A triptych of Rivieria reptile dreamings fit to waste a Saturday...

 

It wasn't the venerable Meade who put together yesterday's Weekly Beast, it was News Corp refugee Tory Shepherd and Rafqa Touma, but they did score one tidy moment in  World media lambasts Trump’s Gaza proposal, but News Corp praises idea as ‘worth a try’, Plan called ‘mad’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, and a possible crime against humanity in most outlets – but The Australian says it reflects Trump’s ‘inherently benign’ worldview. Plus: Mr Murdoch goes to Washington

It was the catch-up on the dog botherer:

Media Watch is back for 2025, as are the Media Watch watchers, whom Guardian Australia occasionally, in turn, watches.
“Not much has changed at the ABC’s Media Watch,” read the headline on columnist Chris Kenny’s piece about the show’s debut with new host Linton Besser.
The show will keep targeting News Corp, Kenny lamented, while conceding News gave Besser an easy target. It’s all so “predictable”, Kenny said.

Heaven forbid predictability.
Here’s a sample of headlines from Kenny’s work last year:
“Chris Kenny slams ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry.”
“Chris Kenny hits out at ABC Media Watch host.”
“Chris Kenny slams Media Watch host.”
“Chris Kenny hits out at ABC … and in particular Media Watch host Paul Barry.”

The dog botherer was back at it yesterday too:

Lattouf debacle reveals all that’s wrong with the ABC,You’d have to toss a coin to decide which has been the most crass and revelatory episode of the week: Bianca Censori at the Grammys or this shabby affair in Federal Court.

What's funny about this is that to have a go at the "shabby affair", "the Lattouf debacle", you'd be better off being a leftie or deeply conservative like the pond to think it outrageous at the way that the ABC behaved under the influence of the Zionist lobby in relation to ethnic cleansing/genocide. 

It's particularly rich for the dog botherer, deep in the camp of the Zionist lobby, to worry about racial definitions of Arabs. Score 1 for epic irony continuing, score 0 for the ABC, score 0 for the dog botherer...

Thank the long absent lord, that's enough time with the dog botherer, but speaking of that Weekly Beast topic in the header, the reptiles this day diligently ignored the epic irony of Comrade Musk destroying USAID, which has invested millions in sending Catholic and evangelical missionaries out into the world to save the world and promote Xian values.

Instead the bromancer was out and about promoting the barking mad Canteloupe Caligula's* (*licensed) vision of rebuilding Rome after the burning and the bombing, in Donald Trump’s clever Gaza play may even help Middle East peace, The US President’s radical ‘Riviera’ idea may be just what’s needed to break the impasse.

The reptiles promised a truly exhausting and debilitating ten minute read, but what could the pond do? The main page was full of the usual ...

Ah, the miners at the top, and down at the very bottom - for those caring enough to click to enlarge to enlarge - there was the deeply blonde Dame Slap  out and about doing her usual black-bashing. Enough already, say no more ...

On the upside "Ned" was missing, and the pond didn't go looking for him; on the downside, the bromancer was top of the extreme far right world ma...

So attention just had to be paid ...

Sure there was also Jenny "the rat in the rank" George doing her usual renewables rant, but the pond has heard it so many times, she could wait in the wings.

Yes the Angelic one was on hand to rabbit on in her fundamentalist Catholic way about the suffering of tradwives ...

But the pond knew that it was best to ignore such women. Stick 'em in the corner with an apron doing some baking and tending the oven or maybe doing the tradwife ironing in a tradwife way (no scribbling for newspapers allowed woman!).

No escape, no way out, the pond what had to be done ...and went straight to the bromancer's opening snap ...

Could it be that Donald Trump has achieved something constructive in his press conference with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Much had to be abandoned ... like noting that deeply weird gift ...

... or the bizarre array on the mantelpiece, which some speculated contained the ashes of dead presidents ... or perhaps they just hired the set designer for Ben Hur...

Gone was any mention of the many departments under siege or well underway to being dismantled ... that would have to be left to others...

No mention of the ketamine-fuelled crazy and his rabid racist young 'uns, intent on burglary ...

Instead it was the full Gaza dreaming ...

