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Daily Telegraph article about an Israeli opinion poll, 16 October. Netanyahu’s policy undoubtedly led to where we are now. He should have made a settlement with the PLO.
David Goldman: Israel was founded in a 1948 national liberation war against the UK.
The British seem to have forgotten the 800 servicemen killed in Palestine by Jewish terrorists.
David Goldman makes a good argument here for the Israelis crushing Hamas. it will cost an enormous number of civilian casualties. Are they war crimes?
He is right here.
I used to like Goldman but he has become an ever more shameless Israeli supremacist and open racist against Arabs. And before you say he "cares for western civilisation", he only does so insofar as it serves Israeli interests.
ReplyDeleteHe is very clever and his ideas are always interesting.
DeleteJohn Helmer is an Australian journalist based in Moscow since 1989. His take on things is always very idiosyncratic and I can't work out what politics he has. left-wing probably. He is never dull, sometimes opaque. His explanation for Hamas's motivations in its attack is much better than anything the Times telegraph Guardian Spectator or BBC have provided. I think I ought to give up newspapers. They seem pretty useless nowadays. https://johnhelmer.net/memo-on-the-final-solution-for-one-state-israel-or-palestine/#more-88712
DeleteJohn Helmer is the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. He first set up his bureau in 1989, making him today the doyen of the foreign press corps in Russia.
DeleteHis family has many links to Russia. The founding father was a soldier from Denmark in Napoleon's Grande Armee, who decided his chances of survival were greater if he stopped in Poland and didn't try to keep Napoleon company on the march into Russia. Other family members were killed by the Germans during the invasion of the Soviet Union of 1941.
Born and educated in Australia, then at Harvard University, Helmer has also been a professor of political science, of sociology, and of journalism, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia.
He is a regular presenter on Russian topics in China, Western Europe, and the United States, and at conferences organized by CRU, Center for Management Technologies, the Vicenza (Italy) Fair, and other industry conventions.
Before Russia, Helmer published several books in the US on military and political topics. Essays on the American presidency and on urban policy in the US followed in book compilations in 1981 and 1982; essays on Greek and Middle Eastern politics between 1986 and 1989. Since 1989 he has published almost exclusively on Russian topics.
Today Helmer is one of the most widely read Russian specialists in the business world for his news-breaking stories on Russian base and precious metals, diamonds, mining, shipping, insurance, food trade, and business policy.
I’m getting rather bored of this constant stream of articles that all basically imply the same things.
ReplyDeleteThat western nations somehow owe it to Israel to give it their unconditional backing, irrespective of Israeli actions.
That comparing the number of civilians killed by both sides during the latest flare up is somehow appeasing Hamas.
That any criticism of Israel is due to antisemitism.
I don’t agree with any of it. We have no obligation to the Israelis or Palestinians, and having critical views of Israel policies is perfectly acceptable. Trying to constantly shut down the debate by using slurs and labels is a favourite tactic of the woke, ironically who most of Israel’s loudest cheerleaders claim to despise