Balanced? Unbiased? not really ….omitted are decades I can recall of regular suicide bus bombing, incursions and fairly constant missiles with no targets other than ‘whoever gets it’ conveniently supplied by the hounds’ comrades with equally barbaric intent, le mullahs of Iran. Yassa.
I've managed to go my whole life without being attacked by any peoples on planet Earth. I'm not certain but I'd hazard a guess it's because I've not tried illegally stealing anyone's land whilst displacing the locals.
Clear as daylight some sympathisers also do not want a solution and actually advocate as much violence and murder as the terrorists who have unequivocally stated their aim.
This is an extremely thorough and damning article deaglan thanks very much for this, it's absolutely disgraceful what they've been allowed to get away with and I will be sharing this article with everybody!!
Very good article and correctly points out Israel has been at this for 77 years, and even before that, back into the late 1920s. Israel is a terrorist state. Period. Further, it has infiltrated Western democracies through lobby groups that buy off politicians, and those it can't buy off, it blackmails. In the UK, we have the LFI and UKLFI, which have turned harassing people and organisations into an art form. UKLFI specialises in sending lawyers' letters to intimidate and, in one particularly egregious case, forced a children's hospital in London to take down a series of plates that had been painted by Palestinian children because they 'offended Jews and made them feel uncomfortable'. Let's not forget how they have bought off the US Congress and members of the Senate, or how they are shaping UK government policy with respect to Palestine Action. Interestingly, former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was shown to have taken a £ 215,000 'donation' from an Israeli lobby group in 2024.
But the biggest unanswered question is why the world's most heavily monitored border - that between Israel and Gaza - was not monitored on the morning of October 7th? That fence has a camera every 100 metres or so feeding back to a control room, and yet no one was around. The armed forces took hours to respond. Why? There is much more to October 7th than meets the eye. Did the Israeli authorities know about the impending attack weeks before it was due and allow it to go ahead as a pretext to invade Gaza?
Thanks, Deaglan, for a gritty, concise and accurate recounting of the brutality and lies spread for close to a century about Israel and the revolting zionist ideology. May the ultimate downfall of Israel also be the world's last gasp of Colonialism.
Excellent article Deaglan. We need to be reminded from time to time how evil the Israelis have always been and how their “final solution” ultimately unfolded.
Exactly - "october 7th" - well which of the nearly century of bloody colonial October 7ths are we supposed to think about?
Also dont forget that this genocide did not just happen - attack dogs were unleashed to do this well before:
May 2022: the US government declares that extremist kahanist forces in Israel, which spearhead the land theft and murder of palestinians in the West Bank, are completely harmless and removes them from the terrorist sanctions list:
That was the unleashing the violent extemists (the type of people that along with Netan-yahoo, incited the murder of Rabin) to bring agressively savage political parties into the Israeli regime's goverment as senior cabinet officers. From where they have overseen.....suprise.....a genocide!
Bear in mean these fine gentlement are friends and partners of western governments that declare they "cannot speak to Hamas".
You once told me that Palestinian history was taught in Irish schools. Epic respect to the Irish educational system for recognizing that colonialism/occupation is not dead and gone.
Clearly this isn’t a thing here in Amerikkka. But WHERE WERE YOU, fellow Amerikkkans, when IsraHell was “mowing the lawn” in Gaza? When ziofilth were gunning down worshippers in mosques? Bombing the shit out of Lebanon? Don’t tell me you didn’t fucking know. Did you really believe all these incidents were aberrations?
When people mention that the aftermath of 10/7/23 “opened their eyes”, I ask them Where you been? Under a fucking rock?
As always Deaglan, I thank you. Your people and mine STAND AS ONE!
Dear gyp, we both know that, given what they're taught about history in school, our fellow Amerikkans do indeed live under a rock of stupidities ranging from manifest destiny to American exceptionalism, all of it manufactured by a history of preemptive colonialist wars initiated by false flag ops. Whatever kudos the Irish educational system might merit, the US education system deserves at least an equal number of demerits. US history instruction is A FUCKING JOKE, and it sets a tone of arrogance that renders the average Amerikkan a FUCKING DUNDERHEAD where it comes to critical thinking about colonialism.
The Australian Labor government , to its eternal shame , has a group of MPs calling themselves “Friends of Israel”. There is no way that the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and their “advisers “ are unaware of this dedicated agenda by Israel. Yet the PM has the gall to blather on about “a two state solution” when increasingly ALL that is left of Palestine is rubble . The obedience to Zionist lobby groups is unforgivable .
