Thursday: Hili dialogue

November 2, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, November 2, 2023 and National Deviled Egg Day. I could eat a dozen of them, but never get a chance to. Here are some cute ones, and I could nom every one:

It’s also All Souls’ Day, National Men Make Dinner Day, International Stout Day (the beer), Coronation of Haile Selassie (a Rastafarian holiday), the second day of the Day of the Dead, or El Dia de los Muertos celebration in Mexico,
International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, Statehood Day for both North Dakota and South Dakota, and Plan Your Epitaph Day.

Below is the best epitaph ever, engraved on the tombstone of Mel Blanc, the voice of many cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety,  Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd.  The first line of the epitaph is how the voice of Porky Pig ended all Warner Brothers cartoons from 1937-1946.  What a wag!

The cartoon ending:

Blanc’s epitaph:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the November 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*This morning’s war news from the NYT has Biden calling for a “pause” in the fighting:

Rescue efforts continued Thursday after two days of Israeli airstrikes decimated a densely populated neighborhood of northern Gaza, and international criticism mounted over the casualties caused by Israel’s bombardment.

The Gazan health ministry said on Thursday that more than 1,000 people were killed, injured or missing after the strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Jabaliya neighborhood of Gaza.

Videos verified by The New York Times showed the aftermath of Wednesday’s strike in Jabaliya, about a half-mile from the site of Tuesday’s strike. Rescue workers and residents could be seen digging through the rubble of flattened rows of buildings; some carried out injured and dead people in their arms. The toll reported by the Gazan health ministry could not be independently verified.

As pressure grows to relieve the suffering in Gaza, President Biden said at a campaign reception in Minneapolis on Wednesday that there should be a “pause” in the fighting, in response to a woman who interrupted him by shouting a demand for a cease-fire. The White House said later that the president was talking about a pause to allow more of the hostages held in Gaza to be released.

More foreign and dual nationals were evacuating to Egypt on Thursday, with about 400 Americans included on a list of people scheduled to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing, the second day the border was open for such departures. But for the vast majority of two million people living in blockaded Gaza, there was nowhere to go.

I’m not sure what kind of “pause” would be required to release the hostages, as for sure the Gazans aren’t just going to let them go scot-free. I’m guessing that any prisoner swap will involve the release of 4,500 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails. But of course those are convicted terrorists, while the Gazan hostages are almost all innocent civilians.  If Hamas were smart, they’d draw out negotiations forever while they regroup and reform. But I doubt Israel would agree to any kind of long “pause”, which is in effect a cease-fire.  Maybe I’m confused, but could someone explain to me the difference between a “pause” and a “cease fire”. Please?

But no, Biden says they’re different. From the WaPo:

President Biden said Wednesday that he favors a humanitarian “pause” in the war but not a cease-fire — the first time he has publicly voiced the position that senior administration officials took last week. “A pause means give time to get the prisoners out,” he said at a fundraiser in Minneapolis.

Doesn’t that require a cease-fire? Surely Hamas will demand a cease-fire as a condition for negotiation.

*The Rafah border crossing from Egypt to Gaza is starting to open. From the WaPo:

Ambulances carried injured Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing Wednesday, the first civilian movement out of the besieged enclave since the war began. Foreign nationals and dual citizens also gathered at the crossing in Gaza, where hundreds were expected to be allowed to leave. In northern Gaza, dozens of people were wounded in another strike on the Jabalya refugee camp Wednesday, the third strike on the densely packed camp over the past 24 hours, according to the medical director at Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, where the injured were arriving. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s strike.

. . . After the evacuation of several dozen injured Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt on Wednesday, the next group listed to leave comprises employees of international organizations. Five Americans are among them, three of whom have already crossed the border, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Some embassies in Cairo were notified Tuesday night that their citizens would be allowed to cross out of Gaza after the wounded and staff of international organizations, and were told to send consular officers to the Rafah border crossing. Those who went, the U.S. official said, had no trouble traveling through the Suez tunnel into Sinai, a route that had been unauthorized until now.

The United States was not among those notified Tuesday night, but the official said the embassy expects the call Wednesday night and about 400 U.S. citizens and eligible family members to begin leaving in stages Thursday.

Americans who are inside Gaza and registered with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo received notice from the State Department late Tuesday that they would be assigned “specific departure dates to ensure an orderly crossing.” They were told to gather necessary documents, watch for further notification and be ready to depart within 24 to 72 hours.

