Category Archives: Ethics

NEW PODCAST (1/25): Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Reason, South-Africa

If you know in advance that your actions will cause the deaths of thousands-upon-thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. ~ilana

IN THE HARD TRUTH podcast, “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza,” David Vance and myself hammer-out the truth together about Gaza, which is, in my opinion, not a hard thing.

Drawing on the essay, “Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” I say that it is inarguable:

The case against Israel’s murder spree in Gaza is ethically simple, and not within the realm of opinion. It is immutable, eternal truth that, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses. Thus, like gentiles, Jews are prohibited from mass murder. The Sixth Commandment (“Thou shalt not murder”) is neither opinion, nor is it optional.

Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” IS A WIDE-RANGING ESSAY, an intellectual and spiritual purge of sorts. It spans, by necessity, past and present, the personal and the political, the philosophical and the factual.

It “hermetically seals the indictment of the Jewish Taliban’s mass murder in Gaza.”

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

Published by The New American, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and The Mises Institute, Power & Market—the essay is a First Principles deconstruction of Israel’s orgiastic murder spree in Gaza opinion.

It is thus, I propose, not opinion, but truth.

For, like the laws of logic, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses—Jews, like gentiles, are prohibited from mass murder. “Thou shalt not murder” (you can “kill,” but you cannot murder—read about the Biblical difference in the essay) is neither opinion, nor is it optional. That’s why the Sixth Commandment is called a … commandment. Immutable natural law is truth, not opinion.

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a blitzkrieg wherein the civilian population has been bombed, buried—dead and alive—then evicted for life.

Eviction is in accordance with an Israeli government policy plan, cited in my essay, but, alas, omitted, I believe, from the South African brief to the International Court Of Justice. I read the Jewish State’s population-eviction document in Hebrew, in English, and in incredulity.

The essay was variously titled elsewhere as follows: “Jewish Supremacism, Like American Exceptionalism, Breeds Barbarism,” “Israel’s Hamas Made Me Do It Claim Doesn’t Excuse Tel-Aviv’s Barbarism,” and an “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder And Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza.”

It “hermetically seals,” the case against the prosecutors and defenders of a war, “70 percent of whose casualties are women and children.” After following the contours of argument and facts, herein, not a sentient soul can say that the war on Gazans qualifies as a just war. It doesn’t even remotely abide by Saint Augustine’s “Just War Theory,” which, while imperfect, is also closer to truth than opinion. Gazans are owed reparations in perpetuity for that which is irreparable.

Brief excerpt: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

“…. In truth, Israel owns the killing field that is Gaza, circa 2023/2024. The offensive it has waged on Gaza is as close to Total Warfare (a term reserved for war against any and all), as modern war has gotten.

And war against civilians is war on civilization.

Yet, all Israel has to do to make world leaders turn tail is intone psychopathically that ‘Hamas made me do it. Hamas ate my homework; I mean my conscience.’

The ‘Hamas made me murder 25,700 souls (at least) and displace two million men, women and children’ excuse-making ‘argument’ will not wash as an argument for mass murder. For one, he who offends against innocents is responsible for his offenses; not a third party. For another, …whether it is committed by decree of the one or by the will of the many; by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’—murder of innocents is still murder. Murder by ‘democratic’ approval is also still murder, however many approve of it.

Besides, mass murder is never ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable and incidental to your ‘mission.’

Annoying as they are, neither do the pitiful caches of arms, ostensibly located in hospitals, begin to justify the grotesquely disproportionate sallies against Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital and all other hospitals, murdering patients and refugees. A hospital should never be demolished. Instead, demolish we must the demented ‘argument’ that claims for Israel a right to drop dumb bombs on Gaza’s doctors and patients. The former, apparently, are expected not only to palliate their imperiled patients, but also account for Hamas’ whereabouts.”….

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a barbaric blitzkrieg whereby the civilian population has been bombed, buried dead and alive, then evicted for life.

David pushes back by saying that Hamas are a terror group that should be wiped off the face of the earth. But he also emphasizes that collective punishment is always wrong. David does agree that Israel has a right to self defense but it has to be carried out with concern for the civilian Gazan population.

We appreciate a Follow at Hard Truth.

RELATED READING:

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-dock-hague/

UPDATED (12/17): NEW COLUMN: Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?

America, Constitution, Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come ~ilana

To refuse to bear witness to the war on Gazansalso the defining event of 2023 and the decade, twinned with COVID—is to be inhuman, insane, incoherent. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in such contradiction was to be less than human, less than coherent, less than sane ~ilana

NEW COLUMN IS “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority“. Or, “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?It was featured on The New American, at The Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity,” and the Mises Institute’s Power & Market.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

I thank all my publishers.

I did some simple math—whose core truth obtains, although the numbers are already out of date, given the scale of the carnage. My editor provided another ratio, at the end, here  https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/ , which speaks to the proportionality imperative of Just War Theory, sundered by Israel.

Please consider that my last four tracts on Gaza, and that scroll of a blog, “Constantly UPDATED (12/13): ‘Total Warfare’ On GAZA: War Against Civilians Is War On Civilization“—all anatomizing the war on Gazans: These are tremendously painful to write, as a Jew and a former fierce defender of Israel.

