.
…and yet, according to the present commentator, it is we “people”(!) who “are pathetic beyond belief”!
A fantastic reply! If only the useful idiots with their knee jerk, parrot replies on here would read and learn.
Yes. Useful idiots, often with academic degrees.
One shouldn't confuse education with intelligence
Especially with academic degrees working for Hamas propaganda
Violent fanaticism is violent fanaticism wether it is Islamic fanaticism or Zionist Fanaticism. Christian Zionism long predates Jewish Zionism.
Jews kicked out ? Or Did Arab communities welcome Jewish communities time and time again through out history . Maybe we all need to take a deep dive and find out what is a lie and what is truth
No, Arab societies did not “welcome” Jews. They treated them, and Christians, as dhimmis. Under both Arab and Ottoman caliphates, they were legally defined as inferior beings, to be subservient to Muslims at all times. Periodically, following the example of their prophet, the Muslims massacred the Jews.
During WWII, when the Arabs supported Nazi Germany, the Arab leader in Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, was the guest of Hitler, had an enjoyable day’s outing at a concentration camp, and brought back racial antisemitism to combine with Middle Eastern Islamic antisemitism. Every single Arab country in the first half of the 20th century, following independence, expelled its deep rooted Jewish communities. No compensation for confiscated homes, businesses, land, personal property or bank accounts for the 850,000 ethnically cleansed Jews. That is why more than half of Israeli Jews have no connection to Europe. Your “deep dive” doesn’t touch the surface of the truth.
Read about jewish history in the middle east. Their history and roots are as old as the arabs in the middle east. Its just bullshit the thought that when arabs «treated jews good» it is an admirable thing. Middle east is as jewish as it is arab. At least. They should never have been at the mercy of anyone.
Just regarding the number of victims: The UN has already updated the number of civilians dead to around 10,000 less than the number stated by Hamas of 33,000. And around 16,000 of them are combatants or collaborators.
This makes the ration of civilians:combatants dead in this war around 0.8:1, meaning, less than 1 civilian dead for each combatant. The UN average ratio for all wars since WWI is 9:1.
Armies of all the world are learning the methods the IDF is using to minimize civilian deaths. All other people in the world should be doing the same instead of bashing Israel without any logical reason.
A hypothesis of this length, written with such assertion and certitude would suggest the writer has read the facts. I would be very interested to see references for the facts and figures on which you base your argument.
References:
https://www.jns.org/un-blames-fog-of-war-for-major-overcounting-of-gazan-child-fatalities/
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/idf/israel-releases-new-gaza-death-toll-claims-historically-low-civilian-deaths/2024/05/16/
https://history.army.mil/armyhistory/AH-Magazine/2023AH_fall/AH129.pdf
https://www.hoover.org/research/not-so-distant-mirror-what-battle-manila-during-world-war-ii-suggests-about-urban-combat
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/second-battle-of-seoul-korean-war.html
Of course your sources are all Zionist propaganda 😁
So, anything with the word Jew in it or even near it is Zionist propaganda? What is your criteria here?
take your ignorance and prejudice somewhere else you stupid cow
Then you should have no trouble correcting Chris's facts.
Hahaha! I didn't ev n have to check that it's so obvious she's a Zionist omg sooooo insane !
Anti-zionists are the scum of the earth.
Hamas does not divide between civillians and combatants. Do you trust Hamas numbers or UN?
Funny that you do not ask Hamas Health Ministry for references and figures
Excellent response. Thx.
Another brain-washed delusional ignorant. Hey, Mr. Antonio, how many Nobel Prices have come out from all the millions of 7th century islamic mentality ?
We, the despicable Jewish race, which only forms 0.2% of the world population, As of 2023, at least 214 out of 965 Nobel Prize and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recipients have been Jewish or have at least one Jewish parent, which is 22% of all recipients. This is 110 times the percentage of the world's population that is Jewish, which as I said, it is only 0.2%. Jews have won awards in all six Nobel Foundation categories.