Israel also took responsibility for the bombing of a hospital and the civilian deaths:

Israel claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s strikes in Jabalya, which the director of the Indonesian Hospital said killed more than 130 people and injured 300. Israel said it was targeting Hamas operatives and infrastructure, describing civilian deaths as a “tragedy of war.” The Washington Post could not independently verify the casualty tolls from the attack.

*At the Free Press, Walter Russell Mead (identified as “the foreign-affairs columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College, and the author of several important book“) asks, “Are we tipping into a new world war?“. The site has both a podcast and a printed excerpt. I’ve chosen the latter as I abhor podcasts and can read much faster than I can listen. This is from Mead’s interview with Bari Weiss:

BW: Prime Minister Netanyahu recently announced that the second phase of the war had begun, with IDF troops officially entering Gaza on the ground. Is Israel right to pursue this ground invasion? Is there any other way that they could defeat Hamas other than this strategy?

WRM: I don’t think there is an alternative. That doesn’t mean that this alternative will necessarily work. We’ll have to see. But I think after what happened, they have to—for domestic political reasons, for the strength of the Israeli deterrent internationally, and just sheer self-defense—they really have to break Hamas.

BW: What does breaking Hamas look like, practically?

WRM: It would look as if Hamas, as an organization, could no longer carry out initiatives on any serious scale. Similarly to ISIS, that went from being this territorial empire and quasi-state into scattered groups who still think of themselves as ISIS, they’re still ISIS fighters, but the entity that we saw that had controlled almost everything in central Syria and western Iraq, that no longer exists. The sentiments behind Hamas will not go away. The people who have had the training—that thanks to Hezbollah and Iran have been able to impart—will not leave their heads. There will be efforts to begin to reconstitute. Breaking Hamas is not the end of the terrorism problem, but it does change the focus. It’s an effective response to what Hamas has just done.

On eliminating Hamas:

BW: There are a lot of progressive groups, including members of Congress, very prominent people here in America, and certainly around the world, calling for a cease-fire. Some are inclined to hear the word cease-fire and think, “a cease-fire is good. It means the end of war,” but in your writing, you explain that is incorrect. Why is a call for cease-fire misguided?

WRM: Let’s travel back in time to 1944. The Allied soldiers have just landed on the Normandy beaches and are just beginning to expand their foothold. A cease-fire would have given the Germans the time they needed to assemble the forces that could throw the Allies back into the sea. A call for a cease-fire that sounded so humanitarian was actually an attempt to hand the victory to one party. Now, I would never say that everybody who calls for a cease-fire today is consciously trying to help Hamas. Nevertheless, it remains the fact that a cease-fire at this time allows Hamas to continue to prepare, it does nothing for the release of hostages, and it does nothing really to alleviate the suffering of the people in Gaza. The war will resume more bitterly than ever. I think it’s a real mistake to call for a cease-fire.

While I agree with Mead, I’m not am not as sanguine as he about the motivations about those who call for a cease-fire. I think that most such people know exactly what that will mean: the withdrawal of the IDF back to Israel, a permanent cessation of Israel’s aggression (but not of Hamas’s rockets!) and horse-trading for hostages that’s either inconclusive or turns over 220 hostages held in Gaza for 4,500 terrorists in Israeli jails. It will be a victory for Hamas Israel’s loss of its power to deter future attacks. But listen to the podcast and see what I’m missing.

*The U.S. admitted that it virtually stopped spying on Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups after 9/11. That’s twenty-two years without U.S. intelligence affecting one of our allies, and it was a miscalculation:

U.S. intelligence agencies all but stopped spying on Hamas and other violent Palestinian groups in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., instead directing resources to the hunt for the leaders of al Qaeda and, later, Islamic State, according to U.S. officials familiar with the shift.

Calculating that Hamas had never directly threatened the U.S. and burdened with other spying priorities, Washington ceded the responsibility to Israel, confident that its aggressive security services would detect any threat, the U.S. officials said. It should have been “a well-placed bet,” said one senior counterterrorism official.

With more than 30 Americans dead and 10 missing, mounting fears of a regional war, and billions of dollars in U.S. military hardware headed to the Middle East since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, some officials say the U.S. misjudged the threat to U.S. national security.

“In terms of intelligence failures, which really do lie mostly on Israel, I think we should also share some blame for missing this event,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA operations officer with extensive counterterrorism experience. “Ceding the target to the Israelis now looks to have had consequences.”

Current and former officials said U.S. intelligence agencies, principally the CIA, had a handful of analysts tracking events in the Gaza Strip before the attacks but relied on Israel to penetrate Hamas with human sources and surveil the group with eavesdropping technology.

