Smotrich calling for whole villages to be destroyed for one person's action

[bythoughts]

Two Palestinians killed six Israelis in East Jerusalem recently. The gunmen were killed right away. In response...

‘The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map’: Smotrich​

"... In a post on X, [Far-right (i.e. Nazi) Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich condemned the “severe and horrific attack” on a bus in Jerusalem, which Israeli officials say was carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank.

“The State of Israel cannot accept a Palestinian Authority that raises and educates its children to murder Jews,” said Smotrich.

“The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map, and the villages from which the terrorists came should look like Rafah and Beit Hanoon,” he added..."

[the above al-Jazeera link is to an updating feed; sorry, I couldn't identify a reliable single article link for this]


At this point, the Israelis are under a test. Will they denounce calls for atrocities that sound remarkably similar to what Nazis did in various European countries? Or will waves of thugs descend on these communities and kill dozens or hundreds of people who did nothing wrong? I am not optimistic about how this test will turn out. But one way or another, no matter whether something or nothing happens, we will see, unequivocally, what the truth is about their people. Is Belial Smotrich what they believe in?

 

[Allan]

Do we know the Palestinian Authority was involved or is this an excuse to clear out the West Bank for settler condos?

 

[Allan]

The attack was captured by a dash cam.

 

[Tigerace117]

The attack was captured by a dash cam.

Six civilian deaths is a slow hour in Gaza under the genocidal Israeli campaign.

 

[Allan]

Six civilian deaths is a slow hour in Gaza under the genocidal Israeli campaign.

Yes but this thread isn't about that is it?

 

[Tigerace117]

Yes but this thread isn't about that is it?

Smotrich screeching about how he wants to turn villages into Rafah says otherwise.

 

[bythoughts]

Do we know the Palestinian Authority was involved or is this an excuse to clear out the West Bank for settler condos?

I stayed away from the PA question because it is relatively valid politics. If an attack like this happens, you might question that mode of governance. I mean yeah, sure, in theory the PA is the sovereign government of a Palestinian state, in theory it is democratic ... but those ships have sailed far beyond the horizon. If the Israelis abolish PA and replace it with some other Palestinianrat they think will be more compliant, I don't know what to think of it. If they go in to villages tonight and kill people, burn homes, etc., that is easier to form an opinion on.

 

[bythoughts]

While I don't enjoy what Smotrich had to say, it was a very good thing for X to give him freedom of speech. By having an official in the Netanyahu government come forward and propose destroying an entire village to punish one man - comparing it directly to cities in Gaza - and by not repudiating the statement, the Israeli government has admitted that its actions in Gaza are intended as collective punishment. There are no hostages to rescue in those two villages in the West Bank. There's no "military objective". And Smotrich says that is the same as Gaza. This is the sort of revealing admission that isn't made if you don't let people speak.

 

[bomberfox]

The attack was captured by a dash cam.

This after settlers destroyed a whole village?

 

[bythoughts]

According to what I'm seeing now, Israel is going for an F-. From the Jerusalem Post via Yahoo News:

Israel in intense war on terror, Netanyahu says at scene of deadly Jerusalem attack​

"A pursuit and encirclement of the villages from which the terrorists came is underway. One of the people who killed the terrorist was an ultra-Orthodox soldier from the Hashmonaim Brigade," Netanyahu added. He then stated that Israel will "take even harsher measures" on those who assisted and dispatched the terrorists. "These murders, these attacks, on all fronts, they do not weaken us. They only increase our determination to complete the missions we have taken upon ourselves, in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, everywhere," Netanyahu stated.

Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed that the terror attack would have "severe and far-reaching consequences. We will pursue terror everywhere." "Whoever gives shelter to terror and directs terror will pay the full price," Katz stated.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar responded to the terror attack during a press conference with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in Budapest. Sa'ar said the terror attack underscored the importance of rejecting current attempts "to force Israel to accept a Palestinian terror state in the heart of our tiny land." "The terrorists this morning came from the Palestinian Authority territories," Sa'ar added. "We are at war against radical Islamic terror. Europe, and every country in the world, must now make a clear and fateful choice: are they on the side of Israel, or on the side of the jihadists? We know that Hungary is on our side."

MK Zvi Sukkot (Religious Zionist Party) went to the scene of the terror attack later on, stating that "Every village from which today’s terrorist came out should look like Rafah looks. The fate of Ramallah should be like that of Jabaliya."

