The Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital in Gaza was founded by the Church Mission Society in 1882, run by the Southern Baptists from 1954 to 1982, and then taken over by the local Anglican diocese. Impeccable Anglo-American Evangelical credentials, and links to the Church of England. That is what has just been bombed.
Even before that, we have had Keir Starmer, David Lammy and Emily Thornberry, who used to be so much better, defending the turning off of the water supply to one million children while white phosphorus was dropped on them. They should all be disbarred, and Bible Belters also have their own housekeeping to do, as have Church and King Tories. But the Left hereby proscribes the Labour Party as incompatible with its aims and values. Membership of or support for the Labour Party shall henceforth constitute autoexclusion from the Left.
And when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
What do you think of Israel blaming Islamic Jihad?
ReplyDeletePeople will parrot it, but absolutely no one could possibly believe it, so it will be useful for smoking out a certain sort. It already is.
DeleteThey are not even trying to blame Hamas.
DeleteThey created Hamas as a divide and rule tactic against the PLO, and no later than 2019, Netanyahu was calling for it to be promoted and funded in order to drive a wedge between Gaza and the West Bank. They see it as an asset, since, unlike the Palestinian Authority, no one would ever give it a UN seat, or take it seriously before the International Criminal Court, or anything like that.
DeletePerhaps trying to blame Palestinian Islamic Jihad for this is in the same vein? PIJ and Hamas do loathe each other. But no one is going to fall for this. Everyone knows who did it.
They didn't "create" Hamas-it long pre-existed Netanyahu's reign and the Gazans voted for it in 2006 in what they kept telling the world was a free and fair election that must be respected.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Hamas, Israel has nothing to gain and everything to lose from bombing a hospital-it's a propaganda coup for Hamas and (as they showed in disgusting fashion last weekend) they think they have alot to gain from slaughtering innocents.
By the way, you mention Starmer but forgot to mention the ex Labour leader addressing a cheering mob of terrorist supporters praising the murderers who slaughtered civilians at music festivals last weekend?
As Peter Hitchens says this weekend, since the leftwing BBC says it can't call Hamas 'terrorists' why can't it call them murderers, which is just an objective statement of fact?
It was created by the Shin Bet, exactly as I described. If you do not know that, then you know nothing. Nothing. You are not worth reading beyond that declaration of total ignorance, so I did not.
Delete60% of people in Gaza are under 30, 50% are under 18, 40% are under 14, they didn't vote in 2006.
DeleteBless him, he does not know what the line is from one minute to the next. Who does?
DeleteThe Israelis have changed their story in a couple of hours, first it was a stray Hamas rocket, now it was Islamic Jihad on purpose. Any word from the Americans?
ReplyDeleteSilence. From their satellites, they know who is telling the truth. And they are not saying a word.
DeleteTwo hours ago, Israeli government sources were calling the Baptist Hospital a "terrorist base" and the IDF was boasting about having "euthanized" Gazans.
ReplyDeleteNow they see how disgusted the world is, IDF is trying to tell us that a backfired rocket from Islamic Jihad is responsible.
The story has changed twice in three hours, and in ways that cannot all be true, not even in part.
DeleteFirst Hananya Naftali (Israel’s Digital Spokesperson) deleted his tweet bragging that Israel had bombed the Gaza Baptist Hospital. Then the @Isreal account itself deleted the fake video claiming to show a Hamas rocket striking the Gaza Baptist Hospital. Now Israel instantly knows the exact location of Islamic Jihad’s rocket launches yet didn’t target them with air strikes. If we’re to believe their story we’d have to assume the thousands of residential buildings they’re blowing up are a more urgent priority.
ReplyDeletePoor James Cleverly cannot keep up at all. Tonight, he tells us that, "The destruction of Al Ahli hospital is a devastating loss of human life. The UK has been clear. The protection of civilian life must come first. The UK will work with our allies to find out what has happened and protect innocent civilians in Gaza." Drivel. Until tonight, the British Government, like the Official Opposition, had been cheering on any and everything that the Israelis had been doing, and threatening to lock up anyone who had objected.
DeleteIt’s a remarkable mess that Keir Starmer has got himself into, along with his front bench. Here we have an ostensibly “democratic socialist” party now condoning actual war crimes. As the public are witnessing them in real time, the penny is dropping for many.
ReplyDeleteAnd here’s the most disgraceful part of it: much of reason why Starmer and co have got themselves in this position is because they are still desperately trying to distance themselves from the previous leader who respected human rights and stood up for the Palestinian people.
So, let’s just pause for a second: this Labour leadership are advocating war crimes in part because of a factional / PR battle against a man they’ve spent three years lying about. To keep that pretence going, they have to back Israel no matter what. Pretty sick, isn’t it?
It is, and so is he. But David Lammy and Sue Gray have been holding emergency meetings with Leaders of Councils because so many Councillors are threatening to leave the Labour Party that it might lose control of some authorities. Splendid.
DeleteOnly you mentioning its now an Anglican hospital.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many outlets in the United States are reporting that it was Southern Baptist for much of its history? I wonder whether this is being reported very much at all there?
