Below is an overview by our Israeli correspondent MC of the current hostage exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.
Soppy
by MC
‘Soppy’ was one of those words of boyhood which described all girls (except the ones that weren’t soppy) and those boys who behaved like the soppy girls.
Soppy boys had difficulty with boyish behaviour, the risky bits like climbing trees and scrumping apples. One of the things we did as boys was to go out on the mud flats and retrieve cannonballs to sell as antiques. There were cannonballs in the mud because HMS Excellent, the Royal Navy gunnery school, was about a mile away and for several hundred years had been shooting live cannonballs whilst teaching sailors how to man the guns.
This was not soppy work. The cannon balls came in different sizes from 4 lbs to 100 lbs, plus, if you were lucky, a spherical (explosive) shell up to ten inches diameter.
Getting the cannonballs meant going out in the mud at least about six inches deep, and if it got soft, one could go in up to the waist. For an 11-year-old boy, handling a 32-pounder in the mud was tricky. One came across a mound about twelve inches across, then hit it with a hammer, and it started to disintegrate. Inside the mound was a six-inch diameter cannonball which then had to be carried to the boat, maybe a hundred yards of hard going in the mud, the extra weight causing one to sink twice as deep. This was not stuff that soppy kids did.
Of course, one now gets soppy politicians. Soppy politicians don’t do the nasty hard bits, but they sit and criticise those that do. Not for them selling cannonballs at 10 pounds a shot (sorry that one just got away from me).
And soppy policemen who beat up on the pro-Israel march because the pro-Hamas marchers will probably hit them back.
Soppy politicians are concerned about ‘innocent civilians’ in Gaza. 60% of said innocent civilians support the actions of Hamas on 7th October, and if appeased, are going to ensure the 10/7 massacre happens on a regular basis. Soppy politicians, male or female, are deadly because they very rarely (if not never) allow their military to finish the job.
General Pershing was the officer in charge of the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1917-18, and he was against the idea of an armistice in November of 1918. His troops were all set to carry the war into Germany to obtain a full surrender rather than an armistice. If the politicians and allied generals had listened, WW2 would probably been avoided.
Same with the Paris Accords of 1972 in which soppy politicians thought they were dealing with ‘gentlemen’ who kept agreements. Within two years, South Vietnam was annihilated…
Curiously, President Roosevelt (and then President Truman) were not so soppy. FDR insisted on unconditional surrender, and President Truman authorised the use of the atomic bombs. There were no comebacks from WW2. Churchill was soppy, and would have accepted another armistice had he not been overruled. The unconditional surrender cost tens of thousands of allied lives and the lives of countless enemy ‘innocent civilians’, children, babies, mothers and fathers.
Israel has been dealing with Gaza since 2006 when they de-occupied it, making it Judenrein as demanded by supposedly anti-fascist forces in Europe and the US. All to begin a cycle of violence in which Hamas strikes Israel, Israel goes into Gaza, and is forced by soppy international politicians to withdraw without settling the issue.
As of writing this essay, that looks to be the scenario we are facing again (this was written before the current imbroglio about hostages).
Hostages make this one very complicated, and in my opinion, the Hamas invasion of October 7th crossed a line, and has to be dealt with, with utmost severity.
The rumour here in Israel is that 10/7 was meant to be a co-ordinated three-prong attack with Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, and Hamas all attacking/invading at the same time. That could have been catastrophic.
As it was, Hamas jumped the gun because of the Re’im music festival. The rapine and brutalism were not intended, but happened because the troops were undisciplined. The invasion could have been much worse if Hamas had been more controlled.
Taking hostages has proven to be the ace in the hole, and the soppypols cannot see past the immediate ‘humanitarian’ problems. I think in many cases these are weak people wanting to virtue-signal their humanity by being seen to ‘solve’ the current issue whilst ignoring the unpleasant consequences that ensure a repeat crisis.
The West’s failure to deal with rogue Islamist states makes us all vulnerable to a 10/7 copycat. I applaud those real innocent civilians at kibbutzim Nir Am, Mafalasim and Zeelim who managed to mobilize their militias in time, and deal with the threat.
Sderot had no militia. Nobody believed there was even a threat.
When I lived in South Africa, we were constantly aware of the threat of snakes, the most dangerous of which was the puff adder. Puff adders lie in the sun, and don’t scarper like other snakes do. It is very easy to tread on them (yes, they are related to rattlesnakes) with drastic consequences. Their venom is cytotoxic and causes massive muscle and soft tissue damage even if the victim survives.