I will continue to write about the Israeli's false-flag attack on an unarmed American ship the USS Liberty, in international waters on June 8, 1967. They killed 34 and wounded 171 Americans in an attempt to blame Egypt and to draw us into the war on their side. They used napalm, strafed medics treating wounded on-deck, strafed life rafts in the water and on deck. They jammed radio frequencies including those known only by our allies. They jammed an international distress frequency. We launched nuclear armed aircraft from my ship the USS America and from the USS Saratoga when we thought it was Egypt. When the ship wouldn't sink, Israel admitted its mistake and the planes were recalled 6 minutes from Cairo. We cooperated with Israel in covering up the entire incident, complete with welding up over 1000 shell holes and repainting the entire ship to deceive the American people about the extent of the attack. The survivors, their families and the families of the dead Americans were threatened with military justice if they spoke of the attack. We actually asked Israel, OUR ATTACKER, if they minded if we presented the Liberty's captain with the Medal of Honor. To not offend the Israeli's the ceremony was held in secret at a Navy base with a Navy official presenting the award, not the president. The evidence, the tapes and documents, have been highly classified by the U.S. since the attack in order to protect Israel.
I grieve that it’s taken the horror of the past 2 years for most people (me included) to finally understand what the Palestinians have been trying to get us to see all these years. The State of Israel must be dismantled. It's a cancer in our world.
Alison: as a Palestine-American who grew up with this knowledge, I grieve as well: that the rest of the world has WILLFULLY IGNORED the plight of the Palestinian people for decades.
And only NOW have jumped on the bandwagon. Where y’all been?
The events of October the seventh were the inevitable result of the preceding decades of abuse,murder and general mistreatment of a captive population by its occupiers.
In any situation such as this there will come a point where those who have been subjected to this kind of suffering will react so violently that the entire world will be forced to take notice.
A more localised example is what happened in England when the government attempted to impose the Poll Tax on the population. We often talk about peaceful protest but when peaceful protest ultimately proves ineffective then violent revolution can be the only result.
There was worldwide revulsion at the deaths resulting from the breakout from Gaza. There was an outcry over the taking of hostages. Against this backdrop nobody seemed to be aware of the fact that Israel had been taking and incarcerating hostages for decades. Even as I write this there are over 10,000 Palestinian people being held in Israeli prisons the vast majority of whom have never been charged with any crime and who include many children. These people detained under what is termed “administrative detention” are routinely abused,tortured,raped and in some instances killed for nothing more than simply being Palestinian.
There is much discussion regarding Israel’s right to exist and I would argue that given that its very existence is predicated upon its continued use of violence and oppression against the people of Palestine and its willingness to attack any and all of the countries that surround it that that it has no such right.
This,I am quite sure,will be interpreted as antisemitic sentiment but the actions of Israel and its continual insistence that it and it alone speaks for the Jewish people who are clearly not some kind of homogeneous,
monolithic entity has all but rendered such accusations meaningless. To object to and demonstrate against an ongoing genocide that has been live streamed on our screens and devices for one day short of two years is not and never has been anything to do with the religion or ethnicity of those perpetrating these atrocities.
There is a dark and twisted kernel that lies at the heart of the state of Israel and now, in high definition,its true nature is being revealed to the world.
The question is what is the world going to do about it? Do we simply sit back and tut-tut doing nothing until we watch the last Palestinian burn in a shelter made of tarpaulins and firewood? Are we willing to sacrifice an entire culture with all of its art,philosophy,poetry and intrinsic beauty on the altar of political correctness and economic concerns?
Are we going to reconcile ourselves to the idea that it is okay to slaughter countless men,women and children just because they have skins of a different colour or worship God under a different name?
I suggest that if we do we have relinquished the right to call ourselves human.
I’m very happy for you to share my post with your daughter. I have come to believe that myself and others like me have been touched by that which is unknowable for a reason and that, in some respects,we are privileged to be the way that we are. We are the lucky ones who are not trapped by our differences as some of our brothers and sisters are. I take great solace from our saying “As above so below.” And the fact that the power of the universe moves within us all,which was something that I would talk to my students about.
Just as an aside,when I was working with my students and during an inspection from our education authority OFSTED I heard my lecturer answer a question about my role in the classroom. He said,and I quote. “I teach them decorating and Kevin teaches them everything else.”
I have never felt so flattered or humble in my entire life.
Your little grandson has to know that we have an enormous amount to offer to the rest of the world and that we should be generous in our offering of it. Our perspective I believe comes from a tangible connection with the divine as does our sensitivity. Only when I undertake my final great adventure will I discover what has happened.
I hold the words of the wonderful Jim Morrison close to my heart when he said “this is the strangest life I’ve ever known”.
It has been a wild ride and I am still in the saddle.
