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By: Douglas Murray
Published: Feb 24, 2024
Like a number of ‘anti-colonialists’, William Dalrymple lives in colonial splendour on the outskirts of Delhi. The writer often opens the doors of his estate to slavering architectural magazines. A few years ago, one described his pool, pool house, vast family rooms, animals, cockatoo ‘and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city’.
I only mention Dalrymple because he is one of a large number of people who have lost their senses by going rampaging online about the alleged genocide in Gaza. He recently tweeted at a young Jewish woman who said she was afraid to travel into London during the Palestinian protests: ‘Forget 30,000 dead in Gaza, tens of thousands more in prison without charge, five MILLION in stateless serfdom, forget 75 years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU.’ It is one thing when a street rabble loses their minds. But when people who had minds start to lose them, that is another thing altogether.
I find it curious. By every measure, what is happening in Gaza is not genocide. More than that – it’s not even regionally remarkable.
Hamas’s own figures – not to be relied upon – suggest that around 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October. Most of the international media likes to claim these people are all innocent civilians. In fact, many of the dead will have been killed by the quarter or so Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that fall short and land inside Gaza.
Then there are the more than 9,000 Hamas terrorists who have been killed by the Israel Defence Forces. As Lord Roberts of Belgravia recently pointed out, that means there is fewer than a two to one ratio of civilians to terrorists killed: ‘An astonishingly low ratio for modern urban warfare where the terrorists routinely use civilians as human shields.’ Most western armies would dream of such a low civilian casualty count. But because Israel is involved (‘Jews are news’) the libellous hyperbole is everywhere.
For almost 20 years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, we have heard the same allegations. Israel has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza during exchanges with Hamas in 2009, 2012 and 2014. As a claim it is demonstrably, obviously false. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the population of the Strip was around 1.3 million. Today it is more than two million, with a male life expectancy higher than in parts of Scotland. During the same period, the Palestinian population in the West Bank grew by a million. Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are uniquely bad at it. Which is it? Well, when it comes to Israel it seems people don’t have to choose. Everything and anything can be true at once.
Here is a figure I’ve never seen anyone raise. It’s an ugly little bit of maths, but stay with me. If you wish, you might add together all the people killed in every conflict involving Israel since its foundation.
In 1948, after the UN announced the state, all of Israel’s Arab neighbours invaded to try to wipe it out. They failed. But the upper estimate of the casualties on all sides came to some 20,000 people. The upper estimates of the wars of 1967 and 1973, when Israel’s neighbours once again attempted to annihilate it, are very similar (some 20,000 and 15,000 respectively). Subsequent wars in Lebanon and Gaza add several thousands more to that figure. It means that up to the present war, some 60,000 people had died on every side in all wars involving Israel.
Over the past decade of civil war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad has managed to kill more than ten times that number. Although precise figures are hard to come by, Assad is reckoned to have murdered some 600,000 Arab Muslims in his country. Meaning that every six to 12 months he manages to kill the same number as died in every war involving Israel ever.
There are lots of reasons you might give to explain this: that people don’t care when Muslims kill Muslims; that people don’t care when Arabs kill Arabs; that they only care if Israel is involved. Allow me to give another example that is suggestive.
No one knows how many people have been killed in the war in Yemen in recent years. From 2015-2021 the UN estimated perhaps 377,000 – ten times the highest estimate of the recent death toll in Gaza. The only time I’ve heard people scream on British streets about Yemen has been after the Houthis started attacking British and American ships in the Red Sea and the deadbeat idiots on the streets of London started chanting: ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.’ Because like all leftists and Islamists there is no terrorist group these people can’t get a pash on, so long as that terrorist group is against us.
I often wonder why this obsession arises when the war involves Israel. Why don’t people trawl along our streets and scream by their thousands about Syria, Yemen, China’s Uighurs or a hundred other terrible things? There are only two possible conclusions.
The first is a journalistic one. Ever since Marie Colvin was killed it became plain that western journalists were a target in Syria. Not eager to be the target, most journalists hotfooted it out of the country. Some who didn’t fell into the hands of Isis. Israel-Gaza wars by contrast do not have the same dynamic and on a technical level the media can applaud itself for reporting from a warzone where they are not the target.
