Israel, Starmer's government and the media are fomenting a moral panic about words 'glorifying violence' towards the IDF, while glorifying the IDF's all-too-real violence towards Palestinians
It is pure deflection by Starmer & the media to take Gaza out of the spotlight when the headlines should be the aid slaughters being committed daily. Furthermore the chant was calling for the death of an organisation which is carrying out that slaughter. It is now a slogan that will become iconic for ever
I am so disgusted by my government. How can they attack a singer protesting the genocide, while they actively support the genocide (slaughter) of men, women and children in Gaza? It beggars belief their lack of shame. It's so blatant and cruel, yet they go after the singer. They have the blood of every dead Palestinian on their hands (last count 377,000 dead).
Death to the IDF = “We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine. A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid.”
The spectacle of the British government, alongside the rightwing press, bending over backwards to shield a foreign country from criticism, while undermining the legitimate right to protest and debate, is a sorry chapter in the decline of the UK. Craven, obsequious and slavishly loyal to Israel and the US is a situation even Thatcher would have blanched at and rejected.
The deliberate ignoring of a genocide, and the Palestinian holocaust is where you end up when you sign up to support zionism, especially with secret military pacts and submission to the interests of arms manufacturers.
The attempt to curtail the slightest criticism or protest against a regime no different to the likes of Pol Pot, favouring their interests in the suppression of information and debate, surely marks the lowest point of any UK government. It is clear that they have no interests in representing the interests of their own citizens, not to mention the international laws they ridiculously pretend to uphold. There is no democratic mandate for any of this. It is a betrayal of everything that the UK parliament once was. Now we have a situation where transnational interest groups - arms manufacturers, zionist lobby groups, and corporate interests have politicians and national governments in their pockets, democracy has been superseded in their interests, so powerful have they become. And we are expected to just go along with it, fed weapons-grade misinformation, lies and authoritarian laws and restrictions on free speech.
These people will bring disaster on us all, rather than abide by agreed norms and rules, and the basic obligations of humanity sharing one planet.
This attempt at distraction is not going to prevent neither the British government, nor the lying jackals in the BBC leadership, from someday being called to account at the Haugue, for their well documented knowing contributions to an ongoing genocide. Their children will grow up to know, their grandchildren will know, and like the Quislings and Petain of a past time, the shame and stench of their names will be so deep that their descendants will change their names. They will have no legacy but shackles and shame.
Where was unconstitutional support for Israel in Labour’s election manifesto? When was it voted on in parliament? It feels as if the Israeli embassy is directing British foreign and domestic policy as well as controlling the BBC.
"Those worse things, of course, include slaughtering children en masse."
This is what reveals the BBC and Starmer and the like to be the morally empty, compassionless sociopaths they are: They make a big fuss over a rather catchy chant (it rhymes nearly) like "Death to the IDF" but can't say a darn thing about the mass murder of children in Gaza. They reveal themselves to be a part of the real problem. They need to be locked away from decent society, which should be free to chant anything it likes. How about: Free Palestine!
I don't chant slogans myself, but I would argue that "Death to the IDF" (or for that matter "Death to the State of Israel") simply indicates a wish to rid the world of an organization that is responsible for the most horrendous crimes against humanity. If Mr Netanyahu can proclaim his desire to destroy, eliminate or eradicate Hamas, then others are entitled to proclaim their desire to do the same to the IDF, which is a far greater threat to the human race.
So if hating the Israeli army for genocidal slaughter, ethnic cleansing and the intentional mass murder of children is anti-semitic, i.e. expressing a hatred of Jews then that is saying Judaism and Jewish values and practices involve genocidal slaughter, ethnic cleansing and the intentional mass murder of children, which, is totally anti-semitic.
If the chanting "Death, death to the IDF" triggers so many politicians and zionists, I have a solution that is way less anti-semetic.
Artists at the festival should put a giant screen up on the stage and play a never-ending loop of the videoes coming out of Gaza showing kids getting blown to pieces.