Donald Trump has done it again: turned the world upside down in a single press conference, floating the idea that the United States could take “ownership” of the flattened, bombed-out and forever tragic Gaza Strip, while its population relocates to beautiful housing somewhere else, and the US supervises the transformation of Gaza into a combination of Florida and Hawaii, high-rise, hi-tech, beautiful beaches.
So that’s all crazy, right?
’Cos we all know that’s not going to happen.
But take even a step and a half back and it may well be that Trump has actually achieved something constructive in this press conference. In his first term, Trump edged the Middle East towards peace more effectively than any president in decades, certainly more than the nearly senescent Joe Biden, or the endlessly moralising but strategically feckless ­Barack Obama.
To reach that conclusion doesn’t require for a second joining up to the legions who think Trump never makes a mistake, that everything he does is four-dimensional chess while the rest of us are playing noughts and crosses.
But nor is Trump remotely an idiot. You don’t win the US presidency twice if you’re an idiot. Trump does some things brilliantly, some things unbelievably badly. The germ of wisdom is to be neither pro-Trump nor anti-Trump, but to try to evaluate his actions and outcomes as they actually work out in the real world.

Um, point of order muh Lud, the emeritus chairman on one notorious and memorable occasion called the tangerine tyrant a "fucking idiot", which isn't that remote ... but do go on ...

In his first term, Trump was stunningly successful in the Middle East, producing, in the Abraham Accords, four normalisation and peace agreements between Israel and its neighbours, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Don’t think these agreements didn’t involve the most complex American diplomacy. They would have earned any other president a Nobel peace prize. The most important was the agreement with the UAE. Reportedly, part of the UAE’s motivation was that Trump was considering approving Israel formally annexing the West Bank, or a big chunk of it. The Emiratis reportedly got from Trump a promise he wouldn’t do this. That allowed them to sell the deal domestically as protecting the long-term interests of the Palestinians.
Did Trump really plan to green-light annexation? Did the UAE really bargain him out of it? Did Trump or the UAE believe this? Who knows? But Trump introduced a new factor into the equation, a new bargaining chip, and then cashed it in for an extremely good outcome. Maybe some other president could have got it, but only Trump did get it. Biden got nothing in his four-year presidency.

Then came a snap to help out the "who knows" man ... Donald Trump was empowering, but also subtly limiting, Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting at the White House this week. Picture: Alex Brandon/AP

As for the rest of the miserable sods stuck in an imploding government, save it for the 'toons ...

The bromancer was steadfastly oblivious ...

Back to Gaza and Trump’s historic press conference. Trump spoke with genuine compassion for the people of Gaza: “The Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly who’ve been really unlucky. It’s been very unlucky. It’s been an ­unlucky place for a long time.”
Trump offered Gazans an alternative vision. Its people could go and live for a time in subsidised housing somewhere else while Gaza itself was transformed into a beachside development of coastal resorts, condominiums and the rest.
It’s all wildly unrealistic, of course, and will never happen. But let’s stick with Trump for a minute. He also offered American resources to clean the territory up, getting rid of some 30,000 unexploded bits of ordnance. He said America could “own it”. We have no idea what he meant by this; presumably own the condominiums rather than the territory, although at the same time he rather confusingly said the construction work would be financed by neighbouring nations.
He didn’t suggest sending US troops, but he didn’t rule it out. Naturally, the media performed its normal task of shrieking hysterically when the most preposterous policy options are not comprehensively ruled out.

So it's wildly unrealistic and will never happen, but somehow it's five dimensional chess?

Point of order muh Lud. As usual the Canteloupe Confuser had cast sand in the eyes of observers:

On sending US troops to Gaza
Trump on Tuesday: “We will do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that.”
Rubio on Wednesday: “It was not meant as a hostile move. It was meant as, I think, a very generous move, the offer to rebuild and to be in charge of the rebuilding.”
Leavitt on Wednesday: “The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza.”
Trump on Thursday: “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.”
“No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed!”
Leavitt on Fox News Channel on Thursday: “The president has made it clear that he will not be sending boots on the ground in Gaza. He has not committed to that. He also has made it clear that American taxpayers will not be funding this effort.” (AP, In their own words: What Trump said about Gaza and how top administration officials contradicted him)

Clear as chaotic and confusing mud, requiring a strenuous walk back. Now carry on walking back with the bromancer ...

