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zvaigzdelasas · 4 months

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“It is a huge escalation, involving perhaps 15-20 missiles,” [...]

"It seems like things are spiralling. There's no way they're firing ballistic missiles and not expecting casualties."[...]

The escalation is part of the [PMF's] campaign to pressure the US to leave Iraq. There are about 2,500 American military trainers in the country under the International Coalition against ISIS. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani [...] has criticised militias for attacking coalition troops on Iraqi territory, but has upped his calls for US forces to leave the country as the conflict escalates. Mr Al Sudani has also fiercely condemned US counter strikes against the militias [which are largely a formal part of the Iraqi Armed Forces] as a “violation of sovereignty”.[...]

The rivalry between US forces and Kataib Hezbollah[, one faction of the PMF, ] is bitter and goes back to the US occupation of Iraq, when the militia killed and wounded hundreds of US soldiers.

Baghdad committed to end presence of US troops in Iraq: Iraqi general - AlMayadeen

Spokesman for Iraq's Joint Operations Command (JOC) Brigadier General Yahya Rasool stated on Sunday that the government of Iraq is determined to terminate the deployment of foreign troops associated with the US-led military coalition, which was originally formed to combat ISIS. "The Iraqi government is resolute to put an end to the deployment of foreign forces in the country. It has devised a vision plan for the next stage, which includes joint technical activities intended for the US-led coalition's departure and subsequent security and military cooperation," Rasool stated. He further stressed that the presence of the US-led military coalition in Iraq is no longer deemed necessary, noting that the capabilities of Iraqi forces are high enough to address terrorism-related issues themselves. On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani reiterated the call for the coalition's departure. "The end of the US-led coalition mission is a necessity for the security and stability of Iraq. It is also a necessity for preserving constructive bilateral relations between Iraq and the coalition countries," Sudani stated during a televised event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Sudani has consistently expressed the desire for foreign troops to leave Iraq, with the country adopting a law to expel foreign forces following the assassination of top Iraqi and Iranian anti-terror commanders in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. [...]

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh admitted earlier this week that US forces in the region came under attack 140 times [since 7 Oct]. Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday, Singh disclosed that the attacks have been "persistent and alarming."

21 Jan 24

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mapsontheweb · 6 months

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Religious Distribution in the Subdivisions (Nahiyas) of the Mount Lebanon Emirate in the 1540s according to Ottoman Tax Registries.

by u/R120Tunisia:

The map wasn't made by me. The original post is here though I modified it by adding a small graph that shows the overall percentages below.

The map uses various books that summarize the results of the tax registries as a source.

In case you might be wondering : "Wasn't Lebanon Christian majority ?" well at that point, no. The largest religious group at the time would have been the Druze followed by Shias. Note the Druze were technically part of the Muslim millet and didn't pay the Jizya so they were included in the Muslim category at the time.

The Druze though were far from united. They originated from the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains and were settled by the Ayyubids and Mamluks over the years along the central Levantine coast to guard from Crusader naval incursions and raids. In the absence of crusader threats, the various Druze clans started to fight among each other, with a divide appearing between Qaysi Druze clans (who claimed descent from Northern Arabian tribes) and Yamani Druze clans (who claimed descent from Southern Arabian tribes). The former were supported by local Sunnis and Shias while the latter had the support of local Ottoman authorities.

The Qaysis eventually gained the upper hand following the Battle of Ain Dara and most of the Yamani Druze were expelled from Lebanon with most moving into what is today Jabal al-Druze which was sparsely populated at the time (this was how Syria got most of its Druze as well). Meanwhile, the Qaysi clans that prevailed started to invite Christian peasants from the Mt Lebanon area as well as from all over the Levant into the area to repopulate the towns and villages left empty by the Yamanis and to become tenant farmers under them. These new immigrants were mainly Maronite but also Orthodox and Melkite to a lesser degree.

This Christian immigration would increase following the takeover of the Shihab dynasty, a Sunni family from the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, following the death of the last Druze Qaysi Ma'nid Emirs. The new dynasty were in frequent conflict with Druze landlords so to build a power base in the area they started to support the Maronite clergy and created local conditions friendly to Christian life (some Shihab Emirs would even convert to Christianity).

And finally two other factors : Christians tended to be poorer and rural (especially Maronites), and the rural poor tend to have higher birthrates, and at the time, there was a split among the local Orthodox population of the Levant that caused many to join the new Melkite Catholic Church leading to many members leaving their communities for sectarian reasons and moving into Lebanon to create new communities out of scratch (most notables of these is Zahlé, Lebanon's third largest city and the largest Christian majority town in the Middle East, which continues to have a Melkite majority to this day).