We all know videoes of dismembered kids is way less anti-semetic than words.
The host of an astonishingly disturbing YouTube episode of Breezy Politics (and I believe he made a reference to himself as being Jewish), titled “Think Israel Is Bad? Wait Until You See Its Society!”, bluntly states that present “Israel is a lunatic state”. (I'd word it more like: There are many otherwise-good people who have lost themselves in their rage that has resulted in seemingly-blind hate.)
In one scene, there are travelers partaking in “Genocide Tourism”, as well as Israeli school children on a field trip — of course all from a safe distance from the unfolding hell — taking turns looking through a coin-operated telescope focused on a smoky Gaza as Palestinian non-combatants — mostly Palestinian children — are being deliberately starved to death via Israeli blockades of foreign food aid; or they’re being blasted by the frequent IDF bombing runs courtesy of unconditional-use U.S.-taxpayer-supplied top-tech weaponry. (What comes next? Celebratory barbeques?)
In another scene, a conservatively-dressed young Jewish woman shockingly casually calmly says to the interviewer: “I just think we need to kill them. Every one of them. And that’s it. The [Israeli] government won’t allow it. The least we [Jews] can do is kill them.”
Surveys show this isn’t just a fringe opinion. One study revealed that, while only 8 percent thought it’s been too much slaughter of and suffering by Palestinian non-combatants, 99 percent of Jewish Israeli society felt it’s been either not enough or the appropriate amount of killing, maiming and/or starving of Palestinians, including so many children. Of that 99 percent, almost 60 percent felt it’s been too little suffered by the Palestinians, while 36.6 percent thought it’s been the right amount.
----
I have long been critical of what I see as clear decades-long maltreatment of the region’s general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies — and, with few exceptions, the Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it.
Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised at reading the cutline below the large photo accompanying a June 26 story (headlined “UK’s largest Jewish group punishes members who broke silence on Gaza genocide”) posted on the Middle East Monitor’s website: “A young Charedi Orthodox Jew holds a placard during the demonstration. Orthodox Charedi Jews joined many thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors outside Downing Street accusing Israel and Zionists of genocide in Gaza.”
Beautiful human beings. Seeing them and their vocal humanity-first conviction is to me encouraging. … Apparently applying a stereotype that Orthodox Jews would be the last to demonstrate with pro-Palestinian protestors and seemingly support their cause, I must admit I had negatively prejudged them.
It must be difficult for decent Jews/Semites with such a strong conscience when they publicly denounce Israel’s atrocities and are then denounced and referred to as “self-hating” by the extreme-Zionism powers, likely in large part to try shaming them into self-censoring.
Also, I read that there’s been an increase in the rate of suicide among younger or teenaged Jews/Semites since 10/7. I find it hard not to feel for them. They didn’t ask for what happened and especially the horrors currently happening. (This bothers me, even though I have neither Jewish/Semitic or Palestinian/Arabic heritage.)
Indeed, "crooked media" (to use a Trumpian slander). At best, those news-media have been editorially emasculated thus negligent.
Though the emasculation may be due to 'orders from ownership headquarters', it's still the ethical/moral duty of Western journalists and editors to publicly expose the compromised news-media product and therefor its facilitator(s). By doing so, such brave journalists can at least then also proclaim they will no longer participate in its creation and/or dissemination.
Quite frankly, journalists/editors with genuine integrity should and would tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored/missing coverage of an ongoing mass-murderous ethnic-cleansing, a brutally lopsided foreign war, or that of great corporate misconduct that will harm the populace.
Over decades, I’ve heard of too many cases of employees not standing up and doing what is necessary for the public and/or human(e) good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I need this job — I have a family to support’. I’m afraid that — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling, copulating and procreating however many years before — such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their willing involvement.
Thank you for yet another excellent essay, Jonathan. Sorry for this polemic - but it means so much to me.