*Reader Jez sent a tweet and some news from the UK.

Sadly, there’s not so much good news on the police front in the UK:

It seems police in London showed up at 4 a.m. (!) because a man had posted a video in which he criticised the number of Palestinian flags being put up by immigrants in his area:

The British coppers, and the completely wacko construal of videos like the second one above as “hate speech”, need reining in. For crying out loud: arresting a buy for a one-minute video he posted criticizing the plethora of Palestinian flags in his neighborhood!  But Jez has more:

Two police officers in London tore down posters of kidnapped Jews in an area with a sizeable Jewish population – the London Metropolitan Police justified this on the basis that they did so to “stop issues escalating” and to “avoid community tension”. (There’s a link containing this news at the end of the following paragraph.)

The chief constable of Greater Manchester Police has apologised after one of their officers also took down such posters, admitting that his force had “responded badly to a complaint and I think we’ve got it wrong.” According to The Daily Mail, the Manchester police force “has now confirmed an investigation is underway and will work to ensure posters can continue to be displayed.” At least they made the right decision in the end, I suppose. But so much for police neutrality.

What? Are the British police antisemitic now? What’s making them behave this way?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is probably referring to this story, about a Polish priest resigning after being caught at a gay orgy in his apartment. But she may be referring to the war in the Middle East.

Hili: Everybody is excited about scandals that are close by.
A: Be tolerant towards your neighbour.
In Polish:
Hili: Każdy żyje takimi skandalami jakie ma.
Ja: Bądź tolerancyjna dla bliźnich.

*******************

From reddit via Peter: the difference between cats and d*gs:

Difference between cat vs dog.
byu/Cyber_Being_ inholdmycatnip

From Merilee, a cat noshery from Mark Parisi’s Off the Mark cartoons:

From somewhere on Facebook:

From Masih, with the Google translation “Walking without a veil can get you killed in Iran: they defy the ban after the death of Amita Garavand.”

 

From Titania:

From Frits, who titles it “Israeli soldiers maintaining their sense of humor.”

From Malcolm, ants carrying a gold chain. Why? Are they going to pawn it?

From Barry, who says, “This sounds about right”:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy gassed upon arrival at only five years old:

Two tweets from Matthew today. The first is a bee fly, a fly aposematically resembling a bee. Google translation: Ultimate I found the ultimate super cute fly! ! ! ! ! Toratsuriabu! ! Her pointy mouth is so sharp and it’s the best, and she’s so fluffy and fluffy.

A view of Mars from a bit above the surface. Taken by the Mars helicopter, which is still operating!

 

23 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Maybe the British police were jealous of how much attention Palestine was getting, what with the flag of Palestine getting massive views.

    Reply

  2. Are the British police antisemitic now? What’s making them behave this way?

    It’s not so much antisemitism, it’s that today’s “anti-racist” attitudes mean that immigrant communities are never in the wrong, and in particular that immigrant-communities that are Muslim are never in the wrong. Any suggestion that they are is “Islamophobic” which is akin to being “racist”.

    Hence the police will appease Muslim communities. We saw the same attitudes over the Rotherham sex scandal and all the similar scandals. And in the fact that the mainstream media never criticises Islam but readily lionizes hijab wearing. And we see it in the fact that the government readily hands over many publicly-funded state schools to be run by Muslims as Muslim schools, where the pupils have to follow the Islamic religion. Disappointingly, this is not even controversial in the UK.

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    1. On this day:
      1899 – The Boers begin their 118-day siege of British-held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War.

      1914 – World War I: The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire and the Dardanelles is subsequently closed.

      1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.

      1917 – The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparation and carrying out the Russian Revolution, holds its first meeting.

      1920 – In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the 1920 United States presidential election.

      1936 – The BBC Television Service, the world’s first regular, “high-definition” (then defined as at least 200 lines) service begins. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day. [It adopted the current spelling of BBC One in 1997.]

      1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the “Spruce Goose”), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built until Scaled Composites rolled out their Stratolaunch in May 2017.

      1956 – Suez Crisis: Israel occupies the Gaza Strip.

      1959 – Quiz show scandals: Twenty-One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

      1959 – The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorway and M45 motorway.

      1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.

      1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

      1966 – The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.

      1967 – Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and “The Wise Men” conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.

      1982 – Channel 4 starts broadcasting.

      1983 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

      1984 – Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.

      1988 – The Morris worm, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.

      1999 – Honolulu shootings: In the worst mass murder in the history of Hawaii, a gunman shoots at eight people in his workplace, killing seven.

