The Jewish State Has a Special Duty to Defend Syrians | New York Times | Ronen Bergman

Syria is a sorry mess for which Obama has the major responsibility. 

To this day Obama says he's "proud" of what he "achieved" after Assad had crossed Obama's own Red Line. Obama claims Assad destroyed Syria's chemical stocks without the US having had to fire a single shot.  But as Obama knew then, and as John Kerry has admitted since, he was lying; Assad destroyed only those chemicals that he'd acknowledged having — not those that he'd hidden (and both Obama and Kerry knew this at the time!). AND Assad hadn't been required to destroy any chlorine at all because chlorine is used in many innocent industrial processes — and in your backyard pool.... And it's chlorine that's been used most recently to kill Syrian civilians. 

Chlorine used by an Assad emboldened by Obama's failure of nerve and his known duplicity. 

This is staggering when you think about it. Pure deception and duplicity by Obama. Yet he continues to prance around the world grinningly untouched, fawned upon by the good and mighty... and Hollywood celebs. 

Whether Trump can do any better is moot. As this article below points out, the situation is considerably more complex than it was before Obama's Red Line. Complexity is not a Trump strong suit.  

And so it falls to Israel....

Ronen Bergman argues that Israel has an historical and moral duty to help protect Syrians from Assad. And has the capacity to do so. 

I wonder if you agree with it. 

The migrant crisis could cost the German taxpayer 1,000,000,000,000 euros (That’s a TRILLION)

The accepted narrative, at least on the left, is that migrants are always and everywhere a net positive benefit. I've doubted that for some time, and the research shows very mixed outcomes. Key variables are the source of migrants and their education. In the case of recent surges to Europe there's the additional hypocrisy by refugee supporters that these waves are indeed refugees, whereas they are about 80% economic migrants. In short queue-jumpers. 

This piece, in the Voice of Europe estimates the lifetime cost to Germany alone of the migrants already arrived to be One Trillion euros. They are uneducated and from countries with cultural mindsets inimical to liberal western societies. 

In his autobiography, "In search of the truth", famous German economist Hans-Werner Sinn says the migrant crisis could cost the country almost one trillion euros, Focus reports. Sinn is a former advisor of Angela Merkel and retired president of the IFO Institute for Economic Research.Germany accepted 1.5 million migrants since 2015 and Sinn says they are not dentists, lawyers and nuclear scientists, but mostly underqualified immigrants. According to him, these people can never repay what they have received from the German welfare state during their lifetimes.

New York Times has problems with people being against Jihad

The way of the apologist for Islam: ignore Islam's bigotries

It's an odd feeling when you read an article in which the author does this: sets out a number of propositions that you're clearly supposed to find wrong and horrifying; to which you're supposed to mutter to yourself "how terrible!", but which in reality you think (or at least I do) "well those observations are spot on!".
One such recently in the New York Times an article by Laurie Goodstein, Pompeo and Bolton Appointments Raise Alarm Over Ties to Anti-Islam Groups.

Here's a few of the statements that Goodstein clearly thinks -- with no evidence -- are beyond the pale, but which are in fact true:

Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo both have ties to individuals and groups promoting a worldview that regards Islam not so much as a religion, but as a political ideology that is infiltrating the United States and other Western countries with the goal of imposing Shariah law, the Muslim legal code. These groups believe that the vehicle for this takeover is the Muslim Brotherhood, and they allege that American mosques, civic organizations and leaders and even government officials who are Muslims are suspected of being Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

But it's true that some Muslims are trying to impose Sharia in the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood has been explicit about this:

[Supporters] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions (From “ An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America,” by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991.)  Via Jihad Watch

Then:

The founder of ACT, Brigitte Gabriel, has written that “the purest form of Islam” is behind the terrorist attacks: “It’s not radical Islam. It’s what Islam is at its core.”

Brigitte Gabriel is a brave woman who has suffered at the hands of Islamists who attacked her family when they lived in Lebanon.   She is 100% correct that "It's not radical Islam.  It's what Islam is at its core".  Just read the foundation documents of Islam.  The Islamic Trinity: The Koran, the Hadith and the Sirah.

Also have a look at Gabriel in action here; she's spot on, and powerful:



Again:

Both Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton have appeared frequently on the radio show of Frank Gaffney Jr., the president and founder of the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that argues that mosques and Muslims across America are engaged in a “stealth jihad” to “Islamize” the country by taking advantage of American pluralism and democracy.