Tl;dr : in the late 17th and early 18th century following inter-Druze conflict and the takeover of the Shihab dynasty, a demographic shift occurred in what is today Lebanon that led to a huge decrease in the Druze population and an increase of the Christian population due to immigration (to re-populate areas emptied by the Druze who left and trigged by both the local conditions in the area as well as theological disputes within the Christian communities of the Levant) as well as higher birthrates, eventually leading to Christians becoming a slight majority in the area.

#maps #lebanon #16th century #religions

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girlactionfigure · 2 months

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🔅Wed morning - ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

( Update 1 of 2 )

🔻AIR ATTACKS..

.. North - Hezbollah

ROCKETS at Gesher HaZiv, Nahariya, Sa'ar, Hanita, Ya'ara, Metzuba, Shlomi, Betzet, Lehman

ROCKETS at Margaliot

ROCKETS at Even Menachem, Zarit, Netua, Fassuta, Shomera, Shtula

ROCKETS at Alkosh, Matat, Netua, Fassuta, Hurfeish

Interceptions without alarm reported over the Kinerret

.. South East - Iranian Shia Militias of Iraq

SUICIDE DRONE at Kushi Rimon

.. South West - Hamas

ROCKETS at Kissufim

▪️TERROR - KOCHAV YAIR.. ramming attack - 4 policemen were injured and the terrorist was shot dead.

▪️VIOLENT ANTI-GOVT PROTESTS JERUSALEM.. MK Zeev Elkin: Hard pictures in Jerusalem. There is no place for breaking the law and harming the police! There is no place for police violence and excessive use of force! Please stop! We are not enemies to each other. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran are the enemies! We are in the middle of a war against a murderous enemy who wants to destroy all of us, the supporters of the government and its opponents.

Head of Shin Bet.. “The violent discourse on the Internet and some of the scenes we saw tonight in Jerusalem, go beyond the accepted rules of protest, harm the ability to maintain public order, may lead to violent friction with the security forces, hinder them from fulfilling their duties and even harm secure individuals.

There is a clear line between a legitimate protest and a violent and illegal protest. This is a worrisome trend that may lead to dangerous areas that should not be reached."

And our enemy watches Al Jazeera and laughs.

▪️IDEAS.. Head of Yisrael Beitenu, former Minister of Defense, MK Avigdor Lieberman:

"The Israeli government must make two immediate decisions:

1. In the security field, there is no justification for purchasing aircraft for a total amount of approximately NIS 35 billion. It is impossible for militias in sandals to be able to launch cruise missiles and UAVs (suicide drones) towards Israel, while in order to attack in Yemen, the Israel needs to put an entire squadron into the air for a flight thousands of kilometers south.

Therefore, instead of purchasing airplanes for approximately 35 billion shekels, you can purchase airplanes for approximately 20 billion shekels, and invest 10 billion shekels in establishing an effective missile force that will meet the security challenges, and five billion shekels to strengthen the land army.

2. In the economic field, we must immediately bring to Israel about a quarter of a million foreign workers, who are needed in the construction, industry, agriculture and hotel industries.

After almost half a year of war, it's time to change mindsets.”

( Update 2 of 2 )

🔻AIR ATTACKS..

.. North - Hezbollah

ROCKETS at Alkosh, Matat, Netua, Fassuta, Hurfeish

▪️CEASEFIRE LEAKS.. The Lebanese Al Mayadeen from a "senior source in the resistance": The new proposal submitted by Israel today does not provide an answer to the main issues that Hamas insists on and therefore there is no progress in the talks.

Al-Arabiya: Israel showed some flexibility proposing establishing 3 safe crossings to the north of the strip, but demanded health checks on the hostages in return.

▪️MORE INFO ON ARAVAH DRONE ATTACK.. At around 1 a.m., a suspected drone flying from the eastern direction entered Israeli airspace in the Arabah region, just north of Eilat, according to the IDF.

The "suspicious aerial target" set off sirens at a popular roadside store in the area.

The IDF says it fired an interceptor missile at the target, although it is not clear if it was shot down. (Fabien)

▪️MORE INFO ON THE RAMMING ATTACK.. a 26-year-old man from the Arab city of Tira rammed his vehicle into four cops near the town of Kochav Yair, police say. One of the officers was seriously wounded.

