UPDATED (10/21/023): Gaza And The Meaning Of Mens Rea, Malice Aforethought, Or Intent

Bush, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Morality, Russia, War

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent ~ilana

From the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s inception; your columnist wrote many an essay  (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/) motivating against the Neocons, Neolibs and NATO Inching Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, via the Ukraine proxy war.

The rejection by Joe and his Uniparty accomplices of diplomacy, framed by myself as realpolitik, was my focus. “It’s Biblical, Zelensky,” I urged. “A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People” is a failed leader.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/

I vehemently now protest the greenlighting of the razing of Gaza by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices.

About “intent,” a bedrock of Western judicial philosophy and Jurisprudence, I said the following on the Hard Truth podcast last Tues (Oct. 10)  (https://rumble.com/v3oicx4-hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason.html):

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.

Moreover, just pretend for the sake of argument that there is no way to kill the Hamas culprits other than via a ground invasion; why-oh-why would Israel throttle the supply of water, food and power to millions of Gazans, when Israel knows this will also kill thousands of civilians indirectly?

Israel has, sadly, squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, October 7 pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan.

BACKGROUND: “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason

* Screen capture credit here:
https://www.strategiccriminaldefence.com/faq/mens-rea-vs-actus-rea/

UPDATE (10/21/023): Yes, this is refreshing via Josh Paul (even though I don’t share his support for other incursions and foreign-policy “moral compromises”)—I didn’t know there were people in our bureaucracy who could speak English, much less write it and reason in it.

Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has resigned from this Biden-staffed bureau, because of its policy of transferring lethal weapons to be used, invariably, against civilians in Gaza. Paul recounted in interviews how he had been instrumental in drafting a cessation to arms transfers under Biden’s new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which allegedly reconsidered “weapons sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.”

It was the policy of Donald Trump, as this columnist’s warned, in 2018, through weapons supplies to the Saudis, to enable “our bosom buddies the Saudi’s” in their “barricading of Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like this one. Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.”

Whatever one’s political sympathies, as I wrote here above, “If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.”

The same obtains if you are a third party, aiding and abetting the carnage that is collective punishment. These are natural, immutable laws. They attached to George Bush’s actions in Iraq. (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/ The Hague ought to have long since nabbed him. They apply to the razing of Gaza following Hamas’ monstrous mass murder on October 7.

UPDATED (10/14): NEW COLUMN: Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason

Ethics, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Military, Morality, Neoconservatism, Relatives, Terrorism, The State, War

NEW ESSAY, “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason,” has been published at The New American, The Unz Review and WND.COM. As you see from its headings—LOW TECH INVASION, MAGA AND ISRAEL, TREASON, DEPLOYING GIZMOS TO GAZA, GEOPOLITICS, TREASON IN THE HOMELAND—it is a wide-ranging analysis contextualized to the American homeland. This analysis is of the backdrop to the treasonous abrogation of Israeli citizens’ rights to life, liberty and property, by the security entities, the IDF and the Israeli intelligence community, who were entrusted to uphold these natural, G-d-given rights.

READ IT NOW ON IlanaMercer.com.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/10/hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason/

Excerpt:

… TREASON

Witnessed in Israel on October 7 was the utter forsaking by the State of its most elementary—and only—obligations to the citizenry: Defend their natural rights to life, liberty and property.

Seventy-two hours on, and a top banana for the Israeli Defense Forces was blaming Hamas for duping Israeli “experts.” D’oh! Why of course: After all, it is expected that a blood-lusting cabal of satanical sub-humans would apprise targets of its comings-and-goings.

Ok, but if you’re deaf and dumb, why not heed Egyptian intelligence, whose officials now claim Israel ignored repeated warnings that “something big” was going down? Google the phrase “What went wrong?” and you’ll discover that the patsy press has received Israeli officialdom’s memo. The efforts of the State to deflect blame, to reject responsibility for treason, have begun. Thus was Danny Dannon, another top banana, recounting to BBC’s HARDtalk what terrible characters are the Hamasniks. D’oh! Again.

Stendhal, a French writer, said there was no hypocrisy in mathematics. Hamas is mathematically honest about what it wants to do to all Jews.

It is the custodians of Israeli security whose calculus is off. If you correctly think Hamas is so horrible, why had Israel opted to deploy gizmos to the border with Gaza?

DEPLOYING GIZMOS TO GAZA

As your columnist divulged in 2008, Israel opted for “Robo-Snipers” instead of flesh-and-blood men and women. The nation’s “19- and 20-year-old soldiers” were still deployed to the front—but virtually. They sit at a safe distance “behind computer screens,” waiting on “approval by a commanding officer” before “pushing the kill button.”

Yes, Israel automated the process of defense against Gaza, creating a set of “auto kill-zones” “by networking together remote-controlled machine guns, ground sensors, and drones along the 60-kilometer border.”

Gizmos are useless against the stuff of Gaza—and Latin America, for that matter. In 2005, with great enthusiasm from the Israeli Left, Gaza was given over to the dogs of war, Hamas and their avid constituents. Despite the fertile, coastal land they were handed, the precious ground water they sit on, and generous international assistance, the place soon went to the dogs. Egypt, Jordan and Israel are all terrified to open their borders to the seething snake pit that is Gaza.

It matters not whether you think the cauldron of cruelty that is Gaza created its inhabitants or whether it’s the obverse. The reality is that every nation in the region fears the Gazans. Nobody in the region wants immigrants from Gaza—although given the US Uniparty’s appetite for progressive, smug preening (aka treason); one can envisage Gaza being air lifted to America by the same Special Ops forces who rushed to import Afghanistan. In any event, hearth and home are best defended by men, military or militia, on the ground, carrying guns and grenades.

