The smooth Englishman on Al-Jazeera to whom I referred this morning is Shihab Rattansi, formerly of CNN, and a credit to the human race. Here is wonderful footage of him this afternoon interviewing first Dennis Kucinich at Congress--and asking him what prayer he has of actually succeeding in mounting a Congressional challenge to the use by Israel of arms sold to it for defensive purposes--and then taking on Rep. Eliot Engel of New York. Mr. Lobby.
When Engel says that "I don't know what it means" to say that the Israeli attacks have been disproportionate, Rattansi says, Well 200 children have been killed. So if that's not disproportionate, would it be disproportionate if 300 children were killed? (Shades of George Bernard Shaw.)
Engel persists that the children were killed, unfortunately, in attacks on Hamas terrorist facilities. "You are demanding the evidence that all these children were around Hamas [facilities]," Rattansi says, with savage irony. Beautiful performance. Also gives Engel stick when he says that Hamas broke the cease-fire. No, Israel did, on November 4... Wow, can you imagine a journalist doing this on our cable stations? And if not, why not? (Thanks to Idrees Ahmad)
Explains another Al-Jazeera English watcher: "The material in these videos is not uncommon on AJE or on the media outside of the USA; it's shown regularly. What's considered 'brave' or 'graphic' in America is mundane anywhere else. European media is a little better. CNN Intl. is one grade above CNN US, but shallow and timid overall (the best they can manage during the coverage is Amanpour interviewing Blair - about as interesting as drying paint and just as informative. It made Larry King look like a hardball interviewer.). BBC goes a little further in terms of pictures and diction. But they both have nothing on AJE, who has the only international journalists broadcasting live from Gaza, doing superb work."
One question for Phil.
Was our response to Pearl Harbor disproportionate?
some would say this is disproportionate:
I would like a poll. How many Americans are waking up to what is going on? What percentage do you think? How widespread is it?
Is it a still just a few cranky people who blog?
these folks must be hamas
This blog seems to be educating a lot of people! Prior to this, people must have thought bombs only hurt bad guys.
Well over 1,000 Jews were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. Do you collect those pictures? If not, why not?
But I really respect you, chimp, for answering a serious and legitimate question with SCARY PICTURES! Way to engage in a dialogue.
That's not Jim Haygood. It's the Imposter.
But I'll answer your question. What we did to Japan was incredibly disproportionate. In fact, our role in the whole Second World War was a mistake. Japan wanted to negotiate, and Hitler was none of our business.
Eliot Engel, a perfect example of some of the best traditions in Jewish culture!
1. Bravely firing naval artillery shells from rolling ships at sea into crowded concentration camps, wiping out whole families with pin-point accuracy.
2. Brazenly lieing to the whole world (this is called moxie) that Hamas has been "hiding amongst the population" when you know full well that Hamas IS the population.
3. Regaining your 'street cred', by showing again how bravely you can kill defenseless people.
One question for the fake "Jim Haygood:"
Are you comparing the damage from the qassam rockets to the damage from the Pearl Harbor attack? Pretty soon you'll be accusing the Palestinians of launching a 2nd Holocaust since those rockets have killed a dozen Israelis in the past 8 years! And by the way, I do consider the response to Pearl Harbor disproportionate, especially when we dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, just as Japan was about to concede defeat. I am not a nationalist. I condemn man's inhumanity to man even (especially) when my own government does it.
It's only fair to blame Hamas for engaging in the systematic destruction of Jews, even if they're not very good at it. After all, Israel has been accused of "genocide" for killing 500 out of 1.3 million people, mostly enemy combatants. Of course in your worldview, "only" 12 dead Jews is nothing to get *this* upset about. Israel should have waited until a kindergarten was devastated and scores of Israeli babies were killed first, right? What's your threshold of dead Jews?
How about the Palestinian's responsibility to run.the.other.way when they see a rocket being launched. They know that Israel is targeting the origin of the rocket/mortar launch, they know Israel has UAVs watching everything. They know Hamas' craven desire for dead civilians to elicit media sympathy.