The assailant then fled to a nearby West Bank checkpoint, where he allegedly tried to stab the guards there. The guards at the Eliyahu Crossing returned fire, killing the suspect.

His family: our son has mental disorders. It was not on a nationalistic basis.

▪️IRANIAN SHIA MILITIA SAYS ATTACKED HAIFA? The Shia militias in Iraq claim: We attacked the airport in Haifa early in the morning with a UAV. No such attack.

▪️PASSOVER ECONOMY.. Min. Of Economy found a 32% gap between expensive and discount grocery chains on the ‘average basket of Passover foods’. It also noted an overall 4% increase from last year.

#Israel #October 7 #Hamas Massacre #Gaza #Israel/HamasWar #Real Time Updates

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bobcatmoran · 1 year

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So, with the 20th anniversary of the US's incredibly ill-advised and generally terrible invasion of Iraq, I've been reminded of where I was at the time that happened. Namely, I was in college, and I was taking a course called "Human Geography of Global Issues." The professor was a Texan, and was known for a) the fact that he loudly and proudly wore cowboy boots everywhere, sometimes capped off with a ten gallon hat — not your typical fashion at my Minnesotan college — and b) his repeated insistence, delivered in his drawling accent, that "Bush Junior is not a real Texan — the whole family are just a bunch of carpetbaggers from New England." (he was also just an absolute gem of a man — I have a very vivid memory of coming into the Geography Department offices the next year, distraught because a computer glitch meant that none of my class registrations for the next semester had taken and the GIS course I wanted to take for my minor was full — and he calmed me down, reassured me that there were ways around this for not only the GIS class but all the classes I was now locked out of, helped me navigate the system, and I got an email within the week saying that despite the GIS class having no room in the online course registration, I was now registered for it)

He was also an expert on the Middle East. And, as it became clearer and clearer as the semester went on that the then-Current Administration (which he had negative respect for) was hellbent on going into Iraq for reasons which seemed to largely amount to "Gonna finish what Daddy Bush started," he made predictions. Predictions about how easy it would be to topple Saddam Hussein and how hard it would be to fill the power vacuum. Predictions about the looming sectarian time bomb between the Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. Predictions about how the Kurds would react. Predictions about how the US would get bogged down and wouldn't be able or willing to leave for years and years and would, in the meantime, commit warcrimes that would just lead to the rise of new terrorist groups.

Every single one of those predictions came true.

(He also predicted in detail during one class, with terrifying accuracy and illustrations, exactly what would happen if a major hurricane hit New Orleans, which it did two years later with Katrina).

Meanwhile, on campus, a "Peace Camp" sprung up in front of the campus center, with students living in tents until…uh…ok, the goals were kind of fuzzy, but it was a fixture for the rest of the school year. At one point, the Young Republicans (all three of them :P) decided to set up a "Freedom Camp" on the other side of campus, which wound up consisting of like, two guys with signs for a single day, and which led to a sprouting of mocking signs for "Weed Camp" and "Space Camp."

Also, a group of anti-war protestors took up a station kitty-corner from campus and they were there every day until I graduated, waving signs, with cars honking as they passed.

#us politics #us history #weird to be saying that for something that happened within my lifetime #but i think a very significant portion of my followers are too young to remember this era

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curiooftheheart · 2 months

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Anytime I see people bring up the 4Chan flag hunt with Shia Lebouf thing as a like fun story of internet people working together I wanna fucking lob bricks at them. It was them harassing him during his anti-Trump displays. It is literally just a bunch of internet jerk offs working really hard for the name of "le funne white supremacy".

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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youtube

The Israel & Palestine Double Standard | Douglas Murray

I'm so fed up of the double standards on all of this. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed in the last 12 years by Bashar al-Assad and other Muslims in the civil war in Syria.

There's no one on the streets of Sydney or Melbourne. There's no one on the Streets of London. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people killed in the last decade in Yemen, Muslims being killed. There's no one on the streets of Melbourne. Nobody is standing outside the Sydney Opera House calling gas the Hutus or gas the Shia, gas the...

Nobody's marching for the dead Muslims in Yemen. Their co-religionists -- we're always told about care so much about their co-religionists -- don't give a damn about their co-religionists. They really don't.