But I suspect it is a moral explanation which explains the situation so many people find themselves in. They simply enjoy being able to accuse the world’s only Jewish state of ‘genocide’ and ‘Nazi-like behaviour’. They enjoy the opportunity to wound Jews as deeply as possible. Many find it satisfies the intense fury they feel when Israel is winning.
Like being fanned on your veranda while lambasting the evils of Empire, it is a paradox, to be sure. But it is also a perversity. And it doesn’t come from nowhere.
==
"From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab."
This is the actual genocide.
#Douglas Murray#Israel#hamas terrorism#hamas terrorists#palestine#palestinians#genocide#ethnic cleansing#israel genocide#gaza genocide#palestinian genocide#genocide myth#antisemitism#genocide lie#religion is a mental illness
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"It amazes most Israelis - as it amazes me - that Britain has seen some of the worse scenes of all the anti-Israel marches across the world. The first protests in London happened before Israel had even begun its military response to Oct. 7. Rallies were held within hours of the massacres. What other country, having suffered a set of atrocities hardly superseded in the whole history of violence, wouldn't get even one day of sympathy? Only the Jewish state. And everybody in Israel knows as much.
Pakistan is currently in the process of forcibly deporting two million Afghans. Nobody cares. Bashar al-Assad is in his twelfth year of killing Muslims in Syria and the world's cameras turned away long ago."
- Douglas Murray, The Telegraph, November 20
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Google’s push to lecture us on diversity goes beyond AI
by Douglas Murray
The future is here. And it turns out to be very, very racist.
As the New York Post reported yesterday, Google’s Gemini GI image generator aims to have a lot of things. But historical accuracy is not among them.
If you ask the program to give you an image of the Founding Fathers of this country, the AI will return you images of black and Native American men signing what appears to be a version of the American Constitution.
At least that’s more accurate than the images of popes thrown up. A request for an image of one of the holy fathers gives up images of — among others — a Southeast Asian woman. Who knew?
Some people are surprised by this. I’m not.
Several years ago, I went to Silicon Valley to try to figure out what the hell was going on with Google Images, among other enterprises.
Because Google images were already throwing up a very specific type of bias.
If you typed in “gay couples” and asked for an image search, you got lots of happy gay couples. Ask for “straight couples” and you get images of, er, gay couples.
It was the same if you wanted to see happy couples of any orientation.
Ask for images of “black couples” and you got lots of happy black couples. Ask for “white couples” and you got black couples, or interracial couples. Many of them gay.
I asked people in Silicon Valley what the hell was going on and was told this was what they call “machine learning fairness.”
The idea is that we human beings are full of implicit bias and that as a result, we need the machines to throw up unbiased images.
Except that the machines were clearly very biased indeed. Much more so than your average human.
What became clear to me was that this was not the machines working on their own. The machines had been skewed by human interference.
If you ask for images of gay couples, you get lots of happy gay couples. Ask for straight couples and the first things that come up are a piece asking whether straight couples should really identify as such. The second picture is captioned, “Queer lessons for straight couples.”
Shortly after, you get an elderly gay couple with the tag, “Advice for straight couples from a long-term gay couple.” Then a photo with the caption, “Gay couples have less strained marriages than straight couples.”
Again, none of this comes up if you search for “gay couples.” Then you get what you ask for. You are not bombarded with photos and articles telling you how superior straight couples are to gay couples.
It’s almost as though Google Images is trying to force-feed us something.
It is the same with race.
Ask Google Images to show you photos of black couples and you’ll get exactly what you ask for. Happy black couples. All heterosexual, as it happens.
But ask the same engine to show you images of white couples and two things happen.
You get a mass of images of black couples and mixed-race couples and then — who’d have guessed — mixed-race gay couples.
Why does this matter?
Firstly, because it is clear that the machines are not lacking in bias. They are positively filled with it.
It seems the tech wants to teach us all a lesson. It assumes that we are all homophobic white bigots who need re-educating. What an insult.
Secondly, it gives us a totally false image — literally — of our present. Now, thanks to the addition of Google Gemini, we can also be fed a totally false image of our past.
