4 July in the Land of the Free, the Mother of Parliaments and the Only Democracy in the ME, Part 3
"The only democracy in the Middle East" can only be called a democracy in the Middle East. Elsewhere, it might be called something else.

George Galloway is the Jew-hating admirer of tyrants, the hard-as-nails Stalinist who had missed out on the 90s communist make-over, unlike his erstwhile comrade, Sir Keir Starmer, who has just become UK Prime Minister in an election that saw the ever-combative Mr Galloway end his latest stint as an MP after 91 days. The memory of his infamous saluting of Saddam Hussein's indefatigability, however, will, like questionable great works, endure to be looked upon in despair. With unseemly haste, President Isaac Herzog has already extended his hand to Keir Starmer:
I look forward to working together with him and his new government to bring our hostages home, to build a better future for the region, and to deepen the close friendship between Israel and the United Kingdom.
Such pre-emptive hasbara brings to mind a little exchange during a debate at Oxford University a decade ago, when an Israeli student took to the floor, boldly introduced himself in loud Hebrew, and approached a very uncomfortable Mr Galloway:
George Galloway: Don’t come any closer to me.
Israeli student: Why not? This is a—
Galloway: Because I’m feeling threatened by you. Don’t come any closer to me. What’s that up you jumper?!
Student (pulling the hidden object from under his jumper): This is an Israeli flag. I’m an Israeli, Mr Galloway.
After the student is escorted from the hall, an uncharacteristically shaken Mr Galloway declared:
The last time I saw that flag was on Saturday in Bradford, held aloft by the English Defence League, ...and I think that it’s come to something that England’s fascist formation finds the flag of Israel the most appropriate flag to fly.
One could probably write an entire novel based around just the ironies in this brief scene. Readers may recall that it was in Bradford where Muslims took to the street in 1989, bayed for Salman Rushdie's death, and in a frenzy right up there with the best of mediaeval mayhems, burnt his book. Most of the offended were unable to even read the title on the cover, let alone the story within that they now wanted to kill the author for. George Galloway once founded and led a political party advocating respect for such people.
Burning books, burning people, same-same. The people Galloway wants us all to respect were out again in force on 8 October, this time dancing in jubilation, their forever-wounded honour finally restored: Muslims had murdered, mutilated, raped and burnt 1,200 Israelis the day before, and now Muslims were celebrating around the world. I used Muslim twice in the same sentence because even as the Simchat Torah massacre was still underway, and remarkably, after Muslims had taken to the streets the world over to celebrate, Israelis, and especially their leaders, went out of their way to stress that the massacre had been perpetrated by Hamas, and not by Palestinians, let alone by Muslims.
This is what I want to write about: the fantastic stubbornness with which Israelis refuse to admit that Muslims are their undying enemy. It is a catastrophic illusion. The cold-blooded mass-murder and mass-rape of twelve hundred of their citizens over the course of half a day by none other than Muslims, celebrated the world over by none other then Muslims, is not enough. It is not enough. The only thing we can say with confidence is that the tipping point lies somewhere between 1,200 and six million.
This is not even about fear of offending Muslims, because Israel’s closest allies in the Middle East, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have each in their own way pre-condoned Israel dealing with the perpetrators as Muslims advancing the cause of Islam. The proponents of hasbara, since they are so good at explaining, have yet to explain why Muslims around the world celebrated the Simchat Torah massacre, hailed and still hail Hamas as heroes, and all lost their minds everywhere, once Israel finally started moving against Hamas.