      2000 – Expedition 1 arrived at the International Space Station for the first long-duration stay onboard. From this day to present, a continuous human presence in space on the station remains uninterrupted.

      Births:
      1636 – Edward Colston, English merchant and politician (d. 1721). [Colston was a slave trader and an 1895 statue of him was torn down by anti-racism activists in 2020.]

      1734 – Daniel Boone, American hunter and explorer (d. 1820).

      1755 – Marie Antoinette, Austrian-French queen consort of Louis XVI of France (d. 1793).

      1815 – George Boole, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1864).

      1879 – Marion Jones Farquhar, American tennis player and violinist (d. 1965). [Won the women’s singles titles at the 1899 and 1902 U.S. Championships.]

      1905 – Isobel Andrews, New Zealand writer (d. 1990).

      1908 – Bunny Berigan, American trumpet player (d. 1942).

      1911 – Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1996).

      1913 – Burt Lancaster, American actor (d. 1994).

      1929 – Amar Bose, American engineer and businessman, founded the Bose Corporation (d. 2013).

      1931 – Phil Woods, American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader (d. 2015).

      1934 – Ken Rosewall, Australian tennis player.

      1941 – Bruce Welch, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

      1942 – Shere Hite, German sexologist, author, and educator (d. 2020).

      1942 – Stefanie Powers, American actress.

      1944 – Keith Emerson, English pianist, keyboard player, and composer (d. 2016).

      1947 – Dave Pegg, English bass player and producer.

      1961 – k.d. lang, Canadian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress.

      1966 – David Schwimmer, American actor.

      But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
      1887 – Jenny Lind, Swedish operatic soprano (b. 1820).

      1950 – George Bernard Shaw, Irish author, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856).

      1961 – James Thurber, American humorist and cartoonist (b. 1894). [His memoir The Years With Ross is a witty and affectionate tribute to The New Yorker‘s creator and first editor Harold Ross.]

      1966 – Mississippi John Hurt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1892).

      1975 – Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1922).

      1991 – Irwin Allen, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1916).

      1992 – Hal Roach, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1892).

      1996 – Eva Cassidy, American singer (b. 1963). [Died tragically young and just as she was on the cusp of success. Her cover of Sting’s “Fields of Gold” is excellent.]

      2004 – Theo van Gogh, Dutch actor, director, and producer (b. 1957). [Directed Submission: Part 1, a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticised the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film’s message.]

      2014 – Acker Bilk, English singer and clarinet player (b. 1929).

      2022 – Atilio Stampone, Argentine pianist and composer (b. 1926).

      Reply

    2. I have been reading some opinions about this recently. The simplest view is that once such a group attains a majority, then they can enforce their will on everyone else.
      But it makes more sense to understand that the percentage differs with the specific characteristics of the minority group, considering traits such as aggression and tolerance of others.
      The number that keeps popping up with Islam is 15% of the local population. Obviously, they cannot just start beheading people in stadiums once they reach that point. Apparently though, they have enough influence at that point that the government will betray it’s own principals and citizens to avoid upsetting them.

      I do not understand how the people of the UK and Western Europe did not see all of this as a logical consequence of their actions.

      Reply

      1. But if you appear in the street with a star of David the police will tell you put it away and clear off or they will arrest you for provoking trouble. All in the name of reducing “social tension”! The big apes are running scared of what will happen if a certain group decides to riot.

        Reply

    3. Don’t forget that they got rightly pilloried over a number of incidents and scandals that could be construed to be racist. They’ve become so paranoid about it that they have over corrected.

      Reply

  3. Connecting to the “go.nasa” link in the paragraph on the Mars helicopter takes you to an incredible interactive site with a view of the current landing and exploration area on the Martian surface. The views of the cliffs, landslides/washes(?), and rubble are amazing … at least to me. In the interactive mode, it shows the specific locations that the rover took samples at. Remember the mission (I think) is trying to answer the fundamental question: is there now or was there ever life on Mars?
    Click on “view map”, then on “view full experience”.

    Reply

  4. The Auschwitz Memorial X/Twitter account says it has lost 6,000 followers since October 7 and are appealing for more people to follow them.

    Reply

  5. Another good epitaph is on the gravestone of Spike Milligan, Irish comedian. Wikipedia says – Spike Milligan’s epitaph includes the phrase Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite, Irish for “I told you I was ill”

    Reply

  6. Just a heads-up, one Jonathan Cook, who is apparently some sort of journalist, seems to be out there sowing seeds of doubt that the Palestinians are responsible for all of the casualties on Oct 7.