Trump never suggested forced relocation of the Palestinian population. But naturally many assumed the worst. Learned articles proliferated about the difficulties American troops would face in Gaza.

But he said ... oh never mind, if the pond keeps quoting actual words, like booting out the Palestinians and turning it over to the world's peoples, and we could be here for ever. 

Do keep walking backwards to Xmas ...

Next day, the White House was clearing everything up. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, briefed explicitly that the US wouldn’t put any troops on the ground, wouldn’t pay for the reconstruction of Gaza, and if any Palestinian refugees were temporarily housed somewhere else it would be in regional nations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth made similar, definitive clarifications.
OK, so let’s all indulge in a round of calling Trump names.
Feel better?

Point of order muh Lud. Is a fucking idiot expecting us to feel better about a fucking idiot distracting a fucking idiot while Uncle Leon wrecks the United States, retribution and havoc is everywhere, and all we get is a fucking idiot peddling a bunch of middle eastern unicorns? 

What about what else is going down? Is that strictly for the 'toons?

Never mind, on with the unicorns...

Time to drag a Zionist into the picture to keep the picture askew and deeply unbalanced and deeply mired in stupidity? Sure thing ...

Now let’s examine what Trump might actually have achieved in the press conference.

Dave Sharma, Australia’s former ambassador to Israel, knows the dynamics of Middle East politics as well as any Australian. He tells Inquirer he believes the Israel-Hamas ceasefire is now more likely to proceed than it was before the press conference.
Trump offered Gazans, and their ostensible leaders, a different future. Says Sharma: “In his own way, the President was saying: it doesn’t have to be like this.”
Trump was also calling on Arab national leaders – Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, the Gulf Arabs generally – to do more for the Palestinians, and with the ­Palestinians. He assuredly wasn’t calling on them to run a campaign demonising Israel or asking Israel to tolerate regular terrorist atrocities like those on October 7, 2023.
Trump was asking them to do something about the development of Gaza, and implicitly, because it can’t be achieved otherwise, something to tame Hamas politically. And reminding them of potential outcomes they mightn’t like.
Sharma again: “I think that’s what Trump is trying to do. He’s trying to scare them all (Arab leaders) with the possible alter­native, and get them to take some responsibility.”
Maybe Trump just riffed without discipline, maybe it was all planned, maybe it was a bit of both, with Trump’s instinct for power leading him to produce ­certain effects. Maybe the Arabs can’t achieve anything even if they try. Let’s see.
Trump has standing with most of the Arab world because of his dedicated approach to containing Iran. Most Arab leaders understand Iran is an infinitely bigger threat to them than Israel could ever be. Biden distanced Washington from the Gulf Arabs and made endless, worthless, indeed counter-productive overtures to Iran’s rulers. These overtures did nothing but chew up US credibility and empower Iran’s government.

Point of order muh Lud. Arab leaders universally denounced the notion as, in not so many words, a form of fucking idiocy. 

Never mind, carry on ...

Trump was doing many things simultaneously in that press conference. He was both empowering, but also subtly limiting, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has always approached the Middle East by ­ignoring, even reversing, conventional wisdom. That’s smart, because conventional wisdom on the Middle East has been a dismal, wretched failure for decades.

Cue an AV distraction:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed US President Donald Trump’s bold proposal to “take over” Gaza labelling it a "remarkable idea" that should be "examined". It comes as Israel has ordered its army to draw up plans to facilitate, what it calls the voluntary departure of residents from Gaza. Trump administration however appears to be dialling back aspects of the Gaza proposal, saying the relocation of Palestinians will be "temporary".

But what about the rest?

Never mind ...