“Israel finally started moving against Hamas,” is a deliberate choice of words. Right from 7 October, rumours have been rife and mounting that something was seriously amiss with everything surrounding Israel’s response to the massacre. I am writing as someone who does not even have access to the Hebrew sources. My suspicions were raised on Day 1, by the ambiguities in the Prime Minister’s address to the nation, and heightened a week later, when an Israeli friend told me something I found difficult to compute. On 4 July 2024, Arutz7 reported exactly what my friend had told me back in October:
One of the closest and most focused warnings before the Hamas-perpetrated massacre in the Gaza envelope was revealed this evening (Thursday) on Channel 12 News. According to the report, the warning ahead of the massacre was written by the same female sergeant from 8200. Like others, it was ignored. In an email sent by the sergeant shortly before the massacre, she wrote, "The sword is coming. The time to warn the people is now."
The sergeant and her team on duty during the early hours of 7 October not only had their repeated alarms dismissed, but were threatened with disciplinary action if they were to persist.
In the email sent to several officers, including the intelligence officer of the Gaza Division, she wrote: "The training shows us that the 'Jericho Wall' plan is realistic and rehearsed, meaning that Hamas already has forces practicing these scenarios and knows how to execute them when ordered.
There were rumours of an inside job. There was the extreme tardiness in the IDF even beginning to act, and the steadily-softening language from the political establishment over the ensuing weeks and months. The Arutz7 report continues quoting the Sergeant:
The exercise very much resembles the plan that appeared in 'Jericho Wall' to destroy the Gaza Division's defense system. The raid training into the country's territory indicates that the 'Jericho Walls' plan is no longer just on paper.
There was increasing talk of warnings weeks, months, and even years in advance, from both domestic and international sources, all ignored. “All the officers who received the letter dismissed it.” When thousands of Gaza “workers” were admitted into Israel just weeks before the massacre, and then all released back into Gaza after Hamas had taken more than 200 Israelis as prisoners of war, I recalled that Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, immediately after Gallant’s latest visit to Washington, announced out of the blue the need to preserve the Palestinian Authority. Only with this recollection did I became convinced that something much wider and truly dark was underway, of which Hamas’s genocidal instincts were but a part. The IDF was forcing the elected government of Israel to create a “Palestinian state”.
The sovereign State of Israel had a foreign diplomat attending her war meetings every week, ensuring that Israel did this and did not do that, for example, send in convoys of supplies to keep Hamas going, or effect so-called “humanitarian pauses”, or Rafah suddenly becoming sacrosanct. And as weeks turned to months and months turned to quarters, amid rising clamour, the Military offered inquiries with what can only be described as insulting parameters. The UNRWA scandal mushroomed out of control to reveal high-level Israeli implication right at the heart of it, including diplomatic attempts to cover it up. When the IDF used Ramadan as an excuse to stand down for a month, I was probably the last one on earth to realise that we were looking at an elaborate, foreign-instigated, coup attempt.
Writing a day later, Joe Klein commented on the Arutz7 article, prefacing his remarks with, “My opinion. I know there is still [a] war going on and technically there has not been any investigation yet as to the reasons why October 7th occurred.” With that out of the way, he offers his opinion, very much my own concerns:
“We all have our ideas of what happened and who is responsible, that [those to] blame includes: the Defense Minister, IDF Chief of Staff, the IDF Intelligence Chief, Mossad Chief, Shin Bet Chief, [Benny] Gantz and others.
The Americans were involved. There is no way they could not have known about the tunnels, the communications, the building up of thousands of people and motorcycles. etc. There is no possibility Sin Bet did not know what was happening in Gaza with hundreds of spies in Gaza, or that thousands of terrorist [were] building up at the border. There is no way Mossad, with agents in Washington and Qatar, did not know what was going to happen. There is no way [IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi] Halevi and IDF intelligence did not know. [Minister of Defense Yoav] Gallant was in charge in the Military and he must have known something was wrong and should have planned for it. Benny Gantz weakened the army to the point that the ability to respond in a preempted (sic) action was made difficult. Benny Gantz was in Washington on October 5th 2023 at the White House betraying Israel and the Jewish people. What did he know? A Small Little War or attack and we will have peace in 1973 and 2023.