But it's true that 80% of mosques in the United States are radical. That's the result of four separate studies, including one by an Imam.

There's more, which I'll leave to Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch to finish off.  Taking the opportunity to say that Spencer is by no means a bigot, or Islamophobe, or xenophobe or racist.  His site does what it says: records the daily examples of Jihad around the world.  He's been doing that for many years.  I've watched him in innumerable videos and read most of his books.  He is hugely knowledgeable about Islam, and careful, always to specify that his criticisms are of Islam, the ideology, not of individual Muslims...

"Reviewing the record of 21st Century Islam” | MercatorNet

Some of Islam in Europe. Straight talking from a Jesuit

This is a rather good review of Islam in the 21st century, by the Jesuit James Schall. Balanced, sane and unhysterical, but concerning for all that, given the reality of the Islamic threat to the west.

Islam is unabashedly a religion that affirms that everyone should be Muslim. Indeed, it assumes that everyone is born Muslim. It does not hesitate, when it sees the opportunities, to expand by what are considered the best means available to achieve this purpose wherever it is not successfully resisted. Many minor "wars" and skirmishes on Islamic world frontiers have this increase of influence as their cause. [The rest here]

The Failures of Anti-Trumpism | New York Times | David Brooks

President Trump has defied never-Trumpers’ best efforts.

Good article by David Brooks that appears spot on to me. Especially his comment

 "Part of the problem is that anti-Trumpism has a tendency to be insufferably condescending”. 

He then mentions a recent academic analysis and could have added Hillary. She was shockingly condescending in her recent outing in India.

Viktor Orban’s Hungary Victory: Country Embraces His National Conservatism | National Review

This is quite the best analysis I've seen of the Hungarian elections and of Viktor Orban's place and influence in Europe and its bureaucracy. (He above).
Better, yes, than anything I've seen or read in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, Fox, CNBC or CNN.
Go on then, find fault with it.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Jewish Problem | City Journal | Theodore Dalrymple

Corbyn gives succour to the worst elements of pro-Palestine
and  the anti-semitism of the British Left

Maybe the best, at least most insightful, comment on the U.K. Labour party's current "problems with anti-semitism". From the always reliable Theodore Dalrymple who should be more widely read.
He ties the bent to anti-semitism with the socialist bent to hate the wealth creators....
Snip:

A few years ago, a survey appeared breaking down household wealth in Britain by religious affiliation, and Jews came first. For someone as suspicious of and hostile to wealth and the wealthy as Corbyn, whose fundamental economic idea is that money is the product of exploitation, and that equality of outcome is desirable, attainable, and just, it is only natural to suppose that both wealthy individuals and groups must have been up to no good, grabbing by illicit means a larger slice of the economic cake than is theirs, according to his own conception of justice. It is therefore perfectly reasonable, or at least in keeping, for him to be anti-Semitic: he hates none more than the independently successful.

We're Not the Thought Police | Frontpage Mag

Wow this is truly scary. 

Report from Bruce Bawer who is an award-winning author and knowledgeable critic of Islam. The Plod recently did over a fellow in England.  The land of George Orwell, who coined the term “Thought Police” in his 1984.

Bawer recollects when the same had happened to him in Norway. 

 
The initial report is in Jihad Watch, run by Robert Spencer who is NOT Richard Spencer, the notorious neo-Nazi and is not the extremist "Muslim hater" the Left would have you believe. He too is a knowledgeable critic of Islam. Of Islam the idea, Islam the concept, Islam the ideology, Islam the way of life. Not of Muslims, the people - who he sees as being *victims* of Islam, more even than we infidels. 

 
A new twist: the Left will now claim that conservatives who speak up for Free Speech are only doing so so that they can spout awful Nazi propaganda.  You can’t win...

Risotto From Sri Lanka Is Just as Good | New York Times | Roger Cohen. April 9.