Unfortunately Kevin, the majority of the world’s WHITES couldn’t give a rat’s ass less about what happens to people with skin tones ranging from tan to black.
The good people of Ireland are an immensely notable exception.
I find myself at an advantage to people of that ilk inasmuch as being autistic I can only see two kinds of people. Those who are good and kind and arseholes. Reductive I know but that’s my world.
I’m nearly 72 years old and have spent the better part of my life trying to work out why I’m the way that I am. For the longest time I thought that there was something wrong with me,that I was defective in some way and that everyone else experienced the world in the same way that I do but could cope with it so much better. In the latter part of my working life I spent ten years as an educational support mentor at our local further education college and one day during my annual professional review session I asked my manager why it was that I always seemed to be assigned to support autistic students. His answer was a complete revelation. He said,and I quote. “You are joking aren’t you?” And went on to explain that it was clear to everyone that I am on the spectrum myself. I can honestly say that I was initially shocked but in the intervening years till now I’ve come to see it as a massive relief. My natural instinct to study anything that is of interest to me led me to read exhaustively about autism and in doing so I discovered that all of the things that I thought were wrong with me are just the way that my brain works. The sensory overload, the intense sense of injustice and the need to fight it, the masking in an effort to be a “normal” or “real” human,the trauma of change. Thankfully the attitude to people like me and your grandson has changed immeasurably over the years and he,hopefully,will not have to suffer the same things as I did. Knowing that your family thinks that you’re a weird kid and hearing the whispers that they don’t think you’re hearing is more devastating than they can ever know. Speaking as an autist I can attest to the fact that we are not incapable of empathy,something that is often said about us. In fact it seems that we can be intensely empathetic probably because we are so fascinated by what we view as real people. But like neurotypical individuals we are as diverse as they are.
The Māori people have a word for autism “Takiwatanga” which means “in his or her own time and space”which I think is quite beautiful. And that is what we need. I know that you love your grandson and that you will give him his own time and space and the encouragement in all of the things that he will be interested in. I am glad to have met you albeit in the virtual realm and I extend to you a sentiment that comes from my interest in a very ancient tradition called Wicca.
That was one of the most beautiful, inspiring posts I’ve read in a long time. I’ve had a crash course in autism for a few years now. There is nothing “wrong” with being autistic any more than there’s anything “wrong” with me for having green eyes.
I hope you don’t mind if I share your words with my daughter. And Kevin: I’m Pagan. Blessed be right back 🙂
Janis Joplin reminded us that sometimes freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. In parallel, hasbara's just another word for nothin' left at all. As the drone video makes perfectly clear.
October the 6th 2023, or, The Day Before the Day After: A powerful retrospective from Deaglan O' Mulrooney and The Spectacle on the genocidal days, years and decades of Israel's colonization, occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people that preceded the violence of the Gaza Prison Break of October 7th 2023.
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I would implore you, however, Deaglan – and anyone else seeking to render a fulsome account of the genocide in Gaza – to please abandon the underreporting of deaths in Gaza provided by untrustworthy authorities who claim that no more than 68,000 people have been killed in these unrelenting two years of unmitigated carnage.
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Please instead consider following the example of Special U.N. Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Alanbanes, who no longer repeats those unreliable figures, and has, for some time now, has been citing, instead, the much more reliable figure of 680,000 Gaza dead, cited in the article "Skewering History: The Odious Politics of Counting Gaza’s Dead" by Dr. Richard Hil and Dr. Gideon Polya, published in Arena Online magazine on July 11, 2025.
You are welcome, Gypsy, and that is my observation also, Gypsy. And I repeat that, otherwise, Deaglan's retrospective on the genocide is a stellar piece of work. And, BTW, even Amy Goodman at Democracy Now sill cites only the preposterous "official" numbers of dead, currently reckoned at something like 68,000 -- approximately 1/10th of the likely death toll. It is long past time, however, that we need to simply disregard the official preposterous claims. The scientists have now provided likely estimates and Francesca is leading the way here. All we have to do is follow.
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BTW, I tackled this issue also in my recent two articles on Israel's campaign of assassination against Palestinian journalists. I know you just finished reading my most recent article on the arrest of the indigenous activist in Boulder, so you may have read those prior articles already? Anyway, I do a deeper dive therein into why the official death tolls are completely preposterous, which you might find interesting.
Actually, Gypsy, the really interesting question, to my mind, is why is it that the Israeli authorities and Hamas agree on their under-reporting of the dead in Gaza? I think is Prof. Norman Finkeltein who has addressed this question cogently. IIRC, he posits that both these parties have an interest in the underreporting of the dead. Israel, for obvious reasons – they don’t want people to acknowledge how much harm they are causing.