The former secretary of state John Kerry, and virtually all Democrats, certainly including Biden’s administration, held as a point of infallible, fixed doctrine the idea that no wider Middle East peace could be achieved until the Palestinian problem was resolved. Trump thinks that’s absurd. He demonstrated its absurdity with the Abraham Accords.
Trump reverses another conventional attitude. US presidents, even those supportive of Israel as, in fairness, Biden generally was, think that to get what they regard as progress they need to put public pressure on any Israeli PM. That’s particularly so with Netanyahu because Democrats detest him politically.
Trump operates on the reverse principle. He thinks the tightest partnership with his Israeli counterpart produces the best results. He provides Netanyahu with absolute reassurance. As a result, Trump has great credibility and influence within Israel, infinitely more than Biden ever had.
Just canvassing the idea that Palestinians might move out of Gaza means Trump has won the love of the Israeli Right, even though this outcome is vanishingly unlikely.
It’s not only the Israeli Right that appreciates Trump. There’s a worldwide crisis of anti-Semitism, and a wild international campaign of demonising Israel. In this climate, as Netanyahu says, Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu is. Netanyahu has to take this into account all the time.
If Trump wants the Israelis to do something, that’s vastly more consequential than Biden wanting it. Thus, although it’s quite complicated, there’s a ceasefire under Trump; there was no ceasefire under Biden.

Time then for the usual gigantic Billy Goat Butt from the greatest goat of all time? Sure thing ...

None of this guarantees, or even suggests, success for US policy in the months ahead. Success in the Middle East is almost an oxymoron. But it adds up to a better chance of success than at any recent time, except during Trump’s first term.

What on this godforsaken earth does "except during Trump's first term" mean? He didn't fix it then, he's not fixing it now ...

Then it was on to a classic, extended bromancer rant, full of hate, bilious bile, fear and loathing, misrepresentations, distortions, errors and emissions, and the pond decided to take it in a gulp ...

Of course, there’s a diplomatic, and probably strategic, cost in Trump’s methods. Unpredictability, ambit claims, flexibility in positions, quite radical changes quite quickly can all be powerful tools in a negotiation. They can also be deeply disturbing, even destabilising, to alliances. Though surely the world is getting to know Trump better now.
A lot of other huge stuff also went down at that press conference. Trump announced maximum sanctions against Iran. He resumed delivery of maximum effect weapons to Israel. He said in simple words no one could misunderstand: he will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon. If it looks like Iran is about to get a nuke, Trump may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, though he didn’t say that directly, or he may support an Israeli strike. This is much more plausible now, since Israel demolished so much of Iran’s air defences.
Trump also withdrew the US from the UN Human Rights Council, and said he wouldn’t give any more money to the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA delivers aid to Gaza, which is vital work, but is thoroughly politicised and ideologically destructive, with numbers of its employees co-operating hand in glove with Hamas. It also perpetuates the grotesque and ridiculous fiction that every descendant or part descendant of any Arab who ever lived even for a moment in Israel is now, today, a refugee. Thus, if an Arab left Israel in 1947, nearly a century ago, moved to Jordan and became a citizen there, married a Jordanian woman and had a child, and that child married a Jordanian spouse and had another child, and that child married another Jordanian and they had a child, all of them would be Jordanian citizens of course. The latest child might grow up to be a millionaire businessman or a cabinet minister in the Jordanian government, but the UN, fixated on its hatred of Israel, and UNRWA, devoted to the savage idea that Israel must not exist, bizarrely classifies that Jordanian cabinet minister as a refugee, to whom Israel is meant to owe some kind of reparation.
No such consideration, it goes without saying, was ever afforded to the hundreds of thousands of Jews chased out of Arab and North African nations in the late 1940s, still less to their distant descendants generations later.
The UN Human Rights Council is an infamous body, often dominated by gross dictatorships, which typically pays more hostile attention to Israel than towards all the other human rights issues of the whole world – China, North Korea, Russia etc.
Western conventional wisdom, and it’s certainly the conventional wisdom of our own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is that it’s best for Western democracies to participate in and fund these organisations and attempt to moderate them. Trump’s much more realistic view is that this is absolute baloney. Under his administration, organisations which hate Israel, and which typically hate America, and which objectively serve the strategic interests of Washington’s enemies, are not going to get the credibility that comes from US membership. And they’re not going to get a dollar of American money.