Let’s not base our immigration policy on an Italian rice dish

LETTER TO NEW YORK TIMES
Oh dear. Roger Cohen off the reservation again after his shocker yesterday.
This time he tells the story of a Sri Lankan immigrant chef in Italy, in case "you're tired of reading terrible things about immigrants". He tells us a success story and reckons "I'd say there are millions of such stories across Europe".
I'd say not. If there were, we wouldn't have 75% of Europeans against ongoing mass immigration.
Not content to ignore the fact that anecdote is not data, Cohen picks Sri Lankan immigrants! He doesn't tell us their religion but it's most likely Buddhist or Hindu. These folk don't have issues with integrating. Unlike the votaries of Islam whose doctrine of "Loyalty and Enmity" enjoins illegal immigrants not to become part of the host country culture.
Come on now Me Cohen! What's happened to you? You used to have a realistic and nuanced position on the great challenge of mass immigration facing Europe.
Now you slime anyone with concerns about illegal immigration and tell us anecdotes about people who are irrelevant to the concerns of the vast majority of Europeans.
P F etc

How Democracy Became the Enemy | New York Times | Roger Cohen. April 7-8

And annoy #MeToo

Letter to New York Times

What's with Roger Cohen? It's possible to be against unlimited immigration without being a Viktor Orbanite. 

Indeed three quarters of European residents are reliably against unfettered immigration. Yet they are mocked by Cohen as nativist "racial and religious purists".

But why should this majority be forced to enable the social problems that Islamic immigration has brought elsewhere to Europe. Should this majority do so because "kale-eating western liberals racked by colonial or war guilt" (as Cohen straw-mans them for Orban) try to shame them to do so?

I think not. 

Europe is not the kale-eaters to give away. 

P F etc

A Historic Step in Austria? :: Daniel Pipes

This ought to be a statement that any political party, anywhere, ought to be able to get behind. It's from the new Austrian coalition government. I find nothing wrong with it and a lot right. Especially the fight against political Islam, which is spot on because that ideology is explicitly out to replace western liberal democracy. 

But I'd bet that those in the Left will find fault: it's xenophobic, or racist, or islamophobic, or whatever. 

Still:

Austria guarantees freedom of belief and religion but fights political Islam. By political Islam we mean groups and organizations whose ideological foundation is Islam, and which seek to change the basic political and social order by rejecting our constitution and Islamizing society. Political Islam, which can lead to radicalization, antisemitism, violence and terrorism, has no place in our society.

How to Make Trade Peace With China | WSJ | Martin Feldstein

How to Make Trade Peace With China

This is a good article ($).
The guts of it is:

 .... the U.S. has several straightforward goals and negotiations are not necessary. What is needed is a change in Chinese behavior to conform to the rules Beijing accepted when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

There it is. Stop whining and obfuscating and prevaricating and dissembling, Beijing. Mr Xi? Just do what you said you'd do when the US was generous enough to usher you into the WTO...
This behind a paywall, so here it is in full. It's too good to embargo! Below the fold...

Trump’s Irrelevant Tariffs | WSJ | Daniel Henninger

Daniel Henninger praises Trump  ($) for creating jobs (deregulation and tax cuts) and criticises him for getting involved in "irrelevant" trade wars ...

Mick Hartley: Anti-Semitism is the precise form that unreason takes in modern politics

The ultimate obscenity; which many anti-semites now accept 

In the wake of the hullabaloo over anti-semitism in Corbyn's Labour Party. Justified, I might add. 

A great article. 

While Hitler comparisons are rarely advisable, MBS's analogy underscores the fact that he sees the nature of the Iranian region very differently than another world leader Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed, several times in fact—former President Barack Obama. Shortly after the Obama White House struck the nuclear agreement with Iran in July 2015, Goldberg pressed Obama on the Iranian regime's anti-Semitism. Obama saw it as functional.

"The fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude you from being interested in survival," said Obama. "It doesn't preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn't preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations."

It didn't take impoverished Iranians protesting against the economy their leaders had pillaged to show that Obama was fundamentally wrong about the nature of the regime — and about one of the chief ideological weapons that it cultivates. Anti-Semitism and reason cannot exist side by side because anti-Semitism is the precise form that unreason takes in modern politics.

A Tale of Two Trumps

Re the post just before this.

Cui Tiankai is hopeless

Unusually incompetent. China's ambassadors usually much more effective

Cui Tiankai is China's ambassador to the United States. I just saw him live on CNBC, allegedly presenting China's case in the current trade disputes with the US.
I was mightily disappointed. China has improved its diplomatic corps in the decades I've known it and promoted more PR-savvy representatives.
But not Cui.
He harks back to the boring bureaucrats of yore: a combination of boilerplate, obscurantism and deflection.
We learn nothing of China's stance except duplicitous statements like: China doesn't force technology transfer (it most assuredly does; I've been personally subject to it with joint ventures I did there). Which also begs criticism of CNBC for not being better briefed to counter Cui's lies and obfuscation.
Disappointing.

