Hamas-Isreal Ethics Train Wreck

The New York Times Opinion Editor Sympathizes With This Formula For Analyzing The Issues In the Hamas-Israel War: Emotion, Emotion, Emotion

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

And ignore facts, history common sense and reality. Like so much of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Trian Wreck, this car has value unrelated to the war itself. Now we can understand why the Times op-eds are the way they are.

The Times just published a column by a recent edition to its stable of extreme woke pundits. Lydia Polgreen opines, in “This Photograph Demands an Answer,” that the news media should bombard the public with photographs that will flood readers’ minds with emotion, making rational, objective analysis difficult or impossible.

Many people may want to look away, to see the world as they prefer to see it. But what should we see when we see war? What should war demand all of us to see and understand? Given my experience in war zones, it is a rare thing for a violent image to stop me in my tracks. But I believe that this is an image that demands to be seen….And so I ask you to look at these children. They are not asleep. They are dead. They will not be part of the future. But know this: The children in the morgue photo could be any children. They could be Sudanese children caught in the crossfire between two feuding generals in Khartoum. They could be Syrian children crushed under Bashar al-Assad’s bombs. They could be Turkish children who died in their beds when a shoddily constructed apartment block collapsed upon them in an earthquake. They could be Ukrainian children slain by Russian shells. They could be Israeli children slaughtered in a kibbutz by Hamas. They could be American schoolchildren gunned down in a mass shooting. These children are ours.

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Why Is The Washington Post Publishing All These “Poor Gaza!” Hamas Propaganda Stories?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Gaza reports more than 11,100 killed. That’s one out of every 200 people,” screamed a Washington Post headline yesterday. Today, the featured propaganda piece is “In Gaza, the dead go uncounted as medical infrastructure disintegrates.”

It is obvious that the Post has thrown in with the war crimes/genocide/ innocent civilians/humanitarian crisis that Hamas was counting on to make Israel the villain in an episode where reality is exactly the opposite, and the ethics are remarkably clear. The lessons, which Israel is now determined to teach Hamas, its sadly brain-washed Palestinian supporters, and others is this: Don’t start wars. If you do, you have no standing to complain about what happens to you. When you find that what is happening is unsustainable and intolerable, surrender, and accept the consequences of your actions.

Another lesson that the “Imagine” crowd, the best of the propagandists, and the anti-Semitic crowd, the worst of them also need to understand is that objective in any war is, or should be, to end it as quickly as possible. Regardless of what some toothless international body might claim, the way one ends wars quickly is to make them as costly and painful as possible as quickly as possible.

That’s what Israel is doing. Good.

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Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck Update: Tells, Hypocrites, Liars And A Jumbo, Part 3…It Just Keeps Getting Better, Doesn’t It?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

A protest sign at the massive Pro-Hamas rally in London last week

I have been procrastinating in finishing this series, waiting for a final shoe to drop and instead being buried by dozens. So let’s get it out of the way, admitting that the ethics rot being exhibited by the American Left’s anti-Semitism, obtuseness regarding the nature of war and appalling ignorance of history is now on full display for all to see and retch over. When it stops nobody knows, especially me. Ethical people can only hope that there are appropriate consequences. I can’t begin to thoroughly cover the revolting developments, but this is the best I can do…

1. Perhaps the most ethically head-exploding news was that four photojournalists who provide reporting and photos for major news media outlets like Associated Press , CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, and others were apparently embedded with the Hamas terrorists as they murdered Israeli civilians in the sneak October 7 attack.. The question being raised is: Did they have advance notice of the assault, and yet simply go along to get vivid photos to sell? Or to put it another, more pointed way, did the AP, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters know about the Hamas terror attack in advance…a and do nothing to warn Israel? 

Of course they are all denying it. This would violate specific principles of journalism ethics, and you and I know how seriously this organizations take those….

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Ethics Pop Quiz: Why Does Amazon Sell “From The River To Te Sea” Merchandise But Not Anything Featuring A Confederate Flag??

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I find this perplexing, and perhaps attention should be paid. Amazon sells several versions of that attractive shirt above, but stopped making anything with a Confederate flag available in 2015. The impetus for this move was, as you might recall, Dylann Roof, a lone, racist wacko, shooting and killing nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church. Yet more than a month after approximately 1,200 Jewish civilians were murdered by Hamas in a carefully organized surprise terror attack, merchandise with the Palestinian slogan calling for Israel’s eradication, in accordance with the Hamas charter, is still selling briskly on Amazon to U.S. customers. The U.S. Congress just censured its racist, anti-Semitic “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib for endorsing the very same slogan. The American Jewish Committee regards the phrase as antisemitic.  The White House finally condemned the use of the “inspirational phrase,” as Tlaib called it. Amazon claims to have a policy prohibiting “the sale of products that promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance” and”prohibits or promote organizations with such views, as well as listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence.”

