Noble but futile
Posted by admin978 on October 7, 2023 · Leave a Comment
The UK’s Terrorism Act prohibits any form of support for the Palestinian resistance organisation Hamas.
Therefore when writing for a UK-based magazine, the only legal ‘side’ to take in relation to this morning’s events in Palestine would be to join the mindless chorus of ‘condemnation’ of Hamas for ‘invading’ their own country.
Or to take no ‘side’ at all.
Zionists are free to say what they like in support of Jewish terrorists, none of whom are covered by the UK’s Terrorism Act even when they have committed barbaric acts against British servicemen and civilians.
And as we have previously commented, even Robert Misrahi – a Jewish terrorist who planted a bomb in a British servicemen’s club in London, and whose colleagues murdered a young Englishman with a parcel bomb – remains at liberty in Paris today.
One of the few groups to be removed from the Terrorism Act proscription list and made legal (even encouraged) in the UK is the anti-Iranian terrorist group Mujaheddin e Khalq, whose leaders (not coincidentally) are closely involved with the fake patriots in the Spanish kosher ‘nationalist’ party Vox.
But Hamas is one of five Palestinian groups on the UK’s proscribed list (not including the many international Islamist groups).
Aside from this legal question, it’s possible to say two things about this morning’s action by Hamas.
Firstly, that in the very short-term it appears to have been successful in surprising Israel, ironically on the 50th anniversary of another surprise attack, the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
But secondly, that unlike the Yom Kippur War (which at least stood a chance of success) this morning’s attacks seem guaranteed to fail.
In 1973 several Arab states (at least to some extent) sincerely opposed the Zionists, so much so that they inflicted economic damage on the West by imposing huge increases in oil prices to punish Western governments for supporting Israel.
Half a century later, almost every so-called ‘Arab’ government (especially the Saudis, despite their weasel words) has become cynical and is either openly allied to Israel or moving in that direction.
Added to that is the characteristic Palestinian ability to undermine their own cause by unwise alliances. Hamas and other groups have for years stupidly allied themselves to the IRA, which gains absolutely nothing for the Palestinian cause but alienates potential supporters in the UK.
And during the past 18 months many Palestinian spokesmen (and their allies in Damascus and Tehran) have equally stupidly allied themselves to Vladimir Putin, despite the illogicality of defending the oppressed Palestinian nation while supporting the obliteration of the Ukrainian nation.
Putin will of course do nothing to help Hamas or other Palestinians: he and his cynical propagandists (including some British ‘nationalists’) will instead enjoy and exploit the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in the retaliatory terror bombings by Israeli forces that are sure to follow.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky has his own reasons for this morning’s strong statement of support for Israel. But the vast majority of Ukrainians who have no personal reason to support Zionism, and who might well instinctively support the Palestinian cause, have also now come to see Hamas, Syria and Iran as the ‘friends of their enemy’ in the Kremlin.
Some instant experts have wrongly compared this morning’s short-term Hamas success to the Tet Offensive carried out by the communist Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces in 1968.
The comparison doesn’t work because the whole point about that offensive is that it demonstrated the long-term unsustainability of the South Vietnamese state, at a time when US aid for that state was already becoming very unpopular across the West.
Sadly the inevitable crushing of today’s Hamas offensive will be applauded by almost every influential politician in the West, including those cynics and cranks in the US Republican Party who are openly or covertly pro-Putin.
Rather than Vietnam in 1968, the appropriate comparison is with the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava, during the Crimean War in 1854. As the British cavalry mounted their doomed frontal assault against Russian artillery, charging into what the poet Tennyson later termed “the valley of Death”, an observant French general Pierre Bosquet commented “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c’est de la folie”. (“It is magnificent, but it is not war: it is madness.”)
Bosquet might say the same in 2023 about Hamas, even though in the UK such words would now risk prosecution under the Terrorism Act.
And Tennyson’s words (though they might seem appropriate) would certainly be illegal if applied to the Light Brigade’s Palestinian successors as they throw themselves against one of the most heavily armed states that has ever existed.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
