The ancient Greeks talked about hubris and nemesis. An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine defined those concepts as follows:
Hubris denotes over confidence, exaggerated pride. It can be associated with a lack of knowledge or interest in history, also with shaming or contempt of others.
Nemesis is the goddess of retribution and denotes the destruction, suffering or punishment that can follow in the wake of hubris.
The Greeks saw the two in a cause-and-effect relationship: anyone displaying hubris was inviting the goddess Nemesis to exact retribution upon him. The time-honored idiom "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad" describes, from a different perspective, the effects of hubris upon those doomed by it.
A perfect example of hubris in action, plus self-centered astonishment at the nemesis that has inevitably followed, may be found in the comments of a leader of Hamas during a recent television interview. This is mind-bogglingly stupid.
Hamas invaded Israel with up to 3,000 terrorists; embarked on a whirlwind of mass murder, deliberate rape of victims (female and male); took scores, if not hundreds, of hostages; and expected to get away with it??? Their complaints about Israel's reaction being unforeseeable, and the real criminal act as opposed to what they did, are unimaginably self-centered and blind to reality. What did they think Israel would do about such an atrocity? Roll over like a hurt child and cry into their blankies? Demand sympathy from the rest of the world while doing nothing? What, in Israel's track record since its independence in 1948, made them think that would be a likely response?
Apparently Hamas actually expected to be allowed to tear great chunks out of Israeli society and culture, leaving great bleeding wounds (literally as well as figuratively) in that nation, and yet escape retaliation. Hubris in action. They now face the utter destruction of the society they'd built in Gaza, and the ruin of their people. Nemesis following hubris. When Hamas complains about Israel "violating all international laws, treaties and norms", they apparently believe that it was quite all right for them to do so during their terrorist attacks, but that Israel was not allowed to respond in kind. Looks like nothing much has changed in human nature since the ancient Greeks . . .
There's another, more modern proverb that fits Hamas' situation. I'm not going to spell it out here, because it's rather profane, but I'm sure most of my readers know it by its acronym, F.A.F.O. I rather think Hamas figured it didn't apply to them. They know better now.
Peter
IMO, nothing the Israelis do to Hamas can be too violent or go too far. If I had been attacked that way, I wouldn't stop until they were all rotting in ditches, and their families as well. Up and down the family trees, at least two generations. Make joining Hamas a suicide for your entire family.
ReplyDelete"by what logic could anyone have expected that the US and the entire west would unite, without exception, in order to wage war against a movement?"
ReplyDeleteda heck?? I KNOW this dude is old enough to have seen 9/11 where that very thing happened!
You're right, Peter. And the headline: "It's not fair! They weren't supposed to hit back!" That reminds me so much of the reaction of antifa and the left to Kyle Rittenhouse. It seems to be the predominate mindset among an unfortunately too large set of crazy people who are eager for war because they don't seem to grasp that yes, the other side will be hitting back.
As posted on other blog remarks, Hamas is pure evil. Those who condone and/or support Hamas are part of the evil. Given the right circumstances, they will commit the same atrocities and feel righteous doing so.
ReplyDeleteWhile the tale of Hubris and Nemesis is more poetic FAFO does tend to be more concise. Either way sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
ReplyDeleteHere's another viewpoint for consideration:
ReplyDeletehttps://voxday.net/2024/02/23/he-is-now/
I'm not going to debate or argue with you on this; your site, your rules. But there are two sides to this argument. The same applies to your views on blacks.
Gab.com is the only SM site that offers a counterpoint to the narrative(Vox Day's Social Galactic site is just an echo chamber for VD's koolaid drinkers).
I agree with Vox, and the titular "him". And I'm also anti-anyone-who-supports-genocide, like more than a couple of this comment thread's members. It's repulsive. Anyone who wants little children slaughtered , or feels that slaughtering them is in any way justifiable, deserves a millstone. And anyone who thinks "extermination" or a "parking lot" is an acceptable solution is saying they want little ones mutilated, and slaughtered. I hope they repent, or enjoy their millstones.
DeleteYeesh, another Voxtitute.
DeleteSeveral articles conclude that there is strong support in the Palistinians for Hamas and their actions toward Israel. It shows that belief can trump reality. https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/middleeast/palestinians-back-hamas-survey-intl-cmd/index.html
ReplyDeletePalestinians support Hamas decision to go to war with Israel, survey suggests, with no political solution on horizon
Well said.
ReplyDeleteThe residents have been taught their highest duty is to kill Jews for decades, and failing to support Hamas got beatings or worse.
ReplyDeleteUntil Hamas and Hezbollah are extinct they will get brainwashed support from the masses.