Like Bob Vylan and Kneecap, I am also appalled by the ACTIONS of the IDF, on the instructions of their government, with the complicit backing and military support of the US and, sadly, my own government, the UK. I am beginning to wonder if any of these bad actors; Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump, Sir Keir Starmer, the BBC etc understand 'Cause & Effect'?
Are they really so stupid not to have learnt, by 9 years of age, as most people everywhere on our planet do;
”if you bully, steal and abuse others - you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for natural justice to come your way. You will carry the guilt for what you have done and be very afraid of the revenge you know you will receive - sooner or later.” It should be called natural morality/'how to survive as a human being'. I believe there are several religions that teach it!
The above-mentioned bad actors are using military and political aggression to deal with anyone/the world-wide majority of 'man or woman in the street' moral humans, who protest, because they/we are ALL totally horrified to see what has been done to Palestinians since October 2023 …. AS WE WERE AND ARE STILL, HORRIFIED BY THE 'HOLOCAUST' after 1945. Why?
Guess what - Human beings simply instinctively know what is right, what is wrong … and what will make each and everyone of us, unsafe. Why have we arrived at having Western 'democratic’ governments who dismiss/ignore what their members must have learnt as children? Did we 'ordinary bods' choose/vote for them to do this on our behalf? Trying to force the silence of those who see the truth of governmental misbehaviour is NOT helpful to either side of a conflict, is it? Pretending to be a democracy and proclaiming to have free speech but stopping it is ... words fail me!
I don't condone what was done by Hamas but I understand WHY it was done - see above paragraph 4. Such provocation since 1948, will eventually cause a terrible reaction, as on 7th October 2023. History will record what has been done since that date: an unbelievably disproportionate, indefensible and horrific response by Israel:
At the very least, for each and every Israeli life recorded as lost that day, 56 Palestinians - children, women and men - (probably many more - the rubble hasn't been searched yet) have been killed by Israel's Defence Force - stop for a minute and imangine what that has done to the minds and souls of those young IDF soldiers who will have to live with, for the rest of their lives, what they have done to other human beings.
I'm wondering; perhaps it would be better if we humans went the way of the dinosaur - and sooner rather than later ... sorry I'm 77! Can we just get a grip of ourselves? NONE of us own this planet!
Does anyone know how many Palestinians have died at the hands of Israel since 1948 - and vice versa? History will eventually record, despite the manipulations of currently ruling parties, where the true moral wickedness lies.
Bob Vylan and Kneecap are BRAVE to be speaking for the vast majority of human beings on this planet in their rather crude way, which I don’t agree with, but I completely understand, because:
Mr. Trump, Sir Keir, the BBC etc - your clearly evident complicity, is VERY alarming to ALL the rest of the world. Your permissive support of the genocidal Israeli actions against all the Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, and those elsewhere in the Middle East is:
1. very wrong,
2. indefensible,
3. making, with every day of killing, and its broadcasted around the world, Israel’s future less safe than it was the day before,
4. breeding hate and revenge on every side,
5. no-one believes for one single minute, you are stupid. We KNOW you know what you are doing/supporting … we just don’t understand why you are doing it, without your citizens' (and beyond) permission,
6. if you truly care for even your own family and friends (never mind the rest of and the planet we ALL share):
7. PLEASE STOP WHAT ISRAEL IS DOING NOW - FOR EVERYONE, INCLUDING THEM - THEY DO NEED SAFETY AND THE WAY WE ARE SUPPORTING THEM IS DENYING THEM THAT, TOO.
Please, everyone, just take a moment, whoever you are, wherever you are: get a load of this if you actually want our species to survive. We really do need to simply care for each other and our planet. We simply need to abandon the idea we are better/bigger/leading/in front of each other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb4WhNvLRFw. This is Carl Sagan and his Pale Blue dot (one version -there are many, many to find on Google).
On 22 July 1946, who bombed the King David Hotel in so-called "Mandatory Palestine?"
Who was murdered?
How many were murdered?