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Hamas, because they're vested in their program of armed resistance, and they're committed to the principle of the martyrdom of the population. I'm not saying that an occupied people don't have the right of resistance, but the interests of the general population and the interests of Hamas diverge at some point.
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Hamas is consumed by their ideology of armed resistance. It's why they engaged in the prison break on October 7th, regardless of the potential blowback. Again, I'm not saying that the Palestinians don't have a right to armed resistance. Of course they do. Nor am I suggesting that there any equality of armed struggle here. There is not. Israel is an illegal occupier and a genocidal ethnosupremacist state possessing overwhelming military force.
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What Finkelstein argues, however, is that Hamas and Israel have a joint interest in not talking about the actual cost to the population of Gaza of the number of deaths that are actually taking place. Israel believes they can overwhelm and annihilate the people of Gaza by sheer force, and walk away repercussions.
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Hamas believe that, through armed resistance, they can bring Israel to its knees, and break about its demise. Both are willing to push their programs to their utter limit. Neither is motivated to count the cost in lives lost. Not in public, anyway. So says the professor. As for the Western media, they pretty much do whatever Israel wants them to do, right?
While I appreciate your input, I have to say that I don’t always agree with Norman and have some issues with this theory.
I don’t see what Hamas has to gain by undercounting the number of Palestinian deaths. They’d want nothing more, IMHO, than to fully reveal IsraHell’s barbarity.
The deaths are only the ones recorded by medical professionals. The world will never know the exact number of broken bodies crushed under the ruins. ( I refuse to employ the term “rubble”, which implies that it’s naturally occurring.) And of the COURSE IsraHell wants to minimize the number of murders it’s committed.
Al Quds is creating havoc among the cowardly, reluctant IGF, whose only ability to fight is by dropping bombs and sniping children in the head. Nothing pleases me more than seeing video of the true warriors stuff a grenade into the turret of an IsraHelli tank.
Death by a thousand cuts. Has the IGF defeated the Al Quds and Al Qassam brigades yet?
For a counter perspective on this discussion, I highly recommend reading the latest article by Alon Mizrahi, in The Mizrahi Perspective on Substack: "The 1 Fatal Mistake the Palestinians are Always Making." I find his arguments highly persuasive, in spite of their troubling consequences. And yet, I fear he is probably right... that Hamas, if they attempt to negotiate with Israel, will be royally screwed over by them, as the Palestinians always are.
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Mizrahi's view is that Hamas needs to insist that negotiations can only be conducted under the auspices of the UN, with UN peacekeeping forces on the ground. He argues that, for Hamas to negotiate directly with Israel lends false legitimacy to their program of genocide, since it creates the impression that these "negotiations" are between two warring parties, whereas these are actually "negotiations" between a victim and their abuser, which is a contradiction in terms, and moreover an impossibility, since the abuser will always default to the relationship of abuse at the first opportunity. Which is the only future that Israel will compel out of such “negotiations.”
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Mizrahi's analysis, and the history of this abusive relationship, communicates very clearly why the Palestinians' options have been so very narrow all along – prior to Oct 7th, and back into the deep past, and up into the present moment. Precisely, really, as Deaglan has described in his essay above. It’s a case of “being damned if you do, and damned if you don't.” No wonder there was prison break on October 7th. No wonder it was violent. The choices the Palestinians face must always feel impossible. They attempt peaceful marches to the wall, and they were murdered in their hundreds. They attempt armed resistance and the Israelis murder them in even greater numbers. No matter what the Palestinians attempt, the Israelis torment them at every turn. I fear for them all in the days ahead.
Balanced? Unbiased? not really ….omitted are decades I can recall of regular suicide bus bombing, incursions and fairly constant missiles with no targets other than ‘whoever gets it’ conveniently supplied by the hounds’ comrades with equally barbaric intent, le mullahs of Iran. Yassa.
I've managed to go my whole life without being attacked by any peoples on planet Earth. I'm not certain but I'd hazard a guess it's because I've not tried illegally stealing anyone's land whilst displacing the locals.
This sounds like a familar story of what invaders occupying other people's countries tend to experience: guerilla resistance.
Fighting tyranny frequently includes violence , pal. Ask the French.
@ “John Schofield”
Clear as daylight some sympathisers also do not want a solution and actually advocate as much violence and murder as the terrorists who have unequivocally stated their aim.
This is an extremely thorough and damning article deaglan thanks very much for this, it's absolutely disgraceful what they've been allowed to get away with and I will be sharing this article with everybody!!
Thank you!
