We thought Owen Jones couldn’t get more odious.. He has proved us wrong!

[Absentmindedsmile]

https://archive.md/aOdSj

Archive link for readability

‘[Owen] seems to be upset because she had a chuckle about his erratic behaviour on Piers Morgan Uncensored last week. In response to an X user who wondered if Jones might have partaken of the white stuff before fidgeting and gurning his way through Morgan’s show, Rowling tweeted: “Well, he is known as Talcum X.”

Jones is hopping mad. He’s even written a 1,300-word screed on what a rotter Rowling is, which I’m sure we can all agree is a perfectly normal response to a woman making a joke.’

😂😂 and also 🤮🤢

I repeat:

Israel has taken considerable measures to reduce civilian casualties, that’s why the toll isn’t higher. If Israel fought with the same disregard for life as Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis, the devastation would be catastrophic.

Why are you holding Israel to a higher stander than anyone else, why was the enemy combatant anywhere near a café. Why is it Israel's responsibility to feed the people who want them wiped off the face of the earth. How are they drinking tea in a café if they're all staving to death. Make it make sense.

I’d say listen to what the humanitarian aid agencies are saying about the situation in Gaza. Not what one of the combatants is saying.

@TheywontletmehavethenameIwant

If Israel fought with the same disregard for life as Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis, the devastation would be catastrophic

More catastrophic for the mothers of Palestine than 10,000+ dead children? And the war and occupation didn’t start on Oct 7th.

An atrocity but Israel is not letting it go unanswered

Israel soldier jailed for abusing Palestinian detainees from Gaza - BBC News

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel-gaza-propaganda

“I’ve limited the collection to 20, but there are databases online with hundreds of statements which show a blurring of Hamas and the population of Gaza (including children) and a desire to inflict collective punishment. The end goal of all this is not the removal of Hamas from Gaza, but the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.”

• “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza,” said May Golan, minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel on 7 October 2023.

• “Flatten everything [in Gaza] just like it is today in Auschwitz,” David Azoulay, council leader for the northern Israeli town of Metula, said in aninterview with an Israeli radio station, December 2023.

• “[I]t’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. it’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved, it’s absolutely not true …” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said at a press conference on 13 October (in English).

• “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth” Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, wrote on X 7 October 2023. Vaturi also wrote: “The war will never end if we don’t expel everyone.” (2 November 2023) and “To wipe out Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Don’t leave a single child there, expel all the remaining ones in the end, so they have no chance of recovery.” (9 October 2023)

• “The children and women must be separated and the adults in Gaza must be eliminated. We are being too considerate,” Vaturi said during an interview with Kol BaRama radio in February 2025, when he also called Palestinians “subhumans” and said the West Bank would be turned into Gaza next.

• “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview. This did not get much international coverage but was cited in the letter sent to the attorney general at the end of 2023 accusing the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring incitement to genocide.

• “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, said October 2023. (Gallant was in this position at the time of the statement but is no longer in government)

• “I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman. I hope you don’t stand behind that statement either. When fighting a group like this, the distinctions that exist in a normal world don’t exist,” said Likud parliament member Amit Halevi in the Knessest, in response to a statement from an Israeli doctor saying suffering children should get painkillers, May 2025.

• “The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves,” said Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid in response to a Palestinian lawmaker bemoaning the loss of civilian life on 16 October 2023.

• “There should be 2 goals for this victory: 1. There is no more Muslim land in the Land of Israel ... After we make it the land of IL, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom …” said Likud member of the Knesset Amit Halevi on 16 October 2023.

• “They [the children] are our enemies,” said Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset for the National Religious party, part of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Rothman was responding to a question from a Channel 4 (UK) interviewer asking “the children are your enemies?”

Sorry, I don't agree that it's reprehensible to impose prevention of and punishment for, say, child rape, genital mutilation or the murder of women for failing to comply with extreme self-abasement.

If your argument is that you should also take measures to make sure that new system "sticks", I agree, but in the meantime I wouldn't be leaving defenceless women and children to their brutal, soul-destroying fate and calling it virtue.

@anotherside Since I don’t know who any of those people are and what they stand for politically, there is no context to those statements, who made them and why.

It’s like someone reading a quote from Farage and assuming he speaks for all British people or the entire British government.