Were the murders freedom fighters or terrorists?
dennis hanna
It is pure deflection by Starmer & the media to take Gaza out of the spotlight when the headlines should be the aid slaughters being committed daily. Furthermore the chant was calling for the death of an organisation which is carrying out that slaughter. It is now a slogan that will become iconic for ever
I am so disgusted by my government. How can they attack a singer protesting the genocide, while they actively support the genocide (slaughter) of men, women and children in Gaza? It beggars belief their lack of shame. It's so blatant and cruel, yet they go after the singer. They have the blood of every dead Palestinian on their hands (last count 377,000 dead).
Death to the IDF = “We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine. A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid.”
The deep taboo here is against facing up to the long, ugly suicide of the zionist entity - that is, seeing the situation for what it is.
The spectacle of the British government, alongside the rightwing press, bending over backwards to shield a foreign country from criticism, while undermining the legitimate right to protest and debate, is a sorry chapter in the decline of the UK. Craven, obsequious and slavishly loyal to Israel and the US is a situation even Thatcher would have blanched at and rejected.
The deliberate ignoring of a genocide, and the Palestinian holocaust is where you end up when you sign up to support zionism, especially with secret military pacts and submission to the interests of arms manufacturers.
The attempt to curtail the slightest criticism or protest against a regime no different to the likes of Pol Pot, favouring their interests in the suppression of information and debate, surely marks the lowest point of any UK government. It is clear that they have no interests in representing the interests of their own citizens, not to mention the international laws they ridiculously pretend to uphold. There is no democratic mandate for any of this. It is a betrayal of everything that the UK parliament once was. Now we have a situation where transnational interest groups - arms manufacturers, zionist lobby groups, and corporate interests have politicians and national governments in their pockets, democracy has been superseded in their interests, so powerful have they become. And we are expected to just go along with it, fed weapons-grade misinformation, lies and authoritarian laws and restrictions on free speech.
These people will bring disaster on us all, rather than abide by agreed norms and rules, and the basic obligations of humanity sharing one planet.
Well said! I salute you ... you've put it perfectly!
This attempt at distraction is not going to prevent neither the British government, nor the lying jackals in the BBC leadership, from someday being called to account at the Haugue, for their well documented knowing contributions to an ongoing genocide. Their children will grow up to know, their grandchildren will know, and like the Quislings and Petain of a past time, the shame and stench of their names will be so deep that their descendants will change their names. They will have no legacy but shackles and shame.
Where was unconstitutional support for Israel in Labour’s election manifesto? When was it voted on in parliament? It feels as if the Israeli embassy is directing British foreign and domestic policy as well as controlling the BBC.
"Those worse things, of course, include slaughtering children en masse."
This is what reveals the BBC and Starmer and the like to be the morally empty, compassionless sociopaths they are: They make a big fuss over a rather catchy chant (it rhymes nearly) like "Death to the IDF" but can't say a darn thing about the mass murder of children in Gaza. They reveal themselves to be a part of the real problem. They need to be locked away from decent society, which should be free to chant anything it likes. How about: Free Palestine!
I don't chant slogans myself, but I would argue that "Death to the IDF" (or for that matter "Death to the State of Israel") simply indicates a wish to rid the world of an organization that is responsible for the most horrendous crimes against humanity. If Mr Netanyahu can proclaim his desire to destroy, eliminate or eradicate Hamas, then others are entitled to proclaim their desire to do the same to the IDF, which is a far greater threat to the human race.
Israel has been committing violence against Palestinians since 1947, to soften them up for the coming invasion of Jews and Zionists in 1948.
So not for the past twenty months but FOR THE PAST SEVENTY EIGHT YEARS.
So if hating the Israeli army for genocidal slaughter, ethnic cleansing and the intentional mass murder of children is anti-semitic, i.e. expressing a hatred of Jews then that is saying Judaism and Jewish values and practices involve genocidal slaughter, ethnic cleansing and the intentional mass murder of children, which, is totally anti-semitic.
If the chanting "Death, death to the IDF" triggers so many politicians and zionists, I have a solution that is way less anti-semetic.