Hamas expected Israel to do a short, pinpoint attack and then back off due to international pressure, just like attacks over the last 20 years or more.
ReplyDeleteRemember, one of the reasons Gaza existed independently was because Israel backed off due to international pressure.
What isn't surprising is Israel doing this. What is surprising is that it took this long for Israel to say 'F it' and go on full destruction mode.
Again, Hamas and Hezbollah have used the 'Attack Israel and then cry when smacked so international pressure comes out' tactic for decades.
I think that much of both Hamas' action and Israels' response can be laid at the feet of the Biden cabal.
DeleteHamas credited the Administrations' hate for the Israeli nationalists and the support for Arab terrorists as a basis for projecting a short or non response on the part of Israel.
** NOTE: Without proof **
I also believe that some of the Israeli Intelligence Community, that part which supported the Leftist / Supreme Court parts of their government against Netanyahu and the populists, interfered with warnings of the Hamas attack, and delayed their Armys' response, planning to blame the massacre on Netanyahu.
That failed because too many individual Israelis decided to fight and die in place to defend their land and their people.
John in Indy
The Jewish people have centuries of abuse, including outright genocide. Regardless of politics, many feel peace is only accomplished by the total destruction of their enemy; especially if they've attacked your citizens.
ReplyDeleteHamas made the mistake of thinking the money they squandered on arms will always be available, and their enemy will not fight to the end to protect their ability to survive. In the end, the leaders will be hunted until they've been killed. Israel has shown the entire world isn't safe from their effort to destroy their enemies. The Palestinians now have lost their only safe haven in the world.
Hamas delenda est.
ReplyDeleteEverything that happens in Gaza, up to and including an extinction-level event, is a bonfire the residents there all pulled down on their own heads.
On their heads be it, and let people talk about such justified retribution upon them in hushed tones down through the ages.
And when every other country in the middle east, and Iran as well, exterminates every single living Israeli as a consequence of Israel's extermination of the Palestinians, they will also deserve it. You are literally talking about a "final solution to the Palestinian problem" without even a hint of irony. It's beyond disgusting.
DeleteHas anyone approached Gavin Newsom about giving Catalina Island to Hamas as a homeland?
ReplyDelete.
I think that world also expected Israel to just take it too.
ReplyDeleteAfter what Hamas did I'd expect Israeli would turn it all into rubble and push it out flat. Think a parking lot.
ReplyDelete"Never again" had to have passed through the Israeli minds after that terror act.
That would take care of the Hamas danger from that location.
We've been observing that place since the beginning and if there is one unending truth it is simple. Palestinians do not appear to be capable of learning. I think this time the Israelis will probably tear the guts out of Gaza and wall it off.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading Exodus long ago when the Jews were learning counter-terrorism from one of Britain's old hands. "How do you protect a pipeline?" Well there was an answer older than time. It works. Some might even call it the first tool of civilization.
I don't think they'll permit UNWRA back in. The rot in the UN is so corrupt it cannot be mitigated, only avoided.
On an individual level, I have seen this behavior from an abuser (perhaps mixed in with a personality disorder). They gleefully engaged in behavior against their victim, but when that behavior was used against them, they were enraged. They could not understand it was the exact same behavior.
ReplyDeleteIt's really only beginning for these guys. They will be hunted for years, maybe decades.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous at 10:38PM and 10:45PM: You have a great deal of right on your side - but also a great deal of wrong. We're dealing with a dilemma that has little "black" or "white", but an awful lot of shades of gray. I wrote about it soon after the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel:
ReplyDeletehttps://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-moral-dilemma-exposed-yet-again-by.html
In that article, I expressed views I'd written about almost a decade before, following the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/11/paris-and-pain-of-being-human.html
I've seen terrorism at first hand, helped its victims, and helped to kill or capture its perpetrators. I'm not a stranger to this conundrum.
You'd be a lot more convincing if you condemned Hamas' terrorism in the same breath that you condemned Israel's retaliation. Morality is above and beyond both sides.
Sometimes, "pure", theoretical morality has to give way before the imperatives of the situation. I hate that - as a pastor and chaplain, I'd love to condemn all such breaches of the "pure" standard - but I can't change reality, and I won't even try. Nobody else will listen. If Newton's Third Law ("to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction") applies to morality, we're seeing it in operation in Gaza right now.
Thank you for your grace, Mr. Grant. Yes, I read your post back then, and even then many of the commenters made me wince, but it was early, and I was angrier and less capable of listening to God's whispering voice. Now, time has passed, and God has struck me with a 2x4. Wincing has turned into horror and dismay.
Delete.