[to his credit, Yisrael Beytenu head MK Avigdor Liberman did not express any genocidal sentiment, but commended the person who fought to end the original terror attack.

Blue and White head MK Benny Gantz wrote in a post that "we must strike this murderous terror with strength and determination, in Judea and Samaria, in Gaza, and everywhere."

Now as I look through this, the theme is to "encircle" and attack whole villages over a killing by two people. In the U.S., two kids with guns shooting six people does not even get a place on the leaderboard. Nobody expects kids to need a village to show them how to commit a few murders. Now yes, I understand that Palestine is the ultimate poster child for effective gun control ... nonetheless, I have my suspicions that it is occasionally possible for one of the many security people detailed there to inadvertently doze off or leave a gun in the restroom, and kids could get hold of it. I don't believe for a minute this post hoc story that there is a hunt for terrorists - I think that the sentiment of collective punishment is still coming through loud and clear in these quotes. It's just like how the Nazis would take a hundred hostages, and if somebody shot one of their people, say bye-bye.

 

[cpwill]

Terrorist shoots up a bus of innocent people because they are Israeli.

Obviously the story is that Israel is bad.

 

[oneworld2]

Two Palestinians killed six Israelis in East Jerusalem recently. The gunmen were killed right away. In response...

‘The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map’: Smotrich​

"... In a post on X, [Far-right (i.e. Nazi) Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich condemned the “severe and horrific attack” on a bus in Jerusalem, which Israeli officials say was carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank.

“The State of Israel cannot accept a Palestinian Authority that raises and educates its children to murder Jews,” said Smotrich.

“The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map, and the villages from which the terrorists came should look like Rafah and Beit Hanoon,” he added..."

[the above al-Jazeera link is to an updating feed; sorry, I couldn't identify a reliable single article link for this]


At this point, the Israelis are under a test. Will they denounce calls for atrocities that sound remarkably similar to what Nazis did in various European countries? Or will waves of thugs descend on these communities and kill dozens or hundreds of people who did nothing wrong? I am not optimistic about how this test will turn out. But one way or another, no matter whether something or nothing happens, we will see, unequivocally, what the truth is about their people. Is Belial Smotrich what they believe in?

Obviously for Smotrich and co Israeli occupation violence is okay, commendable , but acts of resistance to the illegal occupation are an opportunity for ever more Israeli violence.

What I found interesting was a point made in the BBC coverage as follows.......................

A number of armed civilians who were at the scene acted immediately. They engaged by returning fire and they killed those two terrorists on the spot.

Six killed by Palestinian gunmen at Jerusalem bus stop

Israeli police say two gunmen were killed after the attack, which was one of the deadliest in the city in years.

www.bbc.co.uk

Again, what should be obvious is that armed civilians that engage in the conflict in such a way , should they get shot/killed themselves will have lost their protected status. IE they would not be " innocent civilians" as we are so often corralled into believing ?

Of course the Israelis will use this attack to justify their own violence which preceded it and dwarfs it by several levels of magnitude.

 

[Tigerace117]

Terrorist shoots up a bus of innocent people because they are Israeli.

Obviously the story is that Israel is bad.

Gee dude, the ANC routinely carried out bombings in apartheid South Africa during the conflict there.

Does that mean apartheid wasn’t that bad after all?

 

[bythoughts]

Terrorist shoots up a bus of innocent people because they are Israeli.

Obviously the story is that Israel is bad.

We have the precursor of this in the U.S.

The minute somebody shoots some kids at Columbine, the Democrats want to ban guns.

The minute a trans person shoots a couple of people in Minnesota, the Republicans want to ban guns for all trans people.

They have gone after Dungeons and Dragons, some video games, the internet, and now routinely prosecuting the parents, a long stream of scapegoats, looking for some innocent people to blame for the actions of the guilty.

But when all those things are gone - when the guns are taken away, when free speech is a forgotten aspiration, when civil life is reduced to little meetings around dinners or at weddings - then the urge to blame people must inevitably go to bulldozing the houses of the family, the village, sending in paramilitary goons to shoot people and chop down their fig trees, and ultimately, besieging whole populations and starving them to death.

Even in the U.S., the attack is no longer the story. Some kid shooting six people at a school is ... Monday. The story is what nonsense will be done to punish innocent people over it. But how very much more true that is now in Palestine.

 

[Aristaeus]

Terrorist shoots up a bus of innocent people because they are Israeli.

Obviously the story is that Israel is bad.

You think Israel should kill an entire village in revenge?