Yet the interesting thing about the past is that it isn’t the present. When we learn about the past, we learn that things were different from now. We see how things actually were and that is very often how we learn from it.
How were things then? How are they now? And how do they compare?
Faking the past or altering it completely robs us of the opportunity not just to understand the past but to understand the present.
Google has said it is going to call a halt on Gemini. Mainly because there has been backlash over the hilarious “diversity” of Nazi soldiers that it has thrown up.
If you search for Nazi officers, it turns out that there were black Nazis in the Third Reich. Who knew?
While Google Gemini gets over that little hurdle, perhaps it could realize that it’s not just the Gemini program that’s rotten but the whole darn thing.
Google is trying to change everything about the American and Western past.
I suggest we don’t let it.
There was an old joke told in the Soviet Union that now seems worryingly relevant to America in the age of AI: “The only thing that’s certain is the future. The past keeps on changing.”
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by Douglas Murray
By early 1948, when Israel was on the cusp of becoming a state, she was known for being a powerful orator—someone who could articulate clearly and plainly why Jewish self-determination was so important. But she was not well-known in America.
In January of that year, Meir, who was then the head of the Jewish Agency, traveled to the United States to raise money in preparation for Israel’s war of independence. (The Jews knew the UN might give them the green light, but the Arabs would not.)
She had not planned to go to Chicago, but while in New York City, her sister Clara persuaded her to go—to speak to the annual conference of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.
Meir arrived in Chicago in the middle of a freezing cold winter “without a dime in her pocketbook even to take a taxi.” Wealthy and influential Jews in Chicago were not especially keen on meeting with her. As Henry Montor, the executive vice president of the United Jewish Appeal, a Zionist organization, recalled, Meir was, to his mind, “an impecunious, unimportant representative, a schnorrer—Yiddish for beggar or layabout.
Meir, for her part, was terrified. On the one hand, she knew that war in the Middle East was imminent, and she had no choice but to bring home money for much-needed weapons—or there wouldn’t be any Israel. On the other hand, she understood all too well that there was, among some upper-crust American Jews, a wariness of the idea of a Jewish state—a desire, often unstated, not to appear too Jewish.
In any event, Montor managed to carve out a little time for Meir to speak at the Council’s luncheon on January 25, 1948, at the Sheraton.
She later recalled: “I was terribly afraid of going to these people who didn’t know me from Adam. I admit I was shaking. I had no idea what was going to happen.”
But providence, or something like it, called her that day. And the effect was historic. The audience was on its feet immediately after she finished. Her goal had been to raise $25 million in America. She came away with $50 million—aid that would prove critical in the months ahead.
According to those present, Meir went to the stage with her hair severely parted, absolutely no makeup, and with no notes to speak from—her preferred habit. The pauses in her speech seem to have been as important as the words themselves. She seemed to be feeling the words, weighing up the words, and judging, by the second, their effect on her audience.
She spoke for some 35 minutes.
Friends was the term she chose to address her audience.
“The mufti and his people have declared war upon us,” she said. “We have no alternative but. . . to fight for our lives.”
She told the audience about the thirty-five Jews who “fought to the very end” on the road to Kfar Etzion and of the last one killed. He had run out of ammunition but died with a stone in his hand, prepared to continue fighting.
And she paraphrased the famous words of Winston Churchill: “We will fight in the Negev and will fight in Galilee and will fight on the outskirts of Jerusalem until the very end.”
She added: “I want you to believe me when I say that I came on this special mission to the United States today not to save 700,000 Jews. During the last few years the Jewish people lost six million Jews, and it would be audacity on our part to worry the Jewish people throughout the world because a few hundred thousand more Jews were in danger. That is not the issue.”
The issue, she explained, “is that if these 700,000 Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish people, as such, is alive and Jewish independence is assured. If these 700,000 people are killed off, then for many centuries, we are through with this dream of a Jewish people and a Jewish homeland.”
This was the spirit—the moral vision—that compelled Golda Meir, like so many Israelis after her, to do what other people thought could not be done.