I’m 100% sure you are now using Jewish technology on your cell, computer, medications taken medical procedures., etc.
C’mon ignorant, throw them away.
You don’t want to be seen with Jewish trash, ha.
You don’t want to be seen with Jewish trash, ha.
Absolutely true. If all these Jew haters want nothing to do with us, then don’t use our technology in your phone or computers and by all means do NOT take advice f the multiple medical breakthroughs and medications that have probably saved the life of some meaningful to them. The truth hurts s if we couldn’t stop getting attacked and be left to live in peace, we would just keep producing miracles to help save the world. Eg Tikkun Olam. The core of our beliefs is to help repair the world. Our basic philosophy is to “Choose Life”.
Hey Chris, thank you, thank you. This is brilliant research, logic and writing. I couldn't agree with you more.
Solid thinking. But it must be noted that this is also happening: “ Smotrich’s remarks are just the latest incendiary rhetoric from the far-right elements in Netanyahu’s cabinet. On Friday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir expressed frustration that the Israel Defense Forces are arresting Palestinians instead of killing them.
“Why are there so many arrests?” Ben-Gvir allegedly asked during a cabinet meeting. “Can’t you kill some? Do you want to tell me they all surrender? What are we to do with so many arrested? It’s dangerous for the soldiers.””
https://www.mediaite.com/news/israeli-newspaper-calls-for-firing-of-top-netanyahu-minister-over-repeated-calls-for-genocide-of-palestinians/
The captured/surrendered terrorists are for the army to gather crucial information about the hostages, tunnels and anything else we need to know.
YES! The far right like Ben- Givir are a HUGE problem to put it mildly, and they incite anti-semitism IMO.
Even Hamas( UN) reduced the number of dead people in Gaza in half.
Hamas doesn’t want peace. They get money and prestige from war. Why they didn’t build infrastructure for the Gaza people over all this years instead they built a tunnel system for weapons bigger than the London subway..
stay on the right side of history. Release the hostages 🎗
Talk about the hostages instead of the the deaths, this is a war!
For gods sake release the hostages they are the innoccent, shame on Hamas to use them for their own advantage. The world is mute about that!!
Kat allow me to challenge your comment for just a moment.
Firstly we “pathetic people” do not support death and destruction in any form. If you know us, really know us you will know our values.
However we do believe when Hamas attacks, no not attacks, that’s what a country does against another country. Massacres, rapes citizens including babies, we people take the human thing and speak out.
Study your history, and understand wars.
Consider someone attacking your home, raping you, your family, burning your home, how would your family react.
Finally even the biased UN have confirmed that the numbers are exaggerated, not that deaths on either side are good. But Hamas started this and Israel, yes we, your disgusting people are going to defend ourselves.
Ask yourself: am I anti-Semitic?
If you are not then place yourself in our position. Yes war is terrible but Israel did not start it.
You need to get out a dictionary and look up the word "murder."
If education is expensive, try ignorance. Dear “Kay”, you are the textbook picture of such.
Go back to primary school and this time really give it a try.
Yours truly, “Pathetic”
"You ppl" …that tells us everything we need to know about you, Kat.
Except so many are cheering Hamas. Listen to your outrage and hatred. And you don’t seem to think that the people of Gaza deserve a better government than Hamas, that spends its money on tunnels to wage war but not to protect its citizens, that is pathetic. If you really cared about the people of Gaza you would want Hamas gone, a better government for the people of Gaza and not just hatred of Israel. enjoy your outrage, but know that it doesn’t help anything,
The words, " you people are pathetic" that you use already show your contempt for the Jewish people. I am sorry that you weren't able to understand the letter that was so well written. Don't you see you've been fooled by Hamas, a fascist state that cares little for its citizens?