To he honest, I figured Hamas' terrorism was sufficiently condemned (in my comment) by the statement "Anyone who wants little children slaughtered, or feels like slaughtering them is in any way justifiable, deserves a millstone."
Hamas killed little ones and innocents in their vile attack. Those responsible, and those who celebrate that slaughter, deserve and will get millstones and hell, unless they repent before Almighty God.
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But Hamas isn't the group being cheered on here. No one here is explicitly cheering on the family in Vox's link (who aren't Hamas any more than living in the suburbs of San Francisco makes one a democrat) "turning Israel into a parking lot" or performing an "extinction level event" on Israel. They *are* cheering on Israel's government for killing that little girl, and (eventually) millions more like her. They're literally pre-excusing any atrocities Israel might possibly commit, because "they *all* deserve it" even the little ones.
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It may not be realistic to object, but it's not dishonest or unfair to call evil evil, even if I can understand the motivation behind the evil. And indiscriminate murder of innocents and children (and encouraging such) is evil, even if the government of the innocents targeted *also* murdered innocents. Two evils do not make one good.
.
It doesn't help that I'm far from convinced that the establishment in Israel (and I have (messianic) Jew friends and acquaintances in Jerusalem who share this suspicion) didn't deliberately allow Hamas' attack to succeed in order to justify further consolidating their power and eliminating dissent and political opposition with an immediate and urgent threat.
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But that's a separate question from the morality of calling for an extermination campaign against the Palestinians that mirrors the Holocaust.
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Maybe I'm a naive fool, but seeing my fellow Americans so filled with passion about one nation turning millions of people, countless numbers of them little children, into piles of broken and mutilated bodies... Makes me weep. It's horrible, it's wicked, and it isn't okay. Lord have mercy.
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God bless you, sir.
If Hamas truly valued the citizens of Gaza, they would be arranging a surrender of their leadership. Amnesty for as many of the rank and file that were not directly involved in the attack as Isreal will permit. Instead they are using the population as human shields....leaving Israel no option but to try and root them out. If anyone can come up with a better way of dealing with terrorism speak up. I do not feel their is actually a humane solution. I will note that none of Gaza neighbors are willing to open their borders and take refugees...there is a lack of common humanity all around.
DeleteThat response is Industrial Strength Stupidity on parade.
ReplyDeleteBut it won't hold a candle to whaever the response will be from the survivors among the American Left if they're stupid enough to provoke an American Civil War, or more appropriately, what will actually be a Second American Revolution.
That one will begin with Scorched Earth and go up from there.
"Anyone who wants little children slaughtered , or feels that slaughtering them is in any way justifiable, deserves a millstone. And anyone who thinks "extermination" or a "parking lot" is an acceptable solution is saying they want little ones mutilated, and slaughtered. I hope they repent, or enjoy their millstones."
ReplyDeleteTo the codswallop-mongers:
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
Psalms 137:7-9
Good luck hanging your millstone around God's neck.
I suspect He'll kick and fuss about that just a wee bit.
Thus endeth the lesson.
Satan can twist scripture too. And that's what you just did. Modern Israel is not the ancient kingdom of Israel, and modern Israelites are genetically more linked to the Palestinians than they are to Peter, Saul, or any of the apostles, much less Abraham, Esau, or David. Nice try, but I'll say to you what I say to any man who twists scripture to justify his evil desires: Get thee behind me, Satan!
Delete|
The Palestinians are not the Amalekites, and God Almighty has not commanded their extinction.
Indeed, God Almighty said that any who harm little ones and deprive them of the opportunity to follow Him should wish for millstones. He said that *after* the section of scripture you're misusing and warping was written. He does not contradict Himself. The second temple fell, and ancient hebrewism fell with it. Talmudism is all that's left, and talmudists are not ancient Israelites. Thus endeth the exorcism. Repent, or enjoy your millstone.
Good passage Aesop.
DeleteIsreal is still playing nice. They are being benevolent to Gazans.
Isreal shouldn't have even needed to step foot in that place.
The USAF should have said, "Nice hostages. I got your country. If you like it we wont turn it into the moon, but only if we have everyone, alive, and well, in the next 8 hrs. After that 1 million lbs of General Purpose munitions will fall from the sky. And we dare anyone to try and stop us."
For Anon, it's worth pointing out, again, that the arabs in the Middle East are sick to death of the damned palestinians and their endless goading of Israel. You probably noted that by the number of arab states that signed Peace treaties with Israel. You don't see any of them making any effort whatsoever to accommodate even a single palestinian in their countries. They went that route and they were repaid with endless atrocities.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know what the solution can possibly be because yes, historically, people this deluded and evil are exterminated which is really why you don't see them around anymore.