The war in 1973 was no surprise to the Americans, [US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and the Intelligence Community, and a few Israelis, including, in my opinion, [Minister of Defense] Moshe Dayan. Maybe they would be told it was a small attack. Who knew about the attack that was designed to bloody the nose of Israel?
Israel was told don’t attack first, absorb the first blow. If you do [attack first], you get nothing. That decision cost Israel thousands of lives and set the [wheels in] motion to Oslo and October 7th 2023.”
Certainly, Muslims around the world have been screaming “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, but they have also, much more brazenly than hitherto, been shouting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” in America, and getting away with it. It ties back to Barack Hussein Obama, Iran and, as I’ve only recently come to learn, Zbigniew Brzezinski, foreign policy advisor to Obama.
Most tellingly, Muslims have increasingly brazenly been demanding the imposition of Shari’a on everyone everywhere. In Britain, some Muslims chant, “Shari’a for UK!” on the streets, while others get themselves elected to Parliament to present the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, with ultimatums to implement a long list of Shari’a demands under cover of outrage over the war in Gaza, for which Starmer has to atone. Let the proponents of hasbara explain how this is only Hamas and “not all Palestinians” or “not all Muslims”.
Many back in 2013, myself included, failed to recognise that the young Israeli man who, Menachem Begin-style, had confronted and taunted Britain’s arch-antisemite, George Galloway, was a hint that while an entire generation of Israeli Jews might have lost their souls in ’73 and disowned them in ’93, hope might survive in their descendants. Now the children of the demoralised ’73 generation are MKs, junior officers in the IDF, and hold other vantage positions in the society, while their children, in turn, are coming into voting age en masse, and suddenly, Jewish power is once again a thing, and the demands for close settlement of the land in Gaza grow ever louder.
The young men who immediately dropped everything to rush to the Gaza border to defend their families and homeland while the IDF top brass went back to sleep, quite literally; the young people out on the border risking their lives to stop Israelis feeding their own killers, while their leaders mock them with their talk of “humanitarian aid for the innocent Palestinians”; the young people who guard their homes and towns in Judea and Samaria; the young people establishing, defending and reclaiming the so-called “outposts” and demolished communities in Judea and Samaria; even the young Haredim enrolling in the IDF; all mean that, at least, the fever of the demoralised generation is broken.
Of course, demoralisation lives on in the hundreds of thousands, from seventeen to seventy, who feel themselves entitled to destroy their country if it cannot be the way they want it. Destroying their country includes: disrupting airports; harassing single mothers and the family members of elected politicians they don’t like; bringing their cities to a standstill; urging soldiers not to report for duty; urging the international community to boycott their own country; and openly collaborating with foreign governments to bring down their own elected government. The pause, a genuflexion towards the existential threat, is over. The elected government is again under attack.
Explanations for this apparent inherent disunity of the Jews is not as simple as a religious-secular divide. There is a not insubstantial religious minority that not only maintain that Israel has no right to exist, but actively support a so-called “Palestinian state”. Yet there are significant numbers of secular nationalist Jews who put their money where their mouths are and live in Judea and Samaria. It is not a simple IDF versus the people, since the lowest ranks are committed to defending Israel and the Jews, while the top brass see their role as defending the Palestinians and securing their future state. One half of the population is convinced that you are beyond evil for not wanting to share the country with the Arabs, while the other half thinks you are suicidal for wanting to do so. And it is also not a simple generational split, as already discussed. It all seems to add an inevitability to how Jabotinsky’s life ended.
Readers may also recall that it was Mr Galloway’s indefatigable Saddam Hussein who was well on his way to becoming Defender of the Faithful through developing a nuclear bomb to drop on Israel. Then Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, a student of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, not only knew what had to be done, but did it: he bombed Saddam’s nuclear reactor. He did not wait for his enemy to strike first, or seek direction from Washington. By the way, the Senator from Delaware whom Begin defied with the famous, "I am not a Jew with trembling knees," is now the trembling-knees President of the United States. Menachem Begin might have been a good student of Jabotinsky, but he was not a brilliant one. Begin gave Sinai away in hopes of peace, an act that proved a crucial enabler of the events in Gaza in October 2023, even while there was peace.