How do you reconcile the contradictory treatment of the Confederate flag, which is a far more ambiguous symbol with important significance in American history, and an infamous anti-Israel rallying cry?

Some possible answers are offered below:

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Unethical Self-Parody Of The Year: France

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Confirming the fairness of every joke since World War II about the French being “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” (Groundskeeper Willy’s memorable description on”The Simpsons” ), French President Emanuel Macron said in a BBC interview that there is “no justification” for Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive against Gaza and Hamas, although, as Old Blues Once sang so well about love and marriage, “you can’t bomb one without the other.”

“There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop,” Macron said, embracing the suddenly popular “proportional response theory” of war now that Jews defending their nation are involved. You can’t really blame him, I guess, as France saw no reason to keep fighting the Nazis when they attacked his country, either.

Macron added to his fatuous surrender monkey outburst by asserting “all civilians having nothing to do with terrorists.” Even when those civilians knowingly elect those terrorist to run their country!

Is France a great country, or what?

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Ethics Hero (Surprise!): Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Hillary agreed to go on “The View,” a guaranteed friendly forum but also a den of morons, and, apparently off the cuff, gave a clear, coherent explanation for why the pro-Hamas postures of many in her own party are ignorant and ethically wrong. The only aspect of her explanation that I would fault is her not making it plain that Hamas “took over” Gaza because the population wanted it to., and thus she does not counter the fatuous “innocent Gazans” talking point.

I also give her credit for explaining why Barack Obama, worshipfully cited by peak idiot Sunny Hostin as if his despicable comments on the war were profound rather than fatuous and facile, was in fact full of it while nodding her head and pretending to agree with her ex-boss. She makes it clear (except maybe to the idiots she is talking to) that he is dead wrong. “We’re all accountable to history,” is brilliant doubletalk, absolutely meaningless but diplomatic.

Yes, yes, Hillary dutifully gives lip-service to a future “two-state solution.” It’s about on par with singing “Imagine,” annoying, but forgivable. There’s nothing wrong with saying you want impossible things, as long as you know they’re impossible.

Political Cartoon Ethics: The Washington Post Apologizes For Being Mean To Terrorists

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Long-time readers here know that I believe political cartooning has outlived its usefulness, and now, not all the time but most of the time, such cartoons on editorial pages of newspapers are just excuses to make misleading generalizations with which the cartoonist, who typically has the political sophistication and depth of comprehension of your average rioter, grossly exaggerates one crude point, usually using gross stereotypes, in a manner that could only be amusing to a partisan. Political cartoonists virtually always rely on reader bias as their sharpest hook.

The cartoon above, by Las Vegas Review and Journal editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, was published in the Washington Post. I was shocked to see an editorial cartoon that a current day Republican would applaud. The Post’s grotesquely unfair, hyper-partisan (guess which party) political cartoons have been a regular feature of the paper since I was a child. For decades, Democrat ideologue Herb Block was regarded as brilliant by using such lazy cliches as portraying conservatives as cavemen and “big business” as a fat white guys puffing on cigars. Naturally, Block regularly won Pulitzer Prizes for this juvenile junk, which was usually about as objectively funny as a “Kick Me!” sign, like this witty example…

Later, a succession of Block’s successors at the Post were equally restrained; here’s how Tom Toles portrayed the President of the United States:

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Ethics Dunce: NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, And A Nelson

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Let me say at the outset that the NFL and, by extension, all of its teams are so thoroughly and constantly corrupt and unethical that its periodic examples of ethical obtuseness—other than paying its players to cripple themselves, which is ongoing—should probably be categorized under The Julie Principle, as in “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, pro football’s unethical, stop wond’ring why…” This episode is also part of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck, however, so it’s worthy of a post.

George Norcross, who is a prominent and wealth Democratic Party activist and power broker, hung a combined American and Israeli flag from his private box at the Eagle’s Lincoln Financial Field during the team’s against the Dallas Cowboys two days ago. Stadium security confronted Norcross over the flags and took him into custody after he refused to remove them. Then they took them down.

The Eagles cited its policy that “signs, banners or similar items that are obscene or indecent, unrelated to the event, potentially offensive to other patrons, that may block the views of other fans or that are otherwise considered dangerous or inappropriate by the Eagles are prohibited.”