Besides, all defense systems are fallible and finite in their capacity. Air-defense systems fail. The Russians have the best possible air-defense system, yet they too, on occasion, are overwhelmed by barrages of British cruise missiles supplied to a flailing Ukraine.

If military experts were doing the work currently done by neophyte chicklet reporters; they’d explain, in newspapers like The Hill, that no defense system can intercept 3000 missiles lobbed all at once. Instead of military experts, alas, we have girls cutting-and-pasting from Wikipedia about Israel’s Iron Dome air missile defense system.

Digital docility was never going to ward off a hissing enclave like Gaza, where people, young and old, writhe in hate (watch the children of Gaza bully a Jewish little boy held captive).

GEOPOLITICS

… Not unlike the United States, Hamas aims to disrupt any productive, cooperative alliances arising out of the forging of regional powers in the Middle East, and has thus made its malign presence felt. …

READ THE REST … “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason” can now be read, free of pop-up ads, satanical antisemitism, and other such grotesque spam, on ILANAMercer.com.  A warrior is unafraid of Little Men and their impotent hatred.

 

NEW PODCAST: Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason

Ethics, Foreign Policy, Individual Rights, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, War

HARD TRUTH’s Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason,” with David Vance and ilana mercer deconstructs Hamas’s low-tech invasion into southern Israel and the massacre of hundreds of its civilians. Witnessed in Israel on October 7 was the forsaking by the State of its most elementary—and only—obligations to the citizenry: Defend their natural rights to life, liberty and property.

In a perspective like no other; HARD TRUTH—the episode titled Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason“—examines the complete failure of the Israeli State apparatus, the IDF and intelligence community being the face of the State. We anatomize the backdrop to Hamas’ pogrom, including the geopolitical and domestic forces at play, as well as the fraught history of the Gaza strip. Ilana lived through the 1967 and 1973 wars in Israel; David through the IRA terrorist onslaughts in Ireland. Our hearts ache for victims of barbarians wherever they are. Nevertheless, examine we must the “ethics” of collective punishment by the State.

To receive ilana’s essay on this topic and others, please add your email to ilana’s newsletter https://www.ilanamercer.com/mailing-list/ .

WATCH.  WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR FOLLOW. HARD TRUTH IS HARD BUT WORTH IT.

UPDATE II (10/8): THE TRUTH: Israel Suffered A Complete Collapse Of The State; The IDF Being Its Face

Affirmative Action, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Israel, Media, Military, The State, War

Israeli intelligence assets could very likely have been compromised. Israel is a progressive society recruiting for representation, not merit. This Israel has learned from the best: America ~ilana

When Israel flattens Gaza, and it no doubt will, if only out of sheer impotence—the World, a wicked place, must remember the body of this young Jewish woman murdered, stripped, straddled, her leg likely broken, folded beside her thigh ~ilana

The IDF appears near-useless in defending its citizens, not unlike the US Army.

So much for flimsy fences, unmanned, AI-powered machine guns on the Gaza border and other clever high-tech resources. Post-graduate cleverness clearly is no match for fiercely savage, hands-on guerrilla warfare.

Hamas’s low-tech invasion across the Gaza border into southern Israel was also a clear demonstration of a complete failure of the State apparatus, the IDF being the face of the State. Bibi Netanyahu, the PM, is in hiding.

The most honest report, as I write, in the evening of October 7, comes from a relative, safe, thank G-d. Her words are the most truthful to date:

 

“Shock, betrayal, the crash of a dream; how could this happen? People are still without help or rescue. They turned to the media to call the army because there were terrorists in their homes and yards. It took hours, and the situation has still not changed much. Total chaos.”

To my question, “Has not a war room been set up and constant TV updates from the IDF and the PM’s office being broadcast?”
Reply: Nope. Nobody is talking to us. People are doing the work of the army. It’s like the Wild West.

News from channel N12 confirms (in Hebrew, or an Ebonics equivalent, the spoken language has so deteriorated) that images of children’s corpses are circulating the internet, but their parents know not where they are lying, in which Israeli morgue. “It’s 2023,” exclaims the TV panelist! “A nightmare!”

300 are dead; 1800 injured.

About living through the 1973 War I wrote in “Betraying Brave Boys”:

The Yom Kippur War Israel nearly lost. Israeli intelligence failed miserably. As is usually the case, the kids paid the price—a few hundred youngsters were stranded on the borders with no backup. They defended their posts heroically before being gruesomely slaughtered. Many were dismembered.

When that war ended, Remembrance Day swelled to include another 2,523 casualties—about one-tenth of one percent of the population was dead. Thousands more were wounded. The casualty estimates for Egypt and Syria were 16,000.

UPDATED (10/8): While the Hamas’s low-tech invasion was confined to southern Israel, the extent of the casualties is far greater than 9/11, as a proportion of a total population of nine-million souls.  The death count to date is 650; 2000 injured

UPDATE II: There are people who are incapable of seeing excellence such as in literature, for instance, because it originates in the wrong side of the political spectrum. This is an intellectual deformity.

Being wedded only to truth and immutable excellence, at least as I see them, helps me seek out the best sources without fear or favor. In this way I consolidate my idea of how, in the case of Israel, on October 7, 2023, the slaughter of over 700 of their citizens was enabled. 

To wit, Fox News is providing the worst rah-rah rubbish, proving itself unfit to my task. MSNBC, on the other hand, has some excellent sources. Richard Engel has always been one of my favorite foreign-policy correspondents. Former Bernie Sanders operative Simone, an obnoxious crumpet of a host, not ordinarily my cup-of-tea, asks probative questions. In an exchange with the awful John Brennan, these two lefties float a plausible theory:

Israeli intelligence assets could very likely have been compromised. Israel is a progressive society recruiting for representation, not merit. This Israel learned from the best: America.