Muslims do not love other Muslims. They have no love for them. They have no love for the Palestinian peoples. None. If they had any, the Jordanians would have taken in the West Bank Palestinians, Egyptians would have taken in the territory they used to run, the Gaza, and own the Gaza. And they would have taken in the Palestinians from the Gaza. Why have the Egyptians made sure that not one Palestinian is allowed to leave Gaza? Why do they make sure that their border wall is tough as anything?

What do they mind? One thing. Jews living. Jews living and Jews winning. It hits them deep in their soul, in their psyche. It's an ancient, ancient hatred. Perhaps the most ancient among the monotheisms. And the deepest and the ugliest, the nastiest. And the one that that has been least addressed.

And we've imported it. As we sit here, roughly the same population of the Gaza is being forcibly moved by the government of Pakistan. Almost 2 million Muslims are being moved by the Pakistani authorities into Afghanistan. Okay. We have a very large Pakistani community here in the UK. If their country of origin can do that, why can't we?

If it comes to that. If it has to come to that. And why does nobody notice this, why is nobody saying this is an appalling war crime by the Pakistani government? Well, only because there are so many Pakistani politicians and others in the UK and other countries who have a deep connection to their country of origin and would never want to see it looked at in a bad way. They will not criticize that. They haven't said a word about that.

So no, I think that if you are zoning in, zooming in on Israel, lambasting Israel and are basically not bothered with everything else in the world, you're not motivated by anything other than being anti-Jewish, antisemitic of course. And it just has to be said.

I mean, I've said this so many times that I tire myself with it but, it's necessary to say. Antisemitism is a shape shifter. It's a shape-shifting virus. It can come from anywhere. At times in the past, it was the case that people didn't like Jews because they were seen to be a different religion and strange and different, and so they were hated for their religion. Then after the wars of religion, you couldn't hate anyone for their religion, so people started to hate the Jews for their race. And after the Holocaust, you couldn't hate people because of their race anymore, so people hated the Jews because of their nation. On and on...

#Douglas Murray #islam #gaza #gaza strip #palestine #palestinians #israel #egypt #jordan #pakistan #hypocrisy #double standard #antisemitism #religion is a mental illness

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brielledoesastrology · 2 years

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Asteroid VARUNA (20000) in your astrology natal chart 💕✨💸

(updated version) - by : brielledoesastrology (tumblr)

Asteroid VARUNA code number : 20000

[also just a reminder that varuna is a "dwarf planet" or a "trans neptunian object" not an "asteroid", but i am just gonna use the word "asteroid" to make it easier]

The asteroid Varuna (20000) in astrology represents : being globally known, legendary fame, amazing leadership skills (if relating to politics or being a leader of something), being iconic, being unforgettable, immortality, being believed by other people easily, charisma, immortal fame and power, grandness, fame that is in history, being extremely rich or wealthy (if relating to money or material stuff), having a feeling that the universe is always in their side, being judgemental, being connected to the waters (especially ocean water), immense, vast, hugeness, greatness, immortal fame.

Mythology of the vedic god Varuna : Varuna is the name of an ancient Indian creator-deity. He created heaven and earth and determined their outer limits, as the horizon. He is also responsible for ensuring that the sun crosses the sky each day, for rainfall, and the order of seasons. He is the supreme keeper of human order and god of law, insisting that people be truthful and honour their oaths and contracts. (Just a reminder that varuna is a god in the vedic era but in today Hinduism varuna became the god of the ocean, but he is still a vedic god from the vedic era originally). Varuna, in the Vedic phase of Hindu mythology, the god-sovereign, the personification of divine authority. He is the ruler of the sky realm and the upholder of cosmic and moral law (rita), a duty shared with the group of gods known as the Adityas (see Aditi), of whom he was the chief. Varuna is also the vedic god of the heavens, cosmic and space in vedic. (Please understand that i am not an expert on vedic mythology, so if you are an expert at it you can correct me in the comments if i am wrong)

⚠️ Warning : i consider this asteroid as prominent and brings the most effect if it conjuncts ur personal planets (sun,moon,venus,mercury,mars) and if it conjuncts ur personal points (ac,dc,ic,mc), i use 0 - 2.5 orbs (for conjunctions). For sextile, trine, opposite and square aspects to asteroids i usually use 0 - 2 orbs. Yes tight conjunctions of planet / personal points to asteroids tends to give the most effect, but other aspects (sextile,trine,square,opposite, etc) still exist, even they produce effects. If it doesn't aspect any of your planets or personal points, check the house placement of the asteroid, maybe some stuff/topics relating to this asteroid could affect some topics/stuff relating to the house placement . ⚠️

