Political Observer on the Propaganda Imperatives of @NYT Bret Stephens & David Brooks.

Like his Fellow Traveler David Brooks , Bret Stephens attempts to change the subject from the 24,100 dead in Gaza, by means of his latest essay: The Meaning of Gaza’s Tunnels! The opening paragraphs.

Ever since Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, critics have accused it of blockading and immiserating the territory — turning it, as they say, into an “open-air prison.”

The charge was always preposterous. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. Gazans were often treated in Israeli hospitals for cancer and other life-threatening conditions. Israel provided Gaza with much of its electricity and other critical goods even after Hamas came to power in 2007.

Now, as Israeli troops uncover more of Gaza’s vast underground city, the falsity of the accusation has become even more apparent.

According to a report this month in The New York Times, Israeli defense officials now estimate that Hamas’s tunnels measure between 350 and 450 miles in a territory that’s just 25 miles long. (By comparison, the London Underground is only 249 miles long.) Some of Gaza’s tunnels are wide enough for cars; some are more than 150 feet deep; some serve as munitions depots; others are comfortably kitted out as command bunkers.

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The Question could be posed as : how might a captive people defend itself against its captors, that controls every aspect of their lives, including enforcing strict calorie management ! Not a question that would ever occur, to a former editor of The Jerusalem Post, a columnist and editor for the Wall Street Journal, nor a New York Times opinion writer might entertain, especially one trained by Wm. F. Buckley Jr.!

Like Mr. Brooks, Mr. Stephens’ propaganda imperative is shifting the current narrative, from the horrific Genocide practiced by Netanyahu and his Military, to a more manageable and easily manipulated set of questions, like Hamas Tunnels! And Brooks’ metastasizing ‘Administrative State’.

Both of these men are Neo-Conservatives: as such they are both the inheritors of the Legacy of Leo Strauss and his Re-Write of the History of Philosophy. And the deployment by the Platonic Guardians of the self-serving Noble Lie, as a necessity to the governance, of the lesser beings under their sway. It’s glaringly obvious that Stephens and Brooks are self-appointed members of this mendacious Political, Moral, Intellectual Class.

Let me go to the end of Mr. Stephens’ turgid melodrama, that the reader can explore at her leisure:

It’s possible that Israel could fight with more discrimination to spare Palestinian lives while still destroying Hamas’s ability to make war. If so, it behooves Israel’s constant critics to explain precisely how, and to do so in a way that doesn’t let Hamas off the hook. Otherwise, the tragic reality of this war is that it is going to be catastrophic for Gaza — not because Israel wills it, but because Hamas spent years of cynical efforts to make it so.

Hamas could have averted this tragedy if it had turned Gaza into an enclave for peace rather than terror. It could have averted it if it had not started four previous rounds of war against Israel. It could have averted it if it had honored the cease-fire that held on Oct. 6. It could have lessened the blow against Gazans by fighting in the open, not behind civilians. It could have eased it by releasing all of its hostages. It could end it now by surrendering its leaders and sending its fighters into exile.

Till then, something I wrote in October holds true now: Hamas bears the blame for every death in this war.

After 75 years of subjugation and terror, the resistance to Zionism became shockingly real! The Israeli Army underwritten and supplied by American arms, and a never ending flow of money, was brought low by an ‘Army’ as yet to be defeated! A Slave Revolt while Israel commits Genocide? The Houthi’s offer the only resistance to Israeli/American teetering hegemony.

Political Observer