Very good article and correctly points out Israel has been at this for 77 years, and even before that, back into the late 1920s. Israel is a terrorist state. Period. Further, it has infiltrated Western democracies through lobby groups that buy off politicians, and those it can't buy off, it blackmails. In the UK, we have the LFI and UKLFI, which have turned harassing people and organisations into an art form. UKLFI specialises in sending lawyers' letters to intimidate and, in one particularly egregious case, forced a children's hospital in London to take down a series of plates that had been painted by Palestinian children because they 'offended Jews and made them feel uncomfortable'. Let's not forget how they have bought off the US Congress and members of the Senate, or how they are shaping UK government policy with respect to Palestine Action. Interestingly, former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was shown to have taken a £ 215,000 'donation' from an Israeli lobby group in 2024.
But the biggest unanswered question is why the world's most heavily monitored border - that between Israel and Gaza - was not monitored on the morning of October 7th? That fence has a camera every 100 metres or so feeding back to a control room, and yet no one was around. The armed forces took hours to respond. Why? There is much more to October 7th than meets the eye. Did the Israeli authorities know about the impending attack weeks before it was due and allow it to go ahead as a pretext to invade Gaza?
Thanks, Deaglan, for a gritty, concise and accurate recounting of the brutality and lies spread for close to a century about Israel and the revolting zionist ideology. May the ultimate downfall of Israel also be the world's last gasp of Colonialism.
Excellent article Deaglan. We need to be reminded from time to time how evil the Israelis have always been and how their “final solution” ultimately unfolded.
Exactly - "october 7th" - well which of the nearly century of bloody colonial October 7ths are we supposed to think about?
Also dont forget that this genocide did not just happen - attack dogs were unleashed to do this well before:
May 2022: the US government declares that extremist kahanist forces in Israel, which spearhead the land theft and murder of palestinians in the West Bank, are completely harmless and removes them from the terrorist sanctions list:
https://www.state.gov/revocation-of-five-foreign-terrorist-organizations-designations-and-the-delisting-of-six-deceased-individuals-as-specially-designated-global-terrorists/
israeli-group-from-terror-list
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/27/who-is-israels-far-right-pro-settler-security-minister-ben-gvir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kach_(political_party)
That was the unleashing the violent extemists (the type of people that along with Netan-yahoo, incited the murder of Rabin) to bring agressively savage political parties into the Israeli regime's goverment as senior cabinet officers. From where they have overseen.....suprise.....a genocide!
Bear in mean these fine gentlement are friends and partners of western governments that declare they "cannot speak to Hamas".
Hi Deaglan
You once told me that Palestinian history was taught in Irish schools. Epic respect to the Irish educational system for recognizing that colonialism/occupation is not dead and gone.
Clearly this isn’t a thing here in Amerikkka. But WHERE WERE YOU, fellow Amerikkkans, when IsraHell was “mowing the lawn” in Gaza? When ziofilth were gunning down worshippers in mosques? Bombing the shit out of Lebanon? Don’t tell me you didn’t fucking know. Did you really believe all these incidents were aberrations?
When people mention that the aftermath of 10/7/23 “opened their eyes”, I ask them Where you been? Under a fucking rock?
As always Deaglan, I thank you. Your people and mine STAND AS ONE!
🇵🇸🇮🇪💪
Dear gyp, we both know that, given what they're taught about history in school, our fellow Amerikkans do indeed live under a rock of stupidities ranging from manifest destiny to American exceptionalism, all of it manufactured by a history of preemptive colonialist wars initiated by false flag ops. Whatever kudos the Irish educational system might merit, the US education system deserves at least an equal number of demerits. US history instruction is A FUCKING JOKE, and it sets a tone of arrogance that renders the average Amerikkan a FUCKING DUNDERHEAD where it comes to critical thinking about colonialism.
But…Vin. The big news of the day is that THIS COULD BE TAYLOR SWIFT’S LAST ALBUM!
Gods save us, the world’s comin to an end.
Nothin against Taylor. She seems like a nice person. But when this is what Amerikkkans absorb as “news”, we’re beyond hopeless.
The Australian Labor government , to its eternal shame , has a group of MPs calling themselves “Friends of Israel”. There is no way that the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and their “advisers “ are unaware of this dedicated agenda by Israel. Yet the PM has the gall to blather on about “a two state solution” when increasingly ALL that is left of Palestine is rubble . The obedience to Zionist lobby groups is unforgivable .