Some observations about famous people who have the asteroid varuna prominent in their astrology natal charts ✨ :

- people with varuna conjunct their descendant are very influential people but they are alot of fans and alot of haters who really hate them at the same time (example : Eminem, kim kardashian, paris hilton, vladimir putin)

- people with varuna conjunct mars are very vastly well known for their martian qualities (example : maddona)

- people with varuna conjuncting their personal planets but it is badly aspected by other planets are ussualy vastly known but for their bad qualities (example : jacob elordi, shia lebouf)

- people with varuna conjunct their vertex or anti - vertex are fated to be vastly well known (example : alexa demie)

- naomi campbell have varuna conjunct sun opposite her neptune this really make sense she is very vastly known of her shady entertaining personality, i love it 😂

- people with varuna prominent in their chart if they become famous or well known they will be considered as like a "king" or "queen" of something by alot of people

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mariacallous · 6 months

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In 2007 I published what was probably my most-read book What’s Left. It asked novel questions.

"Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal-left is against come from the liberal-left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don…Why, even in the case of Palestine, can’t those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see?

“After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-right?”

In short, I asked why was the world upside down? In the past conservatives made excuses for fascism because they mistakenly saw it as a continuation of their democratic right-wing ideas. In the early 2000s, overwhelmingly and everywhere, liberals and leftists were more likely than conservatives to excuse fascistic governments and movements, with the exception of their native far-right parties. As long as local racists were white, they had no difficulty in opposing them in a manner that would have been recognizable to the traditional left. But give them a foreign far-right movement that was anti-Western and they treated it as at best a distraction and at worst an ally.

I say my questions were novel because, although socialism was one of the great political movements of the 20th century, few discussed the consequences of its collapse in the 1980s. The decline of the socialist religion had as profound and as perverse consequences as the collapse of Christianity in the late 19th century. But no one, or next to no one, wanted to think about them.

As a good atheist I hated to paraphrase GK Chesterton, but there’s no escaping the old Catholic apologist. My argument boiled down to saying that what Chesterton said about God applies just as well to socialism. When men stop believing in it, “they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

After dreams of socialism and communism vanished in the 1980s, large sections of the radical left preferred any enemy of the West to the West having no enemies at all: radical Islam, insane Sunni and Shia dictators, Putin’s Russia, violent misogynists and homophobes. As long as they were anti-western, and in particular the enemies of the US and Israel, the radical left was happy to form alliances.

Or as Judith Butler explained the new orthodoxy in 2006, “Understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.”That by any normal standard Hamas and Hezbollah were tyrannical, inquisitorial, and misogynist was irrelevant. They were anti-western and that alone made them “progressive”.

Not everything I wrote in 2007 stands up well today. In the 2010s we began to see Conservatives fawning over trash like Viktor Orban, and from 2016 on we have seen the wholesale abasement of the US right before Donald Trump. The lure of authoritarianism was by no means confined to the left

But overall, what I said remains true. And just to be clear, I did not then and do not now believe in the horseshoe theory. The far left is not the same as the far right. There is a huge difference between living in a country ruled by Donald Trump and a country ruled by Nicolas Maduro or between Iran and North Korea. The far left and far right target different people, and serve different interests.

It is better to think of radical Islam seducing elements of an exhausted radical left. The white western working class would no longer die for the revolution (truth be told, it was never that keen on dying for the revolution even at the best of times for the left). But young Muslim men would fight and kill Americans and Israelis. And if you could forget about the obscurantist religious tyranny, the hatred of every human right, the persecution and murder of Arab and Iranian leftists, they might in a certain light appear to be a replacement for the western working class that had let the far left down so badly.

When What’s Left came out respectable critics said words to the effect of “come on, Nick, you are just talking about tiny groups of post-Stalinists and post-Trotskyists. The real left was in the then Labour government, trade unions and charities and campaign groups.”

I replied with words to the effect of politics is downstream of culture. Look at academia, the comment pages of the Guardian, the organisers of demonstrations, the left trade unions and many of those supposedly respectable campaign groups and charities. They are getting drunk on a weird mixture of far-leftism, far-rightism and postmodernism. They will embrace medieval levels of superstition and regimes they would have no hesitation in describing as fascist if they were white.

I asked where this was leading. The far left provided an answer when, to the astonishment of my respectable critics, it took over the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Now the Gaza war has led to another pact being formed between the western far left and radical Islam. Over at Quillette, an American academic, Susie Linfield, has gone through the whole hideous detail of how leftist thought leaders and academics celebrated the murderers. Some of those she indicted are so predictable you would miss them if they were not there.