Palestinians are snakes. Pretending to be Western ‘Christians’ they use the soppy value system of many as a weapon to enforce a moral relativity. Snakes have no morals; they deceive the gullible, who assume that Muslims worship the same god as they do, but whilst God required us to follow His Ten Commandments, Allah make no such call. On the contrary, he encourages the good Muslim to kill the unbeliever (and those who are of different sects of Islam).
One cannot deal with Islam by being soppy, just as we could not deal with German and Japanese fascism by being nice. We bombed the hell out of them, ‘innocent civilians’ and all.
But we cannot have Israel doing that. Israel is full of historically soppy jooz who must wait in line to be slaughtered early one Shabbat morning…
O’Biden, the puppet, judges Israel by the standards of his tame Democrat Jewish contingent. He fails to realize that we in Israel are not soppy leftist minions. Biden forces Israel to accept a ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for criminals and would be murderers. This is his take, his operation, but it is the people of Israel who will have to live with the consequences.
Boston Tea Party, anybody?
MC lives in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. For his previous essays, see the MC Archives.
Western soppyness is preparing us mother of all disasters..
Regarding Churchill: After Hitler decided to declare war on the United States in December 1941, Churchill wrote that
. . . now at this moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! . . . England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of force.”
Churchill, The Grand Alliance, pp. 467-477.
In addition: Churchill sent the Royal Navy to attack the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir (Twice! Not many people know they were send back a second time.) According to Harry Hopkins, this convinced FDR that the Brits meant business and that they were worth backing. (Hopkins told Jock Colville this during his visit to the UK in January 1941)
WSC also ordered the Arctic Convoy PQ16 to sail to Murmansk in May 1942, against the recommendations of his Chiefs of Staff, because Molotov was due to arrive in the UK to negotiate and hopefully sign the Anglo-Soviet Treaty. According to Churchill, even if half the boats were sunk by the Germans, he would consider that a success.
On the day Molotov was signing that piece of paper, British and American ships were being attacked by German submarines and bombers. (I have a copy of the “Top Secret” naval communique that was sent to WSC informing him that the Germans had found the convoy.)
What else? The British government declared war on Finland just to keep the Soviets happy. (Churchill insisted that this was recorded in the minutes of the War Cabinet meeting – this document can be found in the British National Archives.)
WSC also told Stalin that if the Germans ever used chemical weapons on the Eastern Front, he would use chemical weapons on Germany – even if that meant the Luftwaffe would respond in like manner against British civilians.
When Churchill visited Moscow in August 1942, he told Stalin that he would use Bomber Command to hammer German towns and cities, in order to “de-house” the German workers. Stalin responded “That is the only way.”
What else? Oh when the Katyn Forest massacre was uncovered in 1943, WSC told the Poles to suck it up, looked the other way and went along with Stalin’s claims that the Germans had committed this appalling war crime. (I have a copy of the memo written by Owen O’Malley, which he sent to Anthony Eden, which lays out the moral compromise required of the British government at that time. A damning document!)
Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that a political leader had to be able to do what is “not good” in order to “maintain his state” and Churchill showed time and again that he was capable of getting his “hands dirty” when it was necessary.
If anyone is interested in a Machiavellian analysis of Churchill’s actions during the first half of the war, check out a book called “The Road to Gomorrah.” (Operation Gomorrah being the firebombing of Hamburg which took place in July/August 1943.) This is relevant today because . . .
Politicians have been faced with the “dirty hands problem” many times over the years. Churchill responded appropriately during WW2, as did FDR.
And now it’s Netanyahu’s turn.
Most of the problems of today can be laid at the feet of Churchill and FDR. Defeating the Germans was worse than letting Germany to survive.
Here’s the thing: It was Neville Chamberlain who got Britain involved in the war, not Winston Churchill. Chamberlain gave a verbal guarantee to Poland on 31st March 1939, then followed that up with a written guarantee – the day after the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed! That meant war for sure – and it was Neville Chamberlain (not Churchill) who declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
Churchill didn’t even become Prime Minister until 10th May 1940.
Churchill followed the plan that had been laid out by the British Chiefs of Staff years before, in 1937 – fight a long war, by holding on against an initial attack by Germany, then try to build up a military force that was capable of fighting back, form alliances with the Americans and the Soviet Union, and eventually an Allied (not British) counterattack would be launched. That was always the plan, and that is precisely what Churchill did.
But it was Chamberlain’s blunders in 1939 that did the damage. Chamberlain and Halifax both. History has been far too kind to that pair.
If they hadn’t interfered with Germany’s Drang nach Osten, then the war on the Eastern Front could have been Hitler’s only war. And what a war that would have been! Instead, because of Chamberlain’s actions in 1939, we got WW2.
