Comments on: Gaza comes to Denmark

By: Francis Sedgemore

Francis Sedgemore — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:22:06 +0000

Odense is an old city, and it still has nice bits. But the housing projects and city centre new build is representative of the naïve modernism of an age now thankfully past. Fucking shite, in other words. Carbuncle, blah.

By: Gadjo Dilo

Gadjo Dilo — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:17:50 +0000

I rather liked Odense and also find it hard to call anything in Denmark a “sink estate” compared to other places in world, but it seems that people will always find a reason to be violent if it suits them. The shooters have been arrested, that (and maybe arrests for inciting racial hatred) should be enough for now; anything more heavy-handed could lead to… oh, I think we know.

By: Francis Sedgemore

Francis Sedgemore — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:49:19 +0000

Ah, so that’s where all my visitors are coming from this evening. Nothing in the queue. However, I’m getting around 500 comments trapped each day in the SPAM filter. That’s too many to search through for false positives, but a cursory glance reveals that they are all SPAM.

By: Alec Macpherson

Alec Macpherson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:40:34 +0000

And I’ve reciprocated with the link. Any messages in the queue?

By: Francis Sedgemore

Francis Sedgemore — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:18:32 +0000

I see that HP Sauce continues to blaze a trail for civilised online debate.

By: Alec Macpherson

Alec Macpherson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:57:04 +0000

I’m going to take a break from Israel for the mo’, and catch up on personal correspondence, but I suspect the higher figure was due to Jews arriving from other parts of Europe in the 1930s and, even, the initial Occupation period.

By: Francis Sedgemore

Francis Sedgemore — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:28:56 +0000

That surprises me, Thomas. It must be some years ago that I saw any figures, but I was under the impression that there used to be a few tens of thousands of Jews in Denmark.

I’ve added a few words in square brackets to the text above.

By: thomask

thomask — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:19:27 +0000

According to the Danish-Israeli Association the number of Danish Jews was never higher than 8000.

By: Francis Sedgemore

Francis Sedgemore — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:12:21 +0000

Military planners need to make moral decisions on the fly, and sometimes they get it wrong. Israel more than not gets it right, in my view, but I will always question the proportionality of its response to attacks from Palestinian terrorists.

What happened today in Jabalya has yet to be determined, and I shall not comment on the incident save to highlight the well-conducted interview by Channel 4 of and IDF PR and a spokesman for the UN.

I think it was other Dano-Palestinians who cheered the shooters in Odense.

As for righteous nation, this is not guff, and has nothing to do with the so-called Biblical Covenant. Israel is a free country, and the most civilised in the region. Holding it to a high (or even higher) standard than others is certainly justified.

By: Alec Macpherson

Alec Macpherson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:01:19 +0000

Were they ‘ethnic’ Danish, or associates of the assailants? If the latter, it could be seen as part of the attack.

>> And as Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch says, “Even if you have a legitimate target you can’t just drop 10-tonne bombs on it.”. We demand a higher standard of Israel as it is a righteous nation.

I disagree with that. First of all, why not? [Dropping the bombs.] Secondly, if there were an unacceptable risk to civilian life, it should be opposed in *whichever* country the conflict is occurring. The guff about Israel being a “righteous nation” either says that Arab states (or Sri Lanka, which is smashing Tamil Tiger bases as we speak) are subject to lower standards of morality, or that Jews are the Chosen People which is irrelevant and Biblically inaccurate.