Donald Trump & Amazon| National Review

What kind of man says dopey things like "only fools or worse..."  when it is he who is the fool? And worse. 

Look in the mirror Mr President!

The clip below from the National Review (you have to scroll down) is the fact of the postal rates matter, in the calumny that Trump is hurling at Amazon. (Amazon allegedly getting below market postal rates hence "cheating" the tax payer). 

Given Trump's additional claims that Amazon is tax dodging (it's not), and that it's affecting Main Street retail (it's not), his Twitter storm amounts to an unprecedented and disgusting display of personal spleen...

Package-delivery rates are set by the U.S. Postal Service in negotiation with Amazon, the service's biggest customer. Despite the president's claims, the postal service does not lose money on every package delivery for Amazon. The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act made it illegal for the postal service to charge a price for package delivery that is lower than the cost of making the delivery. All changes to delivery prices have to be approved by the federal Postal Regulatory Commission, which has five members; no more than three members can be of the same party. The commission currently has four members; three are Republicans. All members of the PRC must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

If Trump wanted to raise rates for Amazon, he could contact the PRC's current members and articulately effectively persuade, with evidence, figures, and reason, that they undercharged the service's biggest customer to the detriment of the American taxpayer. (Stop laughing.) Tweeting things like "only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon!" probably isn't going to change their minds.

Amazon tax - Wikipedia

To BBC:
AMAZON *Does* pay sales tax!
Don't repeat Trump's "fake news"!!

The Wrong Way for Germany to Debate Islam | Jochen Bittner | NYT

The money shot, with which I agree 100% snipped below  As in, when people ask, "ok so you're anti Islam / pointing out the issues in Islam.... so what do we do about it?" the answer is, at least: stand up for our own values.  And require that people who come to our countries abide by our values.
The money shot here:

So how do we move on? Instead of prolonging the mistakes of the past, the secular majority in Germany should make clear two things to their fellow Muslim citizens. Yes, Muslims belong here — but belonging brings with it expectations. Being a citizen means, first and foremost, upholding the values and laws that make this country so attractive. The secular majority must learn how to convey this expectation in a clear yet civil manner.Germans struggle with this because they are uncomfortable, for historical reasons, with making such demands of religious minorities. The problem, in other words, is not just politicians who wield stupid slogans. It is also the majority of nonpopulist Germans who are shy about expressing the terms of participation in a pluralist society.

The whole article, here online, but behind paywall, is below the fold.

Yasmine Mohammed on Twitter: "These Islamists are very honest. They are transparent about their plans...”....

... Yasmine Mohammed on Twitter: "These Islamists are very honest. They are transparent about their plans, but ppl in the West* just refuse to believe them because they think they're nothing but little brown dears incapable of actually being malicious. Meanwhile, they are succeeding at an alarming rate. https://t.co/HdnWjJTjCY"

*She could have added, The Left...

Genocide in South Africa: now that’s a black-and-white issue

Probably only Rod could get away with an article like this on Orania...

Rod Liddle in The Spectator.

There are two ways of looking at this tragedy but only one of them can be expressed

Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the Northern Cape which is home only to a handful of jackals, the occasional springbok and supporters of the Afrikaaner Resistance Movement. I had been visiting Orania, a smallish town in which no black people are allowed. Set up by the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd, its existence now is very grudgingly protected by the South African government under regulations which preserve minority cultures — ah, the irony.

dodgy

How perverted that a religion should praise a father willing to gut his son, for the sake of voices in his head.  And this is supposed to be our moral guide?....
From here.
And Hitchens on the issue.

Opinion | The War on Drugs Breeds Crafty Traffickers - The New York Times

For every reasonable move Trump makes — like taking on China's predatory mercantilism — there's at least one other totally crazy thing he proposes. Here his proposal to kill drug traffickers. Yeah, like Duterte. 

I've long been against the war on drugs. What sane person hasn't?

Places that have tried decriminalisation and medication have proved they work. When will they learn? ("They" being those, mostly, on the right). 