You honestly think it’s 36,000 people that are mostly women and children? You’re delusional. It’s round 1% of the population even assuming those number, at least half of whom are enemy combatants. You clearly have no clue how war works. War is messy and people die. It’s awful, but bombs and shooting isn’t something you may wish were perfect and only targeted soldiers. Most of those civilian dead would be alive if Hamas didn’t hide in tunnels, in mosques, schools, hospitals. Why don’t they come out in the open and fight? That way they would avoid any civilian deaths.
The number of 37,000 killed in Gaza is misleading. Of these, at least 15,000 are active combatants. And when Al Jazeera reports that women and children are killed, I suspect that children aged 14-18 are also often active combatants.
And when IDF rescued the four hostages last week, 200 people were apparently killed. Evidence suggests that Hamas killed many themselves in cross fire. And again, the women and families who held the hostages can’t be called civilians.
You need to look past the headlines.
You need to discern the raw truth. And accept it.
so.. how many innocent people do YOU say have been killed? And are you saying that number is OK?
Yes obviously if you close your eyes to the fact that there absolutely no way to fight hamas that operates in schools kindergartens hospitals and from lm inside the population in every way, if you close your eyes to the fact that hamas lies about the numbers, if you close your eyes to the fact that in comparison to every other similar war actually the civilian casualties are much less, than it will seem reasonable to hate Israel.
It is possible to disagree with the way this was is being conducted and also to disagree with the way the left is silent on many wars, as long as they perceive both sides as "brown". It is possible to disagree with the lack of constructive suggestions, the name-calling, the simplicity, the outrage that is not for an ongoing genocide in Sudan or the expulsion of 2M Afghan refugees from Pakistan but rather for a nation's response to a brutal attack. Please suggest a course of action that a nation should take when terrorists are holding land. Should Israel behave like Columbia fighting the FARC? How about like Nigeria fighting Boko Haram? Should they take a lesson from Assad? From the PRC? What model do you suggest?
Of course, Israel could have avoided the war and gone directly to negotiation. the attack was a choice. The response was a choice. But a democracy answers to its citizens. Like most nations under attack, security is top of mind for Israeli citizens. The Gazans also want security from violent Israeli responses to terrorist attacks.
What is your solution? From the safety of your perch in the West, bought through actual colonialism and genocide, what do you suggest? How do you prevent a terrorist group that is holding land and that is committed to your destruction from attacking you?
Check your numbers, even if you want them to be true. Hamas does not divide between civilians and combatants (even Russia does..). 15.000 dead are now believed by UN to be combatants. That leaves 21.000. In 9 months. If you know shit about war, this is far better than the norm. It seems like western women see war for the first time now that its on Instagram. They are shocked that people actually die.
How many Isrealis have died? And is that proportion "the norm"? And do you enjoy normalising mass civilian deaths?
If you condone the heinous attack on innocents on October 7 and don't see Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah and the chant and actions of radical Islamists as instruments of the diabolical, you have lost your humanity
I agree. What happened to the Jews by Hitler is the thing Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Amazing that the author couldn't that.. it's a one sided paper.
IF you swallow whole every Hamas lie - including as to the number of civilian casualties that even the UN has contradicted.
IF you support an immediate cease fire that is NOT conditioned on immediate release of the 120 hostages (live and dead) AND would leave Hamas Terrorists in power then
BY DEFINITION you are PRO-HAMAS.
It was Arab land and it was stolen. The Brits had no right to decide for the Arabs what they could have. This is colonialism.
It was Jewish land and stolen by Arabs (among others), but you would know that (and be "PROUD of that") if you were Arab Muslim. Yes, Arab Muslims celebrate their own wide-ranging settler-colonialism and near-eradication of native cultures everywhere. But then moan and whine when the original peoples decide to take back what is theirs (cf. Spain, Serbia, Berbers in N. Africa, Iran, Kurdistan, etc.).
Ignorance. All that land was owned by Arab kings, dictators, tyrants, etc. The Zionist paid dollars on the penny. Hardly colonialism.
Suddenly, there was civilization, agriculture, green pastures, dripping irrigation, green houses, education, including women (oh, that’s probably a fact you forgot).