The Gaza War is Israel’s war of attrition against herself, or, to put it less abstractly, it is the IDF leadership’s war of attrition against the Israeli people and government. Benjamin Netanyahu is petrified of the top brass, active and retired. They do as they please and there is naught that the Prime Minister can do about it. Both Benny Gantz and Yoav Gallant are flagrantly insubordinate, openly having meetings with officials in Washington against the wishes of their boss (or so it would seem), meetings at which they plot the overthrow of the elected government of Israel and the imposition of a Palestinian state from the river to the sea. "The only democracy in the Middle East" can only be called a democracy in the Middle East. Elsewhere, it might be called something else.
Yet, when Benny Gantz resigned from the War Cabinet, Netanyahu dismantled the War Cabinet, rather than appoint what are supposed to be his own coalition partners to it. Benny Gantz’s list of treasonous acts is long. Who can forget Gantz’s circumventing the withholding of funds from the PA in the amount of its pay-for-slay payments? Benny Gantz found a way around Israeli law so Mahmoud Abbas could continue paying Palestinians to kill Jews. It is Benny Gantz who leaned on the Attorney-General to ensure that the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, never got the arms for his Judea and Samaria citizens defence units. I was struck by Benjamin Kerstein’s account of Tiberius Julius Alexander, in his essay, “The eternal mystery of the self-hating Jew.” Kerstein says:
Tiberius led the Roman military response that put down the Jews to devastating effect. He also took part in the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE and thus played a part in the Temple’s destruction... In this case, we have a Jew who became so Romanised that, for all intents and purposes, he was not a Roman first and a Jew second, but a Roman only. This exchange of identities permitted him to commit horrendous violence against his own people.
Benny Gantz’s idealisation of the Palestinians goes back decades. There is no mystery there, nor is it really a mystery why Benjamin Netanyahu seems unable to distance himself from this man, while demonstrably marginalising his own coalition partners whose loyalty is beyond question. The eternal mystery is the masochism of ordinary Israelis to repeatedly put their fate in the hands of someone like Benny Gantz.
On 4 July 2024, the Jury may still be out on the half-century since the Yom Kippur War, but the verdict on the Gaza War becomes clearer by the day. Yet, there is hope, Israeli citizens have a Sovereignty Movement, and a new generation of uncowed Israelis with which to start afresh, with a revised Zionism, so to speak.
Part 4/...
Picture credits:
Ecrusized, influenced by user Rr016. - Own work, Israeli military presence in Gaza Strip citing Institute for the Study of War & Critical Threats Project. Maximum Palestinian advance citing NYT & WSJ. Made using OpenTopoMap data., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138592589
Screenshot from https://youtu.be/gD_g5sTdp84
https://www.facebook.com/IsraelSovereigntyMovement/
U.S. Department of State - https://www.flickr.com/photos/statephotos/50925278638/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99705586
Comments:
On 16 July 2024 at 13:48, Ben Dor A. wrote:
Dear Anjuli Pandavar
It's very difficult to digest the truth when it hits you in the face.
Very few people have the courage to put it in writing where everyone can read the writing on the wall.
My dear friend Amil Imani wrote a few days ago:
The radical left enjoys controlling people from the cradle to the grave. (sounds like Muslims). They want socialism. They want to be in charge of people's lives for eternity. The leftist agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and fosters government reliance, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, promotes Sharia law, denigrates the sanctity of marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship and much more.
Regretfully, here, it's much worse than that.
The First and Second Temples fell due to self hatred.
Regretfully, it seems that we as people, never learn from our past mistakes.
In 1936 Zionist leader Berl Katzenelson angrily asked:
Is there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally and mentally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe?
God help us all 🙏
Best Regards
Ben Dor A