They may be sick of them, but that doesn't mean they'll tolerate their extermination. And they remember how modern Israel was created, and that for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, the bulk of the territory now claimed by the modern state of Israel was called Palestine. https://voxday.net/2021/09/15/why-old-books-matter/
Delete|
They may be sick of Hamas, and the constant fighting, but they have relatives in Gaza and the West Bank. And their people have relatives. It's one thing to want your Uncle and his kids to shut the hell up and stop pissing off the neighbor who is a linebacker for the Steelers. It's another thing entirely to tolerate that linebacker kicking in your uncle's door and slaughtering every one of your nephews and nieces, because your uncle lost his mind and shot one of the linebacker's kids.
Via Instapundit
ReplyDelete“NO ONE WILL EVER BE FREE UNTIL PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS CAN HIJACK PLANES WITH IMPUNITY: Here is someone who’s visa should be in the process of being revoked as we speak.”
https://instapundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/planes-600×428.jpg
Text from image –
“Mohammed El-Kurd
@m7mdkurd
Follow
You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott.
You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes.
You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw
Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t
heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t
riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be.
6:17 PM 2/26/24 From Earth 718K
Views
“
I note that "anonymous" is anonymous, they do not have to courage to stand up for their so-called convictions. To me, their statements about Hamas ring falsely, they are just another anti-semite.
ReplyDeleteThere is a very old saying, "Never stand next to a man throwing fecal matter at an armed man".
ReplyDeleteUntil the Gazans swear off Hamas and join in the hunt to destroy Hamas, they will be treated as if they were Hamas. Because they are.
In reply to anonymous, above:
ReplyDeleteNobody I know wants to see little girls blown to pieces. Or incinerated in firestorms.
All those things happened to little German girls some time ago. And all because their society allowed a homicidal psychopath to become Chancellor and go to war with nations he considered to be enemies.
Were all those deaths the responsibility of the Eighth Air Force? Or the madman who started the war?
Some commenters here do. Aesop explicitly wants little babies thrown on rocks, per his distortion of scripture. And no, Hitler isn't responsible for the firebombing of Dresden. The blitz? Yes. Along with others who supported it and ordered it. But the men who accepted the orders bear the bulk of the responsibility. Regardless of any rationalization that might've been made at the time, or even today, firebombing civilian targets was an evil act, and there's no shelter in "I was just following orders" or "they did it first!!". Evil+justification=evil. And "he started it" != absolution. Clear enough?
Delete-Ishmael
Hitler wasnt responsible for Dresden? Could've not backed the Japanese, he declared war first. Already attempted to bomb civilians in Britain.
DeleteUnintended consequences of your decisions are still caused by your decisions. No excuses own it.
Japan had reason business wise to be mad. Thats understandable. America was more neutral than the 4 years we were neutral in WW1. We didnt want to fight. But you picked it so fuck you sideways.
If you like having hostages and using them as leverage, I'll teach you how to hold hostages. Wanna get mad and let your ego win, fine. We'll teach you to use your brain for thinking not feeling. Hamas would kill everyone who reads this blog. No problems. They celebrate (yes the "innocent" civilians) the death and public display of a civilians naked raped body. In public on main street, when I get talked to at HR about talking about hunting at work. These people could use a backhand to fix their attitude of whats ok.
Kill enough of them and they will leave you alone. Until then they will keep training and getting stronger.
To he honest, I figured Hamas' terrorism was sufficiently condemned (in my comment) by the statement "Anyone who wants little children slaughtered, or feels like slaughtering them is in any way justifiable, deserves a millstone."
ReplyDeleteHamas killed little ones and innocents in their vile attack. Those responsible, and those who celebrate that slaughter, deserve and will get millstones and hell, unless they repent before Almighty God.
Says the man quoting Vox Day, who made "St. Breivik" a meme on his blog. So which is it, Anon? Do child killers get millstones or sainthood?
As the saying goes: "Your boos mean nothing because we've seen what makes you cheer."
And when every other country in the middle east, and Iran as well, exterminates every single living Israeli as a consequence of Israel's extermination of the Palestinians, they will also deserve it. You are literally talking about a "final solution to the Palestinian problem" without even a hint of irony. It's beyond disgusting.
What all 1% of them? You don't even know how the Jews were already expelled from the surrounding Arab countries when Israel was founded. Where were all the tears and millstones back when it was Jewish kids being harmed?