Due to the productions of jobs, needless to say actual salaries, arabs from all over the Middle East, started to immigrate to the land of milk and honey. Stolen ? Yes, it might have been a colony of the British, but finally the Jews got back what has been theirs for millennials. How do you explain Hebrew ruins every time they dig ?
Perhaps pebbles and camel’s shit is the islamics and palestinian tribes’ contributions. Go back to history
10000000001. Entiendes ?
terrorists)
When anyone else takes land it's called conquest. When Arabs do it, it's glorious conquest, in the name of Allah. That's how Palestine came to be Arab & Muslim in the first place. But of course Jews "steal." If it's theft, there's not a square inch of Israel that wasn't stolen first from the Jews, much of it more than once.
Only, with the Jews, it wasn't even conquest. The whole international community—the League of Nations and then the United Nations—not just Britain, acknowledged the Jewish claim to the land. Arabs started a war to deny the Jews' rightful claim, and lost. That's called "fortunes of war" when it's anyone but the Jews.
Jews are indigenous to Israel. It has always been until today.
Both Arab Palestinians and Jewish Palestinians were living together in Mandated Palestine continuously for the last few thousands of years before a imperialist Christian’s and a group of European Jews who decided to be the perpetrators this time around of ethnic cleansing by adopting the outrageous violent imperialist
ideology that Zionism is. Hamas are a bunch of violent religious fanatics who issued from the Islamic Brotherhood and who were trained and funded by Israel for the purpose of dividing and conquering the Arab Palestinians . With great success . Caught in the middle are innocent civillian Palestinan Jews and European Jews and Jews immigrated from all over as well as Palestinian civillians who under no circumstance and for no reason should be being murdered by either Hamas Muslim fanatics or Zionist fanatics. BOTH NEED TO STOP MURDERING
INNOCENTS . All of you on both sides of the violent extremism are a behaving like a bunch of viscous cowards who are being funded and armed by power hungry imperialist superpower elite - Russia US China Iran etc . And you are destroying the whole world and leading us into your crazy war with your lame claim to victimhood to justify your greed and violence .
Hey EDUCATED Deborah Guth! Are you aware of the Armenian Genocide as well as MANY massacred before that??? In the name of "Alluhu Akbar" & calling others Infidels, the butchering of women & children. My own grandfather's 2 brothers were buthchered & beheaded as children in front of my father's grandmother. My father knew the story directly from her. Now you can go ahead & decide it's a lie & a myth.
Here's what I REALLY think about the Jews. The Ancient Caucasian race was one of the MOST peaceful peoples in South Caucasus for 1000's & 1000's of years minding their own business. It's the rest of Humanity that changed them. It's in their subconscious DNA. There are clues that repeats itself consistently in what I am saying. Herriah , Herraih from the very same den or garden or what have you. One side STILL refers to them as Herriah, as they have done for 1000's of years. It's OKAY if you don't agree with me. Just be advanced enough to let me have my own space. Possible?.....
Te haces mal la pregunta Kat.. La pregunta correcta es porque
Un breve artículo perfectamente escrito por tu autora favorita qué
no dice una sola palabra falsa te produce una sensación profética de mancha? Pareces inteligente, sabrás que la mancha está en tu ojo
La causa, sólo tú puedes averiguarla, no es tu autora favorita
Ella conserva imdemnes. sus facultades
It is her. If it is so hard for you to read the truth you should ask yourself in what fantasy am I in?
Do you really think a western democratic country would go to such a brutal war for nothing???
Kat, I'm just wondering what piece of Helen writing makes you think that she lost her moral compass? Could you please quote?
And why do you consider this a stain ?
Hey Kat did you even read what she wrote? There is only one moral compass for Jews defending their right to exist and that is in two words "never again". I cannot find strong enough words to call uninformed defenders and enablers such as you who chose Hamas, radical Islam and savage terrorism to side with over a modern democracy and America's best ally in the Middle East. Here are some other words invisible to your parroting of Hamas propaganda, invasion, hostages, human shields, militarized tunnels, Sharia law, unprovoked rockets, rape, burnt baby bodies, these Hamas tactics of starting a unprovoked war during a peace agreement define your side. the only stain is your defending them.