This leads to a broader, profound, conclusion about Trump. He’s revealing the exhaustion of the international liberal rules-based order. He has not himself destroyed the liberal international rules-based order. He has instead revealed how hollow and ineffective it is.
Its institutions have been corrupted or simply lost their way. Its assumptions have been twisted by the non-democratic majorities in so many UN bodies. Its Western avatars are themselves often motivated by an exaggerated critique, if not hatred, of Western societies, especially the US.
A country like Australia will naturally and sensibly be much more cautious than the US, but we should mostly follow its lead on this. The rules-based order was only ever a polite way of saying: American power. After World War II, America so dominated the world, economically, politically, strategically, culturally, that it could set up a raft of institutions genuinely based on liberal values, and they, backed by the US, could help run the international system.
The US, though still by far the most powerful nation, can no longer do all this on its own. It makes more sense for it, and every sensible nation, to pursue their national interests within their ethical frameworks.
The rules-based system didn’t deter Russia from invading Ukraine, nor China from seizing and militarising the islands of the South China Sea, nor all those nations which pretend to abide by trade rules but actually construct unbreachable non-tariff barriers to their markets.
Trump simply won’t go along with any pious cant from the rules-based order era. Sharma argues that the arrival of the second Trump administration brings to a definitive end the post-Cold War period and the reign of international liberalism through institutions. He thinks nations like Australia should adapt: “We should take a much more a la carte approach. We should not ­belong to institutions that don’t reflect our values or serve our interests.”
Sharma thinks a smart nation will invest in alliances, all kinds of special arrangements and also those continuing international institutions that actually still work.
Even though Trump brings new energy and dynamism to the table, the immediate future in Gaza still looks very bleak. The obscene parading and harassment of Israeli hostages, as they’re being released by masked Hamas gunmen, illustrate that if the Israelis leave the territory altogether, Hamas will probably re-establish dominance. The Israelis won’t ­accept that.
The two-state solution remains inconceivable today, yet necessary in the long run. 

Hang on, hang on, the pond copped a lot in that rant, a huge amount, a ridiculous amount.

But the pond just had to pause, just had to repeat that line, run it around on the tongue, savour the sheer absurdity on the back palate...

The two-state solution remains inconceivable today, yet necessary in the long run. 

So we will get the two state solution, Israel and the USA, or does he mean that the real owners and residents of Gaza will head off to Paradise in another country and then will return to live on their new Riviera ...

The Albanese government has destroyed Australia’s bipartisan position, which was to support a two-state solution negotiated by the parties. Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong take the radical and frankly ridiculous view that two states can be imposed by the international community, regardless of negotiations. Technically speaking, that’s nuts. A two-state solution will need a long period of normalisation first, which must include the Palestinians moving on from terrorist death cults like Hamas.
In the meantime, the best that can be hoped for is to manage things with as little death and violence as possible. The near-term future is incredibly messy, full of uncertainty. Trump’s interventions, for all their apparent disorder, attempt to nudge things in a better direction.

Without resorting to technical speak, the bromancer is barking mad, and nuts to boot, and always attempts to nudge the hive mind into deeper loonacy ...

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

But the pond is now stuck in this groove, and so to the Ughmann, offering his usual seminarian perspective. 

There is a singular relief, it took him away from climate science ... and as a bonus, he seemed to be at odds with the bromancer ...

Trust the pond, it's only a four minute read, and if anyone fails to notice how the Ughmann conforms to the second modified law of Henry, “Deluge the sphere with Xian ordure”, don't blame the pond.

Trump fails to learn from history, and the Bible, The children of Israel know better than any other that the forced expulsion of a people will not end their desire to go home. Why would we imagine the Palestinians feel any less of a spiritual bond with their ancestral home?

Point of order muh Lud, the children of Israel clearly don't know, because many are very keen on ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion, and have been vigorously pursuing it in the West Bank and Gaza, since the original Nakba, but do go on ...start with the usual opening snap of the Canteloupe Clown ...

Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th president of the United States as Melania Trump holds his Bibles. Picture: Picture: AFP

Hmm, best keep the 'toons under control, this is a sermon from the mount, and we must hearken to the preacher ...

Preacher was a talkin’, there’s a sermon he gave
He said "Every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it’s you who must keep it satisfied."
It ain’t easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat
She gave her heart to the man
In the long black coat

Preach on preacher, steal the pond's heart ...