Maybe, they take responsibility for their own destiny by revolting against the real occupying power in Gaza. Next time a rocket launcher is set up, overpower the squad, destroy the launcher, drop the rocket down a well and beat them to death. The minute I saw *that* footage on YouTube, I'd be the loudest one screaming for a cease-fire. Until then I keep reminding myself that they voted these people into power, knowing exactly what they planned to do.
How about stop blaming Israel for acting to end the more than 6500 rockets and mortars, regardless of the death and damage they cause, simply because no one should have to live like that.
As far as that picture of Palestinian child abuse is concerned, there are two versions with the same child. Same bruise on her head, same orange jacket:
link to daylife.com
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0eToeOx9YrgMg/A_Palestinian_father_carries_his_wounded_baby_daughter
So which one is her real father? Or did they play "pass the baby" to get more media play out it?
"We won't get fooled again…"
PS I have no expectation that this post will remain on your site for very long. Already posted this response and a link back here elsewhere.
Bravo for getting the journalist's name, and telling us more about him. I did a cursory search without turning anything up, but you're a real journalist.
If you want to read something scary, read Pat Lang on the IDF ground force today, including the comments.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/01/the-idf-ground.html
Engel claimed that Hamas had broken the ceasefire. When his interviewer pointed out that Israel had actually done so at the beginning of November he said something like that he didn't know whether that was accurate, that it was widely accepted, also in the Arab capitals (he mentioned Cairo),that Hamas had broken it. Also to completely cover himself he remarked that in any case it was not essential who had broken it (not essential when his people had done it that is).
I checked up on one of the most important Egyptian weeklies (Al Ahram) and found in the current issue this statement by Barghouti:
-"Israel claims that Hamas violated the ceasefire and abandoned it unilaterally. Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the ceasefire."
In a way he did not entend Engel was right about the unimportance of that question regarding the ceasefire. It is pretty generally accepted that the preparation of Israel's assault started at least half a year ago. Israel was going to have it even if Hamas had been as quiet as nuns.
thank you for the pat laing article on the idf. laing is extremely trustworthy i have heard. he makes the point that the israeli army is set up differently than the us army. he says the soldiers being the post-adolescents they are , bully people at checkpoints, etc., shoot at women hanging up laundry, and this is because they do not have mature men as sergeants in command, as the us army does.
Thanks to Leila for the Pat Lang link.
Since I know Richard Witty gets worried about visiting sites not written by his fellow Jews, I've quoted a few of Lang's observations on the IOF:
"The national government has a hard time knowing whether or not specific policies will be followed in the field. For example, the Israeli government's policy in the present action in the Gaza Strip has been to avoid civilian casualties whenever possible. Based on personal experience of the behavior of IDF conscripts toward Palestinian civilians, I would say that the Israeli government has little control over what individual groups of these young Israeli soldiers may do in incidents like the one yesterday in which mortar fire was directed toward UN controlled school buildings.
"In Beit Suhur outside Bethlehem, I have seen IDF troops shoot at Palestinian Christian women hanging out laundry in their gardens. This was done with tank coaxial machine guns from within a bermed up dirt fort a couple of hundred yards away, and evidently just for the fun of it. In Bethlehem a lieutenant told me that he would have had his men shoot me in the street during a demonstration that I happened to get caught in, but that he had not because he thought I might not be a Palestinian and that if I were not the incident would have caused him some trouble. I have seen a lot of things like that.
…
"In my travels in the west Bank in March of 2008, it was noticeable that the behavior towards Palestinian civilians of IDF troops at roadblocks was reminiscent of that of any group of post-adolescents given guns and allowed to bully the helpless in order to look tough for each other."
"BBC goes a little further in terms of pictures and diction"
Sorry, no, not this time around. No. BBC's coverage has been pathetic. And I say this as someone who usually prefers BBC coverage to CNN, etc.
Rosemarchy Church of CNN Int'l might be the bravest mind on CNN. She really asks some good and important questions (she did the same in July 2006 when the Lebanon war was raging), although not all the time. Better than the rest of the pack.
The problem is that these images are not shown on TV in the U.S, and the most they show are lightly injured adults. Israel would then say that these were really Hamas gunmen in civilian clothing… Pictures of children killed in the most brutal ways, their bodies torn apart, are probably rarely if ever shown on local American stations…
Sorry, I meant Rosemary Church.