Artists at the festival should put a giant screen up on the stage and play a never-ending loop of the videoes coming out of Gaza showing kids getting blown to pieces.
We all know videoes of dismembered kids is way less anti-semetic than words.
The host of an astonishingly disturbing YouTube episode of Breezy Politics (and I believe he made a reference to himself as being Jewish), titled “Think Israel Is Bad? Wait Until You See Its Society!”, bluntly states that present “Israel is a lunatic state”. (I'd word it more like: There are many otherwise-good people who have lost themselves in their rage that has resulted in seemingly-blind hate.)
In one scene, there are travelers partaking in “Genocide Tourism”, as well as Israeli school children on a field trip — of course all from a safe distance from the unfolding hell — taking turns looking through a coin-operated telescope focused on a smoky Gaza as Palestinian non-combatants — mostly Palestinian children — are being deliberately starved to death via Israeli blockades of foreign food aid; or they’re being blasted by the frequent IDF bombing runs courtesy of unconditional-use U.S.-taxpayer-supplied top-tech weaponry. (What comes next? Celebratory barbeques?)
In another scene, a conservatively-dressed young Jewish woman shockingly casually calmly says to the interviewer: “I just think we need to kill them. Every one of them. And that’s it. The [Israeli] government won’t allow it. The least we [Jews] can do is kill them.”
Surveys show this isn’t just a fringe opinion. One study revealed that, while only 8 percent thought it’s been too much slaughter of and suffering by Palestinian non-combatants, 99 percent of Jewish Israeli society felt it’s been either not enough or the appropriate amount of killing, maiming and/or starving of Palestinians, including so many children. Of that 99 percent, almost 60 percent felt it’s been too little suffered by the Palestinians, while 36.6 percent thought it’s been the right amount.
----
I have long been critical of what I see as clear decades-long maltreatment of the region’s general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies — and, with few exceptions, the Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it.
Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised at reading the cutline below the large photo accompanying a June 26 story (headlined “UK’s largest Jewish group punishes members who broke silence on Gaza genocide”) posted on the Middle East Monitor’s website: “A young Charedi Orthodox Jew holds a placard during the demonstration. Orthodox Charedi Jews joined many thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors outside Downing Street accusing Israel and Zionists of genocide in Gaza.”
Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/nasim/uks-largest-jewish-group-punishes-members-who-broke-silence-on-gaza-genocide/
Beautiful human beings. Seeing them and their vocal humanity-first conviction is to me encouraging. … Apparently applying a stereotype that Orthodox Jews would be the last to demonstrate with pro-Palestinian protestors and seemingly support their cause, I must admit I had negatively prejudged them.
It must be difficult for decent Jews/Semites with such a strong conscience when they publicly denounce Israel’s atrocities and are then denounced and referred to as “self-hating” by the extreme-Zionism powers, likely in large part to try shaming them into self-censoring.
Also, I read that there’s been an increase in the rate of suicide among younger or teenaged Jews/Semites since 10/7. I find it hard not to feel for them. They didn’t ask for what happened and especially the horrors currently happening. (This bothers me, even though I have neither Jewish/Semitic or Palestinian/Arabic heritage.)
Indeed, "crooked media" (to use a Trumpian slander). At best, those news-media have been editorially emasculated thus negligent.
Though the emasculation may be due to 'orders from ownership headquarters', it's still the ethical/moral duty of Western journalists and editors to publicly expose the compromised news-media product and therefor its facilitator(s). By doing so, such brave journalists can at least then also proclaim they will no longer participate in its creation and/or dissemination.
Quite frankly, journalists/editors with genuine integrity should and would tender their resignations and even publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s media product, whether it involves self-censored/missing coverage of an ongoing mass-murderous ethnic-cleansing, a brutally lopsided foreign war, or that of great corporate misconduct that will harm the populace.
Over decades, I’ve heard of too many cases of employees not standing up and doing what is necessary for the public and/or human(e) good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I need this job — I have a family to support’. I’m afraid that — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling, copulating and procreating however many years before — such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their willing involvement.