When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th US President, he did not put his left hand on either of the two Bibles held by his wife.
Despite the usual torrent of conspiracies, this was probably just an oversight, as being anointed leader of a superpower must be an otherworldly experience.
But if the President has ever read either Lincoln’s Bible or the one gifted by his mother, then there was no evidence of it when he said we should “learn from history” as he floated taking control of Gaza.
Because if you take one geostrategic lesson from the Bible it is that foreign powers should hit pause before declaring a desire to occupy any part of the Holy Land.
The man who promised to get the US out of “forever wars” has now more deeply entangled America in one of history’s longest running conflicts – 3000 years of shifting battles over the Holy Land.
The Old Testament records more than 40 battles spanning conquest, defence, rebellion and exile. There was also civil war when the land was divided between Israel and Judah after the death of King Solomon.
The external powers fought by the Jews include the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians and Greeks.
The New Testament is set against the backdrop of Roman occupation. Some of Jesus’s followers believed he was a revolutionary warrior king who would drive out the occupier and restore Jewish independence. But he demurred, saying his kingdom was not of this world. Even so, he was crucified under Roman law on the charge of treason.
Luke 23:2 says: “We found this man inciting our people to revolt, opposing payment of the tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king.”

Time for an interrupting snap from the sepulchre ...

An Israeli archaeologist in 2007 walks along a drainage channel discovered next to Jerusalem's Old City. It was believed ancient Jews might have fled to the underground channel to escape the Romans. Picture: AP

Yep, we're deep in Henry land, or at least the biblical portion thereof...

In Trump’s defence, it’s likely both his Bibles were missing the books of Maccabees, which tell of the Jewish revolt against Greek occupation. Those two books are included in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but omitted from Protestant and Jewish canons because they were written later and in Greek.
Maccabees holds a grim warning for would-be foreign occupiers. Its opening would have appealed to Trump because it begins with the conquest of the region by a leader he would judge as an equal – Alexander the Great. The first book of Maccabees says Alexander “ … advanced to the end of the earth, plundering nation after nation; the earth grew silent before him and his ambitious heart swelled with pride”.
The Greeks ruled Israel for about 170 years, from 332 BCE. Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes persecuted the Jews, tried to Hellenise them and desecrated their temple. It ended in tears after an insurgency, led by Judas Maccabaeus, retook Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple. This victory is celebrated every year in the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah.
And what of Antiochus? Maccabees 6:8 tells us that “When the king heard this news he was amazed and profoundly shaken; he threw himself on his bed and fell into a lethargy from acute disappointment, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned”.
Things rarely go to plan in the Middle East.

Cue a reason why the mango Mussolini's dreaming is prophetic, Displaced Gazans walk towards Gaza City on January 27. Picture: AFP

The pond needed the break. There's nothing like the suffering huddled masses as a balm when the preacher gets into full Henry stride ...

It’s intriguing that those who speak of Jewish “colonialism” start the occupation clock very late. In the biblical tradition the Jews took what is now Israel from the Canaanites in about 1400 BCE; that’s what Joshua was doing when he fought that battle of Jericho.
The archaeological records support some of the biblical accounts and differ with others. But there is no doubt about the Jewish connection with the land from antiquity. The Jews were in Jerusalem 1638 years before the Muslims took the city from the Christian Byzantine empire. They have never ceded their land rights, no matter how many overlords have come and gone.
Islam’s Dome of the Rock was built on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the Second Temple stood. The destruction of that temple by the Romans in 70 CE is a defining moment in history. The Jewish revolts against Rome ended in defeat in 135 CE when Hadrian expelled Jews from Jerusalem, renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina, and sought to erase Jewish identity from the region. While many Jews were dispersed across the Roman empire, significant communities remained in the Galilee and beyond.
The diaspora never forgot their homeland, or lost their desire to return. That longing was embedded in their liturgy in the phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem”.
And here is the greatest lesson from history. You can kill thousands of your enemies, reduce their buildings to rubble and banish them from their homeland, and still not defeat them.

Say what? What would the bromancer make of all this? Why there's even a heretic prayer session in view,  Muslim Palestinian men take part in Friday Noon prayers in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud. Picture: AFP

Oh they'll have to balance that one ... meanwhile, on with the lesson ...