If you are interested in this subject, and want to see the argument made that Britain would have been better off leaving the Poles to their own devices, and letting the Red Army and the Wehrmacht fight one another to the death far, far away from the British Isles, I recommend two books:
Roosevelt’s Road to Russia by George Crocker, and The Road to Gomorrah: Britain’s War 1939-1943. You might be able to get a free copy of the Roosevelt book online somewhere, but you can get both of them on Amazon for sure.
The other thing I would have to say about this deal that has seen at least some of these hostages released is that I read a book years ago about the tunnel rats in Vietnam, and it was an incredibly difficult environment to operate in. I would assume that it was equally difficult for the IDF just now – maybe more so.
The IDF had been after the enemy for some seven weeks and had been unable to capture the sections of these underground tunnels where the hostages were being held. It may be the case that it is next to impossible to achieve this military objective, and the only way to have any kind of certainty that any of those hostages would ever see the light of day again was to strike this deal.
As to what happens after the hostages are released, well that’s another story.
I would also point out the similarities between the actions and tactics of the Barbary Corsairs and the Ham-Ass terrorists based in Gaza. Utter brutality as they attacked civilian targets, mass rape, torture and murder (In one instance when Murat Rais attacked Iceland in 1627, his men threw a mother and child into a fire, and when the victims started to scream, “the wicked Turks bellowed with laughter.”) It’s all so similar.
Also the taking of people to be enslaved, but who would also serve a dual purpose – they were essentially held hostage in the hope of a ransom being raised by their home countries. This happened at least some of the time.
Isn’t it strange how the behaviour and tactics of the Barbary Corsairs and the Ham-Ass terrorists are so similar? A disregard for the lives of infidels, absolute brutality, rapes, tortures, murders (especially of infidel infants) and the taking of hostages in the hopes of squeezing every drop of profit out of the victims’ homelands . . . yes it’s very strange indeed – I wonder what the common denominator could possible be?
I have a friend who was a tunnel rat in Viet Nam. The powers that be declared that tunnel rats were declared insane after the war.
My friend has some strange hobbies but I have NEVER seen insane behavior from him. He is a sweet guy with a bright attitude.
Give me Jews any day! Moslems have all but taken Britain. Its horrible. I actually shed tears today at the state of Britanistan. I am 70 years old and had a hard life but the constant sight of Hamas flags in London and elsewhere plus the fact a private study established that there are now 23,000,000 of Mohammed’s finest hidden in the major cities like London- my own city of birth is acutely heartbreaking. The politicians responsible are indeed snakes. This allied with the ongoing “Sudden Deaths” from the Gates Medical procedure that has killed thousands is the worst crime in history, yet nonbody wants to know- Excess deaths up 40%. My beloved daughter and father died from these acts of mass slaughter. Andrew Bridgen tried to debate but was blackballed. What do you do with such heinous and cruel apathy. I love my country but not what ist has become. As an Old Roman Catholic-pre Vatican II, I despair of the future! What is wrong with people? I know of many of my friends that have lost relatives from the Gate’s concoction, yet nobody wants to discuss or do anything to stop this ongoing human tragedy. I am so angry I canot describe in words.
When anger finally turns into action, you are well on your way to Reconquista. When fighting the 3rd world, take the bloody gloves off, put on the mailed fist and begin, until none, are left.
Really liked your term “soppy”. The only “non-soppy” politician in recent times in Israel was Meir Kahane. And look how it ended for him. The soppy crowd crowded upon him in a very “non-soppy” way and crushed him. The world only allows the savages to recruit non-soppys for their top positions. It’s only the Western refined, progressive, cultured and multicultural governments the ones where only soppys (0bama, anyone?) can conform the ruling class, and hence the consequences: The major problems facing their governments are climate change, carbon footprint, meritocracy , redefining men/women/non-binary/transgender freaks and organic, gluten-free vegan diets.
Remember that video of Barry Soetoro in the gym “working out”? Pathetic! And just look at the current PM in the UK. Hardly an imposing physical specimen – if he tried a barbell squat with a decent amount of weight on the bar, his legs would snap like two pencils.
I just hope that Conor McGregor challenges the Irish guy to a cage match – forget all that voting malarkey, let’s go old school! Winner gets the top job. I’d pay for that PPV.
I’m looking at the Irish and the fact the commie politicians and that alphabet 3rd worlder as PM are starting to panic because the public is starting to make waves where they cannot put that genie back in the bottle, even the IRA are now making signs of stirring. Give an Irishman a bottle of swampwater whiskey and they will fight anyone. Let the whiskey flow!