Thank you for yet another excellent essay, Jonathan. Sorry for this polemic - but it means so much to me.
Like Bob Vylan and Kneecap, I am also appalled by the ACTIONS of the IDF, on the instructions of their government, with the complicit backing and military support of the US and, sadly, my own government, the UK. I am beginning to wonder if any of these bad actors; Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump, Sir Keir Starmer, the BBC etc understand 'Cause & Effect'?
Are they really so stupid not to have learnt, by 9 years of age, as most people everywhere on our planet do;
”if you bully, steal and abuse others - you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for natural justice to come your way. You will carry the guilt for what you have done and be very afraid of the revenge you know you will receive - sooner or later.” It should be called natural morality/'how to survive as a human being'. I believe there are several religions that teach it!
The above-mentioned bad actors are using military and political aggression to deal with anyone/the world-wide majority of 'man or woman in the street' moral humans, who protest, because they/we are ALL totally horrified to see what has been done to Palestinians since October 2023 …. AS WE WERE AND ARE STILL, HORRIFIED BY THE 'HOLOCAUST' after 1945. Why?
Guess what - Human beings simply instinctively know what is right, what is wrong … and what will make each and everyone of us, unsafe. Why have we arrived at having Western 'democratic’ governments who dismiss/ignore what their members must have learnt as children? Did we 'ordinary bods' choose/vote for them to do this on our behalf? Trying to force the silence of those who see the truth of governmental misbehaviour is NOT helpful to either side of a conflict, is it? Pretending to be a democracy and proclaiming to have free speech but stopping it is ... words fail me!
I don't condone what was done by Hamas but I understand WHY it was done - see above paragraph 4. Such provocation since 1948, will eventually cause a terrible reaction, as on 7th October 2023. History will record what has been done since that date: an unbelievably disproportionate, indefensible and horrific response by Israel:
At the very least, for each and every Israeli life recorded as lost that day, 56 Palestinians - children, women and men - (probably many more - the rubble hasn't been searched yet) have been killed by Israel's Defence Force - stop for a minute and imangine what that has done to the minds and souls of those young IDF soldiers who will have to live with, for the rest of their lives, what they have done to other human beings.
I'm wondering; perhaps it would be better if we humans went the way of the dinosaur - and sooner rather than later ... sorry I'm 77! Can we just get a grip of ourselves? NONE of us own this planet!
Does anyone know how many Palestinians have died at the hands of Israel since 1948 - and vice versa? History will eventually record, despite the manipulations of currently ruling parties, where the true moral wickedness lies.
Bob Vylan and Kneecap are BRAVE to be speaking for the vast majority of human beings on this planet in their rather crude way, which I don’t agree with, but I completely understand, because:
Mr. Trump, Sir Keir, the BBC etc - your clearly evident complicity, is VERY alarming to ALL the rest of the world. Your permissive support of the genocidal Israeli actions against all the Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, and those elsewhere in the Middle East is:
1. very wrong,
2. indefensible,
3. making, with every day of killing, and its broadcasted around the world, Israel’s future less safe than it was the day before,
4. breeding hate and revenge on every side,
5. no-one believes for one single minute, you are stupid. We KNOW you know what you are doing/supporting … we just don’t understand why you are doing it, without your citizens' (and beyond) permission,
6. if you truly care for even your own family and friends (never mind the rest of and the planet we ALL share):
7. PLEASE STOP WHAT ISRAEL IS DOING NOW - FOR EVERYONE, INCLUDING THEM - THEY DO NEED SAFETY AND THE WAY WE ARE SUPPORTING THEM IS DENYING THEM THAT, TOO.
Please, everyone, just take a moment, whoever you are, wherever you are: get a load of this if you actually want our species to survive. We really do need to simply care for each other and our planet. We simply need to abandon the idea we are better/bigger/leading/in front of each other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb4WhNvLRFw. This is Carl Sagan and his Pale Blue dot (one version -there are many, many to find on Google).