What I personally seem to have assembled as the sequence of events is that IJ fired a rocket rocket salvo regarded by Israel as the casis belli, but that they did so in response to an air strike on one of their teams. It is my impression that IJ often fire the first salvo in such a sequence of events, then Israel retaliates, then Hamas joins in. I think this reflects a sort of order of decorum, rather than a substantial policy lag.
None of the posts above using my name were mine. Obviously.
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/israel_the_bernie_madoff_of_countries
World
Israel: The Bernie Madoff of Countries
Posted by Taki Theodoracopulos on January 07, 2009
Israel can now safely be called the Bernie Madoff of countries, at it has lied to the world about its intentions, stolen Palestinian lands continuously since 1948, and managed to do all this with American tax payer’s money. Every American taxpayer, starting with George W. Bush, has Palestinian blood on their hands thanks to the butchers that run Israel.
Sderot, where a few homemade harmless missiles have landed, was once an Arab village called Najd, whose 600 Arab inhabitants were expelled by Israelis in 1948. Jewish settlers built over the old town in 1951. Having been ethnically cleansed, the Arabs moved to the Gaza Strip, along with some other 750,000 Palestinians who had been removed from their lands—or murdered, like the villagers of Deir Yassin—before the first Arab-Israeli war had even begun.
UN Resolution 194 and Article 13 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights say the people of Najd and Palestine’s other 384 demolished villages must be allowed to go home. But they can’t because Israel confines them in a small stretch of coastal desert that the Egyptian army held onto in 1949 and became a dumping ground for the displaced population of southern Palestine. Ninety per cent of Gaza’s 1.5 million people are refugees and their descendants. Israel won’t let them come back, nor will it let them have a state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank even if they relinquish their right of return.
Continued Infant Hasbara alert:
Since I sent out general notice yesterday, Bill Pearlman has posted a host of his usual juvenile and vile comments under other names, among them: 9x as Jim Haygood;3x as Watcher's watcher; 1x as Watcher;1x as Ed; 1x as Martha; 1x as David.
I've had CNN International (and some looks at other stations) on for almost 24 hours. During the last three days, their coverage has really improved. They've run hours of interviews and reports with a pro-Palestinian slant. Lots of interviews with UN representatives. They gave prominent time to the Director of HelpUPA, and have their site up on CNN/Impact. Considering where they were on Day 1, their coverage has improved tremendously.
BBC World's idea of hard-hitting coverage seems to be "interviewing" the IDF Massacre Machine reps, basically letting those reps just run on without interruption. Really pathetic.
Finnish TV is doing independent coverage, not relying on US feeds, and has prominently interviewed Palestinians.
The Russian TV stations have given very little coverage to what is taking place in Gaza, just some still photographs of damaged buildings. There was an attempted pro-Palestinian demonstration in Moscow that I saw on Finnish TV, but that was cleared up quickly with 15 of the participants being arrested.
Can somebody tell me something about the custom to pronounce Hamas with a disproportionate lengthening of the first a, exactly the way Engel does.
It's strikingly different from how Shihab Rattansi pronounces it. Is that how it is pronounced in Israel? I am wondering for quite some time now about the origin of this pronunciation.
Voice of America If you listen here it is definitively closer to Shihab Rattansi's.
puzzled.
As far as that picture of Palestinian child abuse is concerned, there are two versions with the same child. Same bruise on her head, same orange jacket:
Unbelievable. Repeat after me: All Arabs and all their kids look alike.
Example one
Example Two.
Notice dear reader. The second picture is staged by the evil lying Arabs.
And notice too. The issue of landgrabs has nothing to do with the whole scenario. Besides it is not anybody's business but Israel's.
For "Hasbarah with attitude(but without a brain)":
You should consider that Israel has openly revealed that it spent the entire 6 months of cease-fire preparing for the Gaza invasion.
Which they had planned almost as soon as the last illegal settler had left in accordance with international law.
It's a good sign that the quality of propaganda from the zionist toads continues to decline…