DeleteBut yes, for all that it still has "Baptist" in its name, it was founded by English Anglicans, and it has been run by Palestinian Anglicans for the last 41 years. Yet Newsnight professed only to have spoken to "the church that operates it". The audience cannot know that it is connected to the Church of England.
The genocide apologists are out in force tonight.
ReplyDeleteHaving lost the argument – no group in Gaza has a rocket that can flatten a hospital, not even close – they're trying to spin it differently.
Supposedly it was still one of Islamic Jihad's paltry home-made rockets but the damage was caused by it hitting an ammo dump – presumably a very large one stored in the middle of the hospital.
Even if that sounds like it might be true to you (and it really shouldn't), watch and listen to the missile slam into the hospital at terrifying high speed. That's a very hi-tech armament. Not something Islamic Jihad knocked up in a workshop after watching a YouTube tutorial.
There truly are ghouls out there – and they will keep spewing out new bits of disinformation on behalf of Israel's genocidal government. Don't be fooled.
I am not, nor will I be. Islamic Jihad has nothing one per cent powerful enough to have done this, and even if it did, then what would have been the chances of that weapon's misfiring such as to hit a large crowd that was standing on top of an ammunition dump in a hospital? By their silence, not even the Americans are pretending to believe that.
DeleteWhen Israel ordered Gazans to evacuate their hospitals, an impossible thing to do, it served notice of its intent to bomb those hospitals.
ReplyDeleteAnd even with notice, that bombing is a war crime. As you say, such evacuation is in any case impossible. Where are people on life support machines, or all wired up after having had major surgery (been there, done that), or on total rest after a heart attack or a Caesarean section, supposed to go? And how are they supposed to get there? But no matter what, intentionally bombing a hospital is a war crime. And yes, Israel declared that intention, on which it has now followed through.
DeleteIt wasn’t Israel. “”This was backed up by Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow in airpower and technology at the Royal United Services Institute, who said video of the explosion did not match with the type of weapons Israel typically uses. He wrote : 'this doesn't look or sound quite like an air strike using the typical IAF 1000lb or 2000lb JDAM/Mk80 series. Incoming projectile sounds like it's under power and the explosion frames visible look like largely propellant fire rather than HE [high explosive] detonation...'””
ReplyDeleteAs I said at the top, Israel has nothing to gain and everything to lose from hitting a hospital while the reverse is true of its enemies, whose inaccurate rockets fall on their own side in at least 33% of cases.
You’ve all made yourselves look like fools, in your desperate attempt to defend the terrorists.
Were you all in that disgusting mob of jihadist supporters cheering the slaughterers of festival goers on Saturday?
RUSI is David Abrahams, when he is not being a Newcastle property developer. As recently as 2017, he tweeted that black South Africans, “preferred white rule as less corrupt and more viable and professional.” He is still in the Labour Party. He is still funding the Labour Party. And RUSI.
DeleteThe grownups are talking, boy. The grownups are talking.
The IDF spin machine is working overtime. The explanations for the hospital bombing war crime are straight out of Mark Regev's playbook of Great Military Miracles. Before we get too engrossed in these flights of fancy:
ReplyDelete(1) The IDF "radar tracked" trajectory of the Hamas missiles (not even a radar track, but a digital illustration) show the missiles fired from a few miles south west of the hospital. What are the chances that a missile would fail directly on the Al Ahly Baptist Hospital? Zilch, zero, nada. But let's be fair and give them the benefit of the doubt, probably one in a million. No, let us put it to Mr Mark Regev that this was a guided Israeli missile. It would have a 100% chance of hitting the hospital.
(2) By the admission of the IDF spin doctor, at the time of the tragedy, Hamas was firing missiles at Israel from the vicinity of the hospital. Could we not therefore assume that the Israeli air force targeted these launches and hit the hospital car park where the launches were probably located?
(3) The spin doctor kept repeatedly saying that the IDF does not target schools or hospitals when it is well documented that both have been repeatedly hit with large losses of life.
Hard to believe that the IDF would conduct this kind of press conference by a nervous speaker and expect us to swallow the info lock, stock and barrel.
Their (Glasgow-born) mouthpiece moved on to say that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza'" and that " There is electricity, food, and water for all Gazans". Seems to be suggesting that the thousands crowding into the unfortunate hospital were merely tourists.
Absolutely spot on.
DeleteListen to Biden's explanation, looks like it was done by the other team, a lot of people not sure.
ReplyDeleteHe has the CIA, the NSA and the most advanced military satellite system in the world.
He knows exactly what happened, and if it wasn't the Israelis he would say so.
Precisely. Yet he is the only leader in the West who has said even so much as that in support of the preposterous Israeli line.
DeleteIf Israel magically knows the location of all the tunnels and command centres and rocket launch points and has recordings of Hamas making plans, then why would it need to carpet bomb civilian areas?
ReplyDeleteIsrael published three videos to try and prove they did not bomb the hospital. Two of the videos showed no explosion, and the third was from 2022. They are lying to you.
Only Biden will even say that it might have been "the other team". No other Western leader will even do that. Everyone knows the truth.