But to refuse to bear witness to the war on Gazans—also the defining event of 2023 and the decade, twinned with COVID—is to be inhuman, insane, incoherent. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in such contradiction was to be less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.

Excerpt:

“… Force-fed the fiction of the IDF as the most ethical fighting force in the universe; I set about to conduct a proportional, if limited, comparison. I compare like with like, albeit in limited but significant theatres of war: Israel’s offensive in Gaza against “Hamas,” in late 2023, to America’s onslaught in Fallujah against the Iraqi resistance, in 2004.

The battle in Fallujah is considered “the deadliest battle involving U.S. Marines since Vietnam.” “Eighty-two U.S. servicemembers died during the street-by-street, house-by-house effort to clear Al Qaeda from the city.” Officially, it is described as a “battle to retake the key city of Fallujah from a violent insurgency that was taking root across Iraq after the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein.”

Before the American invasion of Iraq, Fallujah was a compact city of about 400,000 people. “Around 700 Iraqi civilians were killed over the course of the 2004 fight for Fallujah.”

Gaza’s population is about 2.4 million strong. The administrative chaos in war-time Gaza would hamper accurate records-keeping. That considered—and not counting individuals buried beneath the rubble—approximately 15,000 Gazans have been killed by Israel. (Haaretz, Israel News, Friday, December 2, 2023)

Let’s extrapolate:

Were Fallujah as populated as Gaza (2.4 million), the United States Marines would have killed approximately 4,200 Iraqi souls. This is a far cry from the Israel Defense Forces’ butcher’s bill of 15,000 civilians dead in Gaza—and climbing.

Were Gaza as small as Fallujah (400,000); the Israelis, befitting their butcher’s bill so far, would still have killed at least 2,500 souls to our Marines’ 700. Ceteris paribus, naturally.

Let that sink in.

On the numbers, I have been exceedingly charitable to the Israelis, given that their victims, buried beneath the rubble, are still mostly unaccounted for, and considering that the IDF resumed hostilities against civilians on December 1.

Both the Israeli and the U.S. militaries come in here for rough treatment. The fulminations of the Israel Firsters stateside aside, however, some American patriotism is owed amid the sorrow over Israel’s barbaric blitzkrieg.

Damning with faint praise though this may be, Americans, in the persons of our U.S. Marines in Fallujah—in the dubious theater of another unjust war—were righteous, compared to the monstrous Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. …

… THE REST is here: “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority.” Or, “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

The complete column is always posted eventually at IlanaMercer’s Weekly Column Archive.

UPDATE (December 17, 023):

These people at ZeroHedge, December 17, 2023, are, well, dishonest. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/4th-generation-devastation-west-has-been-targeted-cowardly-globalist-mind-war

Over the pages of The New American, first, this column mocked the Fourth Generation Warfare categorization—and ostensible benevolence. On December 4, 2023, I applied this the 4th Generation Warfare vs. 3rd Generation Warfare analysis to the current global woke military.

In an intellectually honest America, my iteration of the idea would have been credited on Zero Hedge:

In their recent military campaigns, America and Israel have waged what to the inexpert, keen observer is largely old-fashioned, Third-Generation Warfare—a blitzkrieg, by any other name, against civilian populations.
The ostensible use of “tanks, mechanized infantry, and close air support” to “collapse an enemy’s defenses” are really unthinking, disproportionate shows of brute military force, reliant on massive amounts of materiel.
Yet when military mavens predicted and depicted the next form of warfare; it was the contours Fourth-Generation Warfare that they were tracing. Fourth-Generation Warfare was to be the distinguishing characteristic of the modern military. Boosted by technology, “advanced” armies would be relying on “small, highly mobile elements, composed of very intelligent soldiers, armed with high technology weapons.” These precision units and attendant weapons were expected “to range over wide areas seeking critical targets.”
In addition to technology; predicted and depicted was a military whose central impetus was augmented by ideas. In America, the controversial changing of hearts and minds, historically, has included fomenting coups around the world with the connivance afforded by psychological operations.
Near as I can tell, Fourth-Generation war was meant to be smart; to see Mind dominate and direct materiel.
What is underway in Gaza, at 2023’s end, however, is the very opposite. I see madness for what it is. Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come. The razing and ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden, his Uniparty accomplices and a complicit West: This appears to capture the kind of Third-Gen “capability” delivered by the modern, standing, Woke military.

https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/  (December 4, 2023)

* Screen pic of Gazans reduced to pre-industrial life, scrounging.

GAZA CITY IS GONE: Yes, Ha’aretz; Americans See It. The World Sees It.

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Terrorism, The West, War

An Israeli op-ed scribbler asks readers to ponder the heft of an ‘insight,’ in plain sight, at which he alone has arrived ~ilana

Anshel Pfeffer, at a Ha’aretz—a national Israeli newspaper—appears to have stumbled upon a scoop.  Or, so he thinks.

