“Six times in the past 12 years Netanyahu rejected plans to eliminate the Hamas leadership”

“Six times in the past 12 years [Benjamin Netanyahu] has rejected plans proposed by the heads of Israel’s secret security agency, known as Shabak, to eliminate the Hamas leadership.” 

So writes former Israeli PM and general Ehud Barak this month in the American defence establishment's house magazine, Foreign Affairs. 

How much better had the spies murdered Hamas leaders than the wholesale massacre that is taking place now. Using the secret service to pick off Hamas fighters might have prevented the 7 October attack. Doing this after October 7 would have been better than what is happening now, both morally and in terms of Israel's long term interests.

The 90 year-old far leftist American Ralph Nader, whose third party candidature is the reason George W Bush became US President in 2000 and therefore the reason for a lot of bad things, thinks the number of dead Arabs in Gaza may be 200,000, not the 30,000 always quoted.

As always, Belloc is to the point.

'Oh! let us never, never doubt

What nobody is sure about!'

As third party candidates for the American presidency go Nader is one of the most significant, comparable to Ross Perot who made Bill Clinton president and Theodore Roosevelt who did the same favour for Woodrow Wilson, but a very long way behind Abraham Lincoln or Donald Trump.