They get millstones if they don't repent. But the actions they're repenting for were still absolutely evil, regardless. Sin is sin, atrocity is atrocity, regardless of necessity, or motivation. And slaughtering helpless innocents is an evil act. *No matter their identity or ethnicity.*
Delete*
The men who firebombed Dresden (and other cities on both sides), and the men who ordered it, all needed to repent, and they'll inevitably be gnashing their teeth in regret, should they be washed in the blood of the Lamb, and allowed to enter the presence of the Almighty. Simple as. And it's cute when guys Vox banned from his blog *years* ago still have enough of him living rent free in their heads that they can't help but lie about him and distort his words. He's not gonna go out with you, "other Nate". And real Nate will never call you sugart!ts again. Cope.
*
And for the pseudonymous folks who object to my refusal to give Google any PIData on myself, call me Ishmael. Feel better? Always loved that book. Darn whale.
-Ishmael
And it's cute when guys Vox banned from his blog *years* ago still have enough of him living rent free in their heads that they can't help but lie about him and distort his words. He's not gonna go out with you, "other Nate". And real Nate will never call you sugart!ts again. Cope.
ReplyDeleteRent-free? You brought him up! lol
And what distortion? He's literally typed "St. Breivek pray for us."
Oh wait... does that involve some kind of context or sarcasm or some other interpretation of words? Funny how you don't seem to grant that to others.
(no idea what your whole "real nate" is about - you're doing a wonderful impression of a homeless crazy person)
" I will note that none of Gaza neighbors are willing to open their borders and take refugees...there is a lack of common humanity all around."
ReplyDeleteNot a lack of humanity. Simple pragmatism.
Hamas has made it quite clear to the rest of the M.E. that the Palestinians CANNOT be trusted, since any inroads that are obtained by the people will be conscripted by Hamas to be turned toward attacks against Israel. The leaders of the other Arab countries are aware that Israel holds enough nukes to remove every sizeable settlement throughout that area. Allowing Hamas to launch attacks from your own country is seen as rather stupid, at least by most of them.
"Aesop explicitly wants little babies thrown on rocks, per his distortion of scripture."
ReplyDeleteNice try, but I merely quoted scripture, one which 99% of Christians and Jews are unfamiliar with, to show the Satanic lie behind the thought that God is too squeamish to delight in the destruction of babies, per se.
I neither interpreted nor applied the passage cited to anyone in modern times, but alleging otherwise is what happens when people try eisegesis instead of exegesis, with God's words or mine.
So that assertion is a total fail, and we have some lovely parting gifts for Ishmael (I think that name's due more to the work of Hagar than Melville - just a hunch - and therefore tellingly more apropos) and his fellows.
While you're up, tell the class the ages of the people destroyed in the Noahic Flood, and the ages of all the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah just after Abraham's and Lot's families departed the region.
Maybe cite the passage where the little ones were spared?
I'll wait over here while you figure that one out.
Do I want small children killed?
No. Plain and simple.
Not even in Gaza.
So if the Palestinians send the innocents too young to commit evil out under a white truce flag (that does not include the little b**tards old enough to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers for 8 decades), and let everyone older than that age take their own lumps, I have zero problem with that.
Alternatively, the residents of Gaza could bring the severed heads and matching bodies of every Hamas terrorist residing therein to the Israeli border as a piece offering, along with all their weapons; forswear violence towards their Jewish neighbors for all time; and commence to live in peace with Israel, as Jordan and Egypt have done since the 1970s, after realizing violence burned both their houses. They could then enjoy a much more harmonious outcome.
Until Gaza adopts one of those two policies, Israel should continue scraping the terrorists out by whatsoever methods seem best to themselves, until there aren't any. When the Egyptian Arabs in Gaza decide they've had enough of that, they'll quit.
If not, they'll perish.
Neither solution disturbs me in the slightest.
Notably, the Jordanian Arabs in the West Bank are conspicuous by their absolute silence and scrupulous abiding within the bounds of law and civilization. Almost like a lesson has been learned there.
Frankly, Israel should've started napalming entire neighborhoods in Gaza when the first rockets flew out of them 20 years ago, and every time they have since; if they had done that then, attacking Israel would've become a non-starter way back in time, and it never would have gotten to this. But they tried to pussyfoot around and appease terrorists, and now both sides get to reap the whirlwind.
For that matter, we should adopt a similar plan with certain communities in this country, and compare crime and murder rates before and after.
If you want a civilization, you teach the teachable uncivilized how to grow up and fly right, and you exterminate the irredeemably savage. True worldwide since before history was written down.
The only people who don't get this are simply too pollyannaishly stupid to grasp that fundamental truth.
Israel has had that lesson tattooed on their foreheads with a sledge hammer, and they've finally reached the end of tolerance for further half-steps towards an enemy that refuses to behave as human beings.
Dulce et decorum est.