Darrell Castle talks about wars in Gaza and Ukraine along with other events in our world today, and asks who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys. Further, how are we to know for sure?

Transcription / Notes

WHO ARE THE GOOD GUYS

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday, the 10th day of May in the year of our Lord 2024. I will be looking at the wars in Gaza and Ukraine along with other events in our world today, and asking who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys, and how are we to know for sure. Does black and white even exist anymore or is the reality of today’s world nothing but grey.

My beat is philosophy today as I look at real events happening in our world and how the media that is supposed to reveal facts to us, but often is no more than the propaganda arm of the regime in power at the moment. Sometimes, it seems, it is even difficult to know what or who is the real regime in power at the moment and what or who is just an illusion.

For example, the nation of Israel as it now exists, and I, are approximately the same age having both been born in 1948. For all my life I have thought of Israelis as the good guys, but now the media gives us the idea that roles might be reversing and Israel’s neighbors are suddenly wearing the white hats. I have seen the wars fought by Israel since 1948 and admired the courage and intelligence of the little country defending itself against much more populous enemies.

The Israelis are also the good guys because they are a Western nation with Western values, right in the middle of a lot of countries still mired in the Middle Ages. The bad guys fight with terrorism, denigrate women to 2nd or lower-class status, and throw gays off buildings. Now we seem to be witnessing a role reversal whereby the Israelis are presented to us as the terrorists and those in Gaza are the victims. However, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said recently that the Israelis are fighting terrorists and that means end of story, of course. The speaker was trying to justify passage of the Foreign Aid Bill which indebts Americans for $95 billion for the benefit of foreign governments and their wars.

The U.S. tells its people and the world that Hamas is terrorist, and therefore should be fought with Israeli blood and American money, but Washington also sends $9 billion to Hamas, I mean Gaza. It’s all very confusing and making sense of it seems close to impossible. Remember that on October 7th of last year Hamas attacked civilian targets inside Israel killing 1400 and taking some 250 hostages they still hold or have killed. There are also horrific images of rape and child murder presented to us. Now, however, virtually the entire world’s media tells us that the Israelis have used the wrong tactics in their war against Hamas and many women and children have been killed. Civilians in Gaza are starving they say, and recently I came across a story of dogs eating corpses in the streets of Rafah which is now subject to Israeli invasion.

The people in Washington who make our decisions and do our thinking say that the Israelis should not invade Rafah. In response, the Israelis say we are going to invade Rafah with or without American help, so President Biden makes a decision to withhold shipments of vitally needed ammunition to Israel. I suppose the president is having trouble deciding who the good guys are in this struggle as well as anyone else. Maybe he is concerned about his base that is being reflected to him from college campuses across America right now. Democrats don’t need or want enemies on the left and the chants of Genocide Joe must raise alarms about reelection.

I want to point out that Hamas is the government of Gaza although Gaza is under Israeli military control. Hamas is not a traditional military force and has little traditional military capability. It has no tanks, no air force, no long-range artillery and no navy.