Article in the FAZ: https://zeitung.faz.net/faz/feuilleton/2024-06-03/ea9751e0d882d8d3764beee76541abd9/?GEPC=s5
go back to your tunnel
Can't handle the truth, eh?
Not at all. Her letter is the peak of an intelligent author, who has seen a lot in her life and found the truth.
Kat :
The jews here are becoming VERY nervous about the factoring of resistance against the terrorism inflicted by 🇮🇱 upon Arabs .
50 years hence , Israel will be defenestrated from the UN.
The Israeli apartheid regime will be politically suffocated and economically strangled :
B - Blockade
D - Divestment
S - Sanctions
and ultimately
E - Embargo
B - Blockade
Excelente su pensamiento q comparto,dijo la verdad clarita como el agua,p hay mucha gente q no la quiere ver a pesar q está delante de sus ojos,p política O principalmente por odio,el mundo a pesar de los grandes inventos,no ha cambiado sigue como hace 90 años atrás,cuando aprenderá a convivir en paz....
You clearly have no idea of what actually happened on October 7th - and has continued for the last 9 months, with attacks on all sides supported and funded by Tehran. There is EXTENSIVE documentation of everything she has written, including from the Go-Pro videos taken by Hamas terrorists themselves (posted to social media for bragging rights).
Here is a validated site with full details: https://oct7map.com
Herta Mueller has stained her legacy for ever with this propaganda piece.
Now go ahead, censor my comment as you did the last one!
Taking back that censorship accusation - I didn't know the moderator is apparently a real person who was sleeping at night... that's why my 1st comment disappeared (only to reappear this morning). That, combined with the 1sidedness of the comments here, compared to wider internet.
Which is a better source: a nobel prize writer who can think for herself, or the "wider internet"?
You seem to think that just prevailing on the "wider internet" makes an opinion valid>
Clearly you can't handle the truth. You're the only stain.
Looking forward to your detailed and unbiased rebuttal.
Herta Muller's insights are obvious. However, Israel was not constituted in Palestinian lands to protect Jews but by the Balfour Doctrine November 2nd 1917 to protect overstretched Great Britain and other parts of Europe during the First World War from Jews that flew from Alexander 3rd's pogroms and in particular the simultaneous revolution in Russia. The Holocaust traumatization is clear, but does not legitimize British support of cleansing Palestine villages and cities. To this, read Jewish historian and Haifa professor Illan Pappé's The History of Palestine, or Sharif Khalidi's Israel's Hundred Years War on Palestine. Hamas radicalized Palestinians because it increasingly was impossible to negotiate about a two-state solution with the right wing governments of Israel in the 1990s after the orthodox murder of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Suicide bombings in the streets of Israel perpetrated by Palestinians in the 90’s is a stronger indication for the rise of the right wing in Israel- for the assassination of Rabin.
Dear Dr Harste, I think what usually tends to happen in comments sections such as this one is, that there is a stating of strongly-held views, but little conversation.
In order to avoid that, I'd like to know your view about "Palestinaian lands". So far as my education about the region tells me, the modern state of Israel is situated in indeed the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, in particular Judea and Samaria.
Where Balfour's much-discussed doctrine is concerned, there I'd say your placement of it is correct in that it was part of Great Britain's general policies towards parts of its empire in Asia.
Israel was not "constituted" by the Balfour Declaration, which only promised British support for Zionist effort—a promise that Britain progressively regretted and walked away from by the start of WWII.
As for British support of "cleansing Palestine villages and cities": (A) that's a skewing of history and (B) Britain's support was, if anything, on the other side. It armed and trained Egyptian and Iraqi troops, and in the case of (Trans)Jordan also provided British officers to lead them—as they proceeded to cleanse Jerusalem of Jews.