The Palestinian Muslims, and remnant Christians in Gaza and the West Bank, also have a long history with the land. And you can be a strong friend of Israel, as I am, and still counsel that the Palestinians have a moral claim to their own state and self-determination.
Anyone who thinks the forced expulsion of a people will end their desire to go home, or extinguish their will to fight, understands neither history, the lessons of the Bible or the human heart.
The children of Israel should know this better than any other people on Earth. Expelled by the Babylonians for 70 years, they returned to their homeland. Banished by the Romans for 1800 years, they returned.
Why would we imagine the Palestinians feel any less of a spiritual bond with their ancestral home?
The Israelis and Palestinians are fated to live together on the most contested patch of dirt in human history. It is sacred to the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They may not read the same Bible, but all believe Abraham is the father of their faith and they all worship the same God. But too often in their prayers, as Abraham Lincoln might have observed, “each invokes His aid against the other”.

Phew, here comes that balancing snap, Jews pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Picture: AP

And so to a final prophetic warning from the preacher ...

There can be no peace in Israel until the Palestinians have a homeland, no matter how remote that possibility now seems or how galling it might be to some.
As is always the case with Trump, everyone is now trying to discern the signal from the noise in his audacious bid to be a peacemaker. Who could possibly say if there was some grand plan or bargain afoot, or if it was just another headline without a story. The latter seems the most likely but words have consequences, particularly when uttered by the President of the United States. The profound danger is that his words will echo in the mouths of other ambitious leaders, in Moscow and Beijing, who have their own land claims. And what is America’s argument against them now?
As Proverbs 18 warns: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”

Splendid stuff, but it'll do bugger all for the poor buggers suffering whiplash ...

Just to complete the triptych, the pond offers this, which turned up yesterday in the lizard Oz.

The pond offers no, comment except to note that the reptiles are full of blithering idiots, blathering fucking idiocy (if you care to channel the Chairman Emeritus)...

This Gerard Baker outing came recycled from The Times, and was, the reptiles promised, a four minute read ...

Can we make sense of Trump? I think we can, Sometimes crazy ideas are just crazy. But successful leaders bend the world in their direction not by making incremental moves along the curve of conventional wisdom but by jumping off the curve completely.

The reptiles offered as an opening one of those hideous uncredited collages which have become a feature of the rag:

Trump's own political success is the ultimate testament to the possibility of the absurdly implausible becoming real: from joke candidate when he came down that escalator in 2015 to probably the most consequential political figure of the 21st century in less than ten years. Why wouldn’t you embrace the crazy?

The pond would have preferred a more evocative portrait, something that brought out the cantaloupe colouring ...

But to be fair, the crazy collage did set the tone for a crazy embracing the crazy, while studiously trying to play down all that the ketamine-crazy tribe were doing ...

Trump's own political success is the ultimate testament to the possibility of the absurdly implausible becoming real: from joke candidate when he came down that escalator in 2015 to probably the most consequential political figure of the 21st century in less than ten years. Why wouldn’t you embrace the crazy?
Even the most worldly, by now inured to the derangements of Donald Trump’s expansive imagination, probably didn’t have these on their list of expectations for the first two weeks of Trump II: pressure on Canada to become the 51st US state; threats of war with Denmark over the annexation of Greenland; America taking ownership of the Gaza Strip and shipping two million Palestinians to Arab countries.
The candidate who promised an end to America’s “forever wars”, railed against wasteful and damaging foreign entanglements and boasted of a first-term record of no major US deployments to far-flung places, has started his second term sounding like a new Caesar, eyeing up vast swathes of territory ripe for incorporation into an expanding imperium. From neo-isolationist to neo-conservative in the blink of an eye. Can we make it make sense? I think we can.

Before making sense, as only a blithering idiot can, an AV distraction, if you please Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians out of Gaza and place the territory under long-term Israeli control has sparked international condemnation.

Put it another way ...

In the murmur of the breezes and the Mediterranean on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.

Time for the vision splendid...