Women's issues are not seen as the stuff of 'real politics'.

Is that for the rapist? A whole seven months? Or was that a different crime? And what about the IDF soldiers who made a shield wall for the soldier to commit the rape (what they hoped was) out of sight of the cameras?

And how about a quote on the matter from the ruling government of Israel:
On being asked by Ahmad Tibi, one of the Arab MPs within the Israeli Knesset last week if it was legitimate “to insert a stick into a person’s rectum”, Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, responded: “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”

wrong thread, deleted!

Many of them are senior/influential Israeli politicians. If you have never heard of a single one of them I’m not sure how much value your takes on the Middle East could possibly be of.

Do you ever ask yourself why Hamas embeds itself amonsgst the civilian population: in schools and in hospitals; why it builds tunnels with entrances inside children's bedrooms?

Do you ever ask yourself why the millions in international aid money goes straight into the pockets of Hamas leaders.....most of whom don't live in Gaza or the West Bank, but live millionnaire lifestyles in Quatar or Istanbul?

Do you ever question the morality of Hamas diverting aid to its control; prioritising its own 'needs' for fuel and food supplies - whilst carrying out summary executions of Gazans found stealing food?

Perhaps if you stopped to ask yourself some of these questions you might realise that it takes two to fight a war...and that the total demonisation of Israel just serves to heighten the hatred. You cannot find any balance.......you cannot allow any credits in Israel's column; only debits.

This hatred you feel for Israel is not something that is shared by anybody here for the people of Gaza. Nobody ( except Hamas supporters) cheers on the death of women and children. This hatred will not change anything for the better.

Rape denial on the feminist board…. Words fail me.

We can all find snippets and clips of people saying extreme things on both sides.

I can find snippets on this bloody thread.

I'll spare you the hundreds of clips I've seen then.

Have you ever seen MEMRI TV? It is a collection of video footage from media and TV stations all around the Middle East?

Arguing about the state of the Middle East has little to do with Jones's obsession with JKR.

No one has to 'speak out' about every horror in the world - particularly such a complicated one with a history of atrocities on both sides across the centuries. JKR (and anyone else) is perfectly sensible to not opine about things she isn't an expert in.

Neither is Owen Jones, but that never stops him pontificating.

Jones hates Rowling because she's a strong, articulate, successful woman who doesn't yield to him. 'Talcum X' is funny because he's a pallid little white man pretending he's some anti-establishment freedom fighter.

Laughing at him on Twitter because he's behaving on camera like a hopped up lunatic is not "picking on him because he has a disability." Saying that is about as convincing as Gregg Wallace saying his sex offender behaviour is because of autism. Both are bullshit that demeans those who are ND.

I have no idea why you quoted me as you seem to be responding to a completely different post.

Erm. Yeah. Not sure how that’s relevant though?

No one has to 'speak out' about every horror in the world - particularly such a complicated one with a history of atrocities on both sides across the centuries. JKR (and anyone else) is perfectly sensible to not opine about things she isn't an expert in.

Hard agree. The constant call for people to speak out on “XX” is weird. If somebody does not feel informed on a topic then it’s absolutely better they remain silent. And equally it’s fine for somebody to have a cause and devote their time and energy to that.

This is the problem with the 'silence is complicity' logic. Unless you continue to broadcast your moral status at regular intervals, you're considered the same as people actually committing atrocities.

'silence is complicity' is just another attempt to control and coerce people.

Oh yeah definitely seen that, seen quite a few Hamas figures on there. I don’t think people in the west fully comprehend how evil these people are, they need to see them speak for themselves. My tolerance for people who claim to be “pro Palestinian” and engage in rape and rape torture denial and denial about what Hamas actually is, is wearing extremely thin.

If you think rape, torture and terrorism is fine then people should just say so. If you have an unhealthy fixation with Jews then just say so. I see them, we can all see them tell us what they are.

I feel like I’m in some sort of struggle session.

I made a different thread about Hamas' sexual crimes yesterday, which some are calling 'genocidal'.

It seems to be another word that is being broadened in meaning.

I think people are sometimes using it to mean a measure of cruelty or immorality.

We've also seen people call the Supreme Court ruling 'genocidal'. To suggest that men being made to use men's facilities is 'genocide' risks hollowing the word of all meaning.