“Somehow,” writes Pfeffer (on Nov 15, 2023 6:58 pm IST), “despite all the eyes of the world being on Gaza, this has … been missed.”

What is it that Pfeffer’s gimlet eye alone has spied? What is this big thing that we dull dolts of America and the World have missed? A truly Homeric “D’oh!” is here in order.

Wide swaths of the city [Gaza] and its surroundings have already been destroyed, and it’s only a matter of weeks before the largest Palestinian city is rendered totally uninhabitable. … The IDF now sits on top of a mound of ruins that was once Gaza City. … Cities have been destroyed before, in the Middle East and across the world, in both ancient and recent history. But when this happens, it is a seismic event for nations…

An Israeli op-ed scribbler tells readers to ponder the heft of an ‘insight’—it’s in plain sight—at which he alone has arrived! Have you ever such solipsistic, self-important pomposity?

“We may be very near the point where there are more Israeli soldiers in Gaza City than Gazans, and the issue of trying to avoid more civilian casualties will no longer exist because all those who can will have left,” writes this obtuse individual.

Since Anshel believes he alone has stumbled on the ruins of Gaza City, circa November 2023; he wonders: “What will it mean to the world when it sees what happened?”

Gaza City is gone. And yes, Ha’aretz; the world has noticed. Americans have noticed. We see. You can’t gussy up what’s going on in Gaza

To wit, “U.S. support for Israel has declined in the month since Hamas’s incursion into Israel on October 7. The percentage of respondents who said that ‘the U.S. should support Israel’ when asked what role Washington should play in the war dropped from 41% in mid-October to 32% percent this week.” (Via Reuters/Ipsos)

*Screen pic courtesy Ha’artez

 

UPDATED (11/14): NEW COLUMN: Bibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza

Argument, Conservatism, Crime, Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Morality, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Terrorism, War

Murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’; murder of innocents is still murder ~ilana

The razing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices, in the course of which civilians are dying: This is murder with malice aforethought, a concept that includes ‘deaths resulting from actions that display a depraved indifference to life! ~ilana

UPDATED (11/9): STOP. WAKE THE FUCK UP. SAVE YOUR SOULS.  The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder and displacement of thousands of innocent civilians by the Israel Defense Forces, with US imprimatur—these are war crimes, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, sheer evil.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-obliterates-memory-october-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-gaza/

NEW COLUMN ISBibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza.” So far, three exceedingly courageous publications have published it: my home at The New American.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

And, The Mises Institute (“Bibi Netanyahu May Find Himself In the Dock, In The Hague.”)

https://mises.org/power-market/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-himself-dock-hague

Note that this is a column penned by a systematic rightist, hence , I offer facts about Palestinian voting patterns and agency. I do this in order to dispel the Disneyfied foreign-policy narrative of the West, and in order to make this clear:

Whatever we think of people, as a group; ethical human-beings can never-ever endorse their wholesale murder. I think these facts strengthen the rightist antiwar message, as they are made from a place of reality, not hippie naiveté.

I thank my editors at TNA for standing by The Truth.

https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has always stood for the Truth.

That Truth is now visible from space.

I thank my podcast partner, David Vance, for sharing a moral commitment, and, well, having the proverbial male bits so few men have.

I am still hopeful there will be others.

Alas, little has changed since Iraq. This response to the razing of Gaza has elements of an Iraq redux, where you tell the unvarnished truth, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2004/11/liberation-has-a-body-count/, become persona non grata forever; and 15 years hence, you get to watch fools slowly feel their way to the truth as you and your ideological ilk had articulated, at the time it mattered, and against your own professional interests, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2015/05/iraq-liars-and-deniers-we-knew-then-what-we-know-now/ in dozens of essays, starting on September 19, 2002: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq .

Many are the good people who learn to trust you; the rest remain as dumb as fuck.

Excerpt from “BIBI OBLITERATES MEMORY OF OCT. 7 MARTYRS; CREATES NEW MARTYRS IN GAZA“:
https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

&

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

It’s simple: If you know in advance that your actions will cause the death of thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy.

The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder of thousands of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with western imprimatur, is a war crime. Strafing civilian populations and pulverizing entire neighborhoods to ostensibly “soften” the few embedded targets within—this violates natural law, international law, and Just War Theory.  

It was true when Genghis Bush dropped daisy cutters and cluster bombs on Iraqi civilians, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of them; it was true when allied forces firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and it was true when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians.

Not that it helped his victims, but Truman icily expressed some “regret” for “the [beastly] necessity of wiping out whole populations”: “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare,” he told an ardent supporter, “but I can’t bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner.”

We know ineluctably that Gaza is “a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare.” The sympathies expressed by Gazans toward their neighbors, victims of the October 7 slaughter, were meager and grudging, coerced by media, for the most. …

…. These uncomfortable facts notwithstanding, murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without the State; by the designated “good guys” or the “bad guys”; murder of innocents is still murder. …

…THE RESTBIBI OBLITERATES MEMORY OF OCT. 7 MARTYRS; CREATES NEW MARTYRS IN GAZA” :
https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

* Gaza, Before and After, Screen Pic Courtesy Al Jazeera