Linfield notes that in the New Left Review, Britain’s leading Marxist journal, Tariq Ali praised the terrorists for “rising up against the colonizers” and implied, bizarrely, that the murders resulted from Palestinian frustration with Israel’s recent enormous pro-democracy demonstrations against the Netanyahu government.

Elsewhere depression replaces tedium. Anyone who remembers the scrupulous work of Michael Waltzer on what constituted just war will be appalled about what has happened to Dissent, the journal he edited. Dissent used to believe that the deliberate targeting of civilians was a war crime. Not so now when the civilians are Jews. In its pages, one writer described Israel as a ‘genocide machine’ and argued that Israeli victims should not be grieved.

“It is not possible to publicly grieve an Israeli Jewish life lost to violence without tithing ideologically to the IDF—whether you like it or not.” So grief is impermissible. Indeed, it’s worse than that: grief is colonialist.

Elsewhere tenured academics were unable to contain their enthusiasm: the attacks were “innovative,” “astonishing,” a “major achievement,” “awesome,” “incredible,” and “a stunning victory,’’ one wrote.

Ah professors. They write in ink and dream of blood.

The essential point to bear in mind is that these expressions of joy at the death of Jews on 7 October was almost instantaneous. It came before a single Israeli bomb fell on Gaza. It was not a condemnation of Israel’s disproportionately violent response. That was still to come. Instead of rational protest there was a celebration of the mass murder of Jews by Hamas, a terrorist group inspired not only by Islamism but by European fascism. As if to confirm my argument in What’s Left the far left was cheering the far right because it has no one else to cheer.

The same question I asked in the early 2000s can be asked now: where is this heading?

I do not go along with the view among conservatives that all who march with Islamists and their leftist allies are antisemites by definition. From the start of this war, I have said that Israel’s aim of destroying Hamas is impossible. I was going to say that it is impossible without unacceptable civilian casualties. But in truth it is impossible in all circumstances. The Israeli forces simply cannot find Hamas fighters as they melt into a population of two million disorientated people. This is not simply my view. Military specialists are noting the low level of Israeli casualties and the small number of Hamas kills the Israeli Defence Forces are claiming to have made. The odds are that Hamas is refusing to opt for a direct confrontation, and allowing civilians to pay the price. It is always reasonable to protest against futile wars and needless suffering, and this war is no exception to the rule.

And yet before I turn too accommodating, let me say there is no other area of progressive life where liberals and leftists ally with racists and don’t show even the smallest embarrassment about their behaviour.

Here’s a thought experiment. There is a growing concern on the western far right about low birth rates. Rather than allow immigration, Viktor Orban in Hungary is offering tax exemptions to women who have four or more children. The left naturally wants higher welfare payments for mothers, too, and in the case of the UK wants to end a nasty Conservative policy which penalises families on benefits if they have more than two children.

For all that, no progressive would join a demonstration of neo-Nazis or alt-right supporters in favour of encouraging British mothers to have more children. They would think that there was a serious flaw in a campaign that attracted ultra-right white support. They would worry about inciting prejudice against ethnic minorities in the UK. And yet they see nothing wrong in going along with campaigns that attract ultra-right Islamist support or in worrying too much about the UK's Jewish minority.

If the grim absurdities of the left of the early 2000s presaged Corbynism and the collapse of the Labour party, what do the 2020s have in store? I am trying to be objective and so won’t go off into long laments about the moral health of the sacred “Left”. I long-ago gave up worrying about that in any case.

First and most obviously the failure of the white left for more than a generation to oppose Israel while also opposing antisemitism has mainstreamed racial prejudices. The explosion in anti-Jewish attacks since 7 October is an inevitable consequence. I have never seen Jewish people feel so isolated. It’s not simply the far left and Muslim agitators who scare them. BBC presenters and others in the mainstream, who make their indifference to the massacre of Jews plain, foretell a future where Israel is a pariah state and Jews are damned by association and must pay the price. Perhaps that future is already here, and we will be permanently in a Corbynista world where Jews are seen as sinister agents in a Zionist conspiracy manipulating western policy.

Second, the uncritical treatment of Hamas naturally reinforces the most bigoted and reactionary elements in British Muslim communities. The consequences we can only guess at, but I think we can say by looking back at the last time the British left ran off with radical Islamists, they will lead us down new spirals of extremism.

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