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By JENNI FRAZER
Describing the climbing on to war memorials during anti-Israel protests as “very sinister” for Britain as well as the Jewish community, Murray said that “the British police have this view, which is not to escalate things. This is different from the view of the French police… in France, the president is allowed to ban protests.
“Macron banned the [anti-Israel] marches, and in the first week, they happened, the police intervened and they didn’t happen again. The police in the UK believe, don’t make a fuss, record it and maybe go in afterwards. But here’s the problem with that. This is something that the Jewish community can bring to the attention of the Metropolitan Police. The problem is that nobody notices when you do a morning arrest at a house in east London. What they notice is people standing in London calling for a Muslim army… and that footage goes around the world”.
“People need to tell police this is utterly unacceptable and that no community should be put through this,” Murray said. “If it was any other community, that community would raise hell”. He agreed with Louisa Clein that the police were fearful of being denounced as Islamophobic, but maintained that “police are meant to step in if they see people breaking the law”.
He added: “There’s not enough noise from the Jewish community about precisely this”, noting that the police were unlikely to fight harder for the community, if the Jewish community itself were not urging action.
Asked by Clein what she should say to her friends on the left, about how to balance their political beliefs with what Murray was saying about Israel and Hamas, the commentator was in no doubt: “Ask them to tell the truth. Look frankly at what is actually happening. I don’t care if I’m thought of as right-wing or not”. He urged those on the left to “listen to the testimony of those on the kibbutzim, who were far to the left of those you are talking about…
“If you go round the sites, you can see Peace Now stickers on what remains of somebody’s fridge. You speak to the people. I spoke to a man who had been on kibbutz all his life, total leftist, peace activist. He was in his safe room on October 7 with his wife and teenage son and daughter”.
The family had shut themselves in their safe room but were unable to lock it. Murray described how the father had held the door closed for a long time, but the terrorists had set fire to the house. The family opened the air vent and were attacked. “They killed his wife, put a Kalashnikov through the shutters and shot his 14-year-old son who bled out in front of him and his daughter”. The dying boy asked to be buried with his surfboard.
“He said to me, I’ve been a leftist all my life. But now I want nothing but potato fields from here to the Mediterranean. We can’t live with these people”. Murray said there were “hundreds” of stories like this. And he asked those on the left: “Have some empathy and understanding for the people who can no longer afford to dream the dreams you dream.”
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18 years of indoctrination from birth to Jihad.
DIY sociopaths in the service of Radical Islam.
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Douglas Murray was scheduled to host a fundraiser for Israeli soldiers in London tonight, but the event was cancelled after workers refused to staff it even when they were offered triple pay.
Douglas Murray worked for many years as a director of the Henry Jackson Society alongside executive director Alan Mendoza. Mendoza is also president at the UK branch of the largest settlement-building organisation in Palestine, the JNF, where Netanyahu is a patron.
The Henry Jackson Society historically shares funders with the Friends of the IDF, illegal settlements in the West Bank, and Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins. Its international patrons include former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold, Israel lobbyist Natan Sharansky, and former director of the CIA James Woolsey.
At least two Henry Jackson Society employees have moved directly to positions within the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Senior Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society Goor Tsalalyachin was previously Head of Strategic War Games in the IDF Operations Directorate, a spokesman for the Israeli PM, and a media advisor to the Israeli Minister of Defence.
All of that would cast doubt on Murray's ability to work objectively as a host on Piers Morgan's TalkTV show. One of the key signatories to the Henry Jackson Society's founding statement was Irwin Stelzer, an adviser to Rupert Murdoch for four decades, so it is no surprise that Murray has been pushed so heavily on Murdoch platforms, including TalkTV.
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Douglas Murray and Kevin Spacey: what Shakespeare can teach us about cancel culture | SpectatorTV
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If you do not respect my past, then why should I respect yours? If you do not respect my culture, then why should I respect yours? If you do not respect my forebears, then why should I respect yours? And if you do not like what my society has produced, then why should I agree to your having a place in it?
