That Dave

We need to send these military geniuses to Ukraine. They seem to believe there is a way of removing an enemy force without civilian casualties. I wish they'd let us in on the secret. It's either that or they are comically stupid bigots.

It bores me (as much as it bores you) to have to write about the Israeli conflict, but I am sick to death of the "Free Palestine" death cult. The reason you can tell Palestine supporters are antisemitic, is because they can muster obscure details about what happened in the region in 1916, 1949 and 1967, but couldn't tell you the first thing about any other regional war or post-imperial injustice - of which there are many. They are simply opposed to Jews having a homeland. What you also notice is that they tend to be far leftists who don't even believe in borders and dispute anybody's right to a homeland (unless they fit the preferred victim criteria). It enrages them that Arabs were driven out (after the war they started), but don't care if Brits are made a minority in Britain. They are as much anti-civilisation and anti-West as they are anti-Israel. I'm not interested in protracted debates about how Israel came about. Most of it was decided and pretty much settled before I was even born. What exists now is a functioning first world democratic state. The troubles there now are the same ones that have been bubbling throughout my lifetime, over what should be done about the Arab enclaves. There are been several opportunities to formalise a state, but each time the hand of compromise has been slapped away by Palestinians, preferring instead to wage a pointless genocidal war of terror on the Jews. Consequently, I have no sympathy for their plight. Gaza could have thrived as a city sate - but they chose death instead. I sometimes think people don't really know what war is. It's that thing when you set out to destroy your enemies. There are several ways of prosecuting a war, but it's usually inadvisable to start one unless you can win it. On that basis, you might think Hamas was pretty dumb to provoke one of the most effective armies in the world, but Hamas aren't stupid. They understand that propaganda is also a weapon of war, by which you can leverage the gullibility and idiocy of people against your enemy. This is quite a costly strategy in that provoking Israel to such an extent was always going to result in a sustained and uncompromising reply. Hamas, of course, knew this but they simply didn't care. They were prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of their own people, playing the long game, in the somewhat plausible belief that they could turn international opinion against Israel. That has worked a number of times in several wars, and its part of the reason the West could not sustain wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is different though, because for Israel, it is not a war of choice. It is a fight or die equation where the opinions of others don't come into it. For a time, though, Israel had reason for concern. International public opinion was turning sour - which is still dangerous for them. But I think that's probably over now because we can see Palestine supporters for who and what they are. Every single one of them has outed themselves as a first order moronic bigot who latches on to every other moronic cause. We also see, in Britain particularly, supporters of this cause are also people who would do to us what Hamas did to Jews on 7/10 if they could - and have a track record of trying. It's the same people who've been grooming and raping teenage girls across England. While pro-Palestine demonstrations have been large - often comprised of foreigners and subversives, they are still a minority. Most are just gullible students who will grow out of it eventually when they learn how the real world works. The vast majority of people in the UK don't care all that much. I certainly don't. What Gazans are living through is exactly what they asked for, and far less than they deserve - especially after cheering on the psychopaths who paraded the corpses of the women they raped. One can only admire Israel's restraint. In the end, the war is one of civilisation versus Stone Age barbarism.

All too generous. This is a man who would cry racism to destroy careers, and unleash Carter Ruck on people to bankrupt and silence them, and part of the polite society that relishes people being jailed for their opinions. Arday was a serial fraudster and a vindictive predator who checked out because he couldn't handle accountability. Yes, the academic institutions have a lot of introspection to do, for elevating and embracing a grifter, same as the NHS had questions to answer over Harold Shipman, but this is a man who was gaming the system for personal gain, knew exactly what he was doing, and was laughing at us while he was doing it.

Unleashing Carter Ruck is not trivial. It says that the people pulling Arday's strings were heavily invested (financially and reputationally) in the scam and were prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to silence a critic, perhaps even to the point of bankruptcy and public humiliation, potentially even suicide. They hound you for years, making normal life impossible. They do not now get to pretend they are good people who made a small error. They were corrupt, devious and vindictive.