I will continue to write about the Israeli's false-flag attack on an unarmed American ship the USS Liberty, in international waters on June 8, 1967. They killed 34 and wounded 171 Americans in an attempt to blame Egypt and to draw us into the war on their side. They used napalm, strafed medics treating wounded on-deck, strafed life rafts in the water and on deck. They jammed radio frequencies including those known only by our allies. They jammed an international distress frequency. We launched nuclear armed aircraft from my ship the USS America and from the USS Saratoga when we thought it was Egypt. When the ship wouldn't sink, Israel admitted its mistake and the planes were recalled 6 minutes from Cairo. We cooperated with Israel in covering up the entire incident, complete with welding up over 1000 shell holes and repainting the entire ship to deceive the American people about the extent of the attack. The survivors, their families and the families of the dead Americans were threatened with military justice if they spoke of the attack. We actually asked Israel, OUR ATTACKER, if they minded if we presented the Liberty's captain with the Medal of Honor. To not offend the Israeli's the ceremony was held in secret at a Navy base with a Navy official presenting the award, not the president. The evidence, the tapes and documents, have been highly classified by the U.S. since the attack in order to protect Israel.
Hi Wayne
As well as IsraHell, we can blame the execrable Lyndon “Welcome to Vietnam” Johnson, who said, I’m not losing an ally over a few sailors!
It was he who personally recalled those intent on rendering aid to the Liberty.
This is a story about the USS Liberty that I wrote for medium. Check out the real LBJ.
https://medium.com/@wfspi/did-israel-and-the-u-s-collude-in-the-6-day-war-9169a5acc8d6?source=user_profile_page---------3-------------df185054f8b9----------------------
Hi Wayne
I own several books on the subject of the USS Liberty. Thank you for the link; it’s been taken down, big surprise.
Same LBJ who conspired to murder our last great president JFK.
Same LBJ who gave nukes to IsraHell.
I grieve that it’s taken the horror of the past 2 years for most people (me included) to finally understand what the Palestinians have been trying to get us to see all these years. The State of Israel must be dismantled. It's a cancer in our world.
Alison: as a Palestine-American who grew up with this knowledge, I grieve as well: that the rest of the world has WILLFULLY IGNORED the plight of the Palestinian people for decades.
And only NOW have jumped on the bandwagon. Where y’all been?
Sorry
Spot on!
The events of October the seventh were the inevitable result of the preceding decades of abuse,murder and general mistreatment of a captive population by its occupiers.
In any situation such as this there will come a point where those who have been subjected to this kind of suffering will react so violently that the entire world will be forced to take notice.
A more localised example is what happened in England when the government attempted to impose the Poll Tax on the population. We often talk about peaceful protest but when peaceful protest ultimately proves ineffective then violent revolution can be the only result.
There was worldwide revulsion at the deaths resulting from the breakout from Gaza. There was an outcry over the taking of hostages. Against this backdrop nobody seemed to be aware of the fact that Israel had been taking and incarcerating hostages for decades. Even as I write this there are over 10,000 Palestinian people being held in Israeli prisons the vast majority of whom have never been charged with any crime and who include many children. These people detained under what is termed “administrative detention” are routinely abused,tortured,raped and in some instances killed for nothing more than simply being Palestinian.
There is much discussion regarding Israel’s right to exist and I would argue that given that its very existence is predicated upon its continued use of violence and oppression against the people of Palestine and its willingness to attack any and all of the countries that surround it that that it has no such right.
This,I am quite sure,will be interpreted as antisemitic sentiment but the actions of Israel and its continual insistence that it and it alone speaks for the Jewish people who are clearly not some kind of homogeneous,
monolithic entity has all but rendered such accusations meaningless. To object to and demonstrate against an ongoing genocide that has been live streamed on our screens and devices for one day short of two years is not and never has been anything to do with the religion or ethnicity of those perpetrating these atrocities.
There is a dark and twisted kernel that lies at the heart of the state of Israel and now, in high definition,its true nature is being revealed to the world.
The question is what is the world going to do about it? Do we simply sit back and tut-tut doing nothing until we watch the last Palestinian burn in a shelter made of tarpaulins and firewood? Are we willing to sacrifice an entire culture with all of its art,philosophy,poetry and intrinsic beauty on the altar of political correctness and economic concerns?
Are we going to reconcile ourselves to the idea that it is okay to slaughter countless men,women and children just because they have skins of a different colour or worship God under a different name?
I suggest that if we do we have relinquished the right to call ourselves human.
Hi Gypsy,
I’m very happy for you to share my post with your daughter. I have come to believe that myself and others like me have been touched by that which is unknowable for a reason and that, in some respects,we are privileged to be the way that we are. We are the lucky ones who are not trapped by our differences as some of our brothers and sisters are. I take great solace from our saying “As above so below.” And the fact that the power of the universe moves within us all,which was something that I would talk to my students about.
Just as an aside,when I was working with my students and during an inspection from our education authority OFSTED I heard my lecturer answer a question about my role in the classroom. He said,and I quote. “I teach them decorating and Kevin teaches them everything else.”