- Douglas Murray, The War on the West
#murray#douglas murray#quote#author#war on the west#nihilism#europe#enlightenment#western society#culture#society
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A phenomenal speech by Douglas Murray in support of Jews and Israel
"Treat UK Hamas supporters like Isis supporters"
H/T Uri Goby
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Douglas Murray: If you start a war, which is what Hamas did on the seventh of October, if you start a war, there are repercussions. There are repercussions to Russia for starting a war against Ukraine; Russia's lost a lot of troops. There are repercussions for Hamas or starting a war against Israel.
As you know, if you've been, Gaza also has a border with Egypt. Why do you not mention Egypt? Egypt has a stronger fence to fence in the people of Gaza than Israel does. It's fenced off, but you'll note, there are more workers - until the 7th - allowed into Israel to work, and indeed to have medical treatments and others that were considered necessary that Hamas doesn't provide. There was plenty more people every day coming in to work in Israel from Gaza - until the 7th - than were going the other way into Egypt.
Somehow, Israel has both "fenced off" and "occupies" the same chunk of land simultaneously. God is both good and inscrutible.
She has literally no idea what she's talking about, and guaranteed she's never been, she's just regurgitating mantras.
#Douglas Murray#Jane Dutton#Israel#Palestine#pro Hamas#hamas supporters#Gaza#free gaza#gaza genocide#open air prison#egypt#misinformation#Hamas#islamic terrorism#hamas terrorism#hamas terrorists#October 7#Oct 7#religion is a mental illness
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The best response to Salman Rushdie’s stabbing
"The illiterate cannot be allowed to dictate the rules of literature. The enemies of free expression cannot be allowed to quash it. The attacker should get exactly the opposite of the response he will have hoped for. Not just hopefully a failure to silence Rushdie, but a failure to limit what the rest of us are allowed to think, read, hear and say."
— Douglas Murray, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-best-response-to-salman-rushdie-s-stabbing
#salman rushdie#douglas murray#free speech#freedom of expression#political violence#literature#the satanic verses
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Portraits of Cecil Beaton and Edith Maude Olivier by Rex Whistler (24 June 1905-18 July 1944). Whistler was a British artist, who painted murals and society portraits, and designed theatrical costumes.
He was killed in Normandy on 18 July 1944, killed by a mortar bomb after he left his tank to go to the aid of other men in his unit. His body now lies in Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery, 10 kilometres east of Caen. Reportedly, The Times newspaper received more letters about Whistler's death than for any other war victim.
Afterwards, Sir John Gielgud wrote to the actor Alec Guinness, telling him that “Whistler's death is a major tragedy” adding that “He wanted to prove that 'artists can be tough' and alas, he has done so - but the world is greatly the poorer for his sacrifice”.
#rex whistler#painting#cecil beaton#Edith Maude Olivier#john gielgud#old britain#alec guinness#1940s#england#douglas murray
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Good News From Israel
Israel's Good News Newsletter to 14th Apr 24
Read More: Good News From Israel
In the 14th Apr 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
A music graduate from Oxford Uni is now an agronomist rebuilding Israeli farms.
A revolutionary Israeli alternative to antibiotics has begun human trials.
Jews hand out dates to Muslim worshippers at the end of Ramadan fasting.
Israelis fly out to help victims of Taiwan’s earthquake.
An invitation to see some “cool” Israeli climate technology.
Commercial organizations can help make Aliyah much easier.
Israeli sporting stars are truly flying the flag.
Two current Jewish Presidents helped write a Torah scroll for Peace.
As you probably know, Israel and its allies have just defended the Jewish State from hundreds of drones and missiles launched by Iran. The good news is that there were no Israeli fatalities and almost all of the projectiles were intercepted. This newsletter was compiled before the news of that attack.
#ADHD#Aliyah#Artificial Intelligence#BBC#chemotherapy#climate#Douglas Murray#Gaza#good news#hostages#IDF#infections#Israel#Jerusalem#Jewish#mental health#Ramadan#Tel Aviv#Torah#wine
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Watch this interview. Piers Morgan has interviewed some abhorrent Jew haters since October 7. Douglas Murray gives him the unvarnished truth and counters the current, trendy "Israel shouldn't fight back" arguments that Piers is still clinging to. Seriously. Watch.
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