DeleteIsrael initially tweeted its triumph at having bombed this hospital, as it had warned the Anglican church (which now runs it, despite its name) three times that it intended to do. No matter what notice you give, bombing a civilian hospital is of course a war crime. And in any case, the lines of communication to Gaza had been cut. By the Israelis.
A reminder today why one shouldn't read amateur bloggers for news. "BBC Verify has shown the evidence to a number of weapons experts, who say it is not consistent with what you would expect from a typical Israeli airstrike. J Andres Gannon, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, says the explosion appears to be small, meaning that the heat generated from the impact may have been caused by leftover rocket fuel rather than an explosion from a warhead. Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) agrees. While it is difficult to be sure at such an early stage, he says, the evidence looks like the explosion was caused by a failed rocket section hitting the car park and causing a fuel and propellant fire.""
ReplyDeleteNot only RUSI (you are obviously impressed by the grand-sounding name, but it is a dodgy Newcastle property developer's hobby these days), but the standing joke that is BBC Verify as well. What a silly little boy you are.
DeleteDavid Abrahams makes me quite nostalgic, obviously crooked as f*ck local businessmen who double up as Far Right Labour politicians, it's the old North East. BBC Verify is Marianna Spring the CV faker.
DeleteAnd suddenly now the Oracle to all the people whom she more than earns the money that she is paid to abuse.
Delete"The grownups are talking, boy. The grownups are talking."
ReplyDeleteTears of laughter-rarely have I read a sentence so comically wide of the mark. The crank bloggers and terrorist supporters over the experts, eh? Grownups are defined by not believing the BS they read in blogs like this, old boy.
No serious weapons expert thinks this is consistent with an Israeli attack-not one.
An idiot could have told you this wasn't Israel-they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from attacking a hospital when they have the world's sympathy, and we all know it's just Hamas that deliberately does that sort of thing.
By the way, have I missed your blogpost excoriating the real slaughter of innocents that took place in Israel last weekend (as opposed to this false flag/fake news from anti-Israel propagandists)?
The grownups are talking, boy. The grownups are talking.
DeleteGive it up, Lindsay. Tears of laughter that this chap thinks "the grownups" believe terrorist-supporting amateur bloggers over genuine weapons experts and media outlets that are legally required to fact-check their claims.
ReplyDeleteThis is like the Nord Stream 2 attack falsely blamed on Russia-anyone but a crank could see from the start that Israel (like Russia) had absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose from doing this.
Everyone who pretends to agree with you about this, pretends to disagree with you about Nord Stream 2, and vice versa. The grownups are talking, boy. The grownups are talking.
DeleteBREAKING: The Church in Gaza said they were given 3 phone warnings by Israel prior to the bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
ReplyDeleteThen Israel bombed it.
Oh, I though it was the Anglicans in Jerusalem. There are three churches in Gaza, and in this case it will have been the American-linked Baptist one. Get out of that.
DeleteSeveral experts confirm Hamas’ view to @Channel4News that the audio tape of “Hamas” operatives talking about the missile malfunction is a fake . They say the tone, syntax, accent and idiom are absurd.
ReplyDeleteTaken from the Alex Thompson Twitter Account
Yes, I had heard that. Arabs saying that it was all wrong.
DeleteChannel 4 News ripped the Israeli account to shreds.
DeleteIt is magnificent tonight.
DeleteHotovely going mental with our Krishnan, she has never been spoken to like that in her life.
DeleteHe is dancing around her.
DeleteNetanyahu: We didn't do it
ReplyDeleteBlinken: Of course you didn't do it.
Netanyahu: And of course you didn't blow up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Taken from the Norman Finkelstein Twitter account
Israel has never taken a side in Ukraine. Biden may just have bought Netanyahu.
DeleteAny first language Arabic speaker laughed like crazy at that Israeli "recording". I don't know what they were supposed to be but they were no more Palestinian than Xi Jinping.
ReplyDeleteSo I have been hearing all day. Then there is Israel's claim that the missile was launched from two different directions. And then there is its record of dishonesty in these matters.
DeleteAnna Botting on Sky also put Mark Regev in his place.
ReplyDeleteThere are still real journalists out there.
DeleteA Palestinian rocket has never killed hundreds of people. All the Palestinian rockets fired have never killed hundreds of people.
ReplyDeleteYet we're meant to believe the Government that told hospitals "evacuate or face the consequences" that one misfired rocket killed up to 500?
Engage your brain.
More and more people are doing just that.
DeleteI agree wholeheartedly with this analysis. Just wondering though - with Labour winning both by-elections this week are you still confident of a hung Parliament?
DeleteOh, yes. We know that Keir Starmer can win seats that the Conservatives held in 2019, but we do not know that he can win back seats that Labour lost to them. That happened at Wakefield in such a bizarre situation as to suggest nothing at all about anywhere else. But after having managed to lose Hartlepool, which Jeremy Corbyn never did, then Starmer failed to take Uxbridge and South Ruislip, meaning that even only one type of pre-2019 Conservative seat is susceptible to his charms.
Delete