I have never felt so flattered or humble in my entire life.
Your little grandson has to know that we have an enormous amount to offer to the rest of the world and that we should be generous in our offering of it. Our perspective I believe comes from a tangible connection with the divine as does our sensitivity. Only when I undertake my final great adventure will I discover what has happened.
I hold the words of the wonderful Jim Morrison close to my heart when he said “this is the strangest life I’ve ever known”.
It has been a wild ride and I am still in the saddle.
Unfortunately Kevin, the majority of the world’s WHITES couldn’t give a rat’s ass less about what happens to people with skin tones ranging from tan to black.
The good people of Ireland are an immensely notable exception.
I agree with you wholeheartedly Gypsy.
I find myself at an advantage to people of that ilk inasmuch as being autistic I can only see two kinds of people. Those who are good and kind and arseholes. Reductive I know but that’s my world.
Hi Kevin
I have an autistic grandson and I hope that, as he becomes a young adult, he sees humanity exactly as you do.
Hi Gypsy,
I’m nearly 72 years old and have spent the better part of my life trying to work out why I’m the way that I am. For the longest time I thought that there was something wrong with me,that I was defective in some way and that everyone else experienced the world in the same way that I do but could cope with it so much better. In the latter part of my working life I spent ten years as an educational support mentor at our local further education college and one day during my annual professional review session I asked my manager why it was that I always seemed to be assigned to support autistic students. His answer was a complete revelation. He said,and I quote. “You are joking aren’t you?” And went on to explain that it was clear to everyone that I am on the spectrum myself. I can honestly say that I was initially shocked but in the intervening years till now I’ve come to see it as a massive relief. My natural instinct to study anything that is of interest to me led me to read exhaustively about autism and in doing so I discovered that all of the things that I thought were wrong with me are just the way that my brain works. The sensory overload, the intense sense of injustice and the need to fight it, the masking in an effort to be a “normal” or “real” human,the trauma of change. Thankfully the attitude to people like me and your grandson has changed immeasurably over the years and he,hopefully,will not have to suffer the same things as I did. Knowing that your family thinks that you’re a weird kid and hearing the whispers that they don’t think you’re hearing is more devastating than they can ever know. Speaking as an autist I can attest to the fact that we are not incapable of empathy,something that is often said about us. In fact it seems that we can be intensely empathetic probably because we are so fascinated by what we view as real people. But like neurotypical individuals we are as diverse as they are.
The Māori people have a word for autism “Takiwatanga” which means “in his or her own time and space”which I think is quite beautiful. And that is what we need. I know that you love your grandson and that you will give him his own time and space and the encouragement in all of the things that he will be interested in. I am glad to have met you albeit in the virtual realm and I extend to you a sentiment that comes from my interest in a very ancient tradition called Wicca.
Blessed be.
Kevin:
That was one of the most beautiful, inspiring posts I’ve read in a long time. I’ve had a crash course in autism for a few years now. There is nothing “wrong” with being autistic any more than there’s anything “wrong” with me for having green eyes.
I hope you don’t mind if I share your words with my daughter. And Kevin: I’m Pagan. Blessed be right back 🙂
Janis Joplin reminded us that sometimes freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. In parallel, hasbara's just another word for nothin' left at all. As the drone video makes perfectly clear.
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October the 6th 2023, or, The Day Before the Day After: A powerful retrospective from Deaglan O' Mulrooney and The Spectacle on the genocidal days, years and decades of Israel's colonization, occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people that preceded the violence of the Gaza Prison Break of October 7th 2023.
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I would implore you, however, Deaglan – and anyone else seeking to render a fulsome account of the genocide in Gaza – to please abandon the underreporting of deaths in Gaza provided by untrustworthy authorities who claim that no more than 68,000 people have been killed in these unrelenting two years of unmitigated carnage.
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Please instead consider following the example of Special U.N. Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Alanbanes, who no longer repeats those unreliable figures, and has, for some time now, has been citing, instead, the much more reliable figure of 680,000 Gaza dead, cited in the article "Skewering History: The Odious Politics of Counting Gaza’s Dead" by Dr. Richard Hil and Dr. Gideon Polya, published in Arena Online magazine on July 11, 2025.
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https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/
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Thank you for pointing this out Sean.
Most human rights groups count the number of dead at at least 3/4 million.
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You are welcome, Gypsy, and that is my observation also, Gypsy. And I repeat that, otherwise, Deaglan's retrospective on the genocide is a stellar piece of work. And, BTW, even Amy Goodman at Democracy Now sill cites only the preposterous "official" numbers of dead, currently reckoned at something like 68,000 -- approximately 1/10th of the likely death toll. It is long past time, however, that we need to simply disregard the official preposterous claims. The scientists have now provided likely estimates and Francesca is leading the way here. All we have to do is follow.