Politicians often escalate drug war rhetoric to show voters that they are doing something. But it is rare to ignore generations of lessons as President Trump did earlier this month when he announced his support for the execution of drug traffickers.This idea is insane. But the war on drugs has never made any sense to begin with.Executing a few individual smugglers will do little to stop others because there is no high command of the international drug trade to target, no generals who can order a coordinated surrender of farmers, traffickers, money launderers, dealers or users. The drug trade is diffuse and can span thousands of miles from producer to consumer. People enter the drug economy for all sorts of reasons — poverty, greed, addiction — and because they believe they will get away with it. Most people do. The death penalty only hurts the small portion of people who are caught (often themselves minorities and low-level mules).Indeed, on the ground, the threat of execution will even help those who aren't caught because they can charge an increased risk premium to the next person in the smuggling chain. The risk of capture and punishment increases as drugs move from farm to processing lab, traversing jungles, through cities, across oceans, past borders, distributed by dealers and purchased by consumers. The greater the risk to smugglers in this chain, the more they can demand in payment.Without the drug war, substances like cocaine, heroin, marijuana and meth are minimally processed agricultural and chemical commodities that cost pennies per dose to manufacture. But lawmakers have invented a modern alchemy called drug prohibition, which transforms relatively worthless products into priceless commodities for which people are willing to kill or die.

Trump’s flaws should not distract from the greater imperfections of US-China trade relations | South China Morning Post

Another in the line of articles labelled "Trump may be an idiot, but...". 

In this case he's right about China's predatory trade and economic policies. Even if his solutions — tariffs — are misguided. What he should be doing is applying reciprocity. Strict reciprocity. 

Trump didn't start the trade war; Beijing did. That he seems flawed in ways no other American president has been, including a questionable affinity for Moscow, doesn't reduce the necessity of changing the current condition with Beijing. Americans, ever resilient, will adapt. It may be a long and economically painful road, but another decade or two without change is likely to result in something more painful, in a darker world. Because the trade war, after all, is about much more than just trade.

100 French Intellectuals Issue A Warning About Islamic Totalitarianism

This is significant

/Snip

A group of 100 French intellectuals has just published in the newspaper Le Figaro (March 19, 2018), its denunciation of Islamic totalitarianism. Among the signatories are some of the most distinguished historians, philosophers, professors, jurists, and journalists, in France, known to all, and representing political leanings from Left to Right. Among them are some ex-Muslims. Not a group easy to dismiss. 

Anti-Semitism Is Rising. Why Aren’t American Jews Speaking Up? - The New York Times

Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise, up 57 percent in 2017 from 2016, the largest single-year jump on record, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That increase came on top of the rise in incidents in 2016 that coincided with a brutal presidential campaign.

This is a useful article. 

Many people decry the rise of "islamophobia", but ignore or don't know that anti-Semitic hate crimes are more common (in total and per capita) and have been rising faster than so-called Islamophobic hate crimes. 

(That's in the US but likely elsewhere as well). 

But....

Weisman doesn't note that the biggest rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes comes from the Islamic community. Weisman only notes that "alt-right", the traditional source of anti Semitism. 

And he mentions Southern Poverty Law Centre approvingly. But this outfit has morphed from a decent fighter against the racism of the likes of the KKK into a smearer of anyone to the right of their hard-left views. Outlandishly, last year, they named Aayan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz as anti Islam extremists. They have failed to correct this travesty despite wide ranging criticism from all spectra. 

Why on Earth is a clearly caring guy like Weisman so ignorant of key facts like these? I dunno. 

Faris on Twitter: "I'm going to translate some tweets in this hashtag #مرتد_حفرالباطن the world must see this."

Wondering if this will link through. To a number of translations of Arabic tweets calling for death of an apostate. (It does link through)

Sadiq Khan’s Hate Speech Praise | National Review

More from the inimitable Douglas Murray and the insidiousness of "hate speech" laws.
In the U.K. you can now be banged up under "hate speech" laws for speaking the truth. About "certain communities", of course....