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Can You Guess Who “The Great Stupid,” The DEI Ethics Train Wreck And The Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck Are Ganging Up On In Germany?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

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Yes, it’s come to this! In the town of Tangerhütte, about 2 hours east of Berlin, Germany, a daycare center that for decades has been named in honor of the most famous child murdered during the Holocaust in World War II, is removing Anne’s name. The Anne Frank Daycare Center will become the “World Explorers Daycare Center” because…wait for it!…the name makes some “migrant” parents feel “uncomfortable.” It isn’t welcoming enough, or something, now that Israel is at war with Gaza.

The daycare center’s director explains that the change from the center’s current name is now troubling “parents with migrant backgrounds” who complained that they found it “challenging” to explain Anne’s story to their children. Of course, the whole idea behind such honors is that succeeding generations remember important stories, like we remember the complex tragedy of the Civil War with statues of its many flawed participants…wait. Oops! Never mind.

City officials now insist the renaming is necessary “to celebrate the diversity” of the children attending the daycare center, as explained by Andreas Brohm, the mayor. Because of the large number of Hamas supporters in the town, Anne Frank no longer aligns with the “new focus on diversity,” Brohm said. Despite Germany’s strong support for Israel as part of its penance for launching the Holocaust under He Who Must Not Be Named, respecting diversity—Kill the Jews/ Don’t kill the Jews: Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!—elevates the feelings of many parents about the current name above “the global political situation.”

Writing at “Victory Girls,” Deanna Fisher muses,

[I]f her name comes off the daycare, where does it stop? How many schools all over the world carry her name? A lot. And how quickly will that change if the local population decides that having a school named after Anne Frank sends the “wrong” message about “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? Where does this end? Given the amount of ugly anti-Semitism we have seen this weekend, and what is promised to come, I am not sure where it ends. And I’m not sure that the West has the backbone to stop it, either.

Oh, I’m absolutely sure it doesn’t! After all, a life-time petty hood died of a drug overdose under the knee of a Minnesota cop three years ago, so of course Anne Frank’s name has to go. Come on! It makes perfect sense!

The Great Stupid is all-powerful, and its reach is infinite…

Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck Update: Tells, Hypocrites, Liars And A Jumbo, Part 2…”From The River To The Sea”

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Yikes. I posted Part I just two days ago, and realized then that I had too many items to cover for a single post. Then anti-Israel demonstrations amassed in Washington, D.C.. and outside the White House, Barack Obama made a fool of himself, “The Squad’s” most anti-Semitic member (but it’s a close race) stopped even pretending she was anything else, and heaven knows what I’m facing today. Well, as Hercules said as he faced the Augean stables, “Might as well start shoveling”….

1. The star of this shit-show is undoubtedly Rep. Rashida Tlaib, elected by a largely Palestinian district, who narrowly escaped an expulsion vote in the House after every Democrat voted her way (and over 20 Republicans too, presumably because they believe that saying disgusting things and holding opinions that defy American values shouldn’t get someone kicked out of Congress by anyone but voters. I have to agree with them). She posted a social media video showing her constitutes chanting “from the river to the sea.” That’s a call for Israel to be eliminated. That’s all it can mean, and that’s all it has ever meant. Formerly Democratic maverick Senator Kristen Sinema, tried to educate her old party’s members, posting this:

The immediate reaction from the Jew Hate gallery was to deny this undeniable fact, using absurd gerrymandered maps to show there might be some topographically possible way to simultaneously have a version of Israel and a Palestine state that reached “from the river to the sea.” These are unethical, untrustworthy human beings who lie routinely. Tlaib, who has already made it clear what she desires for Israel, went full Jumbo: “Me? Anti-Semitic?” “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate,” Tlaib wrote in a post on X/Twitter. “My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”

Right. As with all of the Left’s wailing about poor, abused Gaza, this gaslighting relies on the utter ignorance of listeners, especially college students marinated in intersectionality. Hamas’s 2017 constitution states, “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” It was not “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence,” and Tlaib knows it. It has been used by Hamas and other terrorist organizations for years, and its intent has never been in doubt. 

“From the river to the sea” was devised by Palestinian nationalists in the 1960s, when the entire Palestinian movement openly sought Israel’s destruction. Mainstream Palestinian groups dropped the phrase after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization formerly recognized one another after the 1993 Oslo Accords, but it was then revived by the Hamas terrorist group and others hostile to Jews.

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