    Otherwise, maybe your friend in Israel who predicted war should be recruited into Israeli intelligence.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the heads up. It is amazing how quckly and how much purchase these guys get. I really miss the 1960’s when walter cronkite filtered all the news with an occasional arched eyebrow. I grow old. I grow old.

      Reply

    2. Jonathan Cook is a notorious crank, conspiracy theorist, and atrocity denier. Naturally, he is/was a big fan of Corbyn, and is one of the many loudmouths who constantly scream that Corbyn was brought down via a “smear campaign”, organised by you know who.

      Reply

  7. Pause vs. cease fire. I don’t know if there is a difference in fact, but my guess is that the U.S. administration would like to see a short-term (a few days) cessation of Israeli bombing (a “pause”) to help lower the tension level both locally in Gaza and in capitals around the world. Continued, unrelenting, attacks by Israel risk making Israel look like a monster—an image that does not help the Israeli cause. A pause might also give a little time for new ideas to emerge and for new information to come to light regarding how to rescue the hostages. (I’m not optimistic about new ideas.)

    In essence, the U.S. has taken the temperature of the world and has determined that a brief respite from the bombing would show that the Israeli administration is not heartless. A couple of news cycles without news of civilian death might give Israel a bit more breathing room (from the international community) to continue its dismantling of Hamas.

    Reply

    1. A pause is very different from a cease-fire. The latter is negotiated where both sides stop shooting in order to allow some humanitarian task to occur, or in the hopes of negotiating a settlement. (11 Nov 1918 was a cease-fire.) A pause is unilateral in the faint hope that some benefit will accrue to the pauser that will, goes the hope, exceed the cost. In this case, the cost would include the continued launching of rockets from Gaza which couldn’t be subjected to counter-fire (except by Iron Dome interception.) A pause can also allow the other side to replenish its military supplies and repair fortifications without fear of molestation, which will tend to increase casualties among the IDF after the pause ends. A pause also allows the other side to consolidate its own diplomatic and political position without the distraction of being shot at.

      If a cease-fire is not in Israel’s interest at this point, then a pause is even less so.

      So far as I know, there was never a theatre-wide mutual cease-fire at any point in the Second World War until unconditional surrender on V-E Day. Any unilateral pauses were simply tactical, say, to bring up gasoline and ammunition along stretched supply lines, or to get replacement troops integrated into the order of battle before the continued advance. Needless to say, these pauses weren’t announced to the Germans.

      I personally don’t think Israel needs any breathing room from the international community. They won’t get much anyway and what they do get will be withdrawn as soon as the next bomb falls on Gaza. (Look how quickly support for Israel evaporated in the usual quarters after 7 Oct. Israel hadn’t even retaliated yet.) The support Israel needs is from the United States and the United States alone. Unlike almost all other countries ready to criticize Israel, the United States has actually been in wars and, if it wants to, can understand what Israel has to do if it is to win.

      Reply

      1. A cease-fire, as others here have noted, is when both sides agree to stop hostilities for a period of time. A pause, in this case, means that Israel would stop firing, and probably withdraw from Gaza. This has nothing to do with hostages, who could be released at any time.
        A pause just gives Hamas a chance to regroup, rearm, and plant IEDs.

        Reply

      2. Here’s the National Museum of the USAF on bombing pauses during Rolling Thunder.

        Hanoi used these pauses to rebuild its strength, repair damage and send more troops and supplies to the battle zone. So, when ROLLING THUNDER missions resumed, U.S. aircrews not only had to attack new targets, but also those previously destroyed and repaired during the bombing halts.

        It’s difficult to see an upside for Israel.

        Reply

        1. The museum in Dayton has five aircraft that my Dad flew, including three he flew in combat.
          For me, going there is like visiting a shrine.
          The only reason that I see for our administration calling for a pause would be pressure from Qatar or their weird fixation with appeasing Iran.
          Unless it is about polling and the upcoming election.

          Reply

  8. IIRC during WW1 the German and Allied troops in the trenches paused hostilities on Xmas day hung out for a few hours before resuming.
    From google:

    “They were dreading having to spend Christmas away from their families. Then something incredible happened on December 24, 1914. Soldiers from both sides put down their weapons, stepped out of their trenches and enemy really did meet enemy between the trenches. For a short time, there was peace.”

    But that was another time.

    Reply

      1. Of course they did, can’t have the troops fraternizing with the enemy.
        Another story, mutural bombardments would occur at a given hour and the same coordinance so as to avoid casualties. This no doubt was stopped as well.

        Reply

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