Opinion | Some Things Are True Even if Trump Believes Them - The New York Times

This makes sense to me. Someone strong like the US does indeed need to get tough with China's flouting of the world trade rules, but in a smart way. Not by crude steel tariffs. Cohn knew this, but he's gone. Economic adviser Navarro is just a misinformed lickspittle. Larry Kudlow?*

Tom Friedman in the New York Times:

So what would a smart American president do? First, he'd sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord. TPP eliminated as many as 18,000 tariffs on U.S. exports with the most dynamic economies in the Pacific and created a 12-nation trading bloc headed by the U.S. and focused on protecting what we do best — high-value-added manufacturing and intellectual property. Alas, Trump tore it up without reading it — one of the stupidest foreign policy acts ever. We Brexited Asia! China was not in TPP. It was a coalition built, in part, to pressure Beijing into fairer market access, by our rules. Trump just gave it up for free.

Once a smart president restored participation in TPP, he'd start secret trade talks with the Chinese — no need for anyone to lose face — and tell Beijing: "Since you like your trade rules so much, we're going to copy them for your companies operating in America: 25 percent tariffs on your cars, and your tech companies that open here have to joint venture and share intellectual property with a U.S. partner — and store all their data on U.S. servers."

Having a really tough trade negotiation with China on manufacturing and high technology, but doing it in secret, makes sense to me. Starting a public trade war with our allies over aluminum and steel that raises the costs for our manufacturers, that doesn't protect our growth industries and that loses allies that we need to deal with China makes absolutely no sense.

* Larry the-always-wrong Kudlow

“Occupation of the American Mind” wants to occupy the western Left mind

A friend brought my attention to this video of 2016, produced by Al-Jazeera with voiceover by Roger Waters.  That provenance might itself be enough for some people, but not me who will even watch Fox, sometimes.
It's a pan of propaganda, though it's propaganda itself; and a complaint about not having its message heard, when its message is spread abroad, and the reviews are uniformly favaourable.
I didn't start with any bias about it, despite its provenance.
So lets just see what it's about and if there's anything wrong with it.
Bearing in mind that all the reviews I could see online were and are favourable.
Mine is going to be unfavourable, because I've watched it twice and find it wanting.
Now these below are my Notes, and I need to tidy them up.
At this point, I just want to get them down on paper, as it were, and give a gist of what I'm thinking on this vid.

Basic thesis is that Israel (government) gets a lot more coverage than does the Palestinian side. They are in a PR “war” and are winning that war. But the reaction to this very video puts lie to that. All the reactions positive and was widely disseminated. So.... at the very least there’s been no conspiracy to suppress Palestinian sides voices.

Note use of “war”. Suggesting ill will and aggression. Maybe they’re just better (AIPAC). There’s a quote about how much AIPAC spends vs how much Palestinians spend. Why don’t PNO spend more then?

Is Israel just better at what it does and the whole film is a paean to envy? Note malicious envy. Part of reason for holocaust. (Ref to Hidden Brain. Shankar Vidantam. There’s also Hitchens theory that Mo felt dissed by the Jews hence the genesis of Muslim Jew hatred).

Opening scenes: 1947 and war. Makes it look like was a Jewish invasion. One of the commenters talks about the fact that it was not - as zionists (ZNO) claimed at the time -“a land without people for a people without land”. No it wasn’t. But neither was it a land invaded by Jews who ruthlessly killed and drove out the Palestinians.

Jews were about half the population of what became Israel. (NOT 8% quoted by Rami Khouri That relates to earlier period. Before Jewish immigration. By which Jews bought land from absentee Turkish landlords. And what? Is migration to be declared wrong? What about demands that Europe take in refugees to a land they’ve never had any claim to. Cf the ancient claims of Jews to Judea and Samaria).

Resolution 181 did give more land to Jews 54%, compared to their population 32%, but over half was the Negev desert.

Israel plays the “defence” card. Indeed they do and it’s correct. Only disputable if you dispute the very existence of Israel. Which of course many do, openly or not. And if that’s your view then there’s nothing more to talk about. Because Israel was created by the United Nations. (Palestinians love to quote UN resolutions but not the one that created Israel).

Resolution 242: quoted but only the bit about Israel’s obligations. Not the bit about Palestinian and Arab states obligations. That is to recognise Israel. Israel said it would abide by 242. PNO said no.

Israel has repeatedly offered terms along lines of 242 and been repeated rebuffed. Oslo, Camp David, Clinton.

Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by right wing Lebanese militias NOT IDF.

(1). ZNO = Zionists and others, Zionist supporters.

(2). PNO = Palestinians and others, especially surrounding Arab states, and Iran, awa western supporters, mostly of the Left.