The overarching explanation for all Trumpian declarations applies here, of course. We should be familiar with the perils of taking the man literally. It is not just that Trump speaks habitually in hyperbole and falsehood, but that he is in a constant game of escalation with his audience. To keep one step ahead of interlocutors on the other side of the table who think they’ve got used to the hyperbole, he needs to keep upping it. The only way to stay ahead of the expectations curve is to make ever more outlandish claims. The most inviting thing you can ever say to Trump is: surely you can’t do that?
But there are, I think, three particular things behind the president’s latest adventures in foreign policy wonderland. On one level, this is “Trump: The Real Estate Mogul Goes Global”. Constantly on the lookout for the most spectacular property development projects in the history of the planet, he is applying a lifelong knack for creating gleaming monuments to himself from the most improbable of building sites.
So Gaza, the bomb and corpse-strewn rubble field on the Mediterranean will become “The Riviera of the Middle East”. In announcing the idea on Tuesday, Trump described the project as the US taking “a long-term ownership position” in the territory – the language of a property speculator huddling with his lawyers and bankers. The icy wastes of Greenland are “an incredible place”, ideal for the construction of US military facilities and the development of mineral and fuel potential. As he threatened tariffs on his northern neighbour this week, he described the border between Canada and the US, fought over in war, settled by treaty and recognised in international law for two centuries, as an “artificial line”, the way a prospective property buyer might haggle with the local authority about the scope for access.

Oh yes ...

Baker did note a little of the "wilder stuff" ...

A second factor is the “Everything Everywhere All At Once” style of governing. Trump’s shock and awe approach, in which he bombards us night and day with presidential initiatives, was well described by his former aide Steve Bannon in 2017: if you keep doing a million new things at the same time, your opponents and the media (the same thing, in their view) won’t have the capacity to scrutinise and oppose them effectively.
This applies especially when you propose some of the wilder stuff: the attention goes there and your other, radical but maybe not-completely-crazy ideas have space to get done.
So just as we were digesting the plan to shut down the US Agency for International Development, we’re going to talk about taking control of Gaza. While senators were still dealing with the prospect of voting to put vaccine-opponent Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of the nation’s health, here comes Putin and Assad-friendly Tulsi Gabbard to run national intelligence. No one can keep up, so he gets a surprising amount done.

But apparently he's a man who loves him some Tulsi as a distraction, as a way of getting a surprising amount done, aka wrecking the country and the planet, not least handing Ukraine on a platter to Vlad the impaler, unless you believe he's playing sixth dimension chess with Tulsi ... Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence. Picture: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/AFP

That was the last of the visual distractions, and it was time to take the crazy out of the crazy by fully embracing the crazy ...

But the most important part of all this is sheer Trumpian self-confidence that he can make things most people deem mad actually succeed in changing the world. For him, moving the Overton Window is a daily occupation. In his mind, it’s driven not by the triumph of hope but by the reality of experience.
His own political success is the ultimate testament to the possibility of the absurdly implausible becoming real: from joke candidate when he came down that escalator in 2015 to probably the most consequential political figure of the 21st century in less than ten years. Why wouldn’t you embrace the crazy?
In the foreign policy field, especially in the Middle East, this is reflected in what he achieved in his first term – against the odds and in the face of ridicule and denunciation. His recognition in 2017 of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was almost universally greeted with predictions of disaster, but it turned out to be a highly symbolic move that helped create conditions for the Jewish state’s normalisation of relations with Arab governments.
In 2020 he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds force, a move that was again greeted by Middle East “experts” as an invitation to catastrophe. In fact it sparked the long, welcome degradation of Iran’s power in the region.
Not that Trump is serious about occupying Gaza. But he surely believes that such wild declarations are the only way to produce radical change where it is needed. Calling for them to take in two million Palestinians forces Arab states to confront their own hypocrisy about Gaza while burying their lingering pleas for a “two state solution”. Canada won’t be the 51st state either but by embracing the idea, Trump thinks he can get the country to concede more economic power to the US.
Sometimes crazy ideas are just crazy. But successful leaders bend the world in their direction not by making incremental moves along the curve of conventional wisdom but by jumping off the curve completely, taking history – often reluctantly – with them.
The Times

By golly, if only Adolf had this Times' man scribbling for him in the 1930s ...

Never mind, it's done and dusted at last. A full blown three picture outing, and yet there are likely some will moan they haven't been entertained.

A measly 1s.6d. for three flicks offering a vision splendid. What more could you want?

Oh no, suddenly, they'll be whining and moaning and complaining, and suggesting a session with the tradwife Angelic One or the prattling Polonius on a meditative Sunday won't look so bad ...might even feel like a read of the pond on a Riviera beach ...

Damn it, enjoy the crazy, enjoy the wrecking ball, and for the nonce, let the immortal Rowe mop your fevered brow ...