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BTW, I tackled this issue also in my recent two articles on Israel's campaign of assassination against Palestinian journalists. I know you just finished reading my most recent article on the arrest of the indigenous activist in Boulder, so you may have read those prior articles already? Anyway, I do a deeper dive therein into why the official death tolls are completely preposterous, which you might find interesting.
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Thank you Sean: what I do know is that the number often quoted is only the official count of the Hamas Health Ministry.
Which would lead one to ask: then why do “western” news sources employ it?
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Actually, Gypsy, the really interesting question, to my mind, is why is it that the Israeli authorities and Hamas agree on their under-reporting of the dead in Gaza? I think is Prof. Norman Finkeltein who has addressed this question cogently. IIRC, he posits that both these parties have an interest in the underreporting of the dead. Israel, for obvious reasons – they don’t want people to acknowledge how much harm they are causing.
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Hamas, because they're vested in their program of armed resistance, and they're committed to the principle of the martyrdom of the population. I'm not saying that an occupied people don't have the right of resistance, but the interests of the general population and the interests of Hamas diverge at some point.
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Hamas is consumed by their ideology of armed resistance. It's why they engaged in the prison break on October 7th, regardless of the potential blowback. Again, I'm not saying that the Palestinians don't have a right to armed resistance. Of course they do. Nor am I suggesting that there any equality of armed struggle here. There is not. Israel is an illegal occupier and a genocidal ethnosupremacist state possessing overwhelming military force.
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What Finkelstein argues, however, is that Hamas and Israel have a joint interest in not talking about the actual cost to the population of Gaza of the number of deaths that are actually taking place. Israel believes they can overwhelm and annihilate the people of Gaza by sheer force, and walk away repercussions.
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Hamas believe that, through armed resistance, they can bring Israel to its knees, and break about its demise. Both are willing to push their programs to their utter limit. Neither is motivated to count the cost in lives lost. Not in public, anyway. So says the professor. As for the Western media, they pretty much do whatever Israel wants them to do, right?
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Hi Sean
While I appreciate your input, I have to say that I don’t always agree with Norman and have some issues with this theory.
I don’t see what Hamas has to gain by undercounting the number of Palestinian deaths. They’d want nothing more, IMHO, than to fully reveal IsraHell’s barbarity.
The deaths are only the ones recorded by medical professionals. The world will never know the exact number of broken bodies crushed under the ruins. ( I refuse to employ the term “rubble”, which implies that it’s naturally occurring.) And of the COURSE IsraHell wants to minimize the number of murders it’s committed.
Al Quds is creating havoc among the cowardly, reluctant IGF, whose only ability to fight is by dropping bombs and sniping children in the head. Nothing pleases me more than seeing video of the true warriors stuff a grenade into the turret of an IsraHelli tank.
Death by a thousand cuts. Has the IGF defeated the Al Quds and Al Qassam brigades yet?
After TWO YEARS….no!
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For a counter perspective on this discussion, I highly recommend reading the latest article by Alon Mizrahi, in The Mizrahi Perspective on Substack: "The 1 Fatal Mistake the Palestinians are Always Making." I find his arguments highly persuasive, in spite of their troubling consequences. And yet, I fear he is probably right... that Hamas, if they attempt to negotiate with Israel, will be royally screwed over by them, as the Palestinians always are.
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Mizrahi's view is that Hamas needs to insist that negotiations can only be conducted under the auspices of the UN, with UN peacekeeping forces on the ground. He argues that, for Hamas to negotiate directly with Israel lends false legitimacy to their program of genocide, since it creates the impression that these "negotiations" are between two warring parties, whereas these are actually "negotiations" between a victim and their abuser, which is a contradiction in terms, and moreover an impossibility, since the abuser will always default to the relationship of abuse at the first opportunity. Which is the only future that Israel will compel out of such “negotiations.”
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Mizrahi's analysis, and the history of this abusive relationship, communicates very clearly why the Palestinians' options have been so very narrow all along – prior to Oct 7th, and back into the deep past, and up into the present moment. Precisely, really, as Deaglan has described in his essay above. It’s a case of “being damned if you do, and damned if you don't.” No wonder there was prison break on October 7th. No wonder it was violent. The choices the Palestinians face must always feel impossible. They attempt peaceful marches to the wall, and they were murdered in their hundreds. They attempt armed resistance and the Israelis murder them in even greater numbers. No matter what the Palestinians attempt, the Israelis torment them at every turn. I fear for them all in the days ahead.
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Bravo🙏
As soon as Trump